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I doubt anyone knows me, but I can bet many of you know this vehicle. This is the M70 swapped E34 Touring owned by Andy (_ethrty-Andy_) and built by Lance (mellowpuf). I came into the car through Euroless, who seems to have saved the car from a terrible fate. I then I got it shipped down from Auckland. It actually beat it's ETA because the transport driver was curious to see who owned it! The car itself is in a pretty poor state at the moment. It's clearly been through some unsavoury hands who had it 'for skidz'. I'm currently in the process of deep cleaning the whole car to find out just how far gone the it really is. Exterior has some serious wear and tear. Front quarter panels are both damaged. Paint is beyond saving in some areas. The front AC Schnitzer bumper clearly has a close relationship with the road, while the rear one has been poorly modified to make the exhaust and towbar fit. Left front rim is badly curbed.. Hood doesn't shut properly and is misaligned, even after some fettling with the adjustments. Rear window panel has been replaced at some point, so it doesn't open indepently like it should. One of the headlight lens are missing. The rear spoiler annoys me: as the car is a UK import it doesn't have a high stop light in it. A shoddy aftermarket one has been installed on the inside of the window instead, probably for compliance when the car entered NZ in 1996. The electrical system is going to take up a lot of my time by the looks of things. I immediately put a new DIN88 battery in it to eliminate any voltage issues. I've already cleared out some of the more interesting wiring. The subwoofer wiring was average at best, and it's gone now. Half the speakers don't seem to work and have been obnoxiously placed over factory trims. Pretty sure the double chassis looms under the rear seat is unnecessary, so that'll have to be rebuilt. It's probably also a fire hazard given that it's right next to the battery. The aftermarket fuse box under the steering column is pretty gross, can't wait to get rid of that. Coolant temp isn't wired up correctly, but surely that can't be hard to do right especially given there's a correctly working aftermarket coolant temp gauge right next to it. I swapped in the spare E32 M70 instrument cluster to see it resolved anything, but alas. The electric radiator fan and the associated wiring just seems silly. Extra wiring installed and spliced onto factory plugs for fog lights that don't even exist. Random sets of factory wiring coiled in the engine bay, not sure what for yet. Mechanically the engine is pretty close to operational. It's an early M70B50, recognisable by the oil filler cap location and the Motronic 1.2 DMEs. The mounting of the engine is actually top notch and the fitment of the ancillaries also shows great workmanship. The exhaust doesn't seem to sit on it's hanger properly though. I have no idea why someone painted the intake manifolds bright red, it looks absurd. The engine should be capable of 220kW and 450Nm, assuming it's factory. However it should not have been driven in it's current state, but clearly has been. I must admit even I'm guilty of this as I had to limp it home from work. It has a moving misfire and a knock. The right bank (1-6 cyl) distributor is arcing internally at random intervals. It requires new distributors and rotors, which are en route already. Gearbox works okay. Diff clearly works, pretty sure it's an LSD but I'm yet to confirm that. It'll get all fluids replaced and I'll carry out the Inspection I and Inspection II service items as well as check the operation and condition of every component I can get to. I won't be happy driving this car until I know it works perfectly from a mechanical standpoint. Just gotta say how disappointed I am by this: the air-con has been removed. What is the point of a big grand touring wagon if you can't be comfortable? The condenser has clearly been removed to make way for the electric fan, and the hoses to make space for some of the ancillaries. The AC compressor hasn't been sealed so it has seized and appears to also have a seized pulley despite still having a belt spinning around it. Suspension is a mess. It has full XYZ coilovers but nothing is setup correctly. None of the shocks are set to the same rebound. Preload on the front springs set randomly apparently; the right has some jounce while the left has none at all (as in it's stupidly stiff). Still need to check the rears. Will have to get it up in the air and remedy this nonsense. Right front wheel bearing is shot, despite the hub being replace a mere 2 years ago with a Repco unit. Quality parts en route to solve that. Tires are in good knick though, won't have to replace them anytime soon. Falken UHP 255 section tires on the rear and some Chinese Habilead 235s up front. Interior is "the second worst I've ever seen in an E34" says Autobahn. Headlining sagging. Door cards are an absolute mess. Front seats are filthy, "like someone has sh*t themselves and smeared it in," one of my co-workers said. Driver's interior door handle straight up just doesn't work. Glove box doesn't sit even close to straight. Everything behind the dash looks in a right mess. Boot space has look like it's never been cleaned despite heavy use. Original spare wheel and tire in there. The lower trunk lid trim is completely missing, though there is a spare piece in the wrong colour hanging around. Trims over the rear strut towers are misaligned and stop the rear seats securing the way they should. All the interior sill trims are missing. The one positive is that (surprisingly) someone hasn't run off with the Nardi steering wheel. Everything inside the car was also dirty. Very dirty. It's cleaner now though. I've removed all the older stickers, steam cleaned the carpet in the boot, cleaned the glass properly, and wiped down most of the interior surfaces. Came with many spares. Someone has clearly been down the wreckers to grab as much as they can. EMLs and DMEs and DKs and 5 wiper stalks for some reason. Couple spare sets of HT leads, which I will use. Should all prove useful, not least for troubleshooting. However I'll need to set up a donor car to replace the entire interior forward of the C-pillar, wiring, front quarter panels, air-con. It'll need a respray and some general body repairs at some point. I plan on retrofitting the pre-facelift E34 wing mirrors as I rather dislike the later E36 style ones the car has. (Fun fact: as the E34 was only available as a Touring following the facelift in 1992, so no Touring could have the old style wing mirrors or any other pre-facelift trim.) This car has some pretty amazing potential, but it's currently far less than the sum of it's parts. I feel like I've bought a $4k cert plate. Can't wait to have it running properly and get it truly nice and tidy. I'll keep you guys up to date as the situation develops.

Replaced the fuel pump. All sorted. Thanks to @_ethrty-Andy_ for coming along with a pump.

@NZ BMW yes, pop the lower back seat up, 4x 10mm nuts and it’s right there.

Glad shes up and running again

All I wanted was somewhere to get a good performance chip. Not a new engine.

I will be around Sunday if you need a hand. The whirring you mentioned could be stater motor related, motor spinjing but not engaging.

Could someone please explain to me how the community reputation works?

The new wagon to replace the E39 touring..

Traffic Circles in the US. The drivers have NO idea how to tackle these. Whilst very simple to most, yanks fail to give way to the right direction, cut across all lanes without looking let alone indicating to where the hell they are going. They are truly terrifying. I had to jam on the brakes the other night to avoid a f**king uber driver dropping someone off whilst half way through the damn thing. One of my local ones has a through road and traffic lights on it, pedestrian crossings with no lights at every entrance. It is a total cluster f**k. I have seen so many near misses there. I'm going to wear my horn out I think.

Just over 200,000KM now

Winterising the E46 today. Ugly ass wheels with Pirreli Snow tyres I picked up for $200. Nearly new. I won't use them in DC. But need them for Quebec.

SOLD !

I have a passenger side that seems ok. Drivers one is split unfortantely

The whirring was when it was running. The starters engaging fine and the engines turning over fine. I’ll head in today with some proper tools and check the voltages and under bonnet fuses/relays

That's the exact point right there, chipping (for what the TA wants) is the cheapest option. Lol you've just confirmed the fact I stated, they are the same block in terms of design. Both blocks are cast iron. The only difference is in most markets, nikasil was added to the cylinder liners on the M52BXX motors..... both use the same iron compound. Both are dimensionally the same. Both run the same bearings, oil and water journals, sumps etc etc etc. The only difference is the nikasil. And yep confirmed wrong by someone else. Yeah try telling that to everyone that's put an M50 manifold onto an M52B28...... massive change in the engine characteristics. Torque curve moves to the right, hp is up, motor revs more freely. Thousands of people have done and will continue to do this swap because it's cheap and damn effective. Yet you claim it's a total disaster..... I'll bet there's forum members here who will completely argue that so called "fact" because of the change to performance in their car. And trust me, I've done this conversion, not just on my 328i but also on a rally car, and the difference is night and day...... do I need to explain to you the basics of how engines work and how to get the best performance from them?? I think you need to go back and check some facts. There is conclusive proof on the net that the M50 manifold swap is the best bang-for-buck modification you can do to an M52B28. Dyno graphs don't lie when they are done back to back with the same car, same day, same dyno etc etc. Again, I'm not arguing about a decent exhaust system helping, that goes without saying with any modifications you do. Yes there's plenty around pushing 200kw, and I would just about bet my left testicle that more than half at that hp rating are running the M50 manifold. Yep Turners can claim what they want, after all they've been in the business of supplying aftermarket parts for BMW's since 1993.... so 24 years.... yeah I think they'd know a thing or two and would be pretty conservative with their claims given the likelihood they would get sued left, right and centre, if their claims couldn't be proven. Again, go back to the TA's original question. Yes chips exist. Yes still cheaper than the engine swap you told him to do.... or the custom exhaust.... I'm happy to continue this debate via pm, I think this thread has been hijacked enough and the TA probably still hasn't gotten the clear answer to his question.

The same block, apart from material used (iron vs alloy). I agree that chipping is a much cheaper option.

"Needs replacement rear screen". I do like the Mercedes lighter though, adds a little class.

Im not convinced that 'NZ new' = $30k more than UK import, but good luck to him.