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Ordered some new subframe and diff bushings for the car, should be here in a week or so, hoping to get the subframe bushings installed soon and hopefully fix the sloppy/vague rear end. Should be a fun job... Diff bushings will go in later on, when I hopefully put in a Mfactory limited slip diff soon.

Changed the wheels finally, took quite a while and a fair bit of $$$, Worth it though, looks way better. * Stage 1 remap * xHP gearbox flash (Stage 2) * Upgrade Focal Speakers and AMP

@Sammo the RHD E30 M3 rabbit hole is deep! I think I'd rather have a tasteful 325i and a big pile of cash. originality probably the key for the M3 as you point out, I think the issue was the RHD steering rack fouled on the headers so any converted one has a slower rack

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated. I decided against the inserts as I believe my bushings are too worn for these to work as intended and with my stiff coilover setup I think id still have too much movement, and don't really want a second spring rate (from the rubber bushings) I haven't replaced the RTABs yet, will do the subframe bushings and see if there's still slop, if so, then those will be next, we will see. I ended up going with the Condor speed shop UHMW ones, as the company was great to deal with, and very prompt in answering any questions as well as hearing some positive reviews. Will update this thread once I get them installed, should be here in about a week, shipping price was fairly reasonable and only an extra 4$ for express fedex shipping. Diff bushings won't be getting installed just yet, will do them when I do a LSD conversion a little bit later on, saves dropping the diff twice. Cheers

Jackson Street, Petone this morning. Thought it might of been a BM except missing one kidney

Yup I just have my FCP car listed as a 2008 128i. Everything is the same bar the air filter. As for the D. Europe is your best option. I would go for the UK. So many 1 series D's.

I always find the horsey types the worst on the road, either pulling a horse float or a horse truck. Never pull over, and often have a massive queue behind them. When there’s been a big horse event on they end up driving in convoys together oblivious to everyone else that wants to get home. I understand horses are not cheap, but if you’re worried about moving your fragile asset on the road then stay at home with it!

@Kees annoying, I would expect if I was to proactively attempt to prise a car from someone, I should be the one making the offer, rather than expecting the non-seller placing a value on it.

As Chris rightly says there's a lot of crossover with other vehicles and I've had E87 success as a result with FCP. I still check in with Schmiedmann from time to time but their shipping costs and timeframes are less attractive than they used to be. I also do a "site:com.au" search for common parts, if you can find a supplier over there willing to ship to NZ (many are) then they're often cheaper than getting stuff here because they don't automatically mark up 100%.

Interior planning update: My Mtech 2 370mm wheel is in NZ now so hope to get my hands on it shortly. Found my Fabric (Anthracite Uberkaro by Relicate) https://relicate.com/collections/uberkaro-plaid-fabric-for-bmw-e30-and-m3/products/uberkaro-fabric-for-bmw-m3-and-e30-anthracite?variant=32486462881872 I didn’t realise but I already have this same fabric in my car as Stitchboots used it for my shifter and handbrake boot - it’s nice and dark - I’m not a fan of the silver Uberkaro. Biggest decision now is wether to go Uberkaro on the door panels as well - due to the one piece E30 door car design it won’t be able to replicate the factory look with the fake stitch (will look like below photo but in Uberkaro) but I think it will tie in nicely compared to having light grey plain fabric (my existing door card). Possibly could have horizontal stitched ‘pleats’ on the door card to break up the wall of fabric and replicate the sport seats vertical pleats / emulate the leather door card horizontal pleats too. Just waiting on my 2nd estimate and hope to get done in July.

Nice, a great set of wheels ready for a winter refurb. Its very therapeutic both for the mind and the wallet. 😁

Two weeks or so ago I pulled out of my garage and left a small pool of coolant, kept an eye on vitals as I drove the short trip to work. Left another small pool in my parking spot at work and got a low coolant warning as I pulled into the driveway at home. For various reasons I've not driven, or been able to work on the car since then. Pulled bits and pieces off today to have a look and was initially pleased to find it was only the upper radiator hose, but then I saw that BMW have made it far more complicated as a single part than it needs to be. 🙄 I read they're a crap design from various forum posts here and elsewhere. At least they're readily available in NZ.

Haven't been able to do much to the car recently, but took it out for a drive and took some photos. Subframe bushings, ride height and wheel alignment next up on the to do list, and hopefully a limited slip diff a little bit later on...

Token bimmer at the Canterbury Rally. Ya little beauty.

E46 coupe on 18” Mpars

so, the problem is not the amount of power we generate as a country. it is the delivery infrastructure we have a family member who works as a grid manager for Orion, and have had several in depth conversations with them about the difficulties they are facing with the governments mind numbing blindness to all the other issues and infrastructure challenges that EV's cause. Our current supply network in the majority of the country is not not capable of delivering a solution to a mass adoption of EV vehicles. for an example, There has just been a multi million dollar sub station placed out the back of Rolleston to power the majority of Rolleston, this was finished early last year and was expected to last for a further 5-7 years of development out that way. HOWEVER, only 18 months later and this substation is at its peak capability due to the mass expanse of Rolleston and the surrounding areas. yes, they can pull another line down from the HV lines running down the south island and build another substation but the cost is monumental when they have to start doing this to literally cater for EV's. This is only 1 example, there are literally hundreds of other examples like this. not only is the supply grid not upto standard, the supply lines to older houses are also not upto standard when you start looking at households that end up with multiple EV's. these are all issues that Orion are already facing with the small uptake we have currently. Our current network can not support what people (the gubberment) are looking to achieve, the amount of money that needs to be spend to deliver infrastructure to support it is truly mind blowing further comments above were trying to say that electric vehicles will be remarkedly cheaper to run than a traditional vehicle, this is simply not going to be true. you look at normal service items (tires, brakes, cv's that sort of stuff) and the maintenance cost will be about the same as a dinosaur burning monster. yet, you have a stupid amount of $$$ required every 10 years ish (if you are lucky it will be that long) for replacement battery packs. if you actually look at it, on the grand scheme of things it will be much of a muchness in regards to running costs. I would be very surprised if we don't see something along the lines of a independent electricity rate for EV chargers. now speaking of battery packs, are EV's really "cleaner" than current solutions? absolutely not. the footprint of a modern EV can arguably be pointed as being the same, if not bigger than a traditional vehicle over its lifetime. where do the batteries go, sure, they can be recycled... sent to the other side of the world on ughhhhh dinosaur burning ships. oooo the irony, what about the pollutants released when we start having mass amounts of fires both caused from the EV itself and overloading of infrastructure Call me a cynic or whatever you want but on so many levels this proposed mass adoption seems wrong for so many reasons... as with anything on this planet, it's not what we are doing but the amount in which we are doing it. If suddenly you could click your fingers and every.single.vehicle was electric there would be other issues based on the numbers..... still comes down to the plain and simple fact that the world id overpopulated! bring back natural selection hahaha to be clear, I am not against the implementation of the EV at all, however trying to push for a mass adoption is the worst idea. but it's a catch 22 as no vehicle manufacturer is really coming out with a "better" alternative at this point! Bit of a rant! enjoy!

closing a smelting plant does nothing to power in Auckland, it can't be transferred from one end of country to the other. and flexibility is bollocks, 95% of evs will arrive home after 5pm to go on charge. Unless private companies like wilsons install them all through their multistory carparks then you got places like wellington where every govt worker lives with the car parked on the street down a cliff from the house, going to be a lot of extension leads the whole thing is a joke until they agree to build a nuclear sub sized reactor in a container and place it somewhere near auckland they are screwed. aus the country with the largest private solar panel input has now realised it screws the power companies up, they still need to have the generating capacity to cover nights and windless days etc but they also lose all the profits of being sole supplier . their business model doesn't work basically when you have people all giving power back to the grid at unneeded times, but you still need to cover them with generation capacity in case.

Hi all, recently just bought a 2007 E87 120d. The car was great. 160,000kms. Well serviced at BMW and another mechanics. Couldn't fault it at all. Picked it up from Christchurch and made the 450km journey to the deep south. Car had multiple start stops etc and again, no dramas or faults whatsoever. I get up the next day (real cold morning), go to start the new daily aaannnnd... No good. Car cranks but won't fire. I've done a heap of research and figured it was probably the glow plugs or glow plug controller. I got the local mechanic to come and scan the car. Had a heap of random faults which was expected, cleared them and then no faults came up after 2 or 3 attempted starts. I disconnected the battery and waited a minute. Hooked it back up and tried starting again. Read the codes and the only one that came up was 483D Throttle Actuator. No glow plug codes. Fuel pump can be activated and there's fuel at the rail. To make matters worse, one of the injectors looked as though it has or had a slight leak due to the varnishing around the top. I tried to pull but couldn't. Tried to reinstall it but the leak was definitely worse. Tried to remove it again and I've cracked the plug on the injector. I'm gutted. Anyone have any diesel experience? Know what my next move should be? Any help is hugely appreciated.