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Starting a new project log for the wagon just picked up. 2009 530i E61 M Sport LCI Japanese Import N52 3L engine, automatic, panoramic sunroof etc One of the first things that will need doing is replace some non working bulbs for the rear fog lights. Error message every time on start up is very annoying. Also the service alert on the CCC iDrive shows brake fluid service due and an oil service due (even though it was done recently it hasnt been reset) so if someone can help me to reset this that would be great. Next thing to chase is a low idle, sits at around 700rpm so the car vibrates very slightly. when moving though there is no vibration or anything which leads me to believe its not spark/coil or engine mounts etc. engine revs smooth and no misfiring. There were a bunch of random codes from my scanner but I deleted them all and will drive it again and see what codes come back and report. Another thing is that there is a clunk/thump kind of noise right after starting the car. so you put the key in and press the start button then the car will fire up, rev up to about 1500rpm then drop back down to idle and on the down-rev it will make a clunk noise. Could be transmission related, I have read on dr google this which seems similar to my issue https://www.bimmerfest.com/threads/transmission-clunk-immediately-after-ignition.639595/ Other than that, both engine and gearbox is smooth and no jerkiness or anything. Panoramic sunroof is a bit of a d!ck. it mostly works fine but if you tilt it up, later when you want to close it, it doesnt close and will just "bounce". In order to close it I need to hold the button down to "reset" it by cycling through all the movement actions and it will work again. Doesnt seem like a mechanical issue like broken parts because it still works if you close it this way.. All in all, happy BMW ownership

So..... firstly, Lester now has his bmw back up and running after over a year and several thousand dollars of “hunting the issue” style of bmw repair strategy (coils,plugs,fuel pumps,o2 sensors.... the list goes on) . I seriously wonder how some “head technicians” get their jobs within Bmw. initial scan of the m3 came back with the following codes (in the picture). Did some googling, and found out that the cat code is Indeed the cause of the limp mode, but what was causing it? Cleared it all off, took the car for a drive and as expected, went onto limp mode along with the cat code and o2 codes coming back during this drive, love data on the scanner showed that the o2 sensor voltage values were NOT changing, which was totally odd as you can see, ALL 4 Sensors have the same heater error...... put everything nag together and was like, surely if all 4 sensors have the same error.... it must be a common something connected to all 4. First thing first, checked the o2 sensor fuse.... wouldn’t you know it.... it was blown ? as a result, the heaters were not working and the sensors were not reading as they should have been...... in turn triggering the cat protection codes because of the “lean readings” in relation to rpm some things are not hard to use half a brain and figure out.... and how Bmw have now been able to use 1/20th of a single brain cell to follow the dead obvious signs fails to amaze me I suspect that what has happened is one of the original O2 sensors has failed, shorted and taken the fuse with it creating the further errors when the new ones were installed but anyway, problem solved!

Thank you for all the response! Special thanks to @Arron for reaching out and helped solving the issue with my car, so stocked that it's finally acting how it really should be. My faith with the dealership is dead, very disappointed on them with all the time and money I've wasted it's just ?. You're a legend @Arron, once again thank you so much. ?

Hi there, thanks for stopping by. After pining for years, I finally managed to muster the courage to get myself an E30 project car. Guess it was a few years at uni (7 to be exact ha) and moving around for work, that prevented me from getting hold of one earlier. Anyway, here is my little E30 coupe, I picked it up at a selvedge auction so there's a fair bit of work required, just to get it roadworthy following a rear collision and subsequent insurer-required de-registration. This will be a slow build, with the end-goal being a tastefully resto-modded-s50-swapped beast Here are a couple of photos from the day I bought it. Guess it was a little bit of a rushed purchase, as I saw it listed, won it and drove up to Auckland to collect all in the same day - imagine my surprise when I saw it being dropped-off for collection on the front of a forklift! Other than the usual rust spots, there is a bit of work required at the rear to correct the collision damage and, to some, that would render this a parts-only car, but I struggle with that idea (unless the car is an absolute mess). So, with that, my focus to date as been cleaning it up, inspecting parts and collecting required parts/nice-to-haves for the project and gearing up for some bill shock, come repair/revin/LVV certification time. On that, if anyone has an S50b30 or b32 and a ZF gearbox they would be willing to part with, please let me know! ha ha. Looking forward to sharing my progress and learning a few things along the way

Ive always just listed all i can about the car im selling and most calls i usually get are viewing related. Maybe some sellers don't mind taking calls and answering questions due to their lack of detail, but its not something i'd ever consider doing.

Have a good scanner located in Christchurch. more than happy to pop over and give it a scan to see if we can help in anyway flick me a text 0221952364 arron

More new goodies, $470 worth of gas struts for the tailgate!! Investigated the handbrake issue, the shoes have plenty of meat on them, but have big grooves all the way around and cracks across the surface so it will be getting new ones, also found a boost gauge in storage, so it will get that as well More cleaning inside, starting to reassemble the interior, still needs a new drivers seat belt, but have started the wood grain delete...

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/318i/listing/2048678500 same guy selling a 2 bedroom unit for 1.2M

With the car rubbing bad in the rear decided to lift it via spring adjusters, then put a smaller profile tyre on and went back out, the difference was night and day, i was able to keep the wheel speed up but raising it had changed the rear toe and it was getting zero side bite, combine this setup with trying to learn drifting at speed and..well... IMG_1162.MOV

Hi There, Was looking for any recommendations for places around Auckland that could do a muffler delete for me, i'm looking at overhauling my E90, but just wanted a cheapish job for the mean time. ?

Talk to Russel https://driveshaft-specialists-nz.business.site/

My faith in Bmw techs is Indeed very quickly vanishing ?

@lbo99 - do this, if nothing else it will give you a baseline. @Aaron - nice one bro.

Pics of the 728 as well please ?

Welcome Jay, pretty sure that’s a infra red key not rf, if I recall you point it at the red bulb under the rear view mirror but I can’t recall the exact sequence. No doubt someone here will recall it, if I remember I found it on you tube. Mainly Japanese cars I believe also, sorry a bit vague but likely the answers already here if you have a good search also ?

Hmmm....... not too sure if I'd be replacing an AGM battery with a gel one on a car like yours. I'd probably just bite the bullet and buy a genuine one. It will definitely need to be registered to the car.

If you could let me know how it goes that would be awesome!

I used an AudioVox media bridge for around 3 years, it worked ok. Sound quality was good enough. However the functions were very minimal as it just disguised itself as a CD stacker. Only the volume buttons on the steering wheel worked, the next/previous track buttons did not. It would stay on until the car had gone into sleep state (nothing in the car being touched or operated for 16 minutes) - this meant my phone would keep playing a song until my phone was out of range, it wouldn't always start playing again when I returned to the car. Bluetooth connection was sometimes slow to connect and the bluetooth calling was pretty rubbish. It died earlier this year. Wasn't terrible for the price but wasn't great either. Sounds like the DICE would have been a better unit. A lot has been said on overseas BMW forms about the BT audio being much better, especially when using digital DSP, if your car is equipped. I noticed a small bump in my audio performance with my NonDSP HiFi system. But like you mentioned, my system is all factory so it's never going to be amazing. The BB can connect directly to your cars telephone circuit using the right patch cable, performing better rather than BT calling over the stereo system. It will make use of the factory microphone/addition of a factory microphone as the car should be factory loom plug tucked away. It also talks with cars systems allowing a menu to be used to adjusts settings, adjust input volume, display song info, display coolant temp. Enable settings like automatic door locking and comfort indicators etc Super quick bluetooth connecting, the BB starts and stops music properly when starting and stopping the car. And of course the ability to easily update the firmware, Ted has updated/fixed many things since it came out. You could even make your own changes as the source code is all available on Ted's Github. I really didn't want to go down the 'Android Avin' road as it ruins the look of these classic interiors. Spending $200USD to keep things factory as possible and provide a bunch of features made it well worth it to me and Ted's support has been outstanding. Yes, the media bridge units are becoming hard to find, I think you can still find GROM units on Amazon and such.

Brave man! But its red, its a coupe and S50/52 is a pretty bloody good vision!

A recent example: me question - "Hi, how long have you owned, what servicing has been done (waterpump, coils, inlet clean, sump gasket, etc) and can you elaborate on the de-registration? Also, would you consider a part-trade with a clean 130i? Thanks " seller answer - "Feel free to contact me to discuss" My thoughts about this response?... nope, sorry not going to call anyone who isn't bothered to put up an answer to a few simple need-to-know questions and some which every potential buyer is likely to ask and which should have been addressed in the listing anyway. Then later... seller comment - "Re-registration due to front r/h hit resulting in insurance right off. Easy repair with all bolt replacement items. Repair certification and re compliance done. very comprehensive process to re vin." Wouldn't you think this information would be kind of crucial to include in the listing? Had I called, let's say it was on autotrader or advertised on the side of the road - what do you think the chances are he would have just volunteered this information? Likely I would only discover it when I came to sell or my mechanic says "did you know the chassis is bent?"*. This is on a 20k car by the way - a significant investment for a lot of people. The listing including the terms "excellent condition" and "unmolested". This is why I personally like trademe the way it is. Anything else, just say "thanks for your comment". ? * not saying it is, but we all know someone who has been shafted in this situation and I'm not looking for a damaged/repaired vehicle

DCH Motorsport still around? Give them a bell.

34,780 and you can find out.

A couple of weeks ago there was a post about ambient lighting updates available to the F12/F13/F06. Long story short, without significant wiring and software updates there is no way to get multi-colour ambient lighting in our cars. This got me thinking about what options we had other than sticking aftermarket LED strips over the existing optics. I found THESE on amazon. The thing that stuck out was that you could use the existing optics with the new light units. This is the result: Obviously the photos from my phone are enhanced so I did some manual adjustments to more closely simulate what it looks like in real life, and this is the result: The result is not crazy bright or garish at all. I attached the supplied LED drivers to the factory optic strips. Running the connecting wires into the car was a wee bit of a challenge since there is no wire tunnel through eh door harness. I overcame this by running them out the bottom of the door, under the rocker panel covers, illuminate sill plate and up into the car under the weather seal. Pretty clean, invisible install. I added footwell lighting front and back using the supplied fibre optic cables. The optics are hidden under the trim panels and the rear seat bench so they are not directly visible. Pretty happy with the result. Took a fair few hours to do but I did remove the seats to properly hide the fibre optic cables for the the footwell lighting. The cables are all routed to the armrest storage. The setup for the app was seamless and works as expected.

I'm not suggesting you get work done elsewhere, just that you go somewhere that will read and print the codes for you. BMW themselves aren't very good with M cars either. They often have 1 tech who's been certified and then they either leave or forget what they've learnt for older cars. In fact, a BMW dealership is probably the worst place to take an older M car tbh.

I'm the type of guy to spray clear coat over the base coat in the final stages here to see what it's going to look like. I'll be sanding it all right back anyway so why not. Had to mix up some clear for some thing else so instead of getting rid of the last 50ml I coated the panel haha Can't wait for the day time so I can get a good look at that colour. But it looks mint

Changed the brake fluid and headed up to Manfield for the MG CC / constructors CC Driver training/shake down track day at Manfield. Was a super fun day throwing the E30 round. Low drama day of redlines and yarns. Shout out to @skidz for the race suit. ^ photo: Jarod Carruthers

Got it out on the track at Manfield yesterday - a lot of fun with the Constructors/MG car club. Very happy with the new suspension and wheel/tyre situation. I do wish I'd got the rear swaybar sorted in time, and I could hear a new clunk on the drive home, but had a very enjoyable day with great company. Photo: Jarod Carruthers

local stickman has 91 at $1.59 and 95 at $1.73 both then less 6c off that. convenient with school hols I guess

This one is mine. Not perfect for sure with the dent in the rear bumper but still a fair price I believe. Can do a deal for bimmersport members.

I owned this car from 2007-2013 as a factory/all original 328i under UQ8500 and did c.250,000 kms in it over that period. It was a great car, I really miss it at times.

I did an exercise many years ago when I had a Mitsi Legnum VR4 and ran it on the different grades of fuel, both with and without octane boosters for a period of time each and carefully measured the economy of each, 98 with no octane booster ended up being the cheapest option, ($ per km) of course the prices are all vastly higher now than they were then but it is possibly still the same result. I'm not prepared to run the M5 on anything but 98 and the Leaf doesn't care how much petrol costs so I won't be repeating the experiment.

FYI - I just dropped my car off at Takapuna Mufflers this morning. Was booked in for 10am but now 'They will try to get to it today' and wouldn't provide an indicative cost despite it being a common enough car and sighting the muffler (clamp on type) which is clearly stamped Supersprint E46 330i... No eftpos either which is whack. I left it with them so we will see - didn't get a great vibe - only went there as they are really close to my office and google reviews seemed fine.