Prefer front bumper. This is Duane Sword's coupe which has the Alpina style air dam. Notice it sits well below the bumper. I'd avoid redesigning or customizing the bumper, it's an un-needed expense.
The end is near....SCOTTeVEST's Baby
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Gorgeous but not a fan of the black rubber strip. Breaks up the lines in my opinion but you love the silver bumper. Gorgeous car
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8,000.00 is looking more like 28,000.00 and then you'll need that 3.5 with headers
Who is counting?
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Like I said, you can set it up to accept the bumper but just not mount it, that way you always have the option to put it on when you want. There will be holes (two on each side; two slats in front) but that will be somewhat less noticeable because of your black paint.
Belgiumbarry
Well-Known Member
either is nice Scott , but imho there's a "look" to achieve
without bumpers you go "racy look " and demands rolled fenders, wider wheels, spoilers , lowered...etc...
with you keep it as factory and stays nice !
what i wanted to say , on a complete stock coupe it has no sense of just deleting the bumpers....
without bumpers you go "racy look " and demands rolled fenders, wider wheels, spoilers , lowered...etc...
with you keep it as factory and stays nice !
what i wanted to say , on a complete stock coupe it has no sense of just deleting the bumpers....
Thank you. I think we are going to go this route leaving the bumper off for a period of time to see how I like it later have the ability to install it. Thank you
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I think filling the bumper holes and making it impossible (without cutting and painting) to mount a front bumper might reduce the value of your coupe, or at least reduce the number of interested buyers if it ever would be for sale.
I really like the front bumper, but it's just my opinion.
EDIT, just saw your post above. That's a good choice.
Another thing I thought of, in what shape are your front and trunk badges? If worn.. yeah you know
I really like the front bumper, but it's just my opinion.
EDIT, just saw your post above. That's a good choice.
Another thing I thought of, in what shape are your front and trunk badges? If worn.. yeah you know
@sfdon recommended that I swap out my fan with a new electric fan. I’ve tried to get Prior shops to do it and they are confused or think it is a bigger deal and said to do it only when my original fan gives out. Is this something that you recommend I do at this time?
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Can leave the fan and clutch if it working properly and put a thermostatic pusher fan in front of the radiator.
I have gone through 3 viscous fan clutches since 2011. Best thing I did was have the radiator triple cored, was between $450-500. Car runs at 4 o'clock on the temp gauge even when it's 105° driving across Kansas in August or 100° doing 100 mph across Nevada.
I have gone through 3 viscous fan clutches since 2011. Best thing I did was have the radiator triple cored, was between $450-500. Car runs at 4 o'clock on the temp gauge even when it's 105° driving across Kansas in August or 100° doing 100 mph across Nevada.
Here's Athena with no air dam or bumper for reference. Notice the bumper gaskets have narrow slits for the bumper brackets to slide into.
Here is a good side by side. Another potential issue will be license plate mounting; there will not be a provision for one without a bumper. My bumperless sienna is registered in NC which does not have front license plates, so no issue. If I register it in a state with front license plates, I would ride with it in the front window, but this could get me ticketed if I got pulled over.
Belgiumbarry
Well-Known Member
Walter , we use a sticker plate on the spoiler . Also not "legal" but "accepted" .
I'll look into this when it comes time, thanks.
In Idaho, just like Washington, you can get historic plates for the car. With historic plates, you only needt to display a single plate on the rear, which frees up the front of your e9 for uninterupted beauty. You just can't use the car as a daily driver. Road trips are fine. Visits to car shows. If you get into an accident (on the way to your mechanic or body shop), you are fine.
There are a few more on eBay However, it isn't everyday that you can find personalized historic plates. Does the word "Island" mean anything to you Scott?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1974-Idaho...716749?hash=item4418ac3b8d:g:qWoAAOSwq61anKzp
There are a few more on eBay However, it isn't everyday that you can find personalized historic plates. Does the word "Island" mean anything to you Scott?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1974-Idaho...716749?hash=item4418ac3b8d:g:qWoAAOSwq61anKzp
If you need a front plate, have Benny make one of these brackets.
I prefer no fr plate. Most states w/collector plates do not require a front plate.
And even those that do, don't seem to enforce it. I don't even run a front plate on my M3. Even though I've been stopped for speeding, they ignored the lack of a front plate.
Right. VERY few cars looks OK w/a front plate. On all my cars, except my pickup truck, has no front plate because it always ruins the look on the front.
Scott, you hate the factory bumpers sounds like, so how about something REALLY CLEAN AND CUSTOM like this?
So, I asked Daniel Stern which headlights to get and he said below. SOOOO confused... What would you do?
Below is just a partial summary as it was too many characters to put here... wow. Who knew there was so much about headlights??
> someone recommended:Â Hella H1/H4 European lamps
Their heart was in the right place, but this is not a good
recommendation; especially on low beam, those lamps are
objectively very poor, giving you severely inadequate seeing
distance. So why do they give you the feeling of being
"bright" with a "great pattern"? The difficulty is, what we
feel like we're seeing isn't what we're actually seeing. The
human visual system is a lousy judge of how well it's doing.
"I know what I can see!" seems reasonable, but it doesn't
square up with reality because we humans are just not well
equipped to accurately evaluate how well or poorly we can
see (or how well a headlamp works). Our subjective
impressions tend to be very far out of line with objective,
real measurements of how well we can (or can't) see. The
primary factor that drives subjective ratings of headlamps
is foreground light, that is light on the road surface close
to the vehicle...which is almost irrelevant; it barely even
makes it onto the _bottom_ of the list of factors that
determine a headlamp's actual safety performance. A moderate
amount of foreground light is necessary so we can use our
peripheral vision to keep track of the lane lines and keep
our focus up the road where it should be, but too much
foreground light works against us: it draws our gaze
downward even if we consciously try to keep looking far
ahead, and the bright pool of light causes our pupils to
constrict, which destroys our distance vision. All of this
while creating the feeling that we've got "good" lights.
It's not because we're lying to ourselves or fooling
ourselves or anything like that, it's because our visual
systems just don't work the way it feels like they work.
And those Hella 5-3/4" H4 lamps produce just about nothing
_but_ foreground light. Severely inadequate seeing distance
from them, even if you aim them much higher than they're
supposed to be.
The upshot of this is that most internet "reviews" of a
headlamp are useless at best -- and that would be the case
even if we ignore the bogus criteria people often use when
"reviewing" headlamps: sharp cutoff on low beam! (also very
low on the list of factors that determine a headlamp's
actual safety performance, but it looks nifty on the garage
wall), "H4" (there are at least as many bad H4 headlamps as
good ones), "E-code" (irrelevant; both the US and the
UN/"E-code" headlamp standards have lots of room for good
and bad headlamps) "High color temperature" (irrelevant at
best)...and so on.
> are "correct" for this vintage BMW.
Sorta kinda -ish. These lamps didn't actually exist in 1974
when that car was built; the H4 was at that time very new
and not yet widely used. If correctness of this type is
important to you, you'd be fine to keep the Hella H1 high
beam lamp units (which aren't bad and were available at the
time the car was built) and use Hella *H1* low beam units.
These have come in a variety of particular designs over the
years; one of them, co-developed by Hella and BMW,
significantly outperforms whatever same-size H4 lamp you
wish to compare it to.
Backing up half a step: you'll want to decide how well you
want to see, how important it is to have German-brand
headlamps, and how much you want to spend on this round of
upgrades. Starting from the start:
The original headlamps are sealed beams. No matter what
brand or when made, plain or halogen, these are primitive
and barely marginally adequate. They produce a dim, narrow,
brownish tunnel of poorly-focused light, very little light
on the road surface, no side spill, and a great deal of
upward stray light that causes backdazzle in bad weather.
You can do much better than these, but you have to be picky
and shop carefully because most of what's on the market is
junk (though all of it is advertised as an "upgrade").
High beam upgrade is an easy pick: if you want the best
ones, put in the best Koito parabolic H1 high beams
($158/pair). If you require German-brand units, use the
Hellas. In either case, use Osram/Philips H1 55w
precision-focus, ultra high luminance bulbs in them
($35.18/pair).
Low beams, you've got some options.
First, decide how well you want to see at night and how much
money you want to spend doing it. This should be decided
based on how much nighttime driving you do and at what kinds
of speeds, and/or on your personal preference for how
important it is to you to have highly effective,
well-focused headlamps. H4s are the standard upgrade
everyone "knows" about (in quotes because most of the
"knowledge" is not grounded in reality). They are _not_
advisable if you are planning on doing much night driving.
H4 lamps (of any brand) in the 5.75" round size are not very
efficient, because with H4 (any H4 bulb in any H4 lamp),
only 55% of the total reflector and lens area is used to
collect and direct the light for the low beam, because of
the low beam filament shield inside the H4 bulb. That's OK
if you have a large lamp, but with small lamps like the
5.75" rounds, you really can't collect much light from the
bulb. A brighter bulb does not compensate. But if you don't
do much high-demand night driving and want to keep the cost
down, a quality pair of H4 lamps (I can provide Hella,
Cibie, or Koito; the Koito-made units are *by far* the best
in terms of efficiency, focus, output, and build/materials
quality, $158/pair) will still give a broader beam coverage
than the sealed beams.
It's tempting to grab for big wattNote how the only advantage the 100/90w bulb gives is in
amount of light on high beam. Seeing distance on low beam is
inferior to that from a high-luminance/high-efficacy 60/55w
bulb. The current best pick in 60/55w bulbs is made by
Tungsram (GE of Europe); it is a +120 item that is a few
developmental iterations improved over the +80/+90 bulbs in
the linked comparison. I keep them in stock for $43.18/pair.
If you do much high-demand night driving, instead of H4s,
put in the Hella BiFocal H1 low beams ($278/pair), which are
the most efficient, best focused replaceable-bulb halogen
headlamps in this size format, and I stock the
commercial-duty version with toughened hardglass lens,
extremely resistant to chipping, pitting, cracking, and
breaking. Use Osram/Philips H1 55w precision-focus, ultra
high luminance bulbs ($35.18/pair). These will give vastly
better performance than the sealed-beam junk _and_
substantially better performance than any H4 conversion
(much more efficient optics; entire optical area used to
form the low beam). Illumination is broad, long-reaching,
and very well focused, with no upward stray light and
significantly less glare to oncoming drivers (because the
light is focused where you need it) -- a substantial upgrade
from the sealed beam lamps' dim, narrow tunnel of light with
no side spread and excessive upward throw that causes
backglare in bad weather, and likewise a substantial upgrade
from the H4 lamps' relatively meager beam performance.
Take a look at
http://dastern.torque.net/Photometry/explication.html and
then http://dastern.torque.net/Photometry/575.html for beam
isoplots of halogen sealed beams, H4 units (Cibies -- I
don't have a plot for the Koitos yet), and the BiFocal.
The BiFocal low beams incorporate a built-in parking lamp
which you may hook up or not, at your option. This is a
small 5w bulb ($4.59/ea) that sticks through the lamp's
reflector into the lamp itself, a short distance away from
the main headlight bulb, via a socket and grommet. "City
light" is a common casual term for this. The official term
is "front position lamp" or "parking lamps". It is _only_ a
parking lamp, not capable of producing an effective or legal
daytime running light or turn signal function no matter what
bulb is installed. Electrical connection is by a standard
1/4" spade terminal, which you wire into vehicle's parking
lamp feed. The city light illuminates the whole headlamp in
a "pilot light" sort of fashion; this makes for large-area
parking lamps, and if a headlight bulb ever burns out,
oncoming traffic still sees you as a double-track vehicle.
Outside North America, parking lamps must emit white light,
the North American style amber ones are not allowed. In
North America, parking lamps may emit white or amber light,
and these white ones built into the headlamp are a legal
form of parking lamp in the USA and Canada.
This type of parking lamp is not used on vehicles with
hidden or pop-up headlamps.
Pic of the Hella BiFocal low beam and the Koito H4 high/low
and H1 high beam lamps attached.
If you go with the BiFocal low beams, there's a minor/easy
mod required to keep the low beams lit when high beam is
activated (which, contrary to appearance, is not presently
the case).
Open the fuse box and remove high beam relay (usually
labelled K3). Examine it carefully -- there should be a
circuit diagram on its top or side, and even if not the
pins should be labelled.
If you see a terminal labelled "87a", follow this first set
of directions:
ams, for vehicles without jumpered
kickswitch:
RIK-H1H1, $59
With H4 low beams: RIK-4, $59
Below is just a partial summary as it was too many characters to put here... wow. Who knew there was so much about headlights??
> someone recommended:Â Hella H1/H4 European lamps
Their heart was in the right place, but this is not a good
recommendation; especially on low beam, those lamps are
objectively very poor, giving you severely inadequate seeing
distance. So why do they give you the feeling of being
"bright" with a "great pattern"? The difficulty is, what we
feel like we're seeing isn't what we're actually seeing. The
human visual system is a lousy judge of how well it's doing.
"I know what I can see!" seems reasonable, but it doesn't
square up with reality because we humans are just not well
equipped to accurately evaluate how well or poorly we can
see (or how well a headlamp works). Our subjective
impressions tend to be very far out of line with objective,
real measurements of how well we can (or can't) see. The
primary factor that drives subjective ratings of headlamps
is foreground light, that is light on the road surface close
to the vehicle...which is almost irrelevant; it barely even
makes it onto the _bottom_ of the list of factors that
determine a headlamp's actual safety performance. A moderate
amount of foreground light is necessary so we can use our
peripheral vision to keep track of the lane lines and keep
our focus up the road where it should be, but too much
foreground light works against us: it draws our gaze
downward even if we consciously try to keep looking far
ahead, and the bright pool of light causes our pupils to
constrict, which destroys our distance vision. All of this
while creating the feeling that we've got "good" lights.
It's not because we're lying to ourselves or fooling
ourselves or anything like that, it's because our visual
systems just don't work the way it feels like they work.
And those Hella 5-3/4" H4 lamps produce just about nothing
_but_ foreground light. Severely inadequate seeing distance
from them, even if you aim them much higher than they're
supposed to be.
The upshot of this is that most internet "reviews" of a
headlamp are useless at best -- and that would be the case
even if we ignore the bogus criteria people often use when
"reviewing" headlamps: sharp cutoff on low beam! (also very
low on the list of factors that determine a headlamp's
actual safety performance, but it looks nifty on the garage
wall), "H4" (there are at least as many bad H4 headlamps as
good ones), "E-code" (irrelevant; both the US and the
UN/"E-code" headlamp standards have lots of room for good
and bad headlamps) "High color temperature" (irrelevant at
best)...and so on.
> are "correct" for this vintage BMW.
Sorta kinda -ish. These lamps didn't actually exist in 1974
when that car was built; the H4 was at that time very new
and not yet widely used. If correctness of this type is
important to you, you'd be fine to keep the Hella H1 high
beam lamp units (which aren't bad and were available at the
time the car was built) and use Hella *H1* low beam units.
These have come in a variety of particular designs over the
years; one of them, co-developed by Hella and BMW,
significantly outperforms whatever same-size H4 lamp you
wish to compare it to.
Backing up half a step: you'll want to decide how well you
want to see, how important it is to have German-brand
headlamps, and how much you want to spend on this round of
upgrades. Starting from the start:
The original headlamps are sealed beams. No matter what
brand or when made, plain or halogen, these are primitive
and barely marginally adequate. They produce a dim, narrow,
brownish tunnel of poorly-focused light, very little light
on the road surface, no side spill, and a great deal of
upward stray light that causes backdazzle in bad weather.
You can do much better than these, but you have to be picky
and shop carefully because most of what's on the market is
junk (though all of it is advertised as an "upgrade").
High beam upgrade is an easy pick: if you want the best
ones, put in the best Koito parabolic H1 high beams
($158/pair). If you require German-brand units, use the
Hellas. In either case, use Osram/Philips H1 55w
precision-focus, ultra high luminance bulbs in them
($35.18/pair).
Low beams, you've got some options.
First, decide how well you want to see at night and how much
money you want to spend doing it. This should be decided
based on how much nighttime driving you do and at what kinds
of speeds, and/or on your personal preference for how
important it is to you to have highly effective,
well-focused headlamps. H4s are the standard upgrade
everyone "knows" about (in quotes because most of the
"knowledge" is not grounded in reality). They are _not_
advisable if you are planning on doing much night driving.
H4 lamps (of any brand) in the 5.75" round size are not very
efficient, because with H4 (any H4 bulb in any H4 lamp),
only 55% of the total reflector and lens area is used to
collect and direct the light for the low beam, because of
the low beam filament shield inside the H4 bulb. That's OK
if you have a large lamp, but with small lamps like the
5.75" rounds, you really can't collect much light from the
bulb. A brighter bulb does not compensate. But if you don't
do much high-demand night driving and want to keep the cost
down, a quality pair of H4 lamps (I can provide Hella,
Cibie, or Koito; the Koito-made units are *by far* the best
in terms of efficiency, focus, output, and build/materials
quality, $158/pair) will still give a broader beam coverage
than the sealed beams.
It's tempting to grab for big wattNote how the only advantage the 100/90w bulb gives is in
amount of light on high beam. Seeing distance on low beam is
inferior to that from a high-luminance/high-efficacy 60/55w
bulb. The current best pick in 60/55w bulbs is made by
Tungsram (GE of Europe); it is a +120 item that is a few
developmental iterations improved over the +80/+90 bulbs in
the linked comparison. I keep them in stock for $43.18/pair.
If you do much high-demand night driving, instead of H4s,
put in the Hella BiFocal H1 low beams ($278/pair), which are
the most efficient, best focused replaceable-bulb halogen
headlamps in this size format, and I stock the
commercial-duty version with toughened hardglass lens,
extremely resistant to chipping, pitting, cracking, and
breaking. Use Osram/Philips H1 55w precision-focus, ultra
high luminance bulbs ($35.18/pair). These will give vastly
better performance than the sealed-beam junk _and_
substantially better performance than any H4 conversion
(much more efficient optics; entire optical area used to
form the low beam). Illumination is broad, long-reaching,
and very well focused, with no upward stray light and
significantly less glare to oncoming drivers (because the
light is focused where you need it) -- a substantial upgrade
from the sealed beam lamps' dim, narrow tunnel of light with
no side spread and excessive upward throw that causes
backglare in bad weather, and likewise a substantial upgrade
from the H4 lamps' relatively meager beam performance.
Take a look at
http://dastern.torque.net/Photometry/explication.html and
then http://dastern.torque.net/Photometry/575.html for beam
isoplots of halogen sealed beams, H4 units (Cibies -- I
don't have a plot for the Koitos yet), and the BiFocal.
The BiFocal low beams incorporate a built-in parking lamp
which you may hook up or not, at your option. This is a
small 5w bulb ($4.59/ea) that sticks through the lamp's
reflector into the lamp itself, a short distance away from
the main headlight bulb, via a socket and grommet. "City
light" is a common casual term for this. The official term
is "front position lamp" or "parking lamps". It is _only_ a
parking lamp, not capable of producing an effective or legal
daytime running light or turn signal function no matter what
bulb is installed. Electrical connection is by a standard
1/4" spade terminal, which you wire into vehicle's parking
lamp feed. The city light illuminates the whole headlamp in
a "pilot light" sort of fashion; this makes for large-area
parking lamps, and if a headlight bulb ever burns out,
oncoming traffic still sees you as a double-track vehicle.
Outside North America, parking lamps must emit white light,
the North American style amber ones are not allowed. In
North America, parking lamps may emit white or amber light,
and these white ones built into the headlamp are a legal
form of parking lamp in the USA and Canada.
This type of parking lamp is not used on vehicles with
hidden or pop-up headlamps.
Pic of the Hella BiFocal low beam and the Koito H4 high/low
and H1 high beam lamps attached.
If you go with the BiFocal low beams, there's a minor/easy
mod required to keep the low beams lit when high beam is
activated (which, contrary to appearance, is not presently
the case).
Open the fuse box and remove high beam relay (usually
labelled K3). Examine it carefully -- there should be a
circuit diagram on its top or side, and even if not the
pins should be labelled.
If you see a terminal labelled "87a", follow this first set
of directions:
ams, for vehicles without jumpered
kickswitch:
RIK-H1H1, $59
With H4 low beams: RIK-4, $59
- Status