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@Kees this is looking fantastic, and your story telling style is also a great read.

Sport steering wheel next?

Starting to think ol' Barbara has it out for me. That and a dose of me being a bit of a numpty. Had a few weird adventures lately. Both the alternator ducts were missing when I got the car so I found an upper one on one of my parts cars, ordered a new lower one and fitted them on once I got the car up and running. Fast forward about a week and found the lower one rattling around on the undertray. The fittings on it are a bit flimsy so it must have vibrated itself loose, jammed itself against the belt and chewed through it. Luckily doesn't look to have done any damage to the belts or pulleys. Last Friday was going about my business, filled the tank on my way to Supercheap to pick up some oil. Pull up to the parking lot and felt a strong whiff of petrol. Looked down to find a massive puddle of fuel spewing out from the bottom of the car. Either I didn't seat the seal properly / didn't tighten the fuel pump lock ring enough or just because I overfilled the tank but the fuel was overflowing through the seal on the pump side. Quickly got the staff to help, grabbed the spill kit to clean it up as it looked a fire hazard. Video 1 Video 2 Undid the fuel pump to find the tank up to the brim and overflowing. Luckily I was already at the store so bought a siphon and a fuel cannister and pumped a few litres out. Seated the seal properly this time and tightened down the lock ring as far as it wanted to go. Looks fine now but will take a wee while to air out the smell of fuel from the cabin. Still have a persistent rattle from the engine for the first second or two on a cold start. At that point I'd done 500km on the special 15W-40 running in oil so figured it must be time to switch to the usual Castrol Edge 5W-30. Way less metallic sludge stuck to the magnetic drain plug than after the first 100km, the oil looked nice and clear still but the fresh 5W-30 didn't fix the ticking either. Not quite sure what it might be still or whether to be too worried about it. Probably worth getting a set of new lifters at some point as the old ones did look a bit tired. After the oil change, took the car out for its first proper drive today, a small club run to Arthur's Pass. Very nice drive with some nice hilly and twisty bits. Just 8 cars in total with an E46 M3 vert, F30 335i and an X5 outside the picture. Mine was the only "project car" in the group and of course decided to be the problem child. Just before Sheffield heard a slight thump and the HVAC screen went blank. The fella behind me told me it also blew a black puff of smoke out the exhaust around the same time. Made it to the parking lot to discover the AC compressor had spat the dummy and spewed out some sort of sticky gunk all over. Out of everything under the hood, the AC was the only thing I hadn't touched so naturally it got jealous and started acting up. The compressor was due a replacement to be fair but didn't want to touch it until the engine was all sorted. Will have to expedite it a bit. Luckily had my toolbox with me (as is a must at this stage) so just took the AC belt off and carried on. Apart from that, no major dramas. The car ran really well, temperatures kept steady, pulls nice and solid, especially with the auto diff, although taking off from a stand still is still an absolute pain so will switch it out for the manual diff shortly. The alignment is all over the place but holds the road steady enough. Will leave it until I get onto the rear subframe and suspension work. Still keeping it under 4k RPM for a few thousand km's so didn't go too crazy, although did try to keep pace with the E92 M3 to enjoy those V8 noises. The drive back was a bit of a pain with no AC as the outside temperatures hit 30 degrees. Might look into getting some of those wind deflector things that fit onto the tops of the door frames as the turbulence was unbearable with the windows open. Was absolutely drenched by the time I got home. Getting back into town I nearly got T-boned by an SUV that obliviously started pulling out from a side road right into the side of me which didn't help with the sweating. Luckily managed to swerve out of the way just in time. NZ driving culture man... But yeah, a few gremlins still but not totally unexpected. Will just keep chipping away.

@Kees Awesome score on that diff! Those seats used to be in my 540i, they weren’t plugged in so no idea on the heat working and I think it’s fair to be hesitant to try it with all you went through.

Thanks guys, I will try Jon in Marton

Leather sports seats and an LSD ftw...assuming both of those items were cheaper than they would be for an E30? Love these E34's - there's a manual 525ix touring around the corner that I'm contemplating putting a 'will you sell me your car?' note on

Yeah its a bit of a story actually. I passed WOF first try which I was rather happy about as it was the first time the car wasn't going to cost me any money getting a WOF. Literally on the way home from the WOF place my ABS light came on and my radio switched off for around 5 seconds. I thought a fuse or something must not be happy so I checked everything, made sure all the fuses were pressed in properly and then took the car to work that night. Car performed flawlessly. After work I decided I'd take the car for a motorway loop to see if it would play-up because if it did, I'd book it in with my mechanic. Anyway, I started on the shore and went out West. When I got to Avondale I could smell an eggy smell, similar to Rotorua. My stuck-up North Shore self initially thought that was just how Avondale smelt. 😂 However, by the Greenhithe bridge I realised it was definitely my car. I pulled over and smelt literally everything. I thought maybe some of my mates had hidden some food in it as a prank, and with the doors and windows open the smell quickly dissipated. Started driving again and the smell came back even worse, I pulled over again on Constellation Drive because I knew there was something properly wrong with the car. It was at that moment it clicked in my brain - battery in my E34 is under the back seats. As soon as that crossed my mind it all made sense in my brain. I'd been wondering why my plug in FM transmitter had become really interferency! I touch my rear seat cushion and its really warm. F***, my car isn't spec'd with heated rear seats... Pull the seat cushion off with my fire extinguisher ready (not that it would really help an electrical fire), and my battery is hissing and fizzing, with acid coming out the top. At that point, given it was also a Tuesday morning at roughly 1AM, I called the fire department because I didn't really feel like touching battery acid trying to disconnect my battery. It's funny actually - one of the fire men I'm sure a few forum members will know. I think his name was Jerry, and his BMW collection at the time was an: - E46 M3 CSL - 635 CSI - X4M Competition - M235i And he said he owned many, many other BMWs prior to those, which was neat. He also knew my mechanic well as my mechanic had race prepped one of his previous track cars. So to conclude: It's very lucky the battery is under the back seat otherwise I wouldn't have smelt my battery turning inside out, and it could have ended in my E34 becoming a very hot E34 which would have been quite bad.

https://www.supercheapauto.co.nz/p/castrol-castrol-edge-engine-oil---5w-30-a3-b4-5-litre/299206.html 50% off castrol edge 5w30 at SCA

Plastic bladder inside box with a screw cap and tap, remove the cap and tap screws onto the cap thread. Once you have it setup on a table etc you just rotate the box 90 degrees towards you and becomes a mini oil dispensary.