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Made a bit of progress this weekend. A couple of weeks ago I took the car for its WOF, which it failed for the first time in my ownership, due to the weeping high pressure power steering line. This was annoying but not unsurprising given it’s been weeping since 2017 and I’ve been intentionally avoiding it for as long as possible (given the new ones start to weep again fairly quickly anyway). Anyhow, needs must, so I placed an order with Schmiedmann for the power steering line and associated bits and new wiper blades (which also needed doing) as well as a bunch of other stuff that fit in the box without increasing shipping cost. That arrived this Friday just been: So on Saturday I took the car round to Dad’s to swap it over (Dad’s driveway is a more advantageous angle than mine, so with that as the excuse I snaffled a few hours of his time as well). I was thankful for a second pair of hands as although swapping the line is very straightforward, it was super annoying getting tools in to undo the vibration dampening brackets and put the new ones on. The offending item: It was good to actually do something on the car. Last time I really did any work on it was in 2019 before my son’s operation. It was pretty cool this time to have him helping me as well 😍 With the power steering fluid topped up and new wiper blades fitted the car is ready to pass it’s WOF recheck this coming week. The other items will remain on the shelf for now (except perhaps for the rear boot lid struts because the honking noise annoys me). The other thing I’ve been doing this week is setting up an old MacBook as my workshop PC (this involved barbaric things such as using a flash drive to install Windows 10 on it, manually installing drivers, and other such horrors that I thought belonged in the 2000’s). Anyway it’s all setup nicely now. Currently using it with my K+D CAN cable but will probably purchase an ICOM interface at some point so that I can hopefully retire my DIS VM for good! Will be making another order from Schmiedmann this week - I have a fairly lengthy list of parts to get through, so biting the list off in chunks for now. Till next time!

But with mercs you see in traffic you dont have to dry heave, even if they are fairly generic they arent appalling. BMW have lost their way big time, not just in styling but in their brand ethos as a whole. I appreciate they also have to make money, but at what cost....

Beautiful car, lovely engine, drives so well. When it's working. Perhaps I'll stick to pre-2002 E46s.

All mercs look the same as they have for the past 5 or so years. It's safe and it's boring, but it's almost impossible for anyone to know you're driving the latest model, so big loss of status symbol points there.

Disagree, the S just looks derivative in my opinion.

Just kidding. It's the new BMW 7 Series. Hoping it's just a bad render. But not looking likely.

Right, where are we up to... Still waiting on the engine back from the machine shop. Instead of the 3 weeks originally promised, it's now been two months and as far as I know, they still wouldn't have touched it either. Last I called them, was told they're still a couple of weeks away from getting to it, claiming covid sweeping through the shop as a justification/excuse. Not overly bothered by it though as I haven't made as much progress with any of the other missions as I'd hoped. Keep getting distracted and jumping from one thing to the next without addressing things in an orderly fashion. Luckily with tomorrow off, I'll sit down and make a proper priority list. First thing will be to finalise the list of needed parts and put a few orders in. Did tick off a couple of other items though with the help of some fellow Bimmersporters. Got a new clutch kit and flywheel, courtesy of @Eagle and a set of coils from @Kodachrome. Top guys, everything was as described and arrived quickly and securely. Also, got the first set of 193's sold and the other one wrapped in fresh new rubber. Still sitting in the garage, waiting to go onto the car at the moment. Got some Carpro DLUX (as well as some other goodies from Detail Depot) and want to try my hand at ceramic coating them before I subject them to road grime, will hopefully preserve the near-new look for a while longer. Apart from the flash stuff, the rusty old diff is cleaning up pretty nicely. Will still have a few more stabs at it with some brass brushes but looking noticeably less crusty already. Stripped the trailing arms down to the bare shell, will also get some brass brush treatment, a couple coats of black paint and then brand new bushes and bearings. Liberating the wheel hubs of all the bearing bits was a bit of a mission but got to try out the wee rotary tool I'd picked up from SCA. With help from @adro managed to figure out one of the reasons why my rear wipers don't work. The extended list of PO's botch jobs got another addition. He'd changed out the clock spring for some reason and of course replaced it with one off a sedan/coupe, the wiper lever on which you can only pull towards you to activate the front washers, but doesn't have the backwards push function that activates the rears. What it is vs. what it should be Turns out the trusty wee ti's also have a rear wiper (who'd have known) and have the same washer lever. Luckily there was one at the local Pick-A-Part so went an nabbed this crusty old thing. Gave it a good ol' clean, fitted it on, powered up aaaaand... a big fat nothing, with the added bonus of the front washers now also not working anymore 😄 Beautiful. I suspect it's still the sheared ground wire at the rear hatch. Really need to get that sorted already. But instead of doing that, I went out and bought this bloody thing... Shoot me.

Avoid like the plague, they're hateful things when they inevitably go wrong. Thankfully mine sold before i got more temped to set fire to it. Every trip in that car was anxiety inducing, waiting to hear that BLING of another fault popping up. It is a lot of car and a lot of tech for the money, but they are old now, and were unreliable when new.

cheap to buy maybe not cheap to fix (unless you're @KwS)

I reckon my MG midget is smaller than one of the kidneys on the X7

Replaced the low tone horn - embarrassing squeaky horn output now gone, with a big thanks to @Spinner99 who loaned his jack and expertise!

Tried the Turtle Wax Hybrid Solutions Ceramic Black Liquid Polish posted here by @GorGasm the other week. Pretty impressed and would recommend too. The problem with most "Sio2" LSP's is they bead so much that when a black car dries you get bad water spots. I actually think older style sealants/waxes are better at sheeting the water off. This one didn't seem to "spot" too bad though. Have just topped it up with this, so see how it goes. Polished tips (but only went to the visible line inside - I'm not OCD! 😂)

f**king oblivious idiots. That's the drivers in their little metal boxes, and the NZTA in their offices decreeing roads should be bounded by wire ropes. Heading to work yesterday, I see an emergency services vehicle exit a roundabout, about 400m behind me. Headlights flashing, emergency beacons doing their thing. And useless f**kwits in their cars paying ZERO attention, blocking progress. Maybe not deliberately, but just because they are so unaware. When I pulled to the left, a couple of vehicles overtook me, looking across at me and shaking their heads. Only then did the wailing of sirens, flashing lights and so on get through into their little worlds, and one truck actually hit a barrier when he pulled to the left so violently he lost control. Paramedic driving the vehicle was remarkably calm, and the vehicle slowly makes progress up the road, fighting every single car it comes up behind, until it encounters a large truck and trailer, who has nowhere to go. Barriers mean there's nowhere for him to pull over or get out of the way. Slow vehicles in front of him are stopping him accelerating at all (I heard his horn a couple of times, but that was probably a bit pointless), so there sits our paramedic, waiting for an opportunity to make any sort of progress.

The resurgence of Caravans. Burn them all. NZ desperately needs to introduce a towing license similar to the UK. The Hyundai SUV with 2 adults, 3 kids, a full boot, 5 bikes on a flimsy bike rack, towing a shittyly restored early 80s wheeled chode of a caravan that has had all the rest of the luggage stored at the very back is quite bloody scary to follow. Especially when you realise the driver has probably never towed anything other than a rental trailer from his local gas station to move some cuttings of which he took 10 mins trying to back up his drive and took the downpipe drain off the side of his garage.

Bit of late night last night with @euroriffic. Tidied up the wiring alot, none really visable which i wanted to achieve. Will work on headers and driveshaft hoops next to then waterblast/scrub the engine bay to then install the radiator. Injector/fuel rail cover will get slightly adjusted to sit better.

Tried swapping coils and plugs from bank 1 to bank 2, but to no avail, still misfiring, eventually got code 29DC injector cutout so doesn't seem to be cylinder specific. Suspect fuel pressure issue. Looking through the MHD data logs of the misfire, the fuel low pressure sensor reading drops before the rail pressure crashes which led me to believe that the LPFP was failing. Bought a replacement (low km OEM from a fellow enthusiast) swapped it in which was a rather interesting procedure as my tank was full, so had to siphon it out first and ended up breathing in petrol for a god hour or so as some of the plugs/clips on the pump were very stubborn. Eventually got it all pieced back together but issue still persisted. Decided that maybe I need a workshop with ISTA to have a look at doing a test on the HPFP, in the meantime I replaced some vacuum lines, didn't do the wastgate ones as they are almost impossible to reach, seems like you would need to remove the heat shield but the back most bolt is blocked by the steering column... On my way to Michael at Euromotive workshop to try and help diagnose the misfire/injector cutout issue, it became quite evident what the issue is. I had MHD data log going while driving to keep an eye on things and try avoid any damage to the engine, going up the harbour bridge (very gently so it doesn't misfire) rail pressure dropped lower and lower eventually sub 100psi and the car went into limp mode, and just ran the rail pressure off the LPFP, so about 80psi. This time low pressure sensor readings remained unaffected so it was evident the HPFP was at fault. Got to the shop, scanned codes and it confirmed HPFP as the issue. Managed to find one out of a n55 5 series (newer version of HPFP) at a wrecker for fairly cheap compared to new prices so installed that and car drives well now, rail pressure responds much faster to throttle input than it ever has. Still need to roll my guards and put the proper wheels on... but at least the car runs properly again, quick drive down one of my favourite roads in the area.

I wonder where they are getting their inspiration... F'ing terrible.

could be worse https://www.thedrive.com/news/at-least-one-rich-person-is-buying-this-1-5m-ram-1500-based-luxury-sedan?fbclid=IwAR2hHU00kGU3R81I5vmoZ_Pxf239Jo9G5Uul12U6EeH4gPV1wO7DZLbiGlg