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Old 11-30-2007, 04:23 AM   #3
cooljess76
NOBODY F's with the Jesus
 
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Ventura California
Posts: 7,824
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Q-1: All the ti's that came with the sport package have sport seats unless someone changed them. The fabric patterns may vary depending on the year and the color combo, but the seats themselves are the same. I recently posted pictures of the sport/vader hybrids in another thread. I'll try to find it for you, they looked pretty cool however it's going to be next to impossible to find just the headrests as I couldn't imagine anyone parting out a set of vaders.

Q-2: Not sure about the number of non-sunroofed ti's on the road. I know my first ti didn't have a sunroof and I almost bought "jflip's" ti which didn't have a sunroof. One of the Colorado member's ti came without a SR but one was installed when it got to the states. They're definitely out there, but the chances of finding a car in a 5 speed, low mileage, good maintenance history, no sunroof, color combo, decent price etc is going to be pretty tough.

Q-3: Metric Mechanic was selling rally m42's and m44's with 250+hp. IIRC they cost over 10 grand.

Q-4: As for the rear suspension, people only say that the semi-trailing arm suspension is inferior to the standard e36 multi-link suspension because they're ignorant. M Coupes, Z3's and Ti's all share the e30 design for a reason. 1 being they're all roadster type vehicles that are specifically designed for spirited driving. The rear suspension on our vehicles increases negative camber when compressed. This helps it hug corners really well, but you get a little understeer from it when you hit bumps in the turns. The tires may also wear irregularly if your car is slammed. The other reason BMW used semi-trailing arm rear suspension on our cars is simply because multi-link takes up more space. The rearends of the M Coupes, Z3's and Ti's are significantly shorter than coupes, sedans and verts and it would be extremely difficult to fit a full multi-link setup on these vehicles. Don't believe the ignorance posted on BF.c

Q-5: Stroking a 1.9L to 2.3L would be impossible. The pistons would be humungous and you'ld probably have to change the angles, not to mention the amount of material needing to be removed would leave you with very thin cylinder walls which would collapse under the excessive load created by the increased displacement. "Viper3812" is working on a 2.9L stroke jobby, but he's using an m52. Investing this kind of money into an m44 or m42 is pointless and will cost thousands if not 10's of thousands.

I just realized that all of my answers were negative and I want to appologize if I came off that way. There's still plenty of reasons to stay with the Ti, those just aren't the right reasons. You could always find a cheap shell and go crazy with a motor swap like many of us are doing these days. I know it's not original, but when it comes to technical info and discussions, you'll get a lot more help from other members who have done the swaps than people who have actually went through the hastles of stroking a 4 banger. I just checked metricmechanic and it looks like they changed their website around. I can't find the m44 rally engines, sorry.
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