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@BMTHUG good to catch up - shame about the rain but some great bimmers on display!

It was a bit wet......

It was an epic catch up dude. I am stoked even though it was raining. Came home and had a nap haha. Now going over the pics from today. So many cool BMWs and other marques too.

Attended the British and Euro Classic show today in Pakuranga with my old man and a few other e30 drivers @Sammo hey bro! Haha. What a lovely turnout of some beautiful vehicles. Saw my dream cars there too, the e9s and e24s. Here are some pics from today. Spent like 8 hours on my car yesterday in preparation for today (finished up at pretty much midnight). Gave her a full cut and polish with a DA polisher, painted and fitted the tech 1 wing and spent like 2 hours touching up every stone chip or paint chip on it. All temporary fixes to make sure it photographed well but I will definitely be doing some PDR and a full repaint in the next couple months. Thank you to everyone who complimented me on my car. My old man's baur was a eye catcher too but @Sammo car is a masterpiece in my eyes. Such presence!

Yes, I've been away for a while. But I thought I would return with a decent vid :D Chris Harris E61 M5 Let's be honest, this is probably going to pump up prices.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a 1999 Z3 of FB Marketplace for a ridiculously cheap price. FB Marketplace is in my mind, the Wild West of Car buying and in this case I was first to contact him, first to get to him and paid on the spot after a quick carjam. The spec is not too bad, 2l M52, Auto GM 4 speed , but it is an LCI with the fat bum, has an LSD and a reasonably nice interior with Heated 2 tone seats. Body wise its pretty tidy with a few scratches here and there. It has 179k on it and has clearly been looked after, for part of its life. I will admit I have always loved the Z3 look, and convincing Mrs Herbmiester, was actually easier than I thought. She did state of course that 6 cars may be overkill. Pfffft. She didn't mention the 7 motorbikes, so all good I guess. As mentioned the car did not run, well technically it did but would not rev past 2500 rpm-ish. So I figured it was the throttle body, and as such I took a punt and paid the princely sum of $2300 for it. After trailering it home, I looked in the box of spares and found a spare throttle body. After taking the old one off I could see that it had corrosion holding the blade shut, very firmly shut in fact. For those in the know this TB was used for a few years and uses a cable but also has a servo motor that is what actually opens the blade. The throttle body rubber manifold was split, but a quick visit to Pick a Part sorted that. With the new bits installed it fired right up. Just like on TV. Haha. Next are the issues that need to be addressed. While I dont want to skimp on important fixes, this will be a budget restoration with money spent where it . and I will state for the record I am not into M539 levels of fixing things. The ABS light is on, with the dreaded F0 code. Once I get the unit out from under the dash, Pramod says he can reprogram the unit. There is an intermittent transmission warning light, so a trans service is probably required. There is a rocker cover leak. No surprises there. Drivers door card is loose (Fixed) Radio is a crappy old Sony with no BT (Fixed). New front marker lights. Cut and Polish. The suspension is tired, shocks are not leaking but bump-stops are gone. Front lollipops feel worn. The suspension rubs on the inner guards especially at the front. New bump stops and a thicker spring perch should sort this. At the rear I will raise it 10-15mm with some thicker spring pads. I will pull the shocks before I commit to replacing them, but they look pretty old so if anyone has some Z3 shocks I am all ears.

Update: My car is on a vessel awaiting passage through the Panama Canal. ETA in NZ is early April.

@BMTHUG good to catch up - shame about the rain but some great bimmers on display!

Had a little impromptu shoot with @hybridand a client's new acquisition. I will just leave these here :D. Where else will you see 4 Tech 1 cars also 😛 would of been a 5th but my mate had a meeting and couldn't make it. Thanks for making dreams a reality Josh! Appreciate you brother

The owners eyebrows kinda match the “bonnet eyebrows” 😳

Well, it took months for new parts to "overnight from Japan" ....... The wagon is back in one piece and has done a few thousand km's this year doing what it does best and touring around the country. On a recent trip to Hamilton a friend noticed that she was pissing oil onto his unblemished concrete driveway - FFS. Grabbing a torch we traced the leak pretty easily back to the oil cooler. Unable to work out if it was the o-rings or the hard pipe connection on the cooler I opted to do what I could to get home and change out the o-rings, a quick cleanup of the oil on the cooler and a test drive it looked like there was a reasonable chance that this was fixed. I drove home, bottle of oil in hand constantly checking the oil level which didn't move (although I'm not always confident that those electronic oil level sensors are super accurate). Unfortunately when I checked the cooler the next day it was obvious that the o-rings were not the issue, luckily it was a very slow leak and the underside is now lightly rust protected Long story short she is now sitting at BMWorkshop sans oil cooler. BMW NZ pricing : well north of $2,000, for a part that is under $800 landed from the usual suspects lol. As I don't want to deal with another cooler crapping out on a known issue the plan is to grab the upgraded aftermarket Mishimoto (sp) version and get that slapped in. That's the minor issue I have had since September..... The major issue is the paint job, panel fitment and general zero f*cks given by the panel shop which is currently a tad heart breaking to look at. I'm really hoping that this will be resolved amicably, and until this is sorted one way or another I won't go into any other details other than someone was having a bad day when the new panels were painted and fitted and now the excusasaurus is in full swing. It's still an epic car, that never fails to make my day better.