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Been slacking on keeping up with the progress here. Manual swap is all done now, was all reasonably straight forward. Installed a lightened SMF, 550i clutch, all new shifter bushings, m performance short shift kit, braided clutchline, removed the CDV and swapped to a large case 3.08diff with a Quaife ATB LSD in it. Everything works like an OEM manual car, no lights, no errors, cruise control works, reverse lights, mirror dips when going into reverse etc.

Car came with 2 sets of wheels, some genuine 16" bbs rs's (which have been sold) and the original 15" basket weaves that I think fit the car perfectly. Only other wheel I would look at are the 16' alpinas but think they are more suited to the mtech 2. The wheels were in pretty rough shape, needing to be stripped back to metal and lips skimmed down and repainted. Powerstrip Industries in Onehunga did a great job at chemically stripping the wheels (for only $65 per wheel) and had the lips cleaned up by Alloy Wheel Repair in Grey Lynn. I painted the wheels myself and they came out better than I could have hoped. I've painted things before but not wheels... let alone basket-weaves. I primed and did 3 coats of base colour and a couple of heavy clear coats. I used VHT wheel paint (i think aluminium colour) and i'm pretty happy with the result. Maybe not quite as bright as original but I haven't compared side by side to a set of originals. Clear coat had plenty of time to cure as I was doing the whole front end servicing of the car at the same time so didn't see any road use for a month or so. Have since bought a 5th matching 15" basketweave that will get the same treatment and used as the spare wheel (as the car didn't come with one)

Scan it is the answer with a proper scanner that talks BMW, you are pissing into the wind blind at the moment and the car will know exactly why it wont start.

A bit of a photo montage of cleaning up the calipers. First time using this gel based stripper and the first application I had not shaken the bottle enough so it was a bit too thin instead of a gel that would sit on the surface with some thickness to it. Overall the process to get to this point was: Roughen up where the stripper would be used Brush on the paint stripper, wait a while then hosed off Used compressed air to blast off / lift additional paint which was lifted but hanging on Use stiff plastic bristle brush to further loosen anything you can Another roughen up with sand paper and then re-application of stripper Dry off with compressed air Carefully scrape off any softened material with screwdriver or chisel Reinstall sacrificial dust boots, bleed nipples and stuff rags into the pistons Sand blast any remaining bits of paint, corrosion etc If doing again I would have gotten a finer garnet (I got Toolshed 'medium') as even my shitty Aliexpress blaster gun was actually pretty good ... I think it'll be fine with primer then 2k single stage paint I've gotten.

Waking up a dead post here, I BOUGHT IT! Sourced an M Sport Bumper and some Bixenon non-AHL headlights New FRM module (coded by some random guy in Poland for $30). H+R springs and Shocks, 35% tints all round, Style M763 Reps 8.5 and 9.5". Stage 2 @ 375bhp 800nm torque and 6.1l/100km between Auckland to Wellington! I've wanted one for years and this came up being quite rare in NZ and i had to have it. Best daily I've owned!