The Orient Steed: Yet Another Touring Story

[cakM3]

Looks good on your orient Botond.


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[az3579]

Thanks. I'll do yellow fogs one day but would rather get an M-Tech 2 bumper at some point before I bother with fogs since they are completely different than the stock non-sports. Man this bumper is so ugly...

[Galapolis]

If you don't mind slight damage, I'll be getting a new MTech bumper later this year and you can have my old one for free.

[az3579]

If you don't mind slight damage, I'll be getting a new MTech bumper later this year and you can have my old one for free.

Thank you for the offer, but financially it doesn't make sense to take you up on that. Shipping is expensive, and the amount spent on gas and tolls coming to pick it up wouldn't be much cheaper. Also, the money spent to fix it and repaint it (we have different colors) would mean just buying a new aftermarket one and getting that painted would end up a better value.

Thanks for putting that out there though. Maybe if the color matched it would be a different story, depending on the damage.
P.S. - I friggin' LOVE your wheels.

[Galapolis]

Thank you for the offer, but financially it doesn't make sense to take you up on that. Shipping is expensive, and the amount spent on gas and tolls coming to pick it up wouldn't be much cheaper. Also, the money spent to fix it and repaint it (we have different colors) would mean just buying a new aftermarket one and getting that painted would end up a better value.

Thanks for putting that out there though. Maybe if the color matched it would be a different story, depending on the damage.
P.S. - I friggin' LOVE your wheels.

No worries, just wanted to throw it out there. You never know, I've met people that paint their parts themselves and I have a friend who commutes to CT sometimes who could bring the bumper for free. Also funny you should mention the wheels because your BBS CHs are my absolute dream wheels on the E46 chassis.

[az3579]

No worries, just wanted to throw it out there. You never know, I've met people that paint their parts themselves and I have a friend who commutes to CT sometimes who could bring the bumper for free. Also funny you should mention the wheels because your BBS CHs are my absolute dream wheels on the E46 chassis.

You know the funny thing is, the front bumpers are easy to find because they're the same as sedan. But that rear bumper... it's almost unobtainium in the aftermarket. I want something new but also don't feel like spending over a grand just for a rear bumper after all is said and done. I can't even find them used here.


One thing that definitely needed rectifying was that sorry looking 325 badge with the missing 'i' at the end. It's been bothering me and I'm not one to debadge, but I'm also not proud of the fact that it's a 325i and not a 330i, so I opted to just remove it.

This is what it looked like when I first bought the car:





Charrie was more than willing to tend to the task of eliminating it with malice:





Oh how nice a 3.2 would've been... but no.





Gone. Removed and compounded out, and sealed as well. Charrie does great work!







Damn I hate this bumper.




Also in Charrie's garage, I decided to disassemble my AL headlights and swap in the spare ZKW lenses I had.





Before:







After:

[johnrando]

Nice werk!

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[pedro2u]

here's an 02 325i Touring bumper for $150 in NC. Looks pretty good in the images.... of course it's blue

https://imageappky.car-part.com/imag...ck%23%20200203

[fredo]

My e90 330i had the "i" missing as well. I don't know why. Maybe PO wanted to debadge and then decided it was too much work.

[az3579]

here's an 02 325i Touring bumper for $150 in NC. Looks pretty good in the images.... of course it's blue

https://imageappky.car-part.com/imag...ck%23%20200203

That's not an M-Tech 2 bumper.