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Hello I know nothing about BMW or Googles 🤣 Was wondering if there are any other BMW people in Orewa that wanna catch up sometime. Could do a regular meet once a month or something. cheers Codi

One year on and I'm dragging this thread up again. The car is running mint and I couldn't be happier that I did the valve stem seals last year. I've just done my annual oil change, the previous one was done just prior to the VSS job. I clocked up 4000k in the year prior to doing the VSS's and off the top of my head I think I had to put somewhere in the 750ml-1000ml range of oil in to keep it topped up over that year. Unfortunately I didn't keep records of those top ups and I'm regretting that now, but I did regularly see the oil level on the i-drive sitting below full. This year I've done 3800km in the car, and I've put exactly 0ml of oil in over that time. It's always been sitting on full on the idrive oil level indicator right to to today when I did the oil change. At my previous warrant it barely passed with comments about the smoke, I think the inspector possibly felt sorry for me. This year, not a mention of any smoke! I'm super stoked there's no more oil consumption, and I no longer have a feeling of dread when the lights turn red and I sit there idling, no more thinking "how big will the cloud behind me be?

The "1983" BMW M3 in VTNZ"s instagram ad 😏

Got a great condition console (shout out to @Dogballs !!) to mount the screen in when the time is right. Good progress also after the ethernet shield arrived. Got things all connected and real data is now populating on the screen ... had some teething issues which have all been resolved now. Not sure if folks are interested in the technical aspects or just keen to see pretty pictures ? Let me know if there is interest else i'll just keep a high level speel going. Next up will be back to trying to request the more interesting data from the ECM which is not streamed by default. On to the pics ... Raspberry Pi mounted to the back of the screen with HDMI jumper installed (comes with screen). Arduino and 3x shields now plus power distribution to the side. Getting things up and running USB power adapters for screen and Pi

New workplace buddies:

Since I'm on holiday, I finally have a bit of time to do an update on my E34 540i. To be honest, in 2022, I didn't do much to the car. It took 3 months for it to get a new windscreen so sat around until April. By that point I was occupied with my W8. It passed it's WOF first try in September! - the first time it had done that, and then almost caught fire that night when the alternator regulator failed and charged the battery at 19V. As you can imagine, the battery didn't fare well. So with an alternator rebuild plus a new battery (alternator got so hot it melted itself so had to be rewound), my wallet was quite a bit lighter so didn't drive it a tone, especially as I soon bought the Porsche. However, just before New Years, some parts I wanted came my way so the motivation to get some things done has returned. I went for a routine trip to Pick-A-Part to get a stock exhaust off an NZ New 540i they had just got in. Out of habit I spun the rear wheels to check if it had an LSD... to my surprise, it did! So that was coming home with me! (2.93 Ratio) I also scored some 95' spec leather door cards, and a few other bits and bobs I needed. A pair of manual grey sports seats came up - just what I wanted as seat twist is just painful, AND I got some E34 skirts - off an M5 even! Need to have them colour matched, although its quite cool that they are still the two tone M5 colour. Gave the E34 Sports Seats a decent tidy up: So anyway, I've started dealing with my interior. Wet Vac'd the carpets and installed the new seats. Carpet was pretty grotty but have it looking relatively good. Found a couple 5 cent coins - 1 from the early 80s! Will have the driver's sports seat re-upholstered at some point. Didn't plug anything in because I don't trust the seat heaters on the 30 year old seats, and to my understanding E34s don't have seat occupancy sensors... I then noticed that the electric mirrors wouldn't work, so I realised I had to pull the memory module off my original electric drivers seat and now they work just fine. I also got to the bottom of my weird climate control issues - a connector retainer clip meant one of the module connectors wasn't in properly which caused AC to not work, rear defrost to not work, and the driver to get no air blown at them. Very annoying issues. Also have swapped a couple door cards but still lots to do. Next on the list is: - Exhaust - LSD installed - Need to find M-Tech front springs (if anyone has some PLEASE sell me them!!!) - Side skirts painted and installed - Blower Motor Change - Change Head-Unit to OEM BMW one. - Put some more Ks on it! Hope to have all these done this year. In terms of driving the car, in the last ~6 months its done a trip to Taupo and I also organised an E34 meet in January this year, so it has had a few long runs. E34 day was a great day out, a few forum members attended. I even had the pleasure of driving @Simca's 535iS and @e46v12's BEASTLY E34 "546" Touring.

Spotted this yesterday. Never seen one in person before. Cool looking thing

Here’s a few more from the Skope Classic…

@Skope classic

That bubbling tint though, that right there is +5 HP.