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The problem is new vehicles and the LED (laser wavelength) headlights can set of false alerts. I just leave laser turned off as there isn't really a point of having it turned on anyways bacause the way a police laser gun works. It already has its fix on first alert. K and Ka bands with camera and fixed speed trap GPS is perfect for 95% of the time.

Yeah I got all paranoid about threads pulling out of the block reading all the forum posts on the topic but from personal, anecdotal experience, the issue might be a bit overblown. The engine I rebuilt turned out to be overheated at some point, to the extent that the head had gone too soft to use. Even still, the replacement head torqued down just fine and all seems to be ticking over alright a year or so on. I even asked the machine shop whether it's worth timeserting the block preventatively just to play it safe, to which the machinist told me to stop being silly. From what I gather, the safer and less involved preventative solution to the issue would be to use head studs instead of timeserting anyway, but there aren't any budget options out there on that front, M54-specific kits seem to be $400+ US. I guess when the threads pull then the person is more likely to go on a forum to talk about it and look for a solution, whereas for every one time that happens there's 10 that torque down fine and go unreported so you end up with a skewed perception going by the number of forum posts alone. There's always a risk though so I do get your logic, these sorts of projects do have a tendency of snowballing out of control as it is. To add to the anecdotes, I pulled the pistons out of the old B25 block the other week out of curiosity. The engine had 227k km's on it and was known to burn oil with the yellow oil light popping up every few months. Wasn't a pretty sight.

You doubt I can hear the difference, you're welcome to your opinion. To recap: You've doubted I can reliably hear the difference. And that in a moving car it couldn't happen. I've responded to the points you made, noted that I'm older and my hearing is degrading, and furnished my experience. You've raised choice of DAC - I've said that's irrelevant - to this discussion. You've suggested my opinion would change if I read audiophile discussions, inferring I don't understand. I read the audio comics for years, and indulged in internet discussion. You present a straw man about hearing degradation and perception differences between the sexes. You disagree, though you misquote me - I have not said WAV is necessary - I've said it's better, and questioned why throw data away when disc space is cheap. At every point I've expressed - all based on my experiences - you've simply attempted to cast shadow. You claim my argument is silly and condescending; what has yours been? I've only presented my experience, that clearly does not align with your opinion. You've gotten personal.

Yeah its worth the extra you pay for the r8nz.. she's a bit pricey, but the way I looked at it after getting a speight of small tickets (post covid) over a 1 year period and one final large one were I got caught out thinking I was in a 100kph and in fact a 80kph (was an honest mistake) it left me quite poor on the demerits. So got serious about not letting that happen again over the next few years. Before any of this I hand not had a ticket in 15 years, my driving didn't change (I drive 99% of the time like anyone else) , something else definitely did.

I wouldn't worry about it. It'll take you a good few hundred years to get anywhere close to $1,500 worth of oil topups.

Well the 130i got it’s Christmas presents yesterday. I ended up ordering mostly genuine parts as I got a bit too concerned about after market ones that said they were for multiple versions of bmw originals (e.g. one shock saying it’s both the sports and m-sport equivalent when they are different part numbers from BMW). I also replaced the rear jack pads as someone had munted them (not a fun job), did an oil change and changed the diff fluid. After all that I’ve driven the car around a bit today and can report I haven’t noticed any significant difference in the rear suspension 😊 I honestly didn’t think the suspension was bad until I pulled the shocks out last year so I guess I’m not surprised there isn’t a night and day change, but I was still expecting to notice something I guess. I took the shocks around to show my dad today (retired mechanic) , he described them as “f***ed”. Anyway I’ve ended up with some spare parts on my journey so a couple of things I’ve noted that are interesting I ended up ordering genuine bump stops even though I already had the Sach’s after market ones. Once the originals arrived I compared them and there was a notable difference in dimensions between the two. The Sachs one was generally 1mm too large in all the places it needed to be smaller such as diameter of the hole the shock goes through or overall outside diameter. It was also about 1cm shorter than the original so I’m assuming that means it would allow the car to sink further before bottoming out. Overall they did the job, they just didn’t fit as well as the genuine ones. I also ordered some Lemforder shock mounts on the understanding what would be arriving was made in Germany, but the ones that arrived were made in China. Sreten’s mentioned a few times the Lemforder stuff made in China isn’t any good so I took a punt on some “OEM” brand mounts from Pelican and although they didn’t indicate their country of manufacture I could see where they had ground off the BMW logo & part number so I’ve assumed they are the same part that would be sold as genuine. If anyone needs a set of Sachs 900127 bump stops (one used for 6 weeks, the other was never fitted on the car) or Lemforder shock mounts (33526768544) I have some available cheap 😊 Here’s some photos – the first one is the bump stops – Genuine is the taller one on the left, Sach’s is the one on the right. They’re quite different. The second photo is the passengers side shock and mounting parts removed along side the new stuff to go in. I forgot to take a side by side photo of the shock mounts to compare the originals to everything else I got, but if you’re interested you’ll see the cleaned up original one on the left that came out of the car – it has a BMW written in the top left corner and the part number. The ones in the middle and right of the photo are the new “OEM” brand ones from Pelican. The one in the middle is orientated the same way as the one that came off the car and you’ll be able to see the top left is ground where the BMW logo would go. Next job is to look at the front and see what I find! I might have to let the credit card recover a little first though.

Majority of it is just a revenue gathering exercise under the guise of safety.

What a c**t. If that happened to me id be going to court with my dash cam footage. R7 international with Mithheru firmware is probably the best performance and features vs price atm.

Took the 130 for a very over due drive out to kaipara today, got pulled over on the way home... 100% police profiling 😕 Was in middle of queue of traffic doing exactly 100kmh, light truck in front of and behind me,... apparently the goat track out there is 80 (going to google maps street view it, because faffed if I saw any signs..)... I need to do some research into radar detectors.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0743H6CSN/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Huge bargain atm fellas. R3 has an incredible reputation regarding range and false positives (or lack thereof). At this price, you can try it out, and probably make a profit selling it locally.

Terrible photo sorry as carpark lights are in holiday mode - a work colleague has a Tech 1 M325i. @hybrid Josh - think it may be next off the production line after yours?!

Fitted a new set of wheels and tyres to replace the factory Style 66's on the 540i BBS LM (rep's) in 19x9.5 with Maxxis VS5 tyres. Might need to look at some slightly lower springs now. Wanted genuine BBS LM's but they would have almost doubled the value of the car! Crap photos as everything jammed in shed currently.

In other news! Sold the 335i, bought a momo wheel, hub adapter and a set of xyz’s coil overs for the compact, so spent a couple days fitting all that up, pumping the rear guards to fit the 17x9.5 arc-8’s, as well as getting the intercooler system plumbed up and working

Ponsonby Road, spiced up SC or 964? I wouldn’t say no!

944 Turbo - looked well used too.

Waze works well on our mostly central-upper North Island trips. Freaked the family out the first time it reported police ahead and they were there.

This one… It’s the parts & service dept work truck, because BMW don’t do utes, unlike some other “premium” car manufacturers.