introduction Getting back in the game after 10 years - curious

[Posaune]

About ready to buy a '74 carbuerated  car.  I sold my last '02 about 10 years ago.  I'm really curious how the parts situation has evolved (devolved) since then.  I know the list would be too long to post here but are there key things going NLA that I should watch for/start picking up?  This car is an auto - is it still relatively easy to buy 5 speed swap parts?

[adawil2002]

Not as easy to buy 5 speed parts now, they are out there and listed here occasionally. Quite a few parts have gone NLA, too many to list, I recall an NLA list thread you may want to search for that. Still a lot of parts  available, prices have obviously risen in the past 10 years, as have the cost of the cars.

 

Advise buying all the 2002 books for your library, you can search for them on amazon. The Macartney books are a must.

[jmr_1602]

5 speeds are out there, but like adawill said prices have risen.

On the plus side, I think sites like bluntTech.com has helped evolve buying parts. It's a lot easier than it was 10 years ago. I think most of the stuff needed to maintain an 02 is available.

Sites to keep bookmarked.

www.blunttech.com

www.wallothnesch.com

And I use BMW of South Atlanta to search for diagrams and parts numbers. Sometimes I buy from them also.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[adawil2002]

There's also Jaymic in the UK.

[gary]

More more dashes

[thehackmechanic]

Posaune, the parts situation has changed somewhat. As there are fewer of these cars, the aftermarket is not serving up parts like it used to. This affects tii-specific parts more, as there are fewer of them. For example, tii-specific water pumps and brake rotors  became dealer-only parts as the aftermarket stopped supporting production of them, and then the dealer stock ran out and has not yet, to my knowledge, been replenished. That has left some of us scrambling to, as jmr_1602 said, the German website WallothNesch.

 

Really, it all starts with knowing the part number for what you're looking for, which as jmr said, can be pulled from the Parts Atlanta web site, or realoem, or Pensky, and then web-searching the part number, and using it to look on 3rd party sights like BluntTech, PelicanParts, BavAuto, ECSTuning, BMAParts, etc.

 

As Andrew said, 5-speeds themselves (Getrag 245s) have become more and more difficult to find, as the supply of 5-speed E21 320is in junkyards is pretty thin. 

 

One of the big sellers of 5-speed conversion parts used to be 2002Haus (Rob Torres), one of the main supporters of this site. Rob sold a very nice kit involving a proprietary U-shaped bracket, but the page on his web site for his conversion kit is no longer up. If you hunt around online, you can find other people selling knock-offs of Rob's bracket. Top End Performance sells a different bracket that involves drilling holes in the sides of the transmission tunnel. Or you can buy the original mounting tabs and weld them on. 

 

Dave Varco at Aardvarc Racing (2002parts.com) is a very good source for 5 speed conversion parts, both whole kits and individual parts. I've dealt with Dave for years and recommend him highly. Ireland Engineering also sells individual parts and kits.

 

There are many threads here on 5-speed conversion, including several of my own.

 

--Rob Siegel

[Posaune]

Thank you for the super helpful info.  I still have several books and bought from some of the folks mentioned above (I spend a lot on parts for my E30 and E39 M5).  great to be back in the community.  Seems that at least that part is still alive and well!