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Okay, it's been a while since my last post, but the car has still been progressing. I left off with the exhaust on the ground waiting for exhaust gaskets, and needing to replace the valve cover gasket. The parts arrived, so I got on with it. With the arrival of the exhaust gaskets for the manifold to center section flanges, I could refit the exhaust. This thing is a damn beast, but with some carefully juggling, wiggling and bolting, I got it back into place. Just as a quick side note, when cleaning up under the car I noted that two of the nuts I removed from the giubo were completely wrong. That wouldn't have helped the balance of the drive shaft. They all got replaced, as they are Distorted Thread locking nuts. The top of them is basically squished and distorted, so when you put new nuts on, they bind on the threads and wont come loose. Reusing them is a no-no, because they will no longer bind like they should. Similar concept to Nyloc nuts, but can handle higher heat. With the underside work done, I could finally refit the wheels with new rubber on them and lower the car down a bit and finish the work inside the car. I needed to refit the clutch pedal, as I had removed it to replace the bushes. I tried some flashy delrin bushes, but unless I removed the whole pedal box and fitted them on the bench, there was no way I could press the bushes on in the car, they were just too tight. Instead I went with a pair of new OEM bushes, slathered in grease. Thanks to the bolt I fitted that was missing from the pedal box, and the new bushes, the clutch pedal feels much better now; it doesn't move off the side, and I don't hit the dead pedal now. The other thing I wanted to do whilst under there was to replace the throttle cable, as my original one was well munted and made the throttle sticky. It was also ugly, and I don't like ugly. Removing the cable was easy enough, once you get the plastic clip out of the firewall (have fun one that one), it was just a case of pulling it through the engine bay and disassembling where it attached to the linkage. This is where it all kinda went wrong, all over one tiny little stupid (but crucial) bit of plastic. As I was attaching the white plastic clip back on the end of the cable so it could attach to the linkage, I dropped it. Of all the places, and things to drop, it was a plastic clip, between the 5th and 6th intake runners. It didn't come out the bottom, and I couldn't go magnet fishing because it was plastic. I tried moving and jiggling things in the area to see if it would drop down, and even lifted the car up and tried to fish around with my hand from underneath to find it. It didn't work, I had only one option left. The whole intake had to come off. Thankfully removing one isn't too hard, and it's something I had done before on my old M3, it's just bit of a prick to get at some of the hoses and bolts. Oh there it is, sitting on the starter motor... This little bastard. I then proceeded to immediately drop it again; onto the floor this time, so until it was ready to go back on, it went into my pocket. Having the intake off did give me a chance to have a quick look around, and give the throttles a quick clean, so it wasn't all bad. Back together it went, and on went the new throttle cable (assembling over a large rag, so I wouldn't drop it again. See, I learn from my mistakes!). Whilst setting up the new cable I encountered two things that made me facepalm. One, the throttle return stop had been mangled, and bent back. This stop is what stops the throttle pedal linkage going back too far when you take your foot off the pedal. If it goes back too far, there will be too much slack in the cable and you will never adjust it out. No prizes for guessing how I found this issue. I bent it back as flat as I could, which made the pedal sit better, and allowed me to correctly adjust the cable. Being bent back was no accident; it took a lot of work to bend it forward again, so I can only suspect it was done intentionally to compensate for the stuffed cable. The second issue, was that the throttle stop was badly adjusted. On my car because the shell was originally auto, instead of a normal solid "stop" under the pedal, I have the kickdown button still. The throttle stop/kickdown button sits behind the pedal and is what stops you putting pedal to the metal, or more accurately, damaging the throttle cable by trying to pull it further than the throttle plate will allow. On the flip side, if it's not adjusted enough, it will stop you getting to Wide Open Throttle (WOT). The whole thing is on a thread and screws into the floor, but does have a locking nut that stops it goes in too far. On my car that locking nut was wound way out, which meant that the stop couldn't be wound in as far as it needed to be, which means by the time the throttle pedal stopped, I was only seeing about 3/4" opening, not WOT. No wonder this car felt slow! I wound the locking nut down, and wound the stop in enough that when the kickdown button (which now does nothing but offer some nice physical feedback through my foot when pressed) is pressed, the throttle is 100% open. With that mess cleared up, I moved out of the interior and into the engine bay for one last job for the day. The valve cover gasket. I noticed it was BADLY leaking down the back corner, so ordered a replacement a while back. I had intended to rebuild the vanos whilst the cover was off, but decided to postpone that (for reasons I will explain in a later post) and just stop it leaking. Replacement is easy; Remove the coils, a whole bunch of bolts, and then the cover itself. When removing the coils, you also need to move the loom out of the way, so I rest that on the strut tower. I didn't notice, or remember, that the coil connectors are actually numbered via a small brown plastic tag on each wire (as seen in the photo), so instead I put a small dot for each coil it went to (1 dot for coil 1, 6 for the 6th coil) with a paint pen. This is the connector for coil 2. The dots are covered by the locking clip when assembled. It never hurts to over mark things before disassembly. And off comes the cover. It takes a lot of wiggling to get the back to clear the cable holder and the rear cam cap, but it does fit. This is the corner that was leaking. The gasket wasnt that old, it must have been replaced when they did the head work, but for whatever reason it just didn't seal here The other leak I had was a bad one into a couple of the spark plug tubes, via the rubber washer on the bolts. I ordered a bunch of these (you need 20x btw, I came up two short). The old ones were hard as rocks and shorter than the new ones I cut them all off the bolts, and pressed the new ones on. I slathered them in red rubber grease, and used a socket and a hammer to press them on. Much quick and easier than doing it by hand. Pop the new rubber washer over the threads, hold the socket on top, and give it a few good whacks with a hammer until it pops over the shoulder. The new gasket was then fitted to the head, with a small amount of sealant in the corners of where it goes over the cam bridge in the front, and then back on the cover went. The bolts were then refitted with the new washers. Now, with the bolts be VERY careful refitting them. They are too easy to pull the threads out of the head if you over torque them. In this case I did them to 8NM working from the middle outwards and all was well On went some new coils, and it looked like an engine again. Some testing shows no signs of leaking anymore, which is good. The clutch pedal and throttle feel much better, with less slack and more immediate response. Unfortunately despite replacing the bushes in the shifter, there is still too much play (although FAR less than before), and it appears to be coming from the joint at the bottom of the shift lever itself, so that will need to be replaced, maybe with a short shifter? The biggest disappointment is that despite replacing the coils and checking the spark plugs, there is still a very noticeable misfire at idle. It sounds like the old girl has some wild lumpy cams. I'm working on this now, so hopefully I can nail it soon.

I think they'd want an asset, not a liability, for collateral.

Damn, over $1,000 already, too rich for me!

Yet another issue that was discovered on the car was that there were signs of oil leaking from the bottom of the vanos solenoid cover. This is a clear indicator that the solenoid seals are beyond their useful life. The other issue I noticed was that one of the bolt heads was missing from the cover, so that needed to be addressed. They are common for breaking over time, so I made sure to have some replacements on hand. I ordered a whole vanos rebuild kit, including new M5 seals (as per a very useful guide) but decided as I was limited on time, and the vanos appeared to be working OK now it was plugged in, I didn't want to take the time to rebuild the whole thing yet. It also didn't help that my fan clutch tool hasn't arrived, so I couldn't remove the fan to access the vanos unit. The solenoid seals are the most common point of failure anyway, and with mine leaking, it's a fairly easy thing to replace. First is to remove the solenoid cover. Its held on by 4 screws, with either a hex head (if original bolts) or torx (if replaced). The broken off bolt was still there, just with no head. I used some vice grips to slowly turn it until i could spin it out The cover was missing one half of the gasket, and had evidence of the bottom solenoid moving in the housing (the black circle on the cover is from the solenoid pressing against it). The bottom of the cover was caked in old oil The solenoids popped out easily, and as expected the seals were flat. The gauze filters were still fitted (usually removed when serviced), although most of the gauze was missing, like the last lot I serviced. Using a small screwdriver I broke off all the brown plastic for the filter, and removed it. I also used a scalpel to cut off the old seals. The old seals were hard as plastic, well overdue for replacement As with my last guide I used a 9v battery and brake cleaner to clean out the solenoids. They were surprisingly clean though, with nothing gross coming out of them like the ones I did on my old M3. Both give a nice solid click when powered. The new seals were fitted, and you can clearly see the improved shape of the M5 seals Everything was thoroughly cleaned, and the solenoids refitted to the vanos unit New gaskets were fitted to the cover, along with a thin smear of sealant to keep them in place The cover was then refitted, with one new bolt (I can't fit my Torx driver in the space with the fan fitted). I will fit all new bolts, and join the solder points on the solenoids, when I remove it all to refresh the vanos later. I noticed when I had the valve cover off that the intake cam sensor had a very big air gap. I know from INPA that it appears to read OK, but I wanted to look further into this. It turns out, looking at the sensor, the previous owner had pinched and hulk smashed the O-Ring on the sensor so it was sitting out quite a bit. The screw was finger tight too. Yeah it shouldn't look like this It turns out you can order these seals separately, but I didn't know I needed them so dug through my viton O-Ring kit and found one that fit well. The one in the photo was too big, but I did eventually find one that sealed well The sensor now sits flush with the head. It probably isn't making any difference, but it bothered me as it was. One last test needed to be done before I could go give it a try, and that was to fire up the old beast and run the DIS vanos leak test. This test is used to see if the vanos solenoids can keep the cam at a certain degree over a certain period of time or if the seals leak, resulting the cam angle slipping. There is some allowance for variation, up to about 5 degrees off target over 10 seconds if I recall correctly. I didn't test beforehand, I should have but I forgot, but after the seals my solenoids can hold the cam at about 3-5 degrees off target for as long as you want. That's pretty good in my books, for a vanos unit that has done almost 300,000km and never been rebuilt. I'll be interested to see if there is as much variation after rebuilding the vanos unit. So, after all this work, there was only one thing left to do. Hoon. The car runs and drives very well, with plenty of power. It feels much more like my old one, pushing you into your seat when you put your foot down. There are still some issues, like the misfire at idle, but overall it's significantly better than when I got it. Not to mention, it looks better! Loving the Style 24s and new Pirelli Dragon Sport tires.

Aftermarket alarms are like women, they all go through a mental stage at some point! It's only when and for how long that varies.

Hi guys, I'm new to both this forum and BMW. I'm thinking of buying a 130i (manual) for my daily. I think this topic has been covered and I've done some searches but I wish to hear more from current/past owners of 130i in NZ. I drive 60km a day in traffic (back and forth from North Shore to East Tamaki) and I occasionally go out for spirited driving in the weekends. The reason why I want to get 130i is because I want so get something that's more fun to drive but reasonably reliable and safe to replace my current daily (Honda CR-Z with CVT transmission). Originally 130i wasn't on my list but after a test drive, the engine sound just got me! How's 130i as a daily? Is fuel consumption as bad as some say (12+)? I see from https://www.spritmonitor.de/en/search.html and fuelly.com that it'll be around 9~11L/100km. My current car is doing 6L/100km so I do expect to pay some(much) more for petrol. Should I also consider E90 330i? Thanks in advance for your comments

I've ordered a new undertray same code as this one for my e81 130i: http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=UB12-EUR-12-2007-E81-BMW-130i&diagId=51_6526 Looking under the car I'm missing a few of the screws/clips to attach the new undertray. Don't know the exact amount missing as the jack doesn't fit under the car ? Anyone have any of these parts or knows where to get them? My usual sources shipping costs makes it not worth ordering from. I'm probably going to need the Msport attachment piece too but will get the ball rolling on pieces I definitely need.

Smoking a marinated, aged, half rump steak today. I make my own marinades and rubs

^ Strangely appealing

It is. ? Just buy it - it's super useful anyway. https://www.xcar360.com/bmw-scanner-1-4-0-car-diagnostic-interface-tool-code-reader.html US$19.99 shipped ?

Word. And yes, seeing the love is satisfying, these things deserve to be treated well. Props.

awesome man, very nice work to bring back a not M3. seriously, some people are not taking care of their cars at all and still think its worth a million bucks. just the amount of work you have put into this alone must be thousands of dollars in parts and labour! love the style 24's and looks SOOO much better than the 20" chromies

Isn’t it though...? Wonder what the policy is for test drives? I probably can’t show proof of that much funds, but I could leave a child as collateral.

I'm BARGING in on the BARGIN! looks like an awesome car

That's probably a best-case scenario. And if the owner has any mechanical sympathy, would be quite likely. If I hear noises like that, I stop driving! Not everyone is the same, though...

You could almost call it a bargain at US$70k considering what they were new and how much better this is than new! But you're right, that's baller money.

I'm into cooking too. Purchased my new Borniac smoker last week to replace my old modified LPG cabinet. Hot smoked brined Salmon on Thursday night and a butterflyed, brined chook saturday night. I also smoke fish and make my own Dry cured smoked bacon and rump steak

definitely read this comment wrong the first time round..

Amazing a thread where people post pictures of their meat made it this far without innuendo.

haha lucky this one has clean drains and sunroof seal/window seals all seem to be in good condition. Only thing i really need for piece of mind would be a new drivers seat and fit some speakers

Another blanket meaningless legislation. The exact same model car, registered on two different days, can have a front/back mix of tyres, or not. Because someone said so. I can see some potential merit in all 4 tyres being run-flat or not (maybe), but mixing tyres on a vehicle (front/back, not on the same axle - that is dangerous) presents no hazard. The only argument in favour of 'all the same' is the possibility of tyre rotation causing mixed carcass construction being present ont he same axle. However, if you want to take the ridiculousness of some poor WoF inspection further, I was presented with a 'fail' because my car had different manufacturer tyres on the same axle. (Correct size etc radials were fitted all round.) Same carcass construction, weather use, size, speed and load rating... I took it up with the manager of the premises and had a WoF pass issued after I cited the manual entries to him while he read it.

I must have miss read your post sorry. Need all 4 the same have asked a number of WOF inspectors and all confirmed this

Are there no independent shops in Masterton you could get to help you out? One of the first things I did with my E70 was throw away the runflats before they turned my spine to dust.

I have seen the same 4.4 X5 in Rotorua and then Tauranga over the last two days driving about with smoke billowing out from underneath, driver apparently oblivious. Hilarious!

Some years ago I tried to get correct fluids for something from an Audi dealer. Parts department was open, but they didn't have any they could sell me, and had to special order it in!