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There is a popular misconception that timing chains last forever and never need replacing. In reality both the chain and the sprockets that it runs on wear. This causes the chain to "stretch" due to accumulated wear, and go slightly out of pitch. Eventually the chain will no longer engage correctly with the sprockets, and the likelihood of the chain jumping teeth on the larger sprocket will increase. The tensioner may also become less effective depending on its design. For industrial applications (and automotive applications are no different) a transmission chain is considered worn out once the change in length (stretch) reaches a specified percentage increase over the original length. Putting a new chain onto worn sprockets will cause accelerated wear on the new chain, so it is good practice to change chain and sprockets at the same time whenever possible. So yeah... that chain did a good job but I would guess it just wore to the point where a cough or kickback on shutdown caused it to jump a couple of teeth. When you have the chain off, try bending it sideways. if you can form a pretty good arc, that is an indication of a well worn chain !! Cheers...

Here's some sounds stuff I wrote up as a message might be useful to anyone with NZ spec e34s coming across this I have been doing a mild bit of reading online, from what it seems our NZ spec cars are practically different from all other cars online. At least to my info the Sony headunits were all dealer fitted, rather than put together in Germany, so they all have inherent wiring funkiness. Mine went from Sony head unit through RCA to a Sony amplifier that was stuffed somewhere under the dash. This already had a bit of funky wiring, the illumination circuit was abandoned for example for the lights to be always on running off the head unit activation signal. From the small (like 17watt RMS per channel or so) Sony amp through the factory speaker wire into the boot and through the factory amp in the boot. At first I wasn't sure why it was amplified twice, but it is not being amplified twice, the factory Blaupunkt amp had been gutted by the dealership, and was only being used to run the crossovers. At first I thought my car had been f**ked with when they fitted the Clarion head unit and that the POs must have done all the gutting themselves, but the "factory" loom for the Sony that I had gotten was equally f**ky, used the same connectors, and had the Blaupunkt amp gutted as well. From the Blaupunkt amp it went into the speaker circuit like normal. They also ran some Sony CD changer instead of the factory CD changer system. My original plan was only to run the head unit off the boot battery (was originally intended for the phone that has been removed) because I thought it would be an incredibly nifty modification, rewire the plugs into an ISO connector so I could always upgrade the head unit later, and then to run the RCA to the back and move the Sony amp to where the CD changer used to be. Then when I had all the wiring out I thought "I mean seeing as the Sony head unit has RCA I might as well run a better amp off it instead". Then I thought, might as well run fatter speaker wire while it's all apart. And then I thought I hate taking the parcel tray out I'll do the speakers while it's all apart. The issue still remains that the car has a component speaker system, with woofer and tweeter in rear, and woofer, mid range, and tweeter in front. My plan was to buy speakers with separate, non inline, crossovers so I could run everything still through the factory Blaupunkt crossover system. Ideally in 5 1/4" inch so I would have to do modifications to fit it all. Along the way I realised that maybe running my audio through a thirty year old gutted Blaupunkt amp is never going to give the best sound, and also that 5 1/4" component speakers with external crossovers are not exactly very common in NZ. Not wanting to buy cheaaaap 5 1/4" speakers, and knowing I could get a half decent price on Kicker stuff I bought some Kicker CSS 6.5" component speakers. Now I plan to use the external passive 2 way crossovers that come with the speakers for the rear, and then I bought some 3 way passive crossovers off AliExpress (lol) to run the front speakers. At this point I still have the issue of the mid range speakers in the dash, which are in standard form 2" speakers. I haven't really found any affordable 2" mid range speakers at all. So my options are: either I blast the music through the factory Nokia speaker (which will be doing the majority of the grunt-work being around 1000hz to 5000hz on the Chinese crossovers), I risk it and buy a 2 3/4" mid range speaker (Kicker does some that aren't toooo bad in price) and hope to god I can make it fit, or not run the mid range at all and just run the two way setup (audio engineers on webforums say no to this as the big woofer is blasting directly into our legs and gets muddled and funky and yuck sounding). I am doing it in the way I am doing it now so that it will leave a semi decent amount of modularity in the system for later on. People say that passive crossovers are sh*t. Yeah, in an ideal world I'm running my RCA pre out through an active pre amp crossover and amplifying each speaker channel individually with one 6 channel amplifier for the front and one 4 channel amp for the rear and I guess to top it all off a monoblock amp and a sub as well. But I like having money to spend on other things, and I also like having things in my boot without worrying that I take a corner the wrong way and I damage 2500 dollars worth of Audio equipment. I'm going to keep the NZ fitted Sony head unit for now, mostly again because I am being a cheap bastard, but also aesthetics. It's most likely going to become the limiting factor in the audio quality, so maybe down the line I upgrade to a modern head unit with 3 high voltage RCA pre outs with USB input for flac music, but I hate the spaceship look of modern head units and don't want to splurge and spend 600 dollars on an old clarion or something funky like that. Maybe I buy a Kenwood, I don't think they look too awful and have an RGB capable display so I should be able to get it to match the interior reasonably well. I actually already sort of have my mind made up, I probably will buy a modern Kenwood, and also probably a sub since I've made it this far. I have a lot of trouble with project feature creep issues, everything seems to be going steadily to plan but man I do have a tendency to expand on everything I do. Anyway here's some pics of the work I've done to fit the 6.5s in the rear. Took some minor dremel work but it will fit: Here's some brackets I have gotten 3d printed by my brother (have yet to try them). One to fit the tweeter onto the rear tray, and one adaptor/spacer to fit the 6.5s into the kick panels, and a smaller one to fit the tweeter into the factory location in the rear (fronts will just glue in): Alright that's about it I think. That's about up to date with the car.

some mixed success today... needed petrol for the mower already, and no parts cars with gas in at the moment. So filled the 320d as well, got 12L in which is pretty crazy for over 300km already on this tank! So leak is ruled out, must be the sender that is faulty. scanned the gauge cluster and turns out there is a sender code there already so there we go! will need further investigation once i do a LOT of kms to burn thru all this diesel! Hopefully not deisel and/or touring specific! and I brought a trade in ladder today, so sent it on its first "job" (never ming the bird dirt on the bumper, an impressive hit i must say)

A lot has happened over the year and a half that this car has been in my possession. Some parts of it extremely embarrassing, but some I am also quite proud of. Around this time last year I went through pulled the cut up head unit wiring loom out of the car, yes the whole thing, and replaced it with that of a less molested car. Wanted that premium factory looking head unit: Some time very close to this I had the whole AC system regassed Then I made a fatal mistake and cooked the motor, like proper cooked cooked. Completely my own fault but lets not get into that: Anyway a new motor was acquired, and before I put it in I had the head rebuilt, and gave the engine a general tidy up and paint and replaced all the gaskets: In the same time I have also got some H&R springs for the car: It's been back together now for over 6 months, and I have been doing problem free driving for the whole time. I have noticed that I am getting another small oil leak coming from the front timing cover, and the seals I replaced on the gearbox aren't doing too much, but for my sake that's going to be ignored for now. Since then I have bought a set of BBS RKs for the car (that came with a free e39 540 that I have been working on) and I have now started doing a sounds upgrade (that I will get into in the next post since its quite text based): Yea that's it... Looking for some clear fronts to match the rears, that's about it. Happy with how it looks, and it handles pretty decent too. Do think that the H&Rs are maybe a bit too harsh for me, but I'll ride them out for now.

The car car currently on offer has less kms, than M3 CSL its a rerun I think from when Southern Speculators (😁) had both the black and silver cars earlier in the year..

this one looks good..... no association of course

about time for a wee update I think! Well i have possibly been a bit naughty driving this car about for most of September, (arguably within the road testing allowances since I am a registered business... ) but i wanted to check it was all happy to be back on the road again. With nothing to cause alarm, other than the tyres past thier best, I swapped a set of E90 Motorsport wheels on and sent it for a wof at VTNZ hoping for the best. the boys down there were blown away by the car. being off the road for all that time, and all they could find to fail on it was the wiper blades past thier use by date (well duh) and one of the rear tyres was a different load rating (out by more than 2) compared to the other axle and the other wheels, which I didnt spot when fitting them. And trust me, I know some VTNZ elsewhere in the country are a bit hopeless, but Seaview are tough, as all most all the inspectors are diesel mechanics and COF inspectors. And only one advisory, that the floor pans could do with some rust prevention coating as the under coating is coming away in places, but no actual rust anywhere. So will get on to that. Sorted the recheck items, topped up the RUCs and Rego, called my insurance broker, and we are back on the road! I did notice that the left front window reg was buggered while I was running about in the car, so ordered one of those, and also an oil filter and cabin air filter. I will also do the trans and diff too once ive put a bit more milage on the car and truely satisfied its totally shaken off sitting for 4 years like its nothing! have since done about 300km or so which has all gone great, though I see my post above... well its sitting on about 1/4 now, so might be a fuel leak somewhere??? One might expect me to notice more quickly, however its still on its first tank, and I drive a LOT and in a lot of different vehicles. equally, it may be that i got my wires crossed on the last post and I didnt fill it. either way ill need to confirm! and today, i was up at pickapart to help a friend get some parts for his Honda, spotted an e46 next lane over which are getting rare there now. was entirely unremarkable other than it had a mint windscreen lower trim (under wipers). as all modern classic BMW owners know, these are always boned by now, but this one had good supple rubber, either has been garaged its whole life, or replaced some time in the last few years. they are about $300 new, so was happy to part with $19. on way back, i had abs light come on, scanned the car and have a right front wheel speed sensor code. cleared it for now, and will see if it comes back, and investigate later. I do know some of these modules now they are getting on in years like to do minor glitches. till next time! nice to have a reason to post on this forum again, good to be part of the community once more! edit: forgot to add, keen on a bonnet for it if someone has something. Topaz blue facelift, and from either a sedan or touring. cheers.

New brakes, intake pipe (034 motorsports), and wheels Need to replace the dog bone bushing too, axle hop when smashing out the DSG farts is annoying, then Im going to leave it alone.... Interesting comparing the engineering whilst spannering this thing. That is one big f**k off single pot caliper out of the VW parts bin (GTI performance option unit), everything been definitely effecting by the accounts department. All the subframes and control arms in it (same as mk7 GTI) are all stamped steel and welded tubes. BMW on other hand are all aluminium forgings etc, and even the stamped steel parts BMW spit out are done less agriculturally... VW/Skoda are definitely built to a price. VW must make a killing on GTIs, as they are more expensive than the Skoda for the same conglomerate of parts.