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https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/m3/listing/4064199155 Spend the $89K you'll save over the other example on fuel and rear Michelin's

What else would you spend $8k on and get the same level of satisfaction 🤣 And let’s be honest - you will spend the $8k on something anyway haha!

Save it, have to !!

The second, NZ New, manual W8 sedan arrived today.... and what a day of ups and downs! Before I begin, let us all remember that the vehicle was written off by the insurer, with the damage being "Engine Damage". This morning I received a text from my transporter saying the car got driven out of the salvage lot on its own by the staff, and then easily pulled itself onto the transporter - strange I thought, given the "Engine Damage" it supposedly had. I also got some photos of the car, looked fairly dirty with muddy arches, and a bit of silt and gravel on the REMUS mufflers (I'm stoked about those). My initial thoughts were that the car was wrongly labelled, and was in fact a flood damaged car. When it arrived, the transporter told me how surprised he was when the gates opened and the car drove out under its own steam, instead of being hauled along by a forklift. He said usually when Manheim say that a car has engine damage, it really does! The car also had no water line on it, and didn't smell of damp. Very, very strange. Why would the car have been written off and deregistered by an insurer if it isn't water damaged, hydrolocked, and seemingly still runs?! I started it, there was a definite misfire, and it instantly started complaining about coolant. Head-gasket was my first thought to explain both of those. I told this theory to my mate who had skipped his engineering class join me for the delivery. He had done a ton of research prior to the delivery on possible issues that could render a W8 with "Engine Damage". He thought head gasket would be unlikely as there is almost no talk of them failing in the forums - and instead thought coolant could just be low, and misfire could be something basic like plugs and coils, or it could be the cam variators and the famous plastic mesh screens that dislodge. So anyway, I top up the reservoir and we take the car for a drive (lucky where I'm keeping the car genuinely has a 1km private road), holds temperature and goes without issue, although its still not the happiest at idle. Decided next best option would be to let it cool down, give it a bit of a clean and then investigate further. Gave the car a bit of a clean - was absolutely filthy and covered in cob webs. Figured out pretty quickly from the gravel rash + FMG insurance card, and live stock purchasing list that the previous owner of 12 years must have owned a farm. This explained the dirt in the wheel wells - so it must not be flood damaged? The car is also leaking oil and transmission fluid pretty well, so we jacked it up to look underneath. One thing I noted was that the front bumper had fresh fasteners in it - also strange. Checked the Air Filter and it was basically disintegrating - maybe the car was just running poorly as a result of old plugs or dodgey coils that were due for replacement? It was really starting to annoy me - why was this an insurance write-off and why was it deregistered? Well tonight I managed to find out what happened: The story may not be 100% correct, but this is how I remember it. A mechanic was driving the car and backed it over a big curb. This squashed the front bumper so the car was booked in to a panel beater to have the bumper put back on and repaired (remember the fasteners I saw...). Well on the way to the panel beater, the car overheated as the radiator pipes had also been squashed and damaged. The car was then taken to another mechanic for assessment where the pipes were repaired, but the car still overheated. Car was diagnosed to have a blown head-gasket and a subsequent insurance claim was made. I will test the head-gasket again myself just to be sure - I'm not sure if it was a "suspect diagnosis" or a formal one, but I am 99.9% sure it is indeed blown based on the miss on idle. It does also turn out that the car may have been the one mentioned on a forum I found, as "Big Jimmy" was from New Zealand, and the timeline matches the modifications done to the car: https://www.passatworld.com/threads/w8-performance-boost.235355/ So yes, I could confirm that apparently $10K was spent in the mid 2000s on the Remus exhaust + some kind of chip tune to bring power closer to 300hp... The fact that it's had the work done tugs on my heart strings to save it... So now the question remains - should it be resurrected or parted out? On a personal note, it really does bug me to part out such a rare car, that could be relatively easily fixed.... BUT, financially it doesn't make much sense, and this is why: So first of all, by the time the car had made it to me, it already owes me $1.6K. Assuming head-gasket is toast - an engine swap will be the cheapest option. This will require an auto W8 as a donor - a half decent one can be had for probably $2.5K. Essentially that is the cost of the engine, not really much value left from an auto W8, could recover a little bit with selling cats + wheels and a few other bits, but its a hassle having another B5 Passat thats in bits lying around... 🤣 Then budget at least $1K in new parts like new engine mounts and various gaskets. Transmission leak would need to be sorted, as well as some oil leaks that the replacement engine no doubt has. OPTIONAL EXTRA: Clutch is ok but quite spongy, logically you would probably do a clutch too at this point while the engine is out... The passenger door also refuses to open, which is just straight annoying to sort as you can't get the door card off without opening the door... So some mutilation of the door card or the door itself would probably need to happen to fix that. Then the car needs to go through compliance, it got WOF in October 2022 and drives decently enough so I don't think it would need a ton of things, but they are so strict that I'm guessing things like brakes will be flagged. And then with it all done you're left with a W8 that cosmetically is not the greatest. Cosmetically: The car is PEPPERED with stone chips, not only on the front but the sides too - having been living in rural areas its clearly been exposed to many gravel & dirt roads. Paint otherwise is nice - no clear coat peel and it does sparkle. The interior is ok but the thigh support is collapsed on the driver's Recaro seat. Wood trim is all cracked and the centre stack bit is peeling off. Leather door cards are doing the typical VAG thing where the leather un-sticks itself from the card and makes an air pocket. The car looks relatively tidy in photos - and I suppose its not horrendous, it's just compared to the silver car it just seems so much more used. I also think I'll pinch the exhaust for my silver car - it's funny, the Remus mufflers look TERRIBLE in photos, but in real life they look great and have grown on me heaps (I am ashamed to admit). So then I am left with the ultimate question: how much would the car be worth when its all done? Given the cosmetics and with a standard exhaust, I think the most I would pay is $7K... and I'm a lunatic. Normal people would probably have interest at $5k? This becomes a problem as at an absolute minimum I see the car costing $6K to resurrect (+ many, many hours), realistically probably $8K+ depending on how many hick-ups occur along the way, and how deep the rabbit hole goes when the engine is out - and ultimately I probably wouldn't keep the car long term anyway. So then on the thought of parting it out - I can take the exhaust, fuel tank module, and save all the unique manual bits like seats, shifter etc for myself just in case, and sell off the box, (its relatively common, definitely no 420G lol), wheels and a few other bits, and still have a bunch of spare bits for my silver car. But it REALLY, REALLY does pain me to part out such a rare and unique car, which is clearly saveable. So anyway, that was a long dump of thoughts, what do you all think? As you can probably tell, my heart says to save it, my head says to part it out....

If you've seen Mat Armstrongs videos on YouTube you'll know how hard it is repair/rebuild a 911

Bit of a special one this. Can't see any signs of water ingress and apparently engine still runs as well, wonder what's up with it. https://www.turners.co.nz/Damaged-Vehicles/Damaged-Cars-for-Sale/porsche/911/23509542 And a wee oldie-goldie. https://www.turners.co.nz/Damaged-Vehicles/Damaged-Cars-for-Sale/fiat/850/23500821

Orders for hardware arrived Tweeter mounts for inside of rear doors In door speaker connectors MQS pins and sockets for door connectors for new looms ( 0.75mm2 / 18 gauage wire versions ) Underseat woofer plugs with pins to accept 2.5mm /13 gauge wire ( Standard bmw size and massively over specified ) 120 meters of single 0.75mm2 cable ( door speakers ) 40 meters of single 2.5mm2 cable. Was trying to get AVSS wire which is high temp thin walled insulated copper cable made for wiring looms . Settled on some esoteric wire that is oxygen free high grade copper plated in silver. It also runs thin walled teflon so rated to 150c . Ideally headroom for a car where the interior gets hot in the sun. I doubt I’ll be able to hear any difference between silver tinned and copper cable. But not much of a price difference between it and AVSS. 18 uf capacitors These are for bass blockers for tweeters that will be running active . I should have possibly used higher capacitance value for the 4 ohm tweeters which will run from 3500 hz. Should have used a value an octave down from this point , but read some bad advice for using a blocking capacitor that is twice the value of the FS or resonance of the tweeter. Will explain this a bit later when I do the house curves for each speaker.

Got the car back today after a mechanical birthday and have to say - I'm falling in love with it all over again. Foruntately for me, the gearbox was fine and it just needed a new clutch so got a few other things sorted as well and it is completely transformed: New LUK clutch kit and flywheel machined (the old generic heavy duty clutch lining was wrecked) Super stiff (I had assumed it was an E30 thing) accelerator cable cleaned and adjusted - will replace later in the year but 100x better already Valve cover leak and valves that were way out of spec adjusted Idle valve and throttle clean and some minor vacuum leaks sorted Everything cleaned off so any potential other leaks can be easily identified I never realised I was driving around a rough E30 but its another car now - nice light and responsive clutch and accelerator pedals, along with a far quieter idle and stronger, much smoother pull through the gears. Feels like its ready for another 400,000km and can't wait to give it some proper beans this weekend!

HAHAHAHA thats gold 😂 Yeah it's one of those things where I think the car was just so unknown that even eagle eyed VAG enthusiasts may have scrolled right past it - especially since an automatic W8 is both underwhelming and pretty much valueless. Definitely a limited market - that car really only has value to an insane person such as myself haha The manual W8s have the same transmission (01E) as the B6 generation Audi S4 with the 4.2L V8, so I suspect the manual box is probably the most valuable bit of the car, but most people don't realise its the same gearbox. In fact, many people can't even conceptualise that a W8 is almost in essence a V8. You are dead right on the international market front - people on the W8 Facebook group go nuts over the manual bits, even the Recaro seats are a hot commodity. Just a bit limiting being in NZ shipping to overseas, but I'm confident I could quite easily make my money back. The split piece factory BBS are worth a little bit too. If the car is pretty gone, I'll keep majority of the bits, and will maybe even embark on swapping a silver wagon to manual so I can have the sedan and matching wagon just for that extra nerd clout hahaha.

Have ordered a Mobridge Most25 8.1.1 Amplifier https://mobridge.us/product/mobridge-most25-amp/ This is a single box solution that contains 9 amplifier channels and DSP. It behaves in the same manner as the BMW Harman Kardon digital amplifier but has substantially more power. It’s also power efficient. Has some really nice features such as 10 channel DSP for time alignment and frequency controls on each amplifier. From an IDrive point of view Mobridge have coded the amplifier to be fully controlled by the IDrive. It supports all audio Sinks so you still get 4 channel PDC in surround, front audio for nav and telephone audio plus usual idrive music options.etc. All the factory sound controls functions work such as fader and equaliser. The two factory audio presets map to Morbridge DSP maps which is handy as I’ll be able to run 2 different Tuning curves so one for driver position and one tune for when passengers in the car. With the amp being MOST based music is fully digital from the idrive system. So Basically DDA in the audio path. Great for reducing system noise. Amp / DSP will be configured in the following way. Power is peak rating at 4 ohms Channel 1&2 Front L / R tweeters 150 watts x2 3500hz to 20;000hz Channel 3&4 Front Door L /R Mid bass 150 watts x2 150/200 hz to 3500hz Channel 5&6 rear door components running passive crossovers 150/200 hz to 20,000 hz Channel 7/8 underseat woofers 300 watts x 2 ( running 8 inch HK 7 ohm speakers so 150 watts expected ) 70-150/200hZ Channel 9 Boot subwoofer 2 ohm 800 watt. 20-70hz