Hi there!
Welcome to the store, and blog. I thought I should provide a bit of background on what we're doing here at BLOC Machine Works.
How'd we get here?
I've now owned three different BMW E30s over the years, and after the third door handle on my third car had snapped, I felt compelled to solve this once and for all. I imagine a lot of you reading this might have had a similar experience.
The solution needed to be robust, and perhaps a bit overkill. This needs to be a door handle that will outlive the car for decades to come. Naturally, this means a solid all-metal CNC machined construction.
Not just a 1:1 replacement
While designing this solution, I also figured it might be nice to spice it up a bit and try to go for a more 'square' and angular design language not unlike the BMWs from this era themselves.
As a mechanical engineer with an interest in industrial design, I was always pained to see the boxy, strong lines of the BMW E30 chassis continuing into the interior, but stopping at the cartoon-ish door handles. The original plastic handles are probably my least favourite part of the car, with the lug bolts being a close second.
A few months later, our first batch of production including finishing and anodization have completed, and we're now completing the final assembly of door handle units. This comprises of about 100 individual door handles, leaving us with 50 total set ready to ship out. As a result, you can expect orders to ship out within a week, likely sooner just as I get situated with shipping.
I also opted to get the handle itself anodized in three different finishes, black, silver/clear, and red. Personally, I'm a big fan of the silver/clear anodize.
Installation can be done in probably <30 minutes for a coupe, and <50 minutes for 2 sets of handles for a sedan.
There are only two (maybe) challenging parts to the installation:
- Removing the door card (just a few screws and a bit of prying)
- Getting the old handle out from inside the door, and the new handle in
Short term future
Going forward, I suppose I'll just have to wait and see whether the world like these handles or hates them. If there are other colour combinations anyone is interested in please send an inquiry. I expect a polished handle might be a popular variant as well.
Long term future
As background, I'm a big vintage BMW enthusiast, but an even bigger enthusiast of all things CNC machining related. Naturally I thought combining my two hobbies would be a good place to start, but I expect to (hopefully) come out with other tangential products such as machine tool accessories, and of course more vintage BMW parts :)
Thanks for stopping by to read, or even just scroll!
Cheers,
Daniel