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oh,,,,,,,,,,,,,you mean like THIS kind of S54 powered sacreligious?? (sold just last week Apr3, on BaT so in $USD)

Fishing line (upgrading the traditional dental floss idea) to put behind the plate and cut through the tape.

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 went to remove the rear number plate surround on the wagon, only to find that either some ass hat has bonded the number plate on with 3M or BMW has another form of black magic to hold the plate in place. I don't want to pull the plate and destroy the paintwork - any ideas? A gratuitous ass shot :

Coupled with the m50 swap package that's on trademe at the moment, would go well

Heat it up, fishing line, "disolve it" spray, compound polish.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/3544258196 This seems not too bad? Ripe for an engine swap or even a nice tidy up

On mine it is the surround that holds the number plate, if you pull the outer layer of the surround off the number plate will fall out and you can unscrew the surround from the car. Its a BMW supplied plate surround and its actually quite flimsy and doesn't fit particularly well!!

This is the thing. They become pretty scary if you want a 10-15k car that actually just works. I honestly would be pretty hacked off buying anything other than a 50 year old British car that leaked oil at 120km. But I also despise working on daily drivers/family cars.

will be in Auckland for the rest of this year! of course I do brother. give me a yell

welcome back! looking forward to seeing your progress, @yoshie

Well, been a while... Moved to London in 2019, pandemic hit, came home, etc. Project now back on track. Ended up with an M90 and going with B35 head, trying to lock down custom 10:1 pistons (a challenge to sort out...). Motor and head in machine shop. Rest of the paint being done in June. Some of the original interior work has developed surface rust, not particularly happy about it but hey. Now deciding what to do re: engine management. Motronic 1.3 conversion seems a good idea, though plenty of folks have gone to Megasquirt. Not sure there's much benefit going MS on a naturally aspirated motor.

IIRC that one had an extensive list of mods, not just the S54 conversion in it, which contributed to the high selling price. Many other S14 powered M3s have sold for well over that price on BaT as well. Granted an S54 is about the only engine swap I would possibly contemplate, and it is often hard to reconcile the fact you can sell an S14 and buy something with lots more hp for much less money. The fact is that the yellow one will never really be able to come back to the condition of being an “original” “collectors” car and is more suited to a restomod. Or race car..

outstanding mate!! well done. And congrats on getting to road-legal with your conversion, a big job.

Brand new Uniden R7 Radar Detector, only used for one day. Purchased as a gift for my wife, however, she tried it for one day decided that she doesn't need it. Comes with hard shell travel case, two mounts, soft pouch etc. Happy to provide receipts and demo it working if needed. Amazing detector but surplus to requirements! Pickup in Christchurch - Free shipping in New Zealand! https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/car-parts-accessories/radar-detectors/listing/3542985306?bof=nS9H07sp $920 for Bimmersport members with free shipping NZ wide. They are over $1200 new.

As long as you swear you're not a fat-cat capitalist trying to gain advantage of the system designed to provide a tax break to poor socialists scraping by on 1000km top-ups of their RUCs. If you're found to be "gaming the system" by the monitoring cabal Department of Approved Utes, they'll come after you for the savings you originally banked and bill you for the difference. Surely this insane system will cost more to implement and monitor/police than it will claw back for the govt coffers? https://www.newsroom.co.nz/government-relying-on-diesel-honesty I bought 15k RUCs for my little oil-burner soon after buying it. I think I've done a little over 5k kms in that time - diesel has gone from under $1.60/litre to over $2.30/litre in these ~6 months so the gubbermit has already increased their tax take from me dieseling my way around our fair land. I'm doing fewer kms than I had reasonably expected to, as we're still mired in Covid-land panic. Anyone rational will buy (anything they use regularly) in bulk to acheive a reasonable saving, given available funding and consideration of the opportunity cost. However this Transport Minister and his apparatchiks want to actively discourage responsible behaviour by vehicle operators, and reduce transactional efficiency (the operator's time and the licensing authority's) by forcing more frequent and smaller purchases of vehicle licensing. Let's not forget the LTNZ have recently proposed increasing charges for these very services. If I take advantage of the reduction in RUC price and buy another 10k kms now to cover the year's running, I risk a slap on the wrist if they perceive I had an ulterior motive and was not buying fairly and squarely. Is this New Zealand we're talking out, or am I in fact driving a Lada and drinking Vodka in a large northern hemisphere country in the 1980's? Scene: Interrogation Centre, Wellington, 2022. Olaf is getting a grilling about his RUC purchase. "why did you buy those RUCs?" "Because I expected to use them, did not want to risk running out. You put them on sale, I bought. Is that illegal?" "yes! you had plenty when you bought, you clearly didn't need more. Off to the gulag with you, fool! You cannot game our system." "I manage efficiently one transaction per year and not worrying about RUCs improves my productivity, provides more time for me to bill more and pay more tax! The project I bought the RUCs for was canned." "This is rubbish, we will change your behaviours through our clever controls. And while we're at it, that's not an approved ute. You are a BMW-driving capitalist! You really should drive Chinese - they're more proletarian, mate." "errr, your govt car is a BMW. Unless it's an Audi e-Tron. How did you sneak those in to the fleet?". "Room 101 for you!. And we're fining you $300 tax difference" "You've cost the country $7000 in lost productivity while you investigated this". /rant

Let that haunt your nightmares

I'd recommend against that unless you're a solicitor. As Kyu suggested above, say the minimum you can whilst remaining polite, any extra commentary just provides another vector for discussion or dispute that can obfuscate the fact that you are not responsible. The absolute most I would offer is to waive your right to privacy with respect to the most recent inspection by Continental Audi (that you paid for). This would allow the new owner to discuss that service directly with them and dispute the quality of their work if he wanted to dig in. But that has nothing to do with you, you just need to get out of the way. Hopefully the buyer sees reason though and accepts the reality of the situation he's in, tough as that might be.

Yeah, looks pretty good - been in NZ most it’s life with dealer servicing - if you’re still in AKL, do you do pre purchase inspections?

I think you should keep it very simple. No real need or reason to give advice on how to remedy the issue. Just say what you already told us above - you disclosed all the information you had about the vehicle, had it serviced and wof'd, and it was sold in good faith. It has now been a month and a half and any issues he currently has is his own responsibility. You can say that are happy to give free verbal advice or recommendations on where to go for servicing/repairs since you are an enthusiast or knowledgeable about these cars but ultimately any cost of repairs is not your responsibility. No point trying to sugar coat it. Better to be clear and upfront but still be kind. (thank aunty Cindy for teaching me that)

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"

Most of the bits unbolted now, bushes are absolutely knackered!

Finally fixed one of the more worrying previous repairs carried out on the old girl, at some stage someone had damaged the section of the drivers door card that covers the airbag, and decided to turn it into a home made Claymore mine by repairing it with a good solid layer of Araldite! I shudder to think what this would have done to me if the airbag had ever deployed!! As you can see there is some silicone in there as well, just in case. Replaced with a good door card from Pick a part, unfortunately it was from an electric seat car so it has the memory buttons which mine has no need for ( manual leather heated seats for the win) so I will keep an eye out for a correct replacement, but in the meantime this one won't cut me in half if the worst happens!