Leaderboard

https://www.bmwblog.com/2022/01/30/bmw-z4-m3-e92-engine-looks-like-z8-coupe/ Drooling..

4 doors may be stiffer but 2 doors create more stiffness IMO

Aka the 2009 F02 760Li. Its great, but I just had a poke around the engine bay... man these things are crammed and alien looking! I can see some minor weepy plastics and lines for the cooling system but I cannot see: - MAFs ( I change these on every car I buy thats like 100k+ km) - Aux Pump (interior vents dont blow hot air..) - Water Pump - 3rd water pump, for turbos Man it goes though, such a fantastic car to drive and be in.

But...318iS!

Oh is that where I’m going wrong? Lol

Fixed.

2010 135i N55 DCT with replacement 47000 km replacement motor (with VAC baffled sump) Original motor died due to oil starvation at a track day. Great as a daily or track toy. Excellent cond. Baffled sump,stepped intercooler,ali charge pipe,aftermarket downpipe, MHD stage 2.5 tune Spare wheels with track tires Black or brown interior options also available $20000

Hi all! I enjoy reading this forum, but I haven't registered. Now I have some thoughts and questions, I would like to express them in some threads. I decided to write here so no one would be surprised by a newbie

Now you just need to cut the front springs, get some mirror tints and black out the lights!!

Hi There All, I'm a 14 years long time owner, enthusiast and aftermarket part producer of Z3M Coupe. Based on Istanbul-Turkiye and hope I can add my knowledge with those who needs. Have Fun, Cemal AKCAL

And the M3 badge

This thread is dedicated to my efforts of rebuilding an M54b30 engine to drop into my Touring. I figured as this is the biggest and most essential part of the project, I'd best separate it from the main thread to avoid the details getting lost amongst the rest of the noise. The engine came out of a 2002 330i sedan with 160,XXX km on the clock. The internals seem to be largely untouched. Before taking the engine out of the donor car, I ran a compression and a leak down test. The testers used were on the cheaper side of the scale so that might have contributed to the results jumping around somewhat erratically. Did give some indication of the state though. All cylinders did hold compression but obviously the engine isn't as fresh as it used to be. Spark plugs 1, 5 & 6 came out being completely drenched in oil. I soon found out that the reason had been that the valve cover had split in several places, from someone clearly "making sure" the bolts were tight enough. The cover was also missing chunk out of one corner, a chunk I would later find swimming in the oil pan, so I'll either be using the cover off of the current engine or getting a new one at some point. Apart from that, oil leaks were aplenty. The return line going from the CCV down to the dipstick had somehow completely split, the valve cover was obviously leaking, as was the OFHG, VANOS pressure line, oil pan and seemingly the rear main seal as well as the crankshaft seal. Funnily enough, the one component that didn't have any visual leaks was the head gasket. The two hard coolant lines under the intake were not unexpectedly completely rotted away at the ends and came off leaving the tip inside (hue hue). A couple of minor observations that I'm not sure what to make of. The first being the water pump had seemingly gone right up against the separator wall and tried to eat away at it a bit. Probably nothing to be concerned about, but would be good to have some assurance? Also, taking off the intake, I found a few of the bolt holes surrounded by rings of oil. Is this a sign of anything at all or just safe to assume it had dripped onto it from the outside somehow? My biggest concern and dilemma at present is whether to take off the head and preventatively change the head gasket. Ideally I'd love to avoid doing that, especially knowing the threat of pulling the threads whilst re-torqueing the head bolts (would be getting brand new bolts of course). I'm leaning towards 'yes' in that regard. I'd pulled off a "high oil temperature" code from the ECU which made me a bit concerned so would be great to have it checked to make sure it's solid. Apart from that, everything looks tidy enough so far. Will be taking the timing gears and the camshafts off in the coming days and deciding the full extent of the rebuild. The plan of attack as it currently stands: Take off the head, have it checked for cracks & hardness, get the surface machined. Have the cylinders honed. Install new piston rings, will try find a kit with M52TU oil control rings. Install a slotted oil pump nut. New timing chain guides. New hard coolant lines under the intake. Rebuild VANOS with new seals & anti-rattle kit. Rebuild DISA flap and possibly diaphragm as well. New CCV & associated hoses. Clean throttle body, idle control valve. New coils, spark plugs. Obviously all new seals & gaskets throughout. Things I would ideally avoid doing: Boring cylinders, new pistons - really don't think it'll be necessary. Rod bearings - shouldn't be a problematic component on these engines so shouldn't need to be replaced? Stem seals - haven't looked into this one much. Probably worth doing but require some sort of special tool? Still not done with research and assessing the cost-benefit of some of those 'maybe' items. Advice and feedback very much welcome. If there's any additional items worth addressing or minor mods/upgrades worth doing or considering while I'm at it, please do let me know. I've never done an engine rebuild or anything close to a task this big before so am bound to have a bunch of blind spots and obvious things I'm overlooking. I'm very much learning as I go along and would love to have others' experience and advice to fall back upon and guide me along the way. Equipment wise, I'm near enough set. Have all the generic tools as well as torque wrenches of all 3 sizes and a few specialist spanners & sockets. Have also ordered a camshaft locking/timing tool kit. Might need some specialist tool to install the rear main seal so will figure that out at some point. Probably missing a bunch of things so feel free to point it out if you notice anything. Cheers

Nope. Styling is totally wrong. Best ever probably belongs somewhere in the E3x range.

Thanks @Vass it sure has been a bit of a journey ... nice to feel like things are moving forward again finally !! My new PDM and associated wiring bits should be here soon from Waytek Wire and YouShop. I got the dry sump pump re-mounted in an alternate position using the same bracket as previous which should work fairly well. Unfortunately needs a new drive mandrel (and belt) as i chopped the other one. Once I get the new mandrel and belt I'll complete the mounting and maybe a simple tensioning mechanism also. Super excited to be doing some wiring now also and have gone over everything that will need to interface with something external so I can plan out the power / signal distribution. Part of this mission was to condense things a little so decided to remove the massive plug used in the Skyline which linked the VVEL control module to the engine harness, power and main ECU. Translated all the wires across and crimped them ... would have been good if they had used the same colours on both sides !! An interesting fact for those interested (anyone ? ) is that there is a private CAN network between the main ECU and the VVEL control module / ECU.

Cheers, yeah the $1200 transport hurts a bit with another $1500 for a replacement rental, but at least the cars under warranty so that’ll be $500 excess. Just push on with the holiday ! Makes me appreciate the 7 when you’ve done a few hundred kms in an outlander, yawn

Cap on backwards, seat reclined right back, fit in with the locals 👍

Looks like its had a rough life and your right it probably deserves a rebuild. Im going say likely an import? Water pump damage wouldn't worry me, cant do much about it anyway. Oil on the intake ports will be from the inside the manifold. Those feet with bolt hole where the gasket sits on the manifold are just a press fit and im sure allow oil to seep past. Are those codes that have been cleared already? Factory software is good as it logs details of the fault and how many times it has occurred. You could add: O2 sensors to the list but they are hard to find without going universal (well one bank is anyway hence why i haven't done mine yet). Injectors cleaned and tested + seals. Maybe fuel lines to rail The rear main seal should come with a plastic cone tool which does the job.

Between you and @adro its hard to convince me E30 coupes are better looking than sedans. Its such a well proportioned car. E36s though, its the opposite, sedans are blegh.

@E28E30 Its Red though!

The extra metalwork in the body to allow for a rear door opening on a sedan is what usually gives the extra stiffness. The strengthening added more than compensates for the metalwork skin that is removed. Seems odd that we are discussing the body stiffness of a nearly 30 year old road car as being an important factor.

Car version of hot potato

Wow! That is “compact” in there.. be such a mission to try and get to anything to work on it.

Hi there, hoping someone might have a manual swap for my 320i tucked away somewhere, i imagine the prices have skyrocketed these days but thought id try my luck, please let me know if you can help, cheers Mitch

Looking at trademe at the moment and prices on the new imports are definitely trending up.... There is also this - https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/130i/listing/3447580373?bof=J9eIxXbu

They are not as nice looking a car, and a different size car as well. E30's in original or near original condition seem to be getting pretty rare now.

Yes, it’s a VERY nice car, really well styled and the execution of the idea is fantastic. The best ever though… that’s a big call.

Watched the top gear video on this yesterday - amazing car - the engine noises! crazy that its a Z4 coupe underneath. 'Best' BMW ever I would be voting for E9 CSL / E30 M3 Sport Evo / E46 M3 CS or CSL with 3 pedals. Either that or a E90 320i.

Just read through the whole thread with great interest. Truly amazing attention to detail. The amount of time and effort that's gone in is mind boggling. One to keep an eye on. Well done sir 👍

Underside and floor mostly prep'd for welding next week. Wheel arches and trailing arm pockets will be stiched reinforced also along with redoing some of the spot welds that were a bit iffy. The poor factory MIG welds for the front threaded receiver under the rear seats will be redone too. Finally the trunk floor reinforcement plates that connect the floor to the side of chassis legs. Underside plate are also plug welded from the trunk floor cavity for an even stronger connection.

BMW Style 230 8x19 225/35/19 9x19 255/30/19 One thing to note is if the tyres fitted are run flat tyres, these rims have a highish chance of getting hairline cracks if you hit a pothole or similar at speed. 19” rims with low profile runflat tyres and nz roads is not a nice combo unfortunately!

Nice car, worth looking at the UK Z4 forum - www.Z4-forum.com heaps of info and help on that site. Have fun.

I still use ISTA and INPA but the laptop has become tiresome over the years. I bought the full Bimmergeeks protool for Android a while back and haven't really looked back (there is / was a cost in time for re-installing etc so the time saved with ProTool is a bargain). Works with an OTG connection and the cables I already had.

And their customer service sucks to be honest. I asked one and the same question and got 3 different answers. Can’t believe this.

Nice! I actually hastily needed a signal generator for a dash repair I was doing when the one I had stopped working, ended up with the same one you have. It still amazes me for $10 bucks or whatever it was you can get something that does it with such a nice little LCD read out. Very nifty! Would be interesting to put the outputs into an accurate oscilloscope and see how accurate it actually is though, probably isnt bad.

I got a good price from @PartsFriend Great guy to deal with and prompt service.

Last FCP delivery for the year, merry early xmas! 😎

Very timely! Package arrived yesterday from David of Parts-friend.com Very quick delivery (delayed slightly by FedEx) and all parts are oe/oem. All well packaged with nil damage, even the radiator and E30 bonnet foam are in good knick. Ill be using Parts Friend from now on. Replied to emails within 24 hours.

S O L D Inbound back to Auckland. The best part of owning this car was the interaction with other E39/BMW owners, thanks to everyone who helped me source parts and helped me trying to diagnose issues. What a trip it’s been. Sold to a non bimmersporter, but hopefully it’s gone to a good home.

2297XX Celis F/L tailights installed. I've been trying to do this for about 1 year now. After 2 dud sets off trademe I had sort of given up but then @BreakMyWindow came through with a set from one of his recent missions to A&E. These also had the plug adapters, major score. Then I was too noob/scared to use NCS to try and code them in and my ISTA P is still not working but @hqstu came through with an LCM IIIB off a late model 525 running all the celis and xenon goods. My PA soft 1.4 is working and so following the E39 source videos I coded the LCM to my car, was alittle apprehensive as to how the front Xenons and wiring were going to respond but everything works perfect so I went ahead and started drilling some holes in the the tailight buckets. I followed E39 source videos again for this and a forum DIY. No hole saw but this stepped drill bit worked a charm New holes plug adapters Before after Fitments pretty good, I did have to do abit of bashing with a hammer. Since I've had it 3 years as of this month I thought some new plates would make a nice birthday present. TBH i was planning on keeping the plates when I sold it so went about remaking them while I was filling in the forms to make them mine. I didnt drill the rear plate, I just screwed the surround (which is abit faded and could probably do with a refresh) and then snapped the plate in place. The E39 community really helped me out with this one, thanks guys! Update on the shimmy. Case closed. I've had 2 people drive the car now and they are more worried about my mental health than any vibrations. Tyres are still on the cards and a new Battery is in the not to distant future too.

211,000 km loving the Xenons. Worth every dollar. Couldn't resist a quick pic on the way to work this week.

On our South Island roadie, down to Whataroa outside of Franz on the coast and had the rear air bags go. No warning just total loss of air. Had about 15ks to run at 40ks tops. Got it shipped back to BMW ChCh while we had to loan a car backup to Greymouth for a rental … yippee. Happy holidays

Congrats, F series is way better then E66. Stunning car, need to see some pics! Although my rear suspension just gave out yesterday so maybe not that much better 🤦‍♂️