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Thanks mate, I'll wait until she's back up and running without any clunks or rattles before I pass judgement on that I think this video is where I heard that bit about the guide tube, from about 5 minutes in. Made sense, and I'm glad I did it looking at the condition of the old one. Cost $80+GST from the dealership. I did have a bit of a squeaking noise when pressing down the clutch previously, pretty faint and nothing to be overly concerned about but now with the new tube in it's perfectly smooth and quiet. The DSSR also seems to have gotten rid of some slop in the linkage, the shifter used to have more side to side movement when in gear, noticeably reduced now. Bit more progress from last night. Engine bay and front end all put back together and buttoned up. New oil filler cap - was cheap as chips, and not repping Castrol anymore. Also, finally replaced the front air duct that had been missing ever since I got the car, although it "didn't need one" according to the PO... Impossible to find these in good condition second hand or at wreckers nowadays so got a brand new one through the dealership. Having that extra bit of access did come in handy at times but does make the front end look more complete without a gaping hole right behind the bumper. Front subframe also got a bit of rust treatment and a few coats of paint whilst being dismantled, tidying up the underside quite nicely. Suspension reassembly next, finally.

Should be doable but would be quite a tedious job, I think 50sKid had a video on how to replace stem seals with the engine still in the car. The seals themselves are ridiculously cheap but up to you whether it's worth the effort. Not too common an issue on M54's I don't think, nowhere near as common as on N42/N46's anyway. Other stuff, depends on how far you want to take it really. I'd probably replace the chain sprocket that sits behind the crank pulley - has rubber bits built in that I'm assuming act as dampeners of sorts, were all cracked and deteriorated on mine so swapped it out for a new one. Chain tensioner for the topmost timing chain, the one that sits on top of the central bolt going down into the timing cover, and the topmost chain guide as well. The other chain tensioner that goes into the side of the head, or at least the spring that lives inside of it. Other potential items - crank pulley, hydraulic lifters, reseal the oil pump? I ran a separate thread specifically for my engine rebuild that could have some useful tidbits in it. There's a picture of the top of the timing cover at this post, lifter cleaning, chain tensioner spring and a bit of a rundown on the use of the timing tools.

I am ignoring this post. I just bought some last weekend. 🤦‍♂️

Aye cheers, might hit you up about it later on. I only ended up stripping back the 5cm for where the beam plate welded in, there's none after the front beam, it dips straight into the rear seat area. All of that sound deadening has long since deteriorated but I don't think it's the same type stuff as in that boot area. Late nights, paint fumes and bonus missions. Rear beam top plate welded in and my mate worked some magic to butcher the old cover plate and weld it in well enough that it doesn't look too much of a disaster. Had to trim the boot plastic trays to fit around the new beam, and the old panel had to be carefully aligned so that the two studs fit correctly with the holes in the plastic bits. Don't have those issues on coupes... Small frustrating thing is that the central trunk cover won't align properly now. Had the top beam have been just 5mm shorter it would have fit perfectly, but as it stands, the inside face of the cover hits the back of the beam and won't sit properly over the studs. Will see if I can trim the holes a bit bigger and make it work or will have to cut off those flanges altogether and screw the front of it into the plastic somehow. Primed, seam sealed, primed again and painted with some gloss black I had from fixing up a small rust patch on the rear door sill. Looking back, should have just kept it primer grey as the gloss black sticks out like dog's balls back there. Luckily, it won't be too visible and the main thing is that it's protected. Onto the underside, test-fitted the subframe to check alignment, all looked fairly good. Ground down any remaining high spots, primed, seam sealed and enamel coated. The colour match turned out to be miles off but will be mostly covered and should provide good enough protection from the elements. Pretty satisfied with how the wheel arches came out. Managed to lay on the seam sealer thick enough to almost match the surrounding rubbery underseal texture. After some primer and enamel top coat, the whole thing looked horridly out of place and with this area being more visually exposed, I popped over to Supercheap for a couple of cans of black underseal and gave it a few coats. It went on well to the rest of the arch but wouldn't stick to the enamel properly, even after some rough scuffing effort. Took a few times of going over it to get a decent finish but ended up with tidy black arches that I'm quite pleased about. Forgot to take a photo of it though.

Hadn't seen that. I was almost mad, would've saved me a lot of work converting mine to facelift, but it does look a lot more rough, no xenons either. Still badass though, they're criminally underrated. Alpine white does them so many favours visually. Having driven mine around a couple months now they are let down a lot by the drivetrain however. If bmw had made a 330ti from factory it would have been a cult classic

The lower control arms on earlier models like E34 and E39 rarely went bad in my experience, always ball joint failure rather than the bushing. The tension struts\upper control arms are the ones that take the most load and its usually the bushing the fails. I tend to replace only the bushing if the ball joint is still good because i believe the OE ball joints are superior\tend to last longer than most replacements. The main downside is a chance to damage the ball joint boot upon removal even with the proper tool. In your situation id probably just buy the complete arms with bushings installed either Lemforder or Meyle HD. Not sure what the labour costs would be,but its certainly easier and less hassle with complete arms. Dont have to worry about anyone stuffing the job up either.

Hey guys, looks like the issues I was having was caused by the MOSFETS so I had them replaced with higher voltage ones thanks again for the advice, however when it was getting it diagnosed the garage I took it to swapped around injector #6 with #1 to rule out the injectors (which it did) however when they refitted the injector brackets they fitted the one that holds injectors 1-2 and 5-6 upside down so they weren't secure. as a result it has caused #5 injector to bounce around snapping the bracket holding injectors 5-6 and also snapped the metal fuel feed tube to #5 injector. I've managed to get another fuel feed tube however I'm struggling to find a injector bracket. would anyone on here have one I could buy? Cheers in advance Mark