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The problem being you're unlikely to be paying peanuts, even if that's what the techs at a main dealer are receiving. Gotta pay for the glass palace and coffee machine somehow

Post quick polish shot, love me some crystal clear headlights (excuse my white legs in the reflection ) And just a reminder that this is my ownership thread, these are my experiences and my opinions - your mileage may vary as they say.

Last year when I took the car to them for a WOF and to recover the BMW service history their WOF inspector was convinced that there was a handbrake issue and proceeded to charge a fair chunk to "investigate". VTNZ down the road from them an hour later passed the car with no "issue". Pay peanuts, get monkeys........

Excellent condition hard top convertible. One NZ lady owner for past 10 years. Always serviced, @ BMWorkshop. Awesome spec including; Sports Leather Steering Wheel Seat Adjustm., Electr. W. Memory Seat Heating F Driver/front Passenger Adaptive Xenon Lights Cruise Control With Braking Function Lt/aly W. Star Spoke 230 wheels 114,000 KM 2007 $15,000 Please DM me with any Qs.(plate not included)

Fig 1: Multifunction Sports Leather Steering Wheel P/N 32 34 2 282 022, before leather restoration Multi-function Steering Wheel: As mentioned above, Jon also installed and retrofitted the Msport multi-function wheel I'd sourced back in 2019. Part Number 32 34 2 282 022. It had sat around in the bubble-wrap awaiting a suitable confirmed post-recall airbag. After getting the parts car, I'd cleaned and dyed the leather, with a Colourlock Leather kit I've had for ages, fed it with Elephant Leather Preservative. I confirmed with BMW via the rego number of the parts car that this was a post Takata recall airbag. So I sourced the BMW multifunction retrofit kit. The option codes (for e46) are: Option S249A Multifunction steering wheel, and option S255A Sports leather steering wheel. This wheel was also optioned in e39, and standard on e46 M3 and e39 M5. Where we started: the original helm (with post-recall airbag) Jon did the retrofit. Now, in addition to the super-comfortable wheel, we have steering wheel controls, and cruise control. Superb. prepping for surgery (Photo: Jon Begley) spread wide - paint by numbers (photo: Jon Begley) let's start reassembly (photo: Jon Begley) For the first time (in my e46) - cruise control! (that bright green indicator, bottom right). Cruise is a real boon coming up to Christmas with a significant increase of visible (and mufti) road policing... Waze on the phone, dial in preferred speed (on the Waze speed indicator), set cruise control, sweat less when the radar detector alerts to the presence of RADAR or LIDAR. Driver's seat view (parked) I dig it. Slightly smaller diameter, much better feel. And of course, buttons! Control the stereo, set the speed etc. It was worth the effort and expense. I particularly like the feel through the wheel turning into a tight corner; significant improvement over the old helm.

The first parts order arrived so I dug into a major service. This batch was aimed at servicing the engine and was as follows: Glow plugs & module Crankcase breather valve Water pump, thermostat & coolant flush Oil & filters First thing to come off was the intake manifold. Really quite easy on these engines not having to disconnect any fuel lines unlike on the M54, just a bunch of nuts & bolts to undo. I was in for quite a shock once it was off though. I knew diesels were "dirty" engines but this I wasn't quite ready for. The intake runners were gunked up so badly that they must have been reduced to roughly half the original diameters. Cleaning these out became the biggest and most time consuming task of this whole endeavour. I went through 5 rolls of disposable rags cleaning out the intake. No matter how much gunk I scraped out, how many times I rinsed the intake through, more and more gunk just kept coming out. Insane stuff. Must have taken a good 4-5 hours just scrubbing away at the intake with rags, brushes and screwdrivers and rinsing it out with a garden hose to get it to a point where it was relatively sludge-free. I then stuck some rags down the openings on the engine side and picked away at the sludge with a screwdriver to get that cleaned up as best I could. To top it off I then made a simultaneously genius and moronic move in taping a piece of rubber pipe onto the end of a shop vac and sticking it down the openings - genius in that you could hear the sludge getting pulled out of the engine so got that end of things cleaned up really well; moronic in that the vacuum tubing now needed an almighty cleanup job itself. Win some, lose some. I then tackled the glow plugs. Have read that these are known so seize inside the engine and needed a really careful approach as to not strip any threads. I'm guessing it's more of an issue in colder climates as mine came out without any issues despite almost certainly still being originals. Glow plugs aren't really critical in our warm-ish climate but good to have the system functioning properly and get rid of some fault codes. The glow plug module is a bit of a mission to get to, sitting underneath a variety of coolant lines, wiring and vacuum hoses. To make access easier, you can remove a coolant flange bolting onto the block, which is what I did since I was draining the coolant anyway. The flange is known to break when working in that area so I ordered a spare Febi one just in case and bolted it on once the new module was in place, which ended up being a mistake as I later discovered. I felt the coolant hoses were a bit loose when reassembling but didn't think much of it at the time. Then with everything reassembled and the coolant topped up both hoses started pissing out fluid with the engine running, all over the brand new glow plug module. On the bright side, it took me just 15 minutes to remove the intake this time around so it didn't set me back too much. Luckily, the original flange didn't get damaged in the process so I just transferred over the gasket from the Febi one and bolted everything back up. No leaks this time around. I know Febi are hit and miss nowadays and have now ticked off my first bad experience with them. Water pump & thermostat went on without issues. The water pump was still original, the thermostat was date stamped 2021 and the coolant that came out was still blue and fairly clean so the car was at least somewhat taken care of. The radiator got a good rinse and clean and went back on as well. Still original but seemingly in decent nick, will have to keep an eye on it. Was surprised by how much of a mission it is changing out the air filter on these. The thing itself is massive and you have to take off the whole cabin filter panel, all beauty covers and several more covers just to get to it, and even then access is really tight with the cover panel hitting brake lines at the side of the engine bay that houses the brake booster. No wonder the filter that came out was filthy as all hell. Had claimed quite a few innocent lives throughout its tenure that thing. On the flipside, oil changes are a breeze as I didn't even need to drive it up onto ramps or jack the car up to have access to the sump. The PCV was a simple in & out affair. Also threw on new expansion tank and oil filler caps for good measure. The engine bay now looking clean & tidy. That's pretty much it on the engine side of things. Will do another oil change in a few thousand km's just to be safe as I don't have much in terms of service history. Have also put an order in for a proper EGR delete kit as I don't want to deal with the absolute horror show of cleaning a diesel intake manifold ever again. Have just unplugged and capped off the vacuum hose going to the EGR valve for now. Luckily it's the older, vacuum operated system on this thing and not the newer electronic valve so didn't trigger any engine lights and no coding required. The engine now breathes noticeably more freely and generally feels happier. Previously it would momentarily stutter at idle when first starting it up so am glad to have gotten rid of that. Have also poured a bottle of Techron fuel system cleaner into the tank to hopefully help her run a bit smoother still. I did discover a new issue that will need addressing sooner rather than later in the form of a split axle boot on the driver's side. Won't be a fun job by any means. Really hope the axle comes out of the hub without much hassle and isn't seized in. Another item I received in this batch was a new driver's side mirror glass. The old one had gone all brown and yucky, assumedly the auto-dim feature going bad. Seems like a rather gimmicky feature that I'm unlikely to miss so just ordered a "dumb" heated mirror as a replacement since it was 1/5 of the price - TYC brand at just 8 EUR a piece. The old one was a mission to get off and I ended up cracking it in my attempts to remove it, spilling that nasty fluid all over the place in the process. The new mirror is nice and clear and has a stronger convex so gives a better field of view than the old one, which is nice to have on a bigger car. I've since discovered the passenger side one to be held together with double sided tape and wobble at cruising speeds so have ordered a replacement for the other side as well. The next batch of parts is now on the way, including the CV boots, fuel and cabin filters that I forgot to include with the original order as well as transmission filter, mechatronic seals and other plugs & gaskets to start changing out the trans, diff & transfer case fluids. Won't be straying too far for the time being with the split boot but wifey's pretty chuffed with her new chariot.

Thought I was watching 'The Office' for a minute haha

I was probably one of those delivering the rental car to your door in the early 2000's. I had a mini motorbike I would throw in the boot. Deliver the car then ride my motorbike to pick up another. Was a sweet gig. At night I would bring cars down to central London from Milton Keys at a very very rapid pace. We had a couple of RS6's as VIP delivered within 30min specials.

Social Media Narcissist fits the bill.

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

While waiting for the M5 to come back from BMWorkshop I finally managed to finish a side project of mine (one of countless). About 12 months ago I bought a flood damaged set of NZ made Image 414 tower speakers, they were absolutely fubar'd and realistically I should have just left them with the seller and kept the money in my pocket but they were very cheap. I managed to dry out the cabinets, glue, clamp, get everything square again and remake part of the base plates - saving $750 on those alone. A lot of careful sanding so I didn't go through the veneer and a pile of water based polyurethane and more sanding later they started to come together. Unfortunately I couldn't get the water damage out of the front veneer to a point that I was happy with it hence the harlequin wrap that I applied, I'm sure there will be as many who like the finish as those who hate it. Two of the drivers needed to have the rubbers replaced, being odd size Israeli Morel drivers it took some time to get aftermarket replacements. All up they owe me about $400, Image Speakers still sell the 414.1 for close to 10x that price dependent on spec. I'm pretty happy with the result and now have a set of office speakers.