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And she's back on the road

New car day.

I bought a 2.5l M54 X3 for my daughters. Yes I have twins. They just got their learners and they have already done about 500km in the X3. I didn't pay too much for it and it had a fresh warrant and its got a nice spec, no sunroof, m-sport and most importantly heated seats.. I had the trans serviced, as it was holding gears and was slow to change up. The service helped, and it changes up earlier. What I have found is that it gets really poor fuel economy. Around 13.5 to 14l/100kms. This is not what I expected. I was thinking of getting the injectors cleaned, replacing the o2 sensors, cleaning the MAF sensor and throttle body, new plugs, new fuel and air filter , as well as an oil change. I have driven it by myself, just a normal combo of motorway and urban running. The economy doesn't change much between myself and the girls. Am I chasing my tail here, are they really that thirsty?

Ahh yes I know Springfield. My old man used to work near there. Yeah man that would be cool. I have a few e30s in my shop up here in Auckland over the next few weeks. I have a passion for making them new again. Once the e30 bug bites, it's a lifetime of joy in many ways. The usual problems I see on my client's cars for WOFs are the rear suspension arm bushes, they often are very perished and the front inner control arm ball joints. The e30s like to be driven so enjoy yours!

I borrowed @hqstu X3 3.0 for a short period and OBC was around 12 iirc for my mixed driving, the open road was much better around 10L. 4WD system, auto, heavy\tall and short diff ratio makes them guzzle compared to a say a 330 manual. Doing the work you above can't hurt and is good maintenance anyway and probably see some increase but i dont you are far off if any. Id say check the fuel trims too to make sure you havent got any vacuum leaks etc. I always higher tyre pressure than BMW's specs which helps.

Nice. I just moved back to Rotorua from Wellington around 5 years ago. Settled in Springfield. For sure, hopefully get to meet someday. Let me know if you're around these ways. Keen to meet and see your ride in person. I'll definitely provide some updates over time. Hoping to get through my upcoming WOF so just sorting some small things myself over next couple weeks. Will leave anything major to the pros.

Yea, I've got to be honest in that this is mostly for looks and the fun of wrenching on the car. The additional functionality with some good pads will be essentially a bonus. I was 'not completely shocked' on the freight of the rears which are on the way via TNT / FedEx and paid £295 all done. As far as master cylinder options go I'd be looking at the M3 item as a replacement since it's what the kits are designed around. Speaking of which the link in my original post is an interesting one if you are looking at the 135i swap as it's (by their measurements / calculations) one of the worst options in terms of bias change ... table below: I'll take a look at the thread thanks @Harper 👍 Looks like more than my Friday lunchtime read I did look at the Rallyroad brackets but i prefer to see them made from steel to be honest and hence going for the creationmotorsports items. I'll have the Renault calipers on the front so the disc sweep part won't be relevant for me, at least in the context of the thread from what I can see. The freakyparts folks will be designing the non-M kit for me so they should be able to give me some feedback on these aspects on the way through.

And here it is in all it's ratty glory haha. Got a check engine light the second time I started it, and a low battery warning as well. Possibly related. I don't think it's been driven much in the last year or so, so I'll try charging the battery. Also need to get an obd reader and see what causing the check engine light. It seems to drive pretty well, and the suspension doesn't feel as lose as I expected. The edc dampers are still noticeable different in the different settings as well. I assume it all still needs replacing but not as bad as I thought it might be.

The NAM3Forum guys hate on the 135i setup, supposedly those calipers are a bit junky but maybe that's just in comparison with M3 calipers. Probably still a significant upgrade over the 330 ones. I've had a set of 996 front and rear calipers sitting in storage for about a year waiting for a rainy day to rebuild and fit to my M3. Almost identical to the OE CSL brake bias with way better pedal feel. The stock brakes honestly are completely sufficient with decent pads and fluid even when I had them on track. I haven't quite been able to bite the $2000 bullet for new CSL front and rear rotors and rallyroad adapter brackets for a mostly visual upgrade but it's on the to-do list. The brackets from rallyroad are far superior, lighter (about half the weight), higher quality, and allow you to run the 98635193915 D737 shape pad which will sweep the entire M3 rotor, where the stock 98635293910 D738 pad won't. https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/main-forum/e46-2001-2006/3153-porsche-brembo-996-bbk-conversion - Very good write up comparing the different brackets Look forward to seeing how you go with this and what your impressions are.

ATF-BMV is needed for many Mercedes, too.

Any use cases not covered here?

I used to live in Kawaha Point when I first came to New Zealand from South Africa. I still have a soft spot for Rotorua. There's something about the Tech 1s that do it for me. Ahh @Sammos car is an absolute beauty. I love his car. Hopefully we get to meet one day bud. I will let you know if I am ever passing through in my e30! Looking forward to seeing some updates on your car as time passes. Glad it went to someone who will appreciate it!

Saw the 337 on Sunday at HD. Looking minter!

A few months ago I helped @Carbon manual swap his E39 530i. Awesome car, a stunning topaz blue 2001 Msport sitting on Style 65's. Shortly after the swap he stumbled upon a cheap, grandpa spec 530i and just couldn't pass it up. Despite the newly manual swapped one having tonnes of maintenance items ticked off and the newest purchase, although being tidy for its age and price, being borderline neglected, he was adamant about the former being noticeably low on power in comparison. My butt dyno wasn't as well calibrated so I couldn't feel much of a difference but to make it scientific, he organised to put both of them on a dyno power run and find out for sure. To satisfy my own curiosity and to add an extra point of comparison, I tagged along. Three M54B30's put to the test. First one up was the 2001 Msport 530i with around 150k km's on the clock, manual swapped with a 5-speed ZF and single mass Valeo flywheel. Maintenance included a rebuilt VANOS, rebuilt DISA, new fuel filter, new genuine camshaft & MAF sensors amongst other things so by all means well up to standard and running the latest EU2 tune. Somehow, it only managed to push out 250 Nm & 157 hp. The air-fuel ratio held steady up to around 4k RPM at which point it fell off a cliff, taking the power numbers down with it. The drop-off seems to occur roughly at the point VANOS and DISA kick in so we suspect one or the other. Currently in the process of swapping over VANOS units so will see what that does. Second was my Touring. Roughly 10k km's post engine rebuild, all reasonable and unreasonable maintenance addressed and well documented. The torque curve looked a wee bit better but still ended up low on power, pushing out 255 Nm & 166 hp. It seemed to be running on the rich side throughout. The tuner said he usually aims for an air-fuel ratio of around 13 when remapping NA engines, mine were floating around 11. He was fairly confident that with a remap there's easily another 20 hp in there and that he could tune for it but it's best to figure out why the mixture is as rich as it is in the first place. And lastly, the grandpa spec 2002 530i automatic with around 180k km's. Still very tidy for its age but out of the three definitely the least looked after and borderline mechanically neglected. Post-dyno we also discovered the DISA to be completely broken and non-functioning - the flap being completely loose and dangling around the shaft, unconnected. Lucky that the infamous pin hadn't dropped into the engine. All this made the results all the more puzzling... 268 Nm (disregarding the early peak) and 186 hp. What the actual hell. The M54B30 is supposed to produce 228 hp at the crank. Account for ~15% in driveline losses, the figure to aim for should be 194 hp at the hubs. The blue car fell 37 hp (19%) short of that figure, mine 28 hp (14%). The grey "broken" car had barely lost any power whilst we and our pReVeNtAtIvE mAiNtEnAnCe had basically managed to downgrade our engines to M54B25's. I guess the takeaway here being that we've both just wasted stupid amounts of money on upkeep and trivial brand new parts when all they needed was a healthy dose of neglect. Less is more. Grandpa spec FTW. I went back to the readings I pulled when I suspected I might have a vacuum leak, with the LTFT's sitting at 8.6%. Sure enough, the 8.6% actually had a '-' in front of it so I had been running rich this whole time, just wasn't clued up on how to read fuel trims properly to realise it at the time. I've since read up on there being a faulty batch of Hengst fuel filters out there with faulty fuel pressure regulators that produce around 60 PSI of pressure at the rail instead of the spec of 50.76 +/- 2.9 PSI. Sure enough, I had installed a Hengst filter just this past October so suspected it might be the cause of my rich running. I hoped for that to be the cause since that would have been an easy fix. So I went out and got a fuel pressure tester to verify only to find that it sits at a steady 52 PSI at idle - well within spec. With the engine turned off, the pressure quickly drops to 48 PSI and then holds steady for at least half an hour, which would also rule out leaky injectors. I tried clearing all adaptations, then ran the car at idle, logging running parameters and sure enough, after a few minutes STFT's shoot straight into the negative territory, sitting at around -15%. Something's not quite right and I'm not sure how to troubleshoot it further. The lack of power itself isn't really that noticeable since I barely ever push the car to its limit but constant rich running can't be good for it. MAF, O2 sensors are brand new OE, DISA is rebuilt and seemingly operating properly (which, judging by the grey car, might actually be a detriment), ICV cleaned, fresh VANOS seals etc etc. I could just go back to the dyno and have the car professionally tuned to aim for an AFR of 13-14 but would be good to figure out why it's currently running as rich as it is. Otherwise, if the issue eventually somehow fixes itself I might end up on the lean side instead. Could it be something to do with the EU2 tune and it being adjusted to the petrol used in Europe that's somehow different to what we're using here? Then again all 3 cars are running EU2 tunes and 95 octane so that shouldn't be a point of difference. All in all, the dyno experience was a good one and well worth doing, despite coming out of it slightly demoralised. Will need to do some more thorough data logging and keep myself up at night even more. Once the car is ready to see the light of day again that is.

I bought this car! Had a crazy family connection and had to have it. I spotted my dad's car (74 Tii race car) in the background of his last Trademe pic. In the paperwork pile with the car, there was old pictures of my late father at the same meets as his late father with both of their 2002's in the early 2000's. A beautiful coincidence. Very very happy.