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Fitted my new spoiler… Paid a pretty penny for it from Alpina to replace my (probably fitted at dealer when new) M3 item, only to find that the sedan spoiler is the same as coupe and I could have used the one I found on a Jap import 318iS coupe a couple of years back! Ah well. Will probably replace the boot with a non-spoiler one and have it repainted, as the holes are very different to the M3 ones.

I asked my wife to take a photo of this M4 as it passes us by. It's a friend of ours who runs the Protect Wellington PPF shop.

Stumbled upon an awesome writeup about this lady called Valeria Giordano, dubbed the 'Queen of the Clownshoe'. Not your regular neighbourhood grandma. Has amassed a collection of 8 (so far) in all sorts of different colors, tinkers on them herself, uses them to help folks learn to drive manual and even offers them to the local high school auto shop for students to practice on. Such an awesome story, gotta love it. Something to aspire towards, eh @Kees? :D

All the hooning around was a good excuse to bust out the camera and take some glamour shots though.

Took it in for its first WoF inspection Friday last week. Ended up 'failing' on two rather laughable points. First was the rear middle seat "missing a belt buckle", which of course had just slipped under the seat. The second was the "front RH fog light alignment too high". I was told they could do it but the front bumper would need to come off... In reality the fog light covers/surrounds just pop out revealing the two phillips head screws holding the light in place, once out there's an adjustment dial on the backside. Eyeballed it to match the left side and took it in for reinspection on Monday. I didn't get it quite right so ended up tinkering with it in their shop in front of the test machine thingy until I got the alignment right on both sides. The mechanic did also verbally mention a few advisories that he didn't even write down, one being the rear tyres being slightly worn on the inner edges. The tyres are still fairly new and the wear was nowhere near close to being fail-worthy but definitely something I will address in the near future. I had noticed a bit of negative camber on the rear, which is likely the upper control arms which seem to be a typical issue on these. The other thing he mentioned is that the steering felt a bit heavy, which I'm not even sure is an issue but he was fairly adamant that it wasn't quite right. Not sure what to think of that since it's not something neither me nor the wife have picked up on so far. Have tried keeping closer attention to it since he mentioned it but all feels fine to me. Apart from that, no other issues and drove away with a fresh WoF sticker. Just in time to rush us to hospital Tuesday night for out daughter to be born in the early hours on Wednesday. The car seat now semi-permanently strapped in, we took her home for the first time on Friday. Must have been the gentlest driving I've ever done. "Baby on Board" stickers have usually been one of my biggest pet peeves but I now caught myself seriously considering getting one to excuse my ultra grand-grandma driving to fellow travellers. I also became super conscious of how sh*t the roads are down here. I've driven the same route hundreds of times but never noticed how rough some of the surfaces were am now paranoid of even the slightest ridge and pot hole. Full blown dad-mode. The Family Tractor coming into its element.

Follow up : valve spring came apart. Broken into a few pieces. Found a retainer floating around in the cam gallery.

Much of the manual conversion kits for the M20 and M4* motors were sucked up by the E30 race series many years ago. You could maybe pick up a Series car cheap which could have rebuilt running gear in it. If I was to own another E30 I would N52 swap it. https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/forum/e30-technical-forums/24v-engine-swaps/n54-n52-swap-forum/9977503-n52-e30-build-thread-for-the-sophisticated-gentleman How about a manual E87 instead? I've had many E30's. I like my crappy manual E87 more than all of them bar my series car.

Sadly it looks like seller withdrew the listing. Maybe got cold feet after setting the reserve at $1...

Changed out the nylon motor gear in an E70 X5 transfer case actuator. What a c**t of a job on the ground, with basic home garage tools. 1. Move heat shields out the way to gain access 2. Drop cross brace as there's still not enough access to the E10 bolts 3. Remove worm gearing from actuator to remove E10 bolts 4. Curse a lot while getting to that last E10 bolt 5. Cuppa tea to cool off, and begin to disassemble actuator casing 6. Soak in WD40 to help split press casing 7. Curse more as pocket knife which would've been perfect to split casing is in E91 with your partner across town 8. Finally get it all apart, replace nylon gear and reassemble 9. Curse some more getting all the fiddly bolts back in their fiddly holes Highly recommend only going ahead with this if you have access to a hoist. Otherwise budget around 4 hours for as many cups of tea as it takes to not throw it across the room.

Fs: complete m62b46 - if you are going v8 then this is one you want. Out of an x5 4.6is done around 205km, has a few oil leaks as expected. Also comes with 5/7 series oil pump and a non vanos lower timing cover so you can fit a standard alternator which is needed for clearance in you e36/e46. Hoping for 5k.. Selling as opportunity to go 1jz has appeared Christchurch

Came off the mountain bike 1 week ago, to the hour, at Redwoods in Vegas down a grade 5. f**ked up a drop, ended up going over the bars and headfirst into the ground. Full face helmet exploded, I remember sliding along dirt and tasting it with my body ragdolling behind my neck. It wasn't a nice feeling. Once came to a stop was on my back and staring up at the tree canopy. Can I feel my toes? Yes. Thanks f**k. Can I move my fingers? Yes. Thank f**k. Can I Breathe.... Yesss... THONK(Owwww). Can I get up? No. Things are crunchy. Rescue medics came pretty quick and stabilised my spine, was thrown onto a stretcher and 6 people lifted my ass out of the forrest and into a ute. Ute met ambulance who took me to Rotorua A&E. Xrays and CT scans, quickly reviewed. Multiple broken vertebrae, sternum is broken in multiple places (I over heard the CT tech says "f**k I bet that stings" ). Due to how smashed sternum is, and the amount of force required to do it, they were worried that my squishy important innards took a beating. so got 2x ECGs which showed normal cardio activity. Rotorua then ordered my ass a helicopter, which flew me (wrapped up like a burrito) to middlemore emergency (who have the best spinal unit in country). 4 more X-rays, two more CTs, cardio ultrasounds and ECGs. Alll damage is structural! I have broken 4 vertebrae (C1, T5, T6, T7... so essentially i folded into a staple shape....) No neurological damage, no spinal damage, no cardio damage. 4 days after nearly ending myself I became vertical for first time and got to see something other than ceilings.. catheter then comes out (which took 3 people and me biting on a rolled up towel, the f**ken pain was unreal). The next day Im walking around. I can feed myself. I can wash myself. I can go to the toilet. 7 days after coming within millimeters of the edge, I've been discharged and am at home with my family. I owe a lot to the rescue and medical professionals, and to the engineer who designed my helmet. Will be at least 6 weeks until am out of brace, and then can think about driving again... but Im pretty sure I just won the lottery.

Yesterday morning I completed the install of the airbox. First up I took the wiring loom and laid it out in the engine bay to work out the best way to route everything (note the red ties temporarily holding it in place). Once I'd done that I then temporarily installed the TB half of the airbox to get the position and orientation of the IAT sensor just right. I made sure to mark on the loom the orientation of the loom to the connector so that it sat just right. Then I uninstalled the airbox, removed the loom and attached the connectors for the MAP sensor and IAT. The finished loom I then installed the loom for real, cable tying at appropriate points: And here's how the MAF connector end looks: With that done the only wiring left to do was to relocate Pin 1 of the X6003 connector to Pin 18 which was a quick job: Then it was back in with the first half of the airbox for reals this time. All of the hoses and connectors fitted perfectly - I didn't run into any of the issues heinzboehmer did - maybe Karbonius have refined since? The only annoying thing was installing the 10mm nut for the rear vibration isolator - there's not much room to get in there. I clamped up the throttle body boots and moved on to installing the MAP sensor. I'm super happy with how the MAP sensor adapter has turned out - it's worked out exactly how I envisioned it would (I've got more to say about this which I'll do as a separate post). Filter in place: Various top-side connections done: Then it was a quick job to install the front half of the airbox and the snorkel: And finally with the rest of the engine bay back together (you'll have to excuse the dirty car - I'm in the middle of significant landscaping and renovations at the moment at home and it simply isn't worth me spending much time cleaning anything up as the clay dust gets everywhere: Then in the evening I flashed the Terra 0401 program binary to the car (after taking read backups of the current prog and tune) and then the partial binary with what I'm calling the "base modifications" to make the 0401 work with non-CSL cams, code out the DTC for the flap, etc. This morning I started the car briefly to confirm it would start and there were no major issues. A bit later today Dad is coming round to (a) come along for the first test drive and (b) hold the data-logging laptop while I drive. The plan is to take it for a run on the "base modifications" binary, log and make sure things are working as they should be and for me to get a feel for what the base CSL tune is like (my exceptions are for it to be rubbish like everyone says). Then I'll flash V1 of my tune and do the same thing and cross my fingers that it's an improvement. We'll find out 🙂

I did also swap out the amber indicators for a fresh set of clears as some eagle-eyed folk might have noticed from those videos. TYC brand corners and fender indicators are good quality and still pretty cheap from Spareto so got sets of both ambers and clears last year. Paired them up with chrome bulbs from LEDPerf since they were the only ones I found (other than Aliexpress) that carried the smaller chrome fender indicator bulbs. Pricing seemed reasonable but did find dealing with them quite annoying so probably wouldn't bother again. Despite a .co.nz website and NZ flag plastered all over the place, they ship their stuff out from France which in my case took over 3 weeks to arrive with little to no tracking updates along the way. The bulbs look to be random brand and probably Chinese-made anyway so would just go direct to Aliexpress next time. Chrome bulbs do make quite a difference though and give a nice clean finish instead of the egg-yolk look you get with amber bulbs. With the fender indicators I somehow ended up with slightly different ones with one having a pearly white edge and the other more of a beige. Might tack on another pair with the next order to have a matching set since they cost the equivalent of a pack of chips. I've also taken up the practice of super-gluing in those metal tabs after having 3 of them shoot out one after another into the fender cavity when reinstalling them after a polish. Don't need the hassle of trying to fish those out again. Did enjoy the amber look but wanted to switch it up a bit after a a year and a bit on that setup and the car does look way more modern with the clears. Need to take her out for a scenic photoshoot up in the hills on a cloudy day sometime.

yes and new shocks and bump stops , most z3 i see have worn out guard liners even when running correct tyre sizes but yes 235 wide is a no no on the front

Rattling off what I've bashed out in the meantime. New shift shaft seal - thanks @Eagle, definitely needed it. Had cleaned all the leaks up so never noticed the thing being completely shot until looking at it closely. Just a $3 part too so definitely worth doing. New foam washer thingy for the selector rod joint. Very tight going on, which is no doubt a good thing. Cut that steering lock cable off right at the base at the steering column. Still locks the key in place with it turned but doesn't get stuck anymore so works as it should I guess. This happened. Again. Couldn't for the life of me figure out how to fit the clutch hard line through. Probably OTT but wanted to do it properly. Got the carpet out and pulled the remaining bit under the heater as far back as I could to create a bit of an opening behind/under the heater core. Even still, it's hella tight, was an absolute bastard to fish through but got there in the end. Not at all surprised that people opt for custom made flexible lines instead. Also realised I missed the other grommet for the hard line. I thought it was just the bit dangling on it already but there's another one that attaches to the body, part number 21521163894. I'd looked at this stupid diagram a hundred times and never noticed it mentioned in the bottom right corner... Have chucked an order in. Removed the brake booster and DSC module to properly get the other clutch line through. Not sure if it's even possible to seat the grommet properly without doing it. Again, OTT and will have to re-bleed the brakes afterwards but wanted to do it right. I'd also stupidly pushed out the other big grommet under the brake booster, thinking that's where the hard line was meant to go originally so wanted to rectify that too. Don't be like me. Took the pedal box apart, cleaned and re-greased the plastic bushes, installed new master cylinder. I'd gotten new pedal covers as the ones that came with the conversion were falling apart, but blindly got the ones listed on FCP without checking. Turns out, the RHD pedals are a different shape to LHD ones, for some bewildering reason. The RHD ones are smaller and pointier at the bottom so the LHD ones I got don't sit tight and slide around all over the place. Stupid. Dissected the throttle pedal to get rid of the kick-down clicker. Had to get a 5-point security torx bit set to get it open but was cheap enough from SCA. As was mentioned on e46fanatics, it's just a mechanical clicker on automatics and not an actual switch. Took apart the cluster to change over the fascia to switch it from km/L to L/100km. Also installed the front cover off a 330 with the silver rings to make it more legit. At some point might get that other small fascia in the bottom right corner that blocks out the window with the auto gears completely, as it does on manuals. Some more stupid OCD stuff but with the carpet out, replaced a couple of air vents with ones I'd pulled off the donor car way back when. One was cracked all the way through and taped up, the other had a patch of glue that would not come off. Will finish up the clutch switch and reverse light wiring during the week, then box on with the engine. Picked up another shitty parts car a few weeks back, will try and rip the dash out of that before putting the interior back together on this thing. Will finally get rid of that stupid footprint if that dash is in as good a shape as it looked on first glance.

RIP 540