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Got the front calipers painted, baked and decals applied ... only to find the Textar anti rattle spring ordered is the wrong size Located the (hopefully) correct one which is on the way from Spareto now. Just in case anybody else stumbles across this looking for the correct part, this is what I have ordered and should be correct: https://spareto.com/products/delphi-accessory-kit-disc-brake-pads/lx0469 I already hate the retention pin system, potentially as I have new pins and have put an extra layer of paint in the holes I'm trying to whack them in to ... but still, just seems pretty suck. Forgot to mention previously also I swapped the bridging pipes end for end as the Renault mounts the caliper to the front of the car and the E46 to the rear.

This is compulsive viewing, so many truth statements in here, brilliant: 1994: SECRETS of the COMPANY CAR MEN | From A to B: Tales of Modern Motoring | BBC Archive Skip to 39 minutes in for the BMW 320i driver if you have insta-patience-syndrome.

Good question. It doesn't make sense. I must have been thinking something and typed that instead. But I can't remember what I was meant to type now..

Time for another post! In around august or september, i noticed a small puddle of oil directly under the right hand side of the intercooler after a long haul back from Hawkes Bay, which told me two things, one that the intercooler isn't completely sealed, and two that something upstream of the intercooler is leaking oil, which of course can only be the turbo. i recalled that Graham had fitted a new turbo to it during his ownership, however after chatting to him, found that it was fitted, didnt solve the problem he was looking at, so the original one was put back, leaving a minty one in the box with him. A deal was struck, and I was the owner of the new turbo, ready to be bolted up for the second time. (As anyone who knows me knows, I have owned several hundred BMWs, at least another 50 or so non-BMs, and worked full time off and on in other shops as well as for myself. It was the first time I have ever done a turbo swap!) I also made sure that the exhaust was clocked properly, and reinstalled the chassis brace I removed a few years back im sure I mentioned here somewhere! Road test, and wow, what a difference, and now i believe that 320d are quicker than 325 328i as the internet says they are. initial 1990s/2000s/diesel turbo lag and then hits hard! Never done it again tho, as thats not what this car is in my life for! Tho it does have a very audible whistle to it which i do enjoy, and wish my F15 M50d did the same! Intercooler went back in as it is, and will deal with that air leak at some other point, if it becomes a bigger problem. As it turned out, after a few weeks of driving, with the added boost, the DDE was obviously demanding more fuel pressure, and two weeks later the mid fuel pump decided to quit 3km from home on another little road. The 320d run three fuel pumps, one lifter pump in the tank, one mid pump located next to the fuel filter/regulator (both of which are same location as a petrol E46), and a third HPFP which i replaced already. Upon diagnosis, I found all that happened was the plug had come off the pump, however it was covered in diesel, as was the underside of the floor. plugged it in, and the car fired right up, but drips formed quite quickly from the plug. Have seen this a few times before, especially on N52/54/55 waterpumps, but not on a fuel pump before! Ordered a replacement, and good to go once more! I mentioned earlier i ordered some Bilstein B4s and had some used msport springs here. While the car was in the air and waiting for the pump to arrive, and another WOF a month or so away, i had a quiet day so time to swap the front struts over. Again, these turned out to be another original part from 2002! on removal, I managed to snap the bolt holding in the ABS sensors on both sides. I doubt they have been moved since 2002 either. for now, i have just urethaned them back into place, and will deal with them if/when they ever fall out. Cant say a huge difference in handling since its not a car i throw around anyways. however, there is a bump in my drive way, and three speed bumps on my street, that feel a lot more solid going over. As for ride height, i was expecting a bit of a drop from the msport springs, but nothing! I measured the car before and after and at best would be 5mm in it! A pet peeve of mine with the car has always been that the cluster is in miles. I respect that the car is a UK import, and with Graham being a pommy too, i like its part of the cars heritage. but mpg means nothing to me, and if the ODO was in kilometers the number looks much bigger!!! I played around with NCS Expert and PA Soft, and now have the digital part of the dash showing metric. Its still the original cluster with the M35080 chip which means not a lot else can be done with it, which is reassuring! And of course the physical speedo is still in Miles, so still true to its heretige! Last week, I was pulling out of my street, and had a wee incident with a Mercedes. Young indian chap, learners license unaccompanied, and only in new zealand for a few weeks. almost brand new A class merc, and rubs his bumper along my left rear door and wheel. ripped the whole corner of the bumper off his merc, and only a paint graze no dent at all to the 320d. Which brings us up to today. Intending to take it for a roady up to Hawkes Bay tomorrow and being out of a WOF (expired two days after above incident so that was lucky), i took it down today, and another clean sheet WOF. Unfortunately while there, they did mention the fan looked a little wobbly, and sure enough its time for a new water pump! Ive known the viscous clutch has needed doing for some time, however being a diesel they dont get hot anyways. So another couple of things to add to the list. So tomorrow I will have to take my F15 M50d, which im not upset about obviously. Planning to catch up with Graham too, who has some old paperwork for the car he has kindly kept to give to me! Its funny these old cars. It's definately not the prettiest in my driveway, and i have parted out much tidier cars than this one. With the parts ive thrown at it over my ownership its not the cheapest to own either, even if the economy would say other wise. But for some reason, I have quite the affection for it, so Im planning on keeping it on the road as long as it wants to!

yes. diesel crank needs the nose machined up - shortened - and a keyway, I think. All the M42/M44 mods seem to require $$ machine costs, for moderate increases in power/torque.

Yet I would still rather hang out with those dickheads over the current social media nepotists somehow.

Well I feel like a bit of a muppet but I've figured out the memory reference issue - it's a very simple reason and I should have realised sooner.. The MSS54HP has 2x processors operating in a Master/Slave arrangement. The full binary that I'm ingesting has the individual binaries for the master and slave conjoined together. The issue with this is that both Master and Slave have the parameter space at 0x00008000 - 0x0000ffff. This is then mapped to virtual location 0x00088000. FOR BOTH PROCESSORS. What I was missing was that when loading and disassembling the binary as a whole, the code on both the master and slave were together referencing the same 8000 bytes between 0x00088000 and 0x0008ffff. What made this tricky to spot is that the full binary for the Master is 0x80000 bytes long, so the virtual offset aligned perfectly to the offset of the start of the slave binary plus the 0x8000 physical offset of the slave's parameter space in the binary. It made it appear as though the references to the slave parameter space was just fine. Anyway, the solution is to simply split the binary in two, ingest them both separately into Ghidra and offset the 0x00008000-0x0000ffff memory space to 0x00088000 for both. On and I've also labeled all of the memory locations used by the Internal Register Map which shows me where the code is accessing things like the QADC, CTM4, QSM, TPU, etc. which will further help to identify what various functions are doing. In loosely related news the CSL dipstick tube finally shipped today so I should have it in time for the Christmas break 🙂 Onwards and upwards.

Either crank can spin up to 8k happily, limiting factor is always the valve train according to the metric mechanic info. The perks of the M44 bottom end is a little more displacement and it has a larger oil pump which flows better at high rpm. But the late M42 head has a host of benefits over the M44 head so it makes sense to marry the two for an OE+ street motor I think and still keeps things simple. Unfortunately nothing is a drop in solution with the diesel stroker crank as far as I know. One way or another you end up having to deck the pistons, have custom rods made, or both in order to get the CR and the valve/piston gap correct. All that being said. The stock M42 is a lovely motor. I've taken the e36 for a few burns since getting it driving again. Not fast but super zingy and responsive, feels like a mini M engine.

Making me think more and more about going Tech1 on my vert…

Managed 11.155 @125.6MPH this time, but transmission wouldn't shift from 3rd to 4th, so could have been a 10.