Tuesday, June 9, 2020

[M3] Evo wing and new steering wheel

[note: this post, like an air-cooled 911, is back-dated to when these events occurred] 

Today I picked up the wing (and car) from the paint shop. The wing was not fitted to the car when I retrieved it, so it wasn't until I got home that I could check the paint match and how it all came together.



I started by assembling the flap and the wing off the car.



In addition to finishing and painting the wing, they re-cleared the top of the carbon flap and buffed it to remove some swirls and crazing marks it had picked up from years of getting moved around.



The awkward no-wing M3 look... been there, done that.



Before:



After:



Before:



After:



It's hard to see in the photos, but the stock wing had been refinished before and the paint match was not quite right. The stock wing had a bit larger/more pronounced flake, and a bit of a blue tint to the silver compared to the decklid, which seems to have a little bit less luster in the clear coat and a bit more of a yellow tint. The new Evo wing matches the decklid very very well. I was holding my breath as I bolted it up, and when I stepped back I was extremely pleased!



There is a bit of dried up wax and stuff I need to clean up at the base of the new wing.



The fit of the wing to the decklid is very good. They also cleaned up the wing base very well. There are still a couple little nicks, but compared to what they started with it's transformed.





One thing I am not super keen on is the exposed fasteners. They are more noticeable than I expected them to be. I am going to order a different style of fastener, in black, and see if I can make them "disappear" a bit more when seen rear-on.



With the car back home, I was also able to fit something very special that I'd ordered from eBay Germany a couple months ago.

Before:



After:



It's a new-in-box (well, not anymore) 1985 Italvolanti Indianapolis in red, 365mm. It replaces a 1983 Italvolanti Formel in 360mm. It's so over-the-top and I absolutely love it.





The color match to the original interior is uncanny! Fitment was not quite plug-and-play. The black wheel uses the Momo-style mounting system, with 6 smaller bolts; the red wheel uses a 3-bolt system. The former type of hub is readily available for E30s, the latter is not. The solution was an adapter piece, purchased here. The +5mm increase in wheel diameter, plus the small offset of the adapter, bring the red wheel a bit closer to the driver than the black one, and have fixed the issue where the black wheel obscured the top of the instrument cluster. Due to the orientation of the fasteners through the adapter, I had to offset the Momo hub 30 degrees on the spline to have the new wheel aligned correctly. As a result my left turn signal does not cancel. Annoying.



Next up will be some clean-up items, and I'd really love to get my 16" wheels refinished one of these days...

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