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So sold the two pfl diesel x5’s I had, and was ideally looking to get a *cough cough* Touareg *cough cough* as seemed best bang for buck with hight adjustable suspension, hi/low range, locking centre diff and 3.5T towing to make it a good all rounder. I went and test drove a petrol v8 with 170k km on it. And was an absolute turd. Sounded good, went well. But everything inside squeaked, all the soft touch plastics were peeling off, and generally pretty rough, so passed on that to keep an eye out for a nice diesel one. But then found this Gem on marketplace a couple weeks ago and after a week it dropped from 4.5k to 3k, so went and checked it out and for the price was too good to pass up, so ended up with another diesel e53, but a facelift. Will hit 300k in 30kms, but you wouldn’t think so. Nz new, I’m the third owner after 2nd bought it off his wife’s boss, so well serviced and looked after. Have just finished up given it a biiiig service of new fluids and filters all round, replaced mechatronic seals, transfer case actuator gears, new front outer CV’s, polished headlights, deleted egr, had no swirl flaps from factory which was good. Cleaned all the gunk out the intake and runners, new T.stat, with water pump and belts on the way still. so now should be good for another 100k

Have been slowly chipping away at this thing over the past month or so. First order of business was a good deep clean inside and out. Discovered quite a few dings and scratches as you would expect but still presents quite well. The headlights are starting to get quite faded and unfortunately these are similar to E46 facelift coupes in that the lenses are molded into the headlight and aren't easily interchangeable for new ones. A mate of mine has the knack and gear for headlight restoration so get him to have a go as that cleans up the look quite drastically. The inside got a good deep clean and vacuum. The bigger mission was sorting out the various messes that someone had made of the wiring. There were some weird unconnected cables added on at the headunit end that I ended up removing and tidying up. In the trunk area, instead of a towing module I found whatever this contraption is. Haven't tested whether the trailer lights actually work yet but that also needed a few dodgy wiring joints tidied up. Hopefully it works as I'm having a hard enough time chasing down one towing module, let alone two. The car came fitted with a reverse camera that was refusing to work. I had a spare one sitting on a shelf so decided to investigate. Hooked up the new camera to the existing wiring - nothing. Hooked up the new wiring to the existing camera - nothing. Hooked up the new wiring to the new camera - works like a charm, so somehow, someone along the way had managed to mess up both the wiring and the camera itself. Upon closer inspection I was again greeted with a whole bunch of dodgy wiring - a combination of wires soldered, crimped, taped together, added plugs and even a terminal connection all covered in copious amounts of electrical tape, sticking out from behind trim pieces in the cabin along the length of it. Ended up ripping the whole thing out and running a whole new length from the headunit to the tailgate, using proper solder-heatshrink butt connectors and taking off door sills and trim pieces to tuck the cables tidily out of sight. The car came fitted with both front and rear parking sensors but neither were working so tried digging into that issue as well. I was fearing the sensors being faulty but the scan tool only gave a code for the gong so dug into that. Taking off the kick panel I discovered the gong wasn't plugged in at all and the plugs were nowhere to be seen. Took a bit of digging around to find the ends deliberately tucked away in behind the carpet. Someone really didn't want these to be found. Figured it would have been done because the whole system was faulty but to my surprise both front and rears work perfectly fine after plugging in the gong. So now the car has fully functional parking sensors and reverse camera. Steady progress.

Going to sell on behalf and took some pics so thought I would share. Really cool car!

E46 M3 wheel at Pick-a-part Takanini Style 67 I saw this at pick-a-part Takanini yesterday, thought I'd post it in case anybody wants it. They charge $60 for 'any wheel in the yard'. It's a bit rough but it's a real 'M' BMW wheel 18x9, near as I can tell. I put it in the back of car 307. You're Welcome. 🙂 photo1 photo2 photo3 photo4