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Sat in this fresh off the transporter today, looks nice in real life and snug hunkered down interior. About $112k.

OK, so Biarritz is all back on the road. Latest round of work included; Finishing timing chains, guides, tensioners, vanos seals. Intake manifold gaskets and all gaskets and O rings associated with getting into the engine... Then spark plugs, fuel filter, transmission mounts, and finally out the back for lower suspension ball joints and integral links. The engine is a bit cruddy internally so a few short interval oil changes coming up after some decent highway driving. Also the repaired and repainted front bumper (with new knockoff East European pork chops) has been fitted and it's quite an improvement on the old nose. M5 style grid. I'm pleased the colour match came up OK. My new spray gun worked great so gives me confidence to try more paint stuff... It's fair to say I'm liking this car - must be the colour...

Haha @balancerider that is my car, lent it to a friend over from Munich to take tot the ciry

@E28E30 (I think) heading north on SH2 in 'THE325'

I’ve been digging into my low/rough idle issue again. I have the 6 pin TPS version as it had the sport auto box and it won’t give me continuity for wide open throttle (according to E30 zone it uses the volts to send that info through the TCU to the ECU but obviously the TCU is no longer in use as it’s been manual swapped) . I have a new 3 pin TPS which has continuity at idle and at wide open throttle. I’m wondering if I can splice a 3 pin connector into the exisiting TPS loom and have it talk to the ICV/ECU as it should (providing I get the wire colours correct) im not sure this will solve my idle issue as the ICV is clearly working with the 6 pin TPS at the moment. The ICV is measuring within spec. I found a thread that had @polley , @Etwenty1 , @_ethrty-Andy_ with the same sport boxes doing a manual swap, can you guys offer any help here? Did you ever run into lean running after your manual swaps due to not having the ECU know it was full throttle? Or did you swap to the 3 pin TPS? my car is a E30 325i SE that had the sport auto box and now has a getrag 260 running motronic 1.3 cheers, A.

I'm not convinced... https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/130i/listing/3480943431

Quite a few sitting at around 30k now going nowhere.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/bmw/auction-3480716223.htm Looks like a nice example.

The widebody look

Have you considered the oem logic 7 amp and speakers? Has the benefit of oem intergration so equaliser control from the idrive etc They are semi hard to find but if you can find a set at a local wrecker etc its well worth it. Ive done 2x now that ive paid around $400 for the whole setup and the sound is fantastic.

Probably the best looking of the current BMW line-up, and that thundernight metallic colour! A hark back to the techno violet days.

Hi all - am hoping that someone with an NZ new E46 M3 might be kind enough to help me with this. At some point (prior to my ownership) the car had a partial respray which included the driver's door jamb. Whoever did it didn't do a particularly great job, but more to the point the stickers (VIN/manufacturer sticker, tire pressures, Airbag warning, etc.) on the door jamb weren't replaced. I'm looking into this now as I continue with plans to restore the car to its original state as much as possible. I have scoured the internet but to no avail - What I'm hoping someone who owns an NZ new E46 M3 might be able to do to help me is to take a photo of their driver's door jamb for me showing the location, orientation and detail of the stickers (feel free to obfuscate VIN, etc. if you don't want to share on the internet!). I would be very appreciative and will sing your praises in this thread 🙂 Cheers, Matt

Update #26 Well I got notification today that the new steering wheel has shipped - should be here in a couple of months! The other day I decided to re-investigate why the rear bumper/diffuser sits so terribly on my car. I say re-investigate as I did look at it a few years ago when Dad and I were doing all the under-body work on the car, but I'd forgotten since what the issue was. Got under there with a torch to see that the plastic brackets that are glued to the Kevlar support bar had all detached, and only a couple of them were still screwed to the bracket on the bumper itself. I removed one, and did some investigation on the internet (although I suspected I already knew the answer). Because the brackets are glued/plastic welded to the kevlar support the whole thing is one part number and you can't purchase individual replacements. I could hunt down a wrecked one and try pull the bits, but didn't particularly like my chances, and thought it was a good opportunity to try putting Dad's 3D printer to use. The original part is helpfully labeled as PA6 GF30 which means it is a Polyamide 6 plastic with 30% glass fibre. There is a 3D printer filament available which is a Nylon 6 (Nylon is a type of Polyamide, so Nylon 6 is pretty similar to PA6) with 25% Carbon Fibre. The printed end result is supposedly stronger than the same thing made out of aluminium, so it should do the trick for this application. I quickly brushed up on my very rusty CAD skills and knocked this up this evening. It was pretty enjoyable to make. The original having presumably begun life by being drawn in CAD by a BMW engineer it was nicely spec'd in whole millimetres, so was easy to reproduce. The most difficult aspect was just that the bridge and the legs are not quite in the same X-Y plane. I've shipped this off to Dad for him to run a test print in PLA. From that I'll check and make any necessary adjustments, but I'm pretty confident it's spot on. The only thing I haven't drawn at this point is the holes in the legs. I'm undecided at this point whether I rivet or plastic bond to the kevlar support. If I go the plastic bonding route then the holes may prove to be unnecessary. Till next time.

ooooooo

You don't muck about ey 😄 Good stuff, she's a lucky girl alright

That’s a nice birthday right there

Finally got the welding done. Certainly not a job i ever want to do on axle stands again but i think it looks decent for an amateur? Penetration appears good so certainly don't anticipate any future problems. Paint will have to wait due to weather.

Wow, more than two years since my last post… *trigger warning - children/babies & medical stuff* A few weeks after my last post my son fell extremely ill. After several long hospital stays he was diagnosed with post transplant lymphoproliferative disorder, in his case caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. At his sickest there were 16 million copies of the virus per millilitre of his blood. He thankfully completed a course of Rituximab (kinda like a chemo drug that wipes out all the T cells in your immune system). By August he was home, and after a couple of blips he has been largely okay since. If things stay good for another few years his doctors will declare victory over the PTLD. In September of 2020 we found out my wife was pregnant with #2! Our second son was born in April 2021 at 32 weeks, following a rough pregnancy. He spent 5 weeks in NICU before joining us at home. 4 days later he was rushed to Starship with respiratory issues. He got a tracheostomy about a week later (which has been amazing) and then spent 47 long days in PICU battling infections and myriad issues that couldn’t all be tied back together. He finally made it up to the ward, and then a few days later started having seizures. Over the course of a few days we watched our little man lose all ability to move, turn his head, hear, and interact with us. Since then it’s been a long slow journey of improvement for him. After a couple of weeks he started looking at things, and us, again, another few weeks later he started responding to sound again, by the time we got him home at the end of September he could turn, but not support, his head. Another 8 weeks later and he could fairly well hold his head up, and today I took a photo of him sitting, propped up, in his hospital cot (he’s been in this week fighting a nasty virus) playing with a toy. The teams at Starship have been incredible. The head consultants from a bunch of different teams have been heavily involved in my son’s care, and their skill and the wonders of modern medicine have been life-saving for both of my children. I’m forever indebted to them, our public healthcare system, and, by extension, taxpayers of New Zealand. Wow. That was cathartic to write out. Not very on-topic, but cathartic. Thus concludes the explanation of why it’s been two years since my last post… I only drove the M3 a couple of times in 2021. For most of the year I wasn’t even sure if I was going to keep it (hard to make plans or think about what’s fun when you’re constantly in crisis mode). But the last few months as things have trended towards our “new normality” I’ve been enjoying driving the car on occasion and making some more plans for it. A couple of days ago I ordered a new OE steering wheel. The current wheel is quite badly cracked along the top, and the paddles and trim are in very poor condition. I looked at options like getting my current wheel rewrapped and buying new trim, etc. but for what that was going to cost it made more sense to order a brand new wheel. I found one for a good price, and, importantly, cheap shipping and pulled the trigger. It’s coming snail mail (hence the cheapness) so, given the current state of global logistics it should arrive sometime between the beginning of April and the end of time. I have a bunch of other items I want to get as well, but they’re all significantly cheaper, so I figured it was best to buy the expensive thing first, so I don’t keep putting it off! I also have a couple of little projects in mind to keep me busy as well so will hopefully be posting those up here soon! Matt