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Tried a couple more diff's since the last post but results were similar to the above. Im current running a 3.15 ratio from a 325i which provides a little more pep with no real noticeable downsides (unless you care about 0-100 times as it taps out at around 98kph in 2nd gear). I think ill end up taking it to KBM at some point and get him to check it out, decide whats in the best condition and maybe swap the helical over if it checks out. I had a weird surge at low rpm when the engine was cold so decided to check the fuel system first. I discovered it was loosing pressure fairly quickly after shutdown(10mins it would be at 20psi) so decided to replace it with another VDO unit(after checking the fpr and injectors). Pressure now holds ~47 psi for at least 15mins and surge is gone too. Unfortunately the pump is much louder than the original VDO one, you can hear it whining as you step out of the vehicle or have the idle down at idle. Guess ill have to live with it for the time being and monitor it. Decided to try the CMP solid steering coupler. I hate the look of chrome plated bolts and nylock nuts and like OE look so OE bolts and new locknuts instead (did need a little extra filling to fit). Painted it in high temp silver paint to match. I had to disassemble it because i forgot to mark it and the BMW parts diagram showed the wrong clocking of the 2 halves. Wasnt expecting a massive improvement given i had new OE unit but its certainly reduced the vagueness and it feels much more like my E36 now. I did strip, clean and re-grease the steering rack too but upset the pinion seal in the process and created a leak. Ive ordered a used unit LPSR in Australia this time. They double the price($600) but at least they are inspected and tested, much better than wasting my time\money traveling around gambling. Ordered a seal kit from them too so i can repair my old for backup. Sump gasket started leaking more than i like that was changed out. Sump had no sludge as expected and just typical carbon staining. Was going to check the oil pump and nut but ran out of time, my poor man engine support was taking up lots of floor area making it hard to move around. Its a very rare failure for a normal car as far as im concerned. With all this cold foggy weather about i decided to try a DMSO engine flush based on a E46 fanatic thread - here. Can't say i remember reading about DMSO flushes but its supposedly a common procedure Russian etc. Ive never really accurately monitored my oil consumption, but it does use some when you are on the Waikato autobahn with higher rpm and vacuum conditions. I didnt notice the oil carboned up\got dirty very quickly when i did an oil change awhile back. I know the vehicles history and have had the valve cover and sump off so no real sludge to worry about. Id say most used M54 engines could benefit from this treatment if nothing more than a preventive measure in helping oil rings out. Lots of variations of this procedure but I did it slightly different due to time constraints and circumstances. I used 20W-50 because it was the cheapest i could get, but i agree with another poster that DMSO doesn't noticeably thin the oil so any cheap 10W-40 or 15W-40 is likely fine. Its hard to avoid inhaling some of the nasty vapors when draining oil on the ground especially the first drain, you could probably use a respirator if you were concerned. Fans coming off and on at various stages but coolant temp never went over 95 degrees. Having a refreshed cooling system is piece of mind and doing it in winter helps, i just periodically checked on it every 10mins. My Engine was already filled with fairly fresh oil and filter after sump gasket so wasn't going to waste it. It was quite darkened given id only done about 10km on it. Drove car for ~15mins to warm up oil. Drained ~1L of oil and mixed with 400ml to DMSO and re-added to oil Idled for 50mins. Drained oil and replaced filter. Re-fill with 6.5L 20W-50. Idled for another 50mins. Increased revs to 1500rpm for a couple of mins every 10mins. Drained oil and replaced filter. Filled with 5W-40 and idled car for 5mins. The following day drove 20mins on the highway mostly in the 2.5-3k rpm range. Drained oil and replaced filter. Filled with 5W-40 Drove same route as above with a some town driving, approx 20km. Inspected oil and filter (Minor carbon particles present in both) Light wouldn't penetrate the first jar it was so black with carbon. Filter is black with dissolved carbon and moderate carbon particles. The second had much better looking oil with the filter being less black and noticeably less particles. 3 3rd and 4th were much the same with pretty clean oil and filter with some minor carbon particles still being caught Oil now looks like new and i expect it to stay much cleaner with the filter catching the bulk of the remainder particles. No leaks and will monitor consumption from now on to get an idea. I'll do the second stage cylinder clean at next oil change - here

You really really really don't need that retrofit kit. Yes, it's not that much money but it's a waste of money none the less for what it is - 3 simple wires with standard BMW pins used in 90% of plugs throughout the car and 2 overly complicated splice connectors. I thought there was more to it so that's what I used the first time doing this retrofit (I bought the same kit for $21 from FCP 3 years ago, and even then it was overpriced) but have found literally no benefit to it. I've done 4-5 of these retrofits since and have never bothered, have just depinned and repurposed wires from parts cars and used a pair of these simple splice connectors instead. They work just as well and the end result is way less bulky than the weirdly complicated connectors that come in that kit. I've got a whole wiring loom sitting in a box in the garage, more than happy to depin some wires for you and post them your way if you don't happen to have any laying around already. Honestly, couldn't recommend that kit any less, not worth wasting money on.

So I finally got a replacement diff. Thanks to Jon for finding the car, a non-running M54B25 325i Touring, pre facelinft slicktop. It was quite a mission, aligning help from different mates. Won the auction, kindly lent car trailer by another mate. Road trip! All the way to Taranaki in my freshly-serviced F25 X3 X-Drive 30D, to pick up a 2000 325i Touring with the all-important 3.46 diff. Couldn't have done it without help of friends. Dragging the parts car home, Taranaki Diesel Fillup in Wanganui Having got back to Welly with a 700km round-trip day, I reflected on how well the X3 tows. The trailer towed well, the little X3 just torqued away. It turned out the oil that came out of the diff is nice and clean. Sadly the alternator had been nicked. Bonus was some speakers and an amp. Got some spare mirrors. And the post-recall airbag for sports steering wheel, so I'll be able to fit that wheel and get the steering wheel controls working, code up cruise control with luck (research needed). The rest of the parts car is now Jon's to part-out - so if you've been wanting to build an e46 Touring race car now's your chance! Nice clean oil out of the new diff. Photo: Jon @ Begley Motor Works Next weekend was Matariki, so I cleaned Blue Zoo and prepped it to take on a car club trip to the Wairarapa. Still such a fun car to drive. [EDIT] The Suspension is tiring, feeling a bit worn. [/EDIT] I think it's worth sorting out. The Hawk HPS pads are working beautifully. The ANSA replacement exhaust has a nicer rasp to it. Barely any louder, just a slightly different note. Ideal. Blue Zoo in the Wairarapa, 29 June 2024 So I need a FRONT Anti roll bar 24mm: P/N 31351094542 in excellent condition. Can anyone help? And it's time to get sorted with the Diff replacement, get the steering wheel swap done, and get some sounds sorted. I'll go for a Kenwood mechless head (like in Grey Thunder), fit the Alpine amp, and two-way component speakers in the front door to replace the factory units. I guess the boot speakers will be knackered too so I'll replace them. I'll also need to make sure I can use the steering wheel controls with new stereo, so there'll be a conversion unit there too. Perhaps August/September.

I pulled an M44 from the scrapyard with 90,000km on it. It's mint inside, doesn't need a rebuild at all. But my Dad is keen on a project so has been refreshing it for his E36 318is. A bit unrelated to the rest of the thread but we took the disassembled motor to my Dad's friend from when he raced porsches. He used to build the porsche race motors, but more crucially he also built the super tourer S42s, S14s along with many M42/44. I noticed these nice looking boxes in his garage while we were there. Full set of S42 pistons, rods, cams, bunch of other parts too. Porsche 962

Id be going for a decent drive and re-check when its warmed up. Im not sure how long adaptions take to reset but probably more than a few mins on cold start. If its still that high then id hook up the gauge and drive just to be sure the regulator aint spiking somehow. If that checks out log the MAF and O2 sensors to rule them out.

I use Posi-taps for those jobs (aliexpress has them). Less damage, more secure and easier to install and remove.

Can verify,have done this in both E46 and E39

The E39 looking a bit like a fish out of water

edit - found.

It's been a wintery weekend here and as I'm waiting on parts from Schmiedmann (they're on their summer break now - boo) I've been limited to more theoretical planning for future projects. While my main parts order from Schmiedmann is waiting on a few bits to come in they did manage to ship out my order with the CSL secondary air rail and SMG expansion tank in it. RockAuto have also shipped the *101 Map Sensor which means that by next week I should be able to get underway with prototyping for 2 of my little CAD projects. CAD Project 1: SMG Expansion Tank bracket The CSL has a mounting bracket that you rivet to the shock tower. Given one of my key goals with my build is to be able to reverse out my changes in the future I don't really want to drill holes in my shock tower. I therefore plan to adopt the same approach as others which is to fabricate a bracket to attach to the threaded stud on the shock down (which is a bit inboard and further back than where the SMG reservoir sits). Others have made a simple bracket out of aluminium which they attach the CSL bracket to. I plan to go one step further and create a 3D-printable piece that is moulded to the shock tower and incorporates the little bracket for the reservoir into it (to save having to purchase the little bracket and keep things nicely fitting and more streamlined. This of course won't look completely original as it will be somewhat visible in the engine bay, but I'm happy to accept this compromise to save mutilating my shock tower. I intend to use the faceID scanner on my phone to capture a mesh of the shock tower with which to design against. I had a play last night with the faceID scanner and it is very impressively accurate - looking forward to challenging my CAD skills a bit more (I used to know how to do this 15 years ago, so hopefully I can figure it out again). CAD Project 2: Adapter for Bosch *101 MAP sensor As I mentioned above I plan to design an adapter for the Bosch *101 Map sensor to space it out from the air rail appropriately and add on the second mounting point. With the rail and sensor due in my hands next weekend I should be able to measure up and have everything I need to prove out this idea. Looking forward to seeing if this will work. The other think I've been doing is some deep dive research into the "tune" side of things for my future CSL airbox conversion. I studied engineering at university, majoring in embedded systems engineering, however haven't really dived into the engine management world at all previously. It's an interesting area though and something that would be fun to figure out. I mentioned this somewhere previously but I've always thought that it's a shame for the CSL airbox conversion that there isn't a standard tune that can be applied for those who are swapping in just the airbox. If you think about it fundamentally BMW had standard tunes for the M3 and the CSL (well, actually more variants, US vs Euro, etc. etc.) but they were standard tunes that they applied for each difference vehicle configuration. The same thing should be possible for those swapping out the airbox, a standard tune that suits the specific configuration of the car. This would then save the hassle of getting your car tuned (which as we know really only focuses on WOT mappings anyway, so isn't really getting to the root of the problem anyway. Well, anyway, since I had those thoughts Bry5on has made breakthrough strides in this area with his Mullet Tune, which combines the VANOS and ignition tables from the standard M3 tune and the CSL tune together to get the best of both worlds. When applied along with the fuel map tuning process described here the outcome is all of the high end boisterousness of the CSL map along with the round-town refinement of the standard tune. For what I want this is ideal. I don't need to eke out a few more HP at the top end, or push timing to the max. I want a reliable OE-like tune that handles the CSL airbox on an engine with standard M3 internals. I spent some time this weekend with TunerPro and the CSL tune and the actual tune from my car currently, getting a handle on the various tables involved and looking at some of the differences between the two tunes - it's really very interesting looking at the VANOS tables and seeing just how much adjustment is made in the mappings for different conditions. Fascinating stuff. One thing I haven't figured out yet is the WOT tuning side of things. I need to work out the best place/way to install a Wideband sensor. I really only need this during the tuning process, so just need to figure out for a Euro-spec car where to put it while I'm datalogging. My presumption is that the standard CSL map is probably conservative enough anyway that running too lean wouldn't be a major concern in my case anyway, but will need to validate this. Beyond those specifics I'm just working through the significant amounts of documentation on the process in general, and documenting my planned workflow/steps to prepare the tune. Good fun.

Been a while since my last confession! Car failed a WOF on its clapped steering rack (play / leaking / torn boots) 3 weeks ago - hummed and hah'd about doing the purple tag swap but cert / bump-steer test anxiety and being time-poor and WOF'less currently, decided against it. Old rack was beyond a rebuild (shaft stuffed) so went with a remanufactured E30 rack from LPSR in Perth. They do new / remanufactured and used tested BMW racks of all types. Really responsive outfit and arrived in a week. Got car back today and am stoked - was a little worried I was dropping a bunch of coin for a WOF sticker and no driving improvement - it feels so much better though - tighter / smoother and even a little weightier. We also sold our little house in the burbs and bought an apartment in Freemans Bay and will be moving next week. So while the E30 will be gaining a secure covered carpark, I will be losing the ability to meaningfully DIY on it - no drama's TBH as car is well sorted now and I've never had any talent for wrenching. While I'll be doing amore walking and a little less driving, I'm looking forward to hooning around a new neighbourhood.

Oops, new addition to the fleet