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She's in!

Lovely looking Cirrusblau(?) E28 525 in Wairau just now - beautiful car - such a great colour with the chrome trim and polished lips.

FCP order arrived a day early, ordered just before Christmas, by Aramex. In an enormous box. Spareto order arrived exactly on time.

Wondered about that too. The paintwork has hardly had time to cure, let alone needing a correction already. It looks a nice enough car , but there are more E30's for sale than there are buyers, same with the E36 M3 (7), E46 M3 (12), and the E92 M3 (34). Looks like a reset in the market, the post covid euphoria that gave a lift (to real estate, cars and everything else) has worn off, and reality is setting in. Welcome to the new world in 2023.

I'm sure seeing those two pictures has shortened my life.

I don't think these are quite the correct racks unfortunately. Want to utilize the recessed mounts in the roof.

not at all. Aramex completed the same totally useless service on my most recent parts order; a week in-country, UPS declare it's delayed, then it shows up without any update to tracking. Useless. You're just lucky it would seem.

Removing the cats will likely create a lot of rasp. I removed my cats and replaced with 50mm tube. Was quite a bit louder and rasped like crazy. It also makes the tin box behind the cats rattle really bad. The tubes going into the cats appear to be 63mm but are dual skinned to keep the temperature high for the cats to work properly. The inner tube is 50mm. Ended up putting 2 x custom made 250mm resonators from AdrenalineR where the cats were and it settled things down nicely. Was still a bit more noisy (but deep sounding) with almost no rasp.

🤔 I wonder if I can pick up a ratty E46 M3 for a daily...

Ho ho ho bimmerheads. Merrily having myself some festive wrenching here. With the engine rebuild near enough finished, I'm now just tying up all the other loose ends to hopefully drop it in before the end of the year. To start off, got a nice wee letter in the mail the other day. I'd asked on E46 Fanatics if anyone might have a spare manual cluster backing plate to block out the automatic gear screen and one fella gladly obliged. Bloody awesome community that. Came all the way from Pennsylvania and is a nice cherry on the cake. Had a bit of a dilemma with the power steering situation. The donor car came with an LF-30 pump that I had already pulled apart, cleaned up and refreshed with all new seals. Was prepared to bite the bullet and get a new high pressure hose from BMW for something like $400+ as those are different between the LF-20 and LF-30. Got a quote from BMW a few weeks prior and was told it's available on order from Auckland. Gave them a call to get one in and was instead told it'd need to be ordered from Malaysia and would be unlikely to arrive until sometime in January at the earliest. Looked over the current LF-20 hoses and they're actually in decent enough nick, problem is the LF-20 pump itself seemed to have some play in the shaft making an audible rattle, which left me a bit uneasy. Ended up going for another scavenger hunt to Pick-A-Part, hoping to either find a pressure hose for an LF-30 or a decent enough LF-20. Out of the 7 E46's there, the LF-20's had either been taken or they'd come with LF-30's so I ended up grabbing a pressure hose for the latter for just $16... then took it to Enzed and dropped $300 to get it refurbished. Smort. Finally got the final stubborn low pressure power steering line removed from the coil on the car that I'd given up on previously. Annoyed the hell out of me. Would not budge at all pressing the white clip in. Tried jamming in a cut up strip from a plastic bottle to no avail. Resorted to cutting it open with a rotary tool in the end. Stupid thing. Managed without any damage to the cooling coil and have a new line to go on anyway. The steering rack itself seems in decent nick and I found this engraved in it when wiping it down. It seems to say "03.15 209k" so wondering if it's been refurbished in March 2015, at 209k km? Bit weird as I bought the car at 214k km's in 2021 and it's unlikely it'd only done 5k km in the 6 years, so assume the rack must have come from some other car at some point. Anyway, tangent. Tackled the wiring looms next. Did a thorough inspection and gave everything a clean, cleaned off a few oily connectors with some contact cleaner and replaced the bits of plastic corrugate sleeving in places where it had crumbled away it. Also removed the auto transmission / O2 sensor loom from the ECU/relay box and tidied up the reverse light wiring I'd left in a bit of a dodgy state previously. Properly crimped and heat shrunk everything in place and culled or tidily tucked away the remaining automatic transmission wiring bits going into the cabin. Also found some sort of... repair someone had taken on previously? Bolted up the new dual mass flywheel and clutch kit I'd bought off @Eagle and mated up the engine and gearbox. Finally found a good use for two old bean bags my partner's been nagging me to throw away for a good part of two years now. Make a good cushy bed for the engine to take some pressure off the crane. There's two E14 bell housing bolts that are longer on a manual box than they are on an auto so I made sure to order those in (part no. 23001222894). Looking at it, the auto ones would probably do the job but wouldn't engage the threads fully so best to be safe. Got pretty annoyed when I got onto bolting on the main tensioner and it started spewing oil all over the place. Frustrating as it's barely a few years old. Bought it from FCP Euro as well so would be covered by warranty but can't imagine the return shipping costs would make the exercise worthwhile. Also discovered that I'd bought the wrong type of AC tensioner so have ordered new ones of both, should be here beginning of the coming week. Gave the exhaust manifolds a good scrub and will look to throw those on prior to the engine install. Not a fun task bolting those on in the car. Gave the whole car and the engine bay a good clean, it'd done a great job collecting pollen, dust and bird sh*t these last few months. Getting really annoyed at the horrid state of the paint now. All going well with the mechanical side of things, I suspect a full respray is on the cards in the not too distant future. Have rolled the car back into the garage finally, tidying up the last few bits and will start tackling the engine install. Plan is still to get the car up and running, break the engine in properly, go for WoF and start tackling the other missions that will knock the wheel alignment out of whack. Front subframe will get all new control arms, bushes, wheel bearings and tie rods, whole rear subframe will be refurbished and will probably throw in adjustable camber arms for good measure. With the subframe out, also aiming to tick off the reinforcement plate mission. Got a full kit from CMP as well as the weld in beam that goes along the back of the rear seats. Not sure if I'll end up going all the way with it but best to have it on hand anyway. Will also try out their solid steering coupling. Currently has a poly coupler that is a squeaky little piece of sh*t so definitely getting rid of that; more on it in a future post. 330 brakes are still waiting to be rebuilt. Some might have also noticed boxes of suspension bits on the shelf in one of the photos. Got a set of Eibach Pro Kit springs and Bilstein B4's all round on a decent deal from Demon Tweeks. Big pile of plans there but should feel brand new when I'm done with her. As far as more immediate tasks, will probably take the driveshaft to a shop to get tested/balanced. Pair extra to get the rear part of the driveshaft send over along with the manual conversion from the UK but the dude didn't mark it at all when removing so no idea how it's supposed to line up. Bit silly. Also haven't quite settled on what to do with the exhaust. Lined the 325 & 330 ones side by side and apart from the flap at the tail pipe on the 330, they seem to be pretty much identical? Leaning towards going with the 325 one if so. Am also thinking I'd like a bit more volume out of it so keen to hear some suggestions as to the best course of action, short of dropping a few grand on a full new setup. Don't want it to be stupid loud but in stock form it seemed barely even noticeable so just after a slight increase. What sort of difference would cutting out the secondary cats / resonator make? I assume deleting the muffler is sure to make it obnoxiously stupid?

If it was in the south island it would be in my drive already. I'd also be sleeping in it as the Mrs would kick me out but it'll be mine haha

Can we what!! Sex spec is back in fashion!! On the hunt for the chrome light set too!

uh, can we just talk about those chromies for the homies for a minute?