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There were 4 AMG E55 wagons sold in NZ, at least some of them have the 3rd row of seats.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/x5/listing/3276351634

Gave it a good clean and a coat of paint sealant.

Thanks to Stuart for doing most of the hard work

Hi Jon, Yes I do but it comes with a NZ new Msport manual which has been caged.

Hooray, the wheels finally arrived today. The difference they make in how the car drives and looks is nothing short of amazing. They will ultimately need stripping back and repainting, but for the moment they are good enough. If anyone wants a set of 195/50/15 D windows, I now have a set for sale. Before After PROBLEM!! For some reason, the front wheels are rubbing on nothing obvious, with a squeak as the wheel rotates. Does anyone have any ideas? My only idea is that the lug nuts are pulling the brake rotor away from the hub causing it to rub on the brake pads? Ive checked that it doesn't rub at all on any of the components, so it must be something different. Yes, Im very impressed with the quality. Just a bit annoying about the orientation of the shifter stalk.

Usually have a collector which mounts them together somewhere on the body. The tailight end plug\connector terminals are where the problems are of the time in my experience. Easy to check.

Hope so @Ghost Chip fortunately I had covered the block and taped up all electrics as I went. I think the carpets copped the worst of it.

Id be checking the rear light bulb holders and contacts then the wiring if needed. Bad grounding usually the issue.

Whatever you do, stay away from imported 'blue performance' ones

Or the 3rd row facing each other on opposite sides

If it happened when you filled up then it could be a leak from the fuel gauge sender unit, crack in the plastic or gasket has failed. Take the plates off under the rear seat and check both sender and the pump. You should see\smell fuel mixed with dust\dirt if this is the case.

Bring back the days of the rear facing 3rd row in station wagons I reckon. Probably struggle with safety ratings now if imagine.

Just over 1k usd and $218 usd for freight with fedex. So $1813 nzd before gst and entry fee. Roughly a similar price to 19s purchased through nz via the usual discount places so not any cheaper. But cheaper ironically to the PSSs I brought in 2015

Ah, true, not that I am aware.

Tirerack can ship internationally. Email them for a quote. From memory for my PS4S's their shipping was pretty fair, about ~200USD for the set.

https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-britishcars/gma-t-50-set-for-public-debut-at-members-meeting/44780?utm_campaign=enews%20bulletin&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Newsletter Send Smart List Video link within

Now we are getting somewhere, there is something weird happening with logging data rate via K+DCAN cable and android headunit (every 7ish seconds the rate fluctuates in the CSVs) , done via bluetooth and phone its looking much more like an N52 dyno and the numbers make sense.... its also very repeatable, will be better if I can find a smoother road. 226 whp

+1. They worked on my old 335i when I destroyed the engine. They did a partial rebuild on the replacement engine (all new bearings + other stuff) and it was good-as-new. If I needed another BMW engine opened up I'd happily use them again.

Still waiting for the header bends to arrive so have been planning out the power distribution for running the VQ and starting to look at what needs to tie in to the BMW wiring / cluster to get things as close to OEM as possible. A vital part of the swap will be using an Arduino to run the OEM cluster functions missing by removing the DME ... there is a fair bit of material on the net about this but no really good one stop shop resource so this will no doubt sink a lot of time ! Luckily it can wait until the car is mobile but its a fun one to start experimenting with now. The Arduino Leonardo I was using turned out to be garbage when it came to putting CAN messages on the bus so a quick trip to Jaycar to get an Arduino Mega r3 clone resolved this and I can now happily put messages on the bus. Yay !! Managed to get the tacho moving which is a good first step. The CANHacker v2 software I think is a bit junk at transmitting messages so I've ordered another CAN bus shield so I can have a pair of them to play with on the desktop. This will be easier to see what is sent over the wire when writing the required code etc without trying to look for activity on the cluster itself in the car. Shrunken.mp4

540i E34 manual > 540i E39 manual

Don't see any point in changing it myself. A M40 is never going to be great on the open road and going lower ratio is sacrifice what little acceleration you already have.

As a result of lock-down I finally found the time to do a decent detail and polish on my E34 540iA. I then applied three layers of wax to make the car nice and glossy. Thought this would be a good opportunity to make a post in the showroom to show it off! Car has done over 371,000km so was quite impressed with how nice the paint still looked. Need to get my replacement sunroof painted though.

Wife is out of town so went for a 'blast' out to Piha today - typically, got stuck behind a line of soft roaders and people movers heading out but got space to stretch the legs on the way back.

Long story short: a pipe burst at home and for five minutes a lot of water covered everything in the kitchen and garage below. The seats were out, but the passenger footwell was soaking. Carpets had to come out, can't have that foam underneath holding water in the car. . Everywhere is solid, so there's the silver lining.