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944 Turbo - looked well used too.

just not a mazda diesel. M54 and N52 are both very good. but your little M47 is here waiting. I havent touched it for three weeks. we both know it will bump over first turn and take you all the way back to waipuk. something something devil you know.

Reviews are good and they are 70% off at Hyperdrive.

I did consider that as an option but the condition of the bonnet and fenders is worse than mine so just gunna keep it as is. Plus I don't mind the pre facelift look kind of gotten used to it. I think I prefer to the prefacelift lights but prefer to the post facelift hood if that makes sense. My ideal choice would to be to swap the front end of a coupe to give it the M3 look, maybe chuck an S54 in it at the same time... Yeah have heard that the LF30's are a bit lighter. Unfortunately I think my LF20 has one foot in the grave so won't be able to test the difference unfortunately. My current rack has the yellow tag rack I think not sure how that compares to purple. Some threads seem to reckon yellow > purple then others purple > yellow so who knows. I could swap just the pump over first then see how that compares, then potentially do the purple later. Not sure if my rack is in the best condition either though and it looks like the purple tag in the parts car was swapped over at some point. One thing to note is that I have the CMP solid coupling in at the moment which helped quite a lot with my steering looseness, although it can be a bit harsh on longer drives I've found, (e.g Queenstown to Auckland...). That could also be because my power steering pump being a bit dodgy though. Parts car has finally been removed from the garage, just need to take that shadowline trim off, front passenger door and some other bits then I can try get rid of it. Also robbed it of the rear touring M-Sport springs so it's got some blocks of wood in there instead. EDIT Trimmed the numberplate as @Vass suggested, definitely looks way cleaner. Currently the numberplate is attached with a bunch of VHB tape but I will replace that some screws when I get back to Queenstown since there's a bunch of screws at work.

Hi all, I have just ordered a G81 M3 Touring, my first ever BMW. In fact it will be the second BMW I have ever driven, the first being the demo G80 M3 Comp xDrive sedan from the dealership. This car is my dream car, and I am really looking forward to enjoying it for a long time.

When I bought my car in 2015 the auto-dimming mirror glass in the rear view mirror had already failed. For the last 8 years I've been driving the car around with no auto-dimming and a big bubble in the mirror. Because I like to address things promptly I recently ordered a replacement electrochromic mirror glass unit. There are a couple of vendors who specifically supply these, I believe that MirrorJohn is the most well known. My research also brought up some discussion that the unit that these vendors sell is the same thing as is available for significantly less from the likes of AliExpress. I decided to take a punt and ordered from AliExpress. A week or so later this showed up: It looked the part. I did notice that the two layers of the glass were slightly offset and initially thought this was due to poor assembly. In actual fact it is intentional and is how the positive and negative rails are exposed and attached. The last few days I have gotten around to doing the replacement. It's a fairly easy process so long as you are careful and take your time. I wrote a DIY guide for another forum that covers the entire process which you can find here: DIY Guide - E46 M3 - Interior - Replace Electrochromic Mirror Glass Removing the mirror from the car is easy, removing the front bezel less so. The bezel is held on with a series of little plastic clips. With the plastic having become fragile over time, and BMW not designing the unit to be taken apart, the clips have a tendency to break. With the unit disassembled it's then just a case of removing the PCB bracket from the old mirror glass: And then preparing it for affixing to the new mirror. The existing writeups on replacing the mirror glass are then very light on this next key step which is to affix the PCB bracket to the new mirror. It's important to get this right so that the forward facing light dependent resistor is aligned correctly. I solved this by essentially reassembling the unit with the PCB in place. I then clipped the bracket to the PCB and used the front bezel to help align the mirror. Then it was just back to reassembly. As I mentioned I broke some of the clips when disassembling (this seems as though it's pretty inevitable). MirrorJohn's advice is to glue the bezel back on, but I didn't like that suggestion as it would stop me from opening up the mirror again in the future. So I decided to come up with something better. I used some brass pins from a 2.54mm PCB header and heated them up and embedded them into the stubs of the broken clips. I then used Araldite to secure them in place. This worked beautifully and the bezel clips securely in place. Very happy with the end result. The rest of the mirror reassembly is straightforward and in no time I had it back in the car. The auto dimming feature is really cool - the AliExpress unit seems to work well (not that I can talk to longevity) - I'm glad I didn't fork out more than twice as much for what certainly appears to be the same thing!

One other thing I have noticed recently, is how expensive Bridgestone and to a lesser extent Advantage (Beaurepairs) have become. Tyre Clinic and of course Hyperdrive can often provide a similar spec tyre at 2/3 to 1/2 the price. Not always I will admit, and you always have to add fitting of $25 or so per tyre, but RE003s seem to have nearly doubled in price over the last 5 or 6 years. Even the buy 1 get one half price deals still make the tyres expensive. The other thing I notice is we seem to get Asian spec tyres that are just not sold in Europe or the USA. As such it can be hard to find reviews. The Pirelli Powergy is a good example. I really do struggle to find a decent tyre at a reasonable price these days and I struggle to trust the lesser brands.

Dont even get me started on Supercats. They shouldnt be legally able to be sold as tyres. Barely ok in the dry, but downright dangerous in the wet. Had two or three cars come on them now and all have been like driving on marbles in the wet.

At that price it appears it might be going back on the Road . Hopefully it will be repaired, And... I've got front cuts and lots of other parts if anyone does buy it with the intention to repair

Purple tag is a must, may have to adapt your turn in as its so precise when the rest of your steering\suspension up to scratch. I am curious what the LF20 feels like with the purple tag rack. My E46 is a bit light in the steering.

Not to push you into further scope creep, but I'd be tempted to do a full facelift conversion 😏 Shouldn't be too involved, just straight swapping parts unless the headlights are different type (halogen vs xenon). Can get a good quality brand new corner light + fender indicator set from Spareto for roughly $50...

Yep i always tell people the different between expensive and cheap tires in the wet is typically massive. Almost a guarantee a lot of these wet weather car accidents are from sh*t\old tyres.

It'll fit but I don't think it'll clip in properly. I had an Msport euro plinth on another car, it also had two clips in behind the front surface that went up into the bumper. Then I had a donor car with a stock bumper euro plinth and that didn't have those extra clips, only clipped into the front and somehow it didn't go in deep enough and didn't feel securely attached. I assumed the stock and Msport plinths are different but could just have been some anecdotal.

@Vass the euro plinth from the original car will fit? @Hazzy i reckon it would look even better with the clear (‘euro’ ) corner lights from the parts car

Went and had a look. Ideally needs a front cut as the chassis rails are bent. Either that or be pulled straight on a chassis machine. It's worse than it looks in the pics

Yup, that’s the Isle of Man green, on an M3 Touring no less.

Not sure what flavour green this is but just spotted at BMW North Shore.

sold mine last year for 2800, bare engine, no ancillaries, they are getting harder to find so people pay good money for them these days. Especially the m20b25s

from memory it cost me roughly $800 (hutt automatics @95 an hour) to drop and reinstall the same box on my 540 which i assume will have gone up since that was 3 years ago. I remember as I was quite insensed by it. I think AAAutomtive quoted $650 for labour for Lyall Bay service center to drop/reinstall but then additional cost to freight it to Auckland and back to be repaired. With such a problomatic box unless you are planning to sell the car ASAP for the sake of your own anxiety surely it's worth getting Zane to drop it and take a look, knowing it's had a tonne of stuff replaced already. Real sh*t/expensive scenario though either way. Sorry to hear man.

Arguably they are not. A guy I used to work out with around then had a black 88 M3 and he paid 18k for it and used it as a cheap daily, he never even cleaned it, was just a car. Old enough to actually go back to being a kid in the 80's when my dad made an enquiry to buy a new RHD converted one and was quoted around $150k, about three times what his 320i cost him, and the 320i had more cylinders, an auto and more doors, was a hard sell at the time. Just think, if you purchased a E30 M3 new in the 80's and accounted for inflation it might be worth that again some day at the rate things are going. To be fair, 120k would have brought you a nice house a good area in Auckland at the time so maybe not the best investment.