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... and another - the price I could not refuse - and shod with M5 wheels - Individual Biarritz blue with extended leather / Premium DSP / rear blind / rear PDC / glass roof / heated seats etc. Needs a lot of love but will look to on sell in medium term once I've gone over it to some degree. Already sorted heaps of stuff, but with guide fragments in the oil pickup - timing chain guides will need doing...

Interesting thread gents. It's an ultimate Q/car in my book. This B10 finally arrived up my drive 30/09/21, 2years until the dealer finally cut his losses & let it go, seeing sense an agreeing to a price starting with a 2... since imported 12/12/18 it's travelled '5' kms in total. Full service history, Alpina wallet, handbook etc. Stats below that might be of interest or not: ENGINE/GEARBOX The B10 V8 is based on the BMW 540i, which has a 286 bhp, 4.4 litre V8 engine. As the BMW V8 engine has Nicasil (later Alusil) coated bores, the block can’t just be over-bored, a whole new block needs to be cast for Alpina by BMW with the displacement increased to 4.6 litre. Alpina have also made other changes to the engine such as a new crankshaft, more aggressive camshafts, hand-fettled ports, lighter higher-compression Mahle pistons and reprogrammed the Motronic system. The result is 340 bhp (254kw) and 470 Nm of torque at 3800 rpm, 100 rpm lower than standard. From 1999 onwards the engine produces 347 bhp (probably more if you look at the much improved performance figures) and a torque of 480 Nm. The B10 V8 has a ZF 5-speed automatic gearbox with the steering wheel mounted Switch-Tronic system as standard. SUSPENSION/BRAKES/WHEELS The B10 V8 has twin-tube gas pressure shock absorbers at both front and rear. It also has new anti-roll bars. The brake discs are ventilated all around and have floating calipers. The Alpina alloys are 18″ with 235/40 tires at front and 265/35 at rear. Michelin tires of course. Optionally available were 19″ wheels.

Spent the evening avoiding the world and used the Mothers CMX on the wagon. No before shots - it was shiny but not as deep as the final result. I started with the CMX polish - useless. It went on like toothpaste and getting it off even on a small area took a stupid amount of time. I decided to go straight to the CMX ceramic coating as the current paintwork is in good condition. I put on a Collecting Cars podcast and spent about an hour applying and buffing off the coating with a microfibre cloth, probably the easiest coating I have ever used. So in my opinion it was money well spent.

got the style 66s back from being dip stripped last week, now to start the laborious task of welding, ginding and filing the curb rash! It was less obvious when they were Matt black but they are going to be silver again so needs to be sorted, these wheels will consume several more weekends of my life before they are ready to wear tyres again!!

It wont be, fedex are solid and not USPS. It might go on a journey to Aussie for a quick stop over though. Seems to be determined on flight schedule out of Hawaii.

Craig Shuester’s old X5, he would have looked after it, can put you in contact if you interested in having a chat. Also, I run an Avin Avant 3 unit in my E38 and for the last couple of years it has been great, would definitely recommend

Added a 175 amp DC connector in the boot, mainly to connect an inverter but also whatever else i need! 200 amp circuit breaker just in case...

Yes, genuine staggered, and yes, ex Japan. The car will be on sold with standard staggered sports 66's.

Lag will have nothing to do with the hardware, that will be software, maybe they have differnt launchers but they all run on Android software. Look at all the models they all look the same, there's no way each of these companies will be getting a custom design headunit done. There are like 5 companies doing the same units. I guess lag is subjective, my xtrons unit is as snappy as my iPhone and works great, a friend has an avin and it feels exacly the same. I would be happy with either brand. Like I said, I think it will come to price point, return policy, customer service and brand loyalty. And of course people tend to be defensive of their purchase. You'll be able to find many people saying one is better than the other for all the brands. One guy might have bought an Avin and it was faulty, so suddenly Avin is crap and vise versa. Xtrons is the one I just happend to buy, but would be happy with a Avin too.

Hey Team So finally cracked into the X5 4.6is parts car, stripped the motor out and refurbed in the past month. Swapped the oil pump to the front sump type and replaced timing chain guides and various gaskets. Pretty much got the motor 90% ready to go back in, just need to make a custom bracket for the oil filter housing. Also arrived was my wiring harness from Condor speed which im hopping will make my job easier. But most excitingly finally got to mock up my custom exhaust headers that i had made i think a year ago, I cant wait to get this thing in the car and running. Drilled out the passger side starter hole. Fiited some 18mm frost plugs into the secondary air pump holes. Getting closer team.

Hey Team So have done a few more things to the project in the last few weeks. Installed the motor with new mounts to test postion, i had to slot the mounts slightly to get the engine to go back by 5mm. Shaved some of the material off the aircon bracket. Measured up front half of the drive shaft and needs to be shorten by 40mm. Fitted some 18mm frost plugs to the secondary air pump ports in the block. Sourced an e87 steering shaft and the piece that goes to the rack fits perfectly but the piece that connects to the steering column will need changing to the e46 one and Finally arrived my wiring harness from Condor speed, hope this makes the wiring up job alot easier. Getting closer team

As far as I can see It’s not cracked so in time, some filler and paint will sort it. 👍

My fcp order had a 3 week stopover in Aus, hopefully they've got that sorted out.

Its been a while between updates ... that's because, I had the bends !!! Mandrel bends that is It all turned into a bit of a saga to be honest, I'd switched to mild steel in order to make the cost closer to something realistic which was all good. What was not all good was the tight (1D) 90 deg bends I received, which were all pretty sub-standard with over 3mm of necking through the bend ... so not fancying trying to weld circles to ovals I arranged to have these replaced with donuts and straight tube (this would nearly double the number of welds needed without the straight legs the bends have). Alas the donuts were also average and measured about 2-3mm under size across one side also !!! Shocking. So ... I've not got stainless bends and donuts on the way from Australia which are hopefully actually round. Switched back to stainless as they only had a single steel donut in stock and their prices were far better than the locals for stainless. The chap measured some while i was on the phone and they sound pretty good ... the donuts are imported from China and everything else is made locally. Crossing fingers for their arrival this week. Anyhow, onto some pictures of what I have been doing other than scouring the internet for tight bends. Completed both header jigs now and re-matched the stainless flanges to the engine, which I'd somehow managed to mix up the first time ?! Started making a few cutting jigs ahead of the new bends arriving ... the idea is to cut with a thin cutoff wheel then sand to perfection on a disc sander to match what was designed with the plastic mockup tubes. This one is a 30 degree bend with 30mm straight from memory. FINALLY into something that isn't header related. So refreshing I can tell you !!! Getting the head back into the wiring space and starting with mating the BMW accelerator pedal plug with new wiring to go to the Nissan ECU. The original M43 was cable throttle so this is a new run of cable and second hand pedal. Stitched together a full ECU wiring plan from the Infinity G37 service manual and printed on the wide format printer at work ... should be rather handy !! Severe brain strain trying to marry up the 6 wires for the pedal, seems so simply but took AGES

Super happy given the time involved to purchase, I made an offer 2yrs ago which was higher than what I paid this week. I will make some enquiries about the block on a couple of Alpina groups in Europe that I follow. The Alpina-Archive is interesting, I learnt a lot from it. https://www.alpina-archive.com/?page_id=185

I learned similar peculiarities about the E4 engine in my B3. 1998, single vanos iron block 3.2 sharing very little with the M50 and nothing intake or exhaust with the Mxx engines. God help me if I need a head gasket.

well , just placed my 1st FCP order for water pump, Thermostat and bolts. Lets hope that shipping issue form the USA in the news last week wont be a problem.

There’s an X3 at Pickapart Mangere, has door mirror, but not white.

Very nice @JonRP. Alpina Blue and Alpina Green are such special colours. The Japan spec bootlid and front plate mount are the only thing that I would change if it were mine but appreciate you may wish to preserve the originality. Cloth sport seats are cool. I must confess I've been looking at the touring versions of these but as they're all UK market cars they'll probably all be rusty by now (unlike this one I assume) https://collectingcars.com/for-sale/2003-bmw-alpina-e39-b10-v8s-touring

Awesome Jon you must be very happy. The Aplina cast block is what gets me, I wonder if there is more information about it. Is it a M62 block design but just improved to meet their specs for 4.6L, does the same supplier of BMW make it? Are these blocks only used in E39 B10 cars? Such a special step you don't hear about too often, talk about an expensive way to increase performance haha. Very cool either way.

New Here Drive an 07 BMW E90 335i

I bet the North Koreans are driving one of these...

Have a look at the avin units. Better than the xtrons, and also better than the dynavin imo

Sreten makes it look so easy though 🙂

Previous rego DC2195

I would be very surprised if that was ever part of the Crown Fleet (or ex Government as the seller refers). My understanding is that all the Crown cars are the same colour - silver, with the same interior - grey. No flag holders on the front guards, and no holes in the interior where all the extra radios, GPS trackers, etc are mounted. Pretty much every 730Ld ever listed on TardMe is called a Govt Car, one joker even tried to suggest his car was “THE Royal Visit” car. They do still pop up now and again on used car yards, and some of the latest fleet have started to show up at Turners as the greens push for EVs. EDIT: Just checked on carjam and as expected it has never been part of the NZ Crown Fleet (no CRxxx rego) but was in fact imported for an embassy and registered on a Diplo plate (DCxxxx) so half right I guess.

X

Staying away from the N62 would probably be the first best decision.

If I was going to be stuck with a bike (assuming that all my cars were broken) then I think I'd happily take one of these https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/126315857/bmw-and-bmw-motorrad-reveal-amby-concept-ebike

Thankyou Nice to know folks are looking and interested given its a bit of a departure to the standard projects round these here parts hah And I hope to be able to show you !! Was really hoping to be mobile over summer but its not looking too likely ... at the rate things are moving at present I'll still be making the headers !! Once I can fire it by turning the BMW key that should spur me on. At some point soonish the oiling system has to be completed also and that's not going to be pleasant on the wallet 😕

Drivers seat upholstery fix this week at Waikato Motor trimmer. new lower outside bolster foam and material and a re shaped upper bolster too with small price of new foam to bring the shape back to factory. A pic of the removed lower bolster and a shot of the rejuvenated seat.

Did a spot of cleaning on the E39 today. Inspired by a mates efforts on his M3. Rear lights were removed, exposing several layers of gunk. Cleaning was done by Chemical Guys all purpose cleaner, clay bar, detailing brushes. Finish protected by Chemical guys wax, and quick detailer.

Completed a full oil and filter service today. Including cabin filters and air filter. 12 month schedule oil was pretty dark so good to give it a refresh. @~165ks then managed to scar my front bumper on my brothers driveway. Feck. it’s not noticeable from standing but looks feels pretty deep if you get down to have a look.

completed oil service, cabin filter, air filter service today. then managed to scone my front bumper a good one in my brother’s driveway. Feck.