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Pulled apart the whole power steering system last weekend to see what the damage was. The power steering reservoir had a bunch of plastic from the cap in the filter and when I pulled the pump out there was bits of plastic inside the pump, as well as pretty obvious scoring on a lot of the rotating surfaces. I think it's fair to say the pump is shot. I thought maybe the reservoir might not have been OEM hence why it melted but it is the OE ZF piece so it's very strange. Fortunately there was an S54 power steering pump on trade me for $125 which was pretty lucky so I grabbed that and it appears to be pretty much perfect inside. I was worried I would have to bite the bullet on a new PS pump from which was looking closer to $600. I did order a full set of new lines since mine were already weeping and it's something I've been meaning to do for a long time but put off since they aren't cheap. All in I was at just under 800 dollars for all the replacement high pressure lines, hoses and reservoir, not including the second hand pump. Ouch. As far as I can tell there is nothing that 'failed' that would have caused the fluid to boil. No blockages in the cooling line, none of the high pressure lines had collapsed or failed. Really seems like the fluid just got too hot which seems bizarre. There doesn't seem to be any obvious upgrade options for the cooler line which seems like the most obvious solution. It seems like the E9X cars have a beefed up cooler with more fins but they are a totally different design so fitting one to the existing would require some custom mounting. Doable but not very elegant. If anyone knows of something to upgrade there let me know. In other news unrelated to the M3, I picked up something pretty cool for my 'daily driver' alfa 156 2.5 V6. The 3.0L V6 from an alfa 166 is pretty much plug and play with the 156 since they are essentially the exact same engine just bored out and are a nice upgrade for them. They run off the same ECU and map, all that swaps over is the bigger injectors from the 3.0L and that's about it. A 3.0L 166 came up at a scrap yard so I thought I'd go check it out. That weekend I was pulling it lol. Unfortunately someone had already snagged the larger intake runners so I'll have to use the 2.5 ones which will choke the motor a bit but I'll just have to keep an eye out for a set. I hadn't really intended on taking the engine because it's meant to be a daily driver car but when I saw the window sticker on the car saying it had done 75,000km as of mid 2020 I figured I would just grab it. Couple hours later I now have an engine sitting in my garage. I can't believe how good the condition of the engine is. It looks brand new. The internals are perfect as well. The original honing on the bores looks untouched which is hard to get a photo of but the crosshatching is perfect. I will do a full gasket set, replace the rod bearings and a few other parts that are easy to get to since I have it all apart already and they aren't so expensive. But I'm pretty blown away with the condition since it cost me less than 300 dollars. Love it when a daily driver turns into another project... But it should be pretty cool when it's swapped over.

The video is fake, Americans don't even have 4 cylinder engines.

Calm down fellas. Pack of lefty-righty sandal wearing keyboard smashers 🤦‍♂️

Netflix and sew.... went red stitching (and Alcantara) to match the recaros... in hindsight black would be cleverer.

Looking to buy a pair of working n54 boost solenoids, auckland region preferred, new or used. Cheers

My thoughts exactly, how did this devolve into personal insults and then political ones?!

I also montage the rear smells of the F82, everything is very nice, it takes a bit of work, but it happens, those who want to do it can do it, sorry, you are making a Turkish translation

It's only physics son... nothing to be frightened of This is what real research looks like... https://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/pdf/2021/44/e3sconf_vesep2020_01030.pdf Cheers...

I'll usually take the metal ring off and blast penetrating fluid into them before hand if they haven't been off in ages, seems to help. Wiggling forward and back they usually come off without too much issue, and i can't say ive ever damaged one.

No input of value from me ... just high five to my V6 brother on Bimmersport 🖐️ Also looks like your kitchen backs onto your garage !! Much support.

Added a cone to the main exhaust collector to get from the 2.25" secondaries to the single 3" exhaust. Having to weld without purge gas from here so I can try and avoid another bottle fill which I won't use all of. No pics at the moment but also will be working on the header secondaries ... looking like the first start will be with a full exhaust which is disappointing Was hoping it would be headers only Also have the rear muffler roughly in place so I can start working out how I will mount it ... should look pretty boss I think !!

Unfortunately there seem to be a fault in the DME or the new clutch module so pedal engagement\disengagement isn't being registered properly. Actually threw a clutch module error and disabled cruise control buttons with it all wired up the so input has disconnected for now. Hopefully it stays thinking its pressed in. Also have developed a annoying rattle on the passenger dash\glove box and light knocking coming from L\R which needs to be looked at when weather improves. On the positive side I've been driving it around a fair bit to bed in the clutch which is slowly improving. I can't really fully push it yet but im sure it's the best running stock M54 ive driven. Fixing the vacuum leaks has dropped the LTFT's from +9,+11 to +3,+4, along with ICV clean and new MAF and O2 sensors has made a very noticeable difference in throttle response and acceleration. Shifts exactly like my E39 with new bushings, E60 short shifter, ZHP knob and Redline MTL. Also bled the DSC unit a few times as pedal travel was quite excessive - very big improvement, so much so you can actually heal and toe now and brake heavily. Gave up on the pom actually giving me anything he promised and bought a new leather boot local from Coombes ( $171 trade and came in just over 1 week so very reasonable)

There's no doubt those things increase load on the power steering system, but it's also not an uncommon setup for a dual duty e46. If anything most run square 265 or larger instead of the 255s that I'm running. Not sure whether to attempt to upgrade the cooling loop or just put it back together as is with new parts and hope for the best. It might just have been that the last few turns at Taupo before the corner that it failed on were too tight/low speed but you'd think failures would be more common doing things like autocross if that were the case.

Not actually BMW branding Dave, Smit Vehicle Engineering's Oletha, acknowledging the Z4/Z8

I think the biggest loss here is your time. Driving to New Market from SE Auckland. Ouch.

Saw that 166 at Zebra this week, that 3.0L V6 is a great score! Will be awesome once its in the 156.

That PS situation is quite astonishing. If there's nothing wrong with the system then it might simply be a consequence of track time plus your aggressive camber and (effective) offsets, that's a lot of extra steering load. Steal on the pump, good score!

Pics, still interested...

Genius Bimmersport thread, starts with a car, quickly turns to TradeMe and then ends up discussing which on-line sports service is best value.

Just got done with the wrenching marathon that was changing the oil pan gasket and some other bits on the daily. What an absolute PITA of a job! Kicked it off Sunday morning, finished 1am that day, continued Monday after work until finally having her back on her wheels at 3am... Even with the subframe dropped down, so little space with all the power steering and trans cooler lines in the way. Quite a few hiccups along the way. The most annoying one being getting the dipstick back in. Cleaned up the oil pan, got the new gasket on, RTV'd the joins on the underside, struggled wiggling the pan in place, started it on a few bolts and then spent half an hour trying to get the right angle for the dipstick to slide into the oil pan with no luck, just too much crap in the way on top. Ended up giving up and dropping the sump back down, cleaning everything up and starting over with the dipstick in place. Bloody frustrating game of tetris. Also changed out the valve cover gasket, oil filter housing gasket, engine mounts and alternator. Probably spent half the time cleaning up all the oil that had caked everything up. Not a perfect job but near impossible to get to everything without taking off the intake, which would have gone well beyond the scope of this mission. After a good 4 hours sleep, set off for work in the morning. Car started up fine but got the ABS and brake lights go off on the dash, as they sometimes do with the wheels off the ground for a while. Drove out onto the street, parked up and tried turning the car off and on only for it not to start again... Flat battery. Ran back home to grab the spare, got her running but from the voltage saw that the alternator wasn't kicking in. Figured the new one must have been faulty. Dammit. Pulled into the driveway and started pulling the intake back apart to put the old noisy one back in, only to discover I'd forgotten to plug the alternator cable back in... Classic 3am brain fog. Hopelessly late, finally set off for work only to hear a clunking noise coming from the front. It then hit me I'd also forgotten to tighten the wheel nuts after I'd dropped the car down from the jack stands... Bloody hell After catching up on lost sleep, tidied up some of the loose ends today so hopefully that's the end of my oil leak dramas for a wee while at least. Thank f**k that's over and done with.

Hey folks, I'm sadly selling my lovely Z4. It took me 2 years of determination (and checking trade me, Facebook, driven etc every day) to find a manual one for the right price. And I've loved opening it, but it has to go to free up some money for me to build a tiny house. I don't need to tell you how rare they are in this country as your all BMW fans so I'm sure you'll know (and if you don't just try and find another one for sale 😀) I'm asking $19,500 or near offer. Located in Tauranga Here's the trademe listing for all the details: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/z4/listing/3636461583

Interior refurb is about to kick off with Fabric being ordered today. Flip flopped to using the original OEM Lemans BMW Anthracite Uberkaro as ended up being cheaper (and faster) than an Internationally sourced reproduction fabric, plus they have the matching bolster fabric too. Will be doing door cards and front and rear headrests in Uberkaro as well so will be a lot of plaid! Should kick off next week. I have some of these Mtechnic seat badges en route as well but wondering if it will be a bit overkill with the pattern?

Been ages since I last updated this so I'll definitely miss a few things that I've done. Most notably, had a problem with the ohlins dampers on the front sticking slightly on rebound. I was worried they might be bent or something but after removing them and sending them off to get rebuilt at KiwiSuspensionSolutions it turned out to just be some toasted internal bushings. I did really want to play around with getting some lower spring rate springs for the front while it was all disassembled and put a CSL front sway on to get the bounce frequencies closer to a flat ride setup, unfortunately cost just got in the way this time so I'll add it to the list of wants. Also finally updated the MAP sensor to the Kassel Performance unit to replace the old GM MAP sensor that had the wrong scaling for the OEM CSL engine management. Pretty easy swap over. Finally got around to grabbing some facelift tail lights for a pretty reasonable price. Visually they were mint, unfortunately a couple of the LEDs in the left hand unit were dead though. Luckily the place I got them from was a wrecker in the states and has already shipped a replacement unit so I'm not too upset. Currently in the midst of gearing the car up for a track day and one of the items on that checklist was sorting the diff fluid which hasn't been changed since I owned the car. While I was there I decided to replace the side seals on the output flanges since the left side was weeping a small amount. It should have been a straight forward job but for whatever reason I was having a nightmare doing it. Problem after problem. All went back together eventually though. Went with castrol fluid available from FCP and buying the friction modifier separately. Most people say to add 4.6%, I figured better to have too little than too much so I started with just under 4%. Went for the mandatory 'test drive' out to an empty paddock to make sure the diff still locked up and sure enough. No diff noise and the lockup feels sharp too, significant savings over the OE fluid so I'm satisfied. One day I'll get Kayne to build me a proper clutched diff since the fluid LSD's in these have a limited lifespan. Couple more things to do this week before the track day, flush brake fluid, new wheel studs etc. Really looking forward to going out on track in this, although the weather is making it look like I might spend a good amount of the day sideways...

Always the way... Can't wait to see it and drive it - again... 😎

wow, just wow I can see why they want to give the vote to 16 yr olds now you must be hanging out for booster #4 by now

I had to have a double take on the photo of the M3! It looks almost identical to a photo I took of my old one in a car park… (Also thanks for reminding me how much I miss that car haha).