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This is a real sleeper wagon, quiet, standard looking, at first glance it's just another E91, and apparently every B road in the Netherlands is driven like the Autobahn. (And yes the channel this is from AutoTopNL do mostly unlimited runs on the German Autobahn, so I'm guessing the high speed runs here are over the border).

With the coming apocalypse I think as a responsible v10 owner I should be applying for some green car rebates to invest into making the M5 more "green". https://www.motor1.com/news/25581/g-power-bmw-m5-hurricane-gs-the-worlds-fastest-lpg-vehicle/ You would have to burn through some huge distances to get any return on investment for your blown swamp gas conversion, but Jacinda would be happy so that's a win.......

Not an ideal situation but unless you're prepared to throw money at something you don't own, what are your options? Buying anything used comes with a degree of risk the buyer accepts, had the car blown up the day after you sold it it might be a different story (and you'd probably be having a chat to Continental Audi). I think you did everything you could before the sale, you have no obligation after the sale as long as you've been honest and it seems you have. Continental Audi effectively gave it a clean bill of health except for some minor items which a) you disclosed, b) the buyer accepted, and c) are reasonable for the age of the vehicle. As tough as it might seem this is a matter of caveat emptor, and in the ~45 days of ownership the buyer had ample opportunity to get a mechanical warranty and apparently chose not to.

So far, so good! 2 bushes out with no drama. A little bit of heat and some gentle persuasion, and in the fluke of the decade I found a piece of aluminium from the leg of an old computer desk that was a perfect fit for the size of the bush and even had an indent in the center the correct size to push them out with!! I took the opportunity to remind my wife that I am a genius for keeping everything that " looks like it might be useful someday"

Ah! I was doing a little shakedown pre-trip run to Pukekohe and back Made it to Cooks Beach and back perfectly fine, now it's off to get the center hanger for the driveshaft replaced.

So I just got the call I didn't want. About a month ago I sold my NZ New 2006 Audi S8 with 119,000km. I think I was as transparent as possible with the car. It came with a clear file filled with all the work that was done to the car and why the work was done. The day before money was transferred and the buyer took the car, I had the car serviced at Continental Audi so that it would be fresh and ready to go for the new owner. Continental Audi also did their typical dealer inspection. They noted: - Split CV boot - Minor oil leak near alternator - Abnormal sound when opening the sunroof (just needed some lubrication) - Some damage to the engine under-tray cover (as expected with a car of this age) I was actually pretty impressed with the car as I thought that if the dealer was OCD enough to note the sunroof squeak, surely the car must be in decent order. The buyer agreed and bought the car. I felt good about the deal because I genuinely thought the car was a great car (which I still think), and I had been extremely transparent with the whole thing. Fast forward about a month and a half to today, the buyer rings me saying over the weekend he was driving the car and the under-tray blew out on the motorway. He pulled over to put it in the boot and found it had oil on it. He took the car to Hamilton Audi who have diagnosed the rear crank seals are leaking oil onto the exhaust manifold and eventually down to the under-tray. This is an engine and gearbox out to fix. Apparently there's a decent amount of dried oil on the under-tray and it drips onto the exhaust manifold. However, this was never picked up on when it was serviced, it obviously never dropped a drip of oil when I owned the car, but most importantly; the car never smelt of burnt oil after driving it (which it would if its dripping heaps of oil on the exhaust manifold). If it is leaking badly onto the exhaust manifold he would have smelt it on the test drive, let alone the 1.5 months he's had the car. My guess is its actually not too bad and theres just some built up grudge on the engine cover. So what do you guys think I should do? I know that as a private seller I have no obligation to do anything but I do feel bad he is not happy with the car. But on the same vein, I literally had the car serviced and inspected the day before collection, and it came with a clear file of literally every single thing I had done to the car and the reason for it. The car was also NZ New with a full Audi service history, with the lowest ks of any PFL D3 S8 on the market at the time, and I sold it for under $20K which I think was pretty fair. It also had near new dealer fitted Pirelli Pzeros, the front pads and rotors were like 2000km old, like everything was done. Like at the end of the day its a 16 year old ultra-high spec European Limousine, I don't think its unreasonable it might have an oil leak. I'm sure most of us wouldn't be too unhappy that an old European car has an oil leak so long as its not pissing out oil, but the guy was really pissed off. And for under $20K, I think its unreasonable to be furious at a 16 year old car leaking some oil. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I agree. Having been on the end of some far less scrupulous secondhand car deals with buried issues and felt let down by humanity, in contrast you’ve behaved as well as anyone could be expected to. Your conscience should be clear; but acknowledge that it feels “off” to be in your situation. And as you say, 16 year old high performance, complex European car. It has a leak, admittedly an annoyingly expensive one to address, but that’s the nature of the beast.

White is much much easier to clean than black and takes a bit longer to look dirty.

https://www.jxbperformance.com/products?tag=E46%2CSpare Bushings

Not sure what lying around means. I have a 3.15 crown wheel and pinion available at market price.

That one is nice @Sammo - MPerformance is dealer fit trim only (sill stickers, reasonably impractical front splitter and someone's changed the splash screen on the cluster) - has been in NZ virtually all its life. OEM towbar is a nice selling point. Think the front PDC is aftermarket.

Yeah its not my preference either, hence my enthusiasm for having an expert take a good look to see if anything has been neglected. There seem to be a few people doing their own N57s oil services online. I'm still chasing up the frequency that these occurred, hopefully it's more often than what BMW reckon it should be done. In saying that, car is quite tidy and looks to have been well cared for, as are the other vehicles in their driveway, it has no obvious issues or leaks that I could see and seems to run and drive well.

@tmase check the oil change intervals

Cool! Last long trip it didn’t come on, however my inspection light has been on for a while so no harm in clearing it. Thanks.

N57, I am aware the potential for timing chain stretch, but this sounded good on a cold start, no rattles

Hopefully he gets $14-15k, would provide a good back up to my insurance valuation 🤣

Tasteful mods, seen that car around north shore and it looked quite tidy, sounded great.

FYI - I appear to have resolved my intermittent ABS light (although probably jinxed myself). Removed and cleaned the sensors - still occurring, but I purchased a service / inspection reset tool and the light has gone and has not come back for a week and a half (was every other drive previously). So hoping it was a stored fault code (not sure if E30's work like that) that the cleaning resolved but had to be reset. Anyway, hoping it stays away.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/3540077910? This has some nice upgrades done

Someone came back last night and baked it up (pitiful attempt) much closer to our place, so I wasted a huge amount of time doing something I meant to do last year during lockdown and installed another camera covering the cul de sac. My neighbours are well pissed at the state of things, fingers crossed they try their luck again tonight.

saw you this morning at drury offramp looks good