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Well, what do you think? Style 71 reps. (Good quality ones at that) 18x8 et35 fronts 18x9 et35 rears great offset for the e46.. as pictured on std msport suspension, fills out the wheel arches well, with std tyres of 255 & 225.

As per the "wanted to buy" thread; I picked up a 330i Touring in Akl. Drove it back yesterday - seems pretty good; NZ new, 170kms, reasonable service history. No fault codes showing. Spec wise it's low on fruit - but everything works and is in reasonable condition. First point of business is to address a very slightly and occasionally wobbly rear - possibly a buggered bush... but first off will get a wheel alignment done. Following that; a second key (any suggestions on sourcing appreciated)... and then I may look at adding a bluetooth module - though I'm not sure I'll even bother. We'll see... may also do something about the tyres - it's got Michelin Pilots on the back which are 2/3rds worn, and bingbonglingdings on the front which are barely worn (wish it was the other way around). As a DD it'll certainly do the job, and make the daily schlep over SH58 much more enjoyable than it was in the Euro!

All of the tools can run in a VM, indeed DIS comes pre-packaged in a VM. However I bet running them on iOS OSX will be problematic. They all run on Windows 10 (32bit) just fine so you don't need an outdated OS. The cable is NOT a red hearing if you need to use BMW's proprietary ADS interface to read every modules and as well as writing to them. Later cars don't have this requirement.

No. The thought of buying a shitty old laptop to keep alive and functioning, along with the attendant troubles of keeping old (read: out of support) hardware/OS/software, running.... well, it doesn't figure in my plans. ? I want something that runs (ideally) under OSX. If that's not available, it's probably a dedicated reader for me. The cable thing is a red herring. You can get OBDII port readers that fire out the signal over wifi or Bluetooth if that's what floats your boat, this kind of solution is popular with phone and tablet users. Phone and tablet use is probably where the market is, so I'm picking that's where the development effort goes! cheers

Yep, still going strong. Here's a pic of it's last real outing with the Wellington guys when we did the trip over the Gentle Annie to Napier. It get's a weekly drive just to keep everything moving. I haven't done a lot to it recently as all my efforts have been going into getting my 4x4 van ready for the summer.

After saying I'd never ever move to Auckland, I'm actually looking forward to it at the end of this year

bbq weather coming, 'spring'

Nice looking car! Personally I think you're better off without the iDrive too, given the age of the things. Mine's certainly nothing to write home about.

bmw plate too!

Nice!

You understand the need to render those unsafe DarkThunderDragon tires unuseable to anybody else, right? Skids

@SmithyInWelly That's excellent news!, I too was concerned my (hip) op would make driving of getting in and out of low cars suck, but so far so good, just have to take it easy.

First longish drive for about 5/6 years when I had the first of two big ops... was a wee bit nervous as to how it'd affect me but I needn't have worried... bluddy awesome! Looking forward to a few more roadies in the coming years

Update: Rivnut gun arrived, but rivnuts did not so that's a just for another day After work today we finished off the wiring on the engine, I then proceeded to install the ecu in the holder and refit everything surrounding it, stood back and thought it looks good and glad that part is now done as it was very tricky to install, proceeded to tidy up and there it was... the fricken ECU plug seal... OMG, FML that's a job for another day lol Also cut the rocker cover cover to fit around the down pipe, it was either that or make another pipe and that wasn't going to happen, fits good With the vanos delete and triggers I got made they are an exact replica of the s50b32, they have the TDC trigger on the exhaust side and intake is variable, I had the intake sensor set to the ecu and it would jump up 2000rpm and back down, so ran it off the crank sensor first and the starting every time was terrible with backfires and a few flames out the intake then would run nice, I got hold of Adam at link ECU on their forums to find out if they had a pattern for the engines camshaft triggers and he was very helpful, told me to run the exhaust sensor and select S52 in the ecu and it will run nice, so I did and it's perfect! So now I'm running my old map with new trigger set up, an adjustment of the idle control valve and I'm pretty happy And seems as the exhaust sensor is going to be pretty important I went for a wonder and found some soft heat shielding from a turbo golf and modified it to fit around the side of the engine protecting it from direct heat, it turned out nice.. passed the flame test Then put on one of the slick wheels just for shits and the 265s look wide

It's been a lng time between drinks.......still charging along ok?

A likely story.

"Mum, why is that weird-looking person taking photos of our car?!"

I'm kinda with you there. I hate the E46 cup holders. Way to make the center console the ugliest outside of American cars.

Am I the only one who hates cupholders/cupholder mods/cuperholder this/cupholder that. Call me the cupholder grinch

I got it. It's now in Wellington ? The drive down was worth the purchase price alone. Now......let's see how long the chain guides last ? Also anyone selling a set of style 65 or 66 rims? Holla, A.

If it's so straight forward and you have a video on how to do it. Why can't you then do it your self ?? I find your statement of a professional just charging labour to fit supplied parts at a labour cost only insulting to the professional repairers in our industry.

It's the liability issue, exposure to risk & the SOGA along with margins, plus the quality of what is supplied. Some people also want to supply there own parts and also expect you to give them a discount on labour as well. We do not discount our labour. It doesn't work for me, and I'm not interested in the crap when something might fail or go wrong

BM Workshop or Bellars Motor Works, they're good but you'll have to see they're keen on installing aftermarket stuff for you. Some places don't like it at all, some will do if you're a regular customer.