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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

e46 m3 csl. My personal Holy Grail, spotted at the Shannon car show today. UK import, and owned (and used - often) by a very nice English gentleman who definitely knew what he had. I was drooling like a schoolboy...........

My car, for sale. I found something else that I want. See TM ad. https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/5174692740

Long time, no update (again); while I was hoping to perform the conversion on my 'actual' 530i over the New Years holiday period, life got in the way. The wiring is coming along slowly, with JBE, CAS, DME and EKPM modules up and running. I did get some time to further develop the CAN translator firmware and put together a small UI for diagnostics / configuring the translator: The CAN translator is of my own design and is based on a PIC32MK with four CAN channels, three switch-to-ground outputs, three switch-to-VBat outputs and three optocoupler inputs. The firmware uses FreeRTOS for low-level task scheduling, TinyUSB (diagnostic interface per screenshot above, implemented using WinUSB, not CDC), and custom libraries for managing all of the peripherals. The firmware is field-upgradable with only a laptop and USB cable too

It has been a few years since my last project (E46 M3 Sedan), and while I'd initially purchased my E39 as a reliable daily driver (specifically not to be modified), I needed something to do a bit of a resto-mod on. An N54 is pretty similar to an M54 though, right? 😁 The subject in question is a 2002 E39 530i touring, purchased in 2018 from a fellow Bimmersport member. Since purchase, I've put around 30,000km on the clock, performed a full suspension refresh (all bushes, bearing, shocks, struts, air springs) and manual conversion. Unfortunately the vehicle was purchased with some clearcoat issues, which have only gotten worse. As this vehicle is still a daily driver, I've also picked up a 2003 520i insurance write-off to use for development / mockup - the pictures below will be of this car. For a donor, a 2008 E82 135i insurance write-off was used. Unfortunately, this vehicle was fitted with an automatic transmission, something I'm not interested in for this project so a GS6-53BZ was sourced from the UK and imported. The underlying theme for this project is "if BMW were to have made it" - I'll be trying to keep everything looking as factory as possible, so no aftermarket BOVs or pod filters. 😀 This theme also flows through to the electrical architecture of the vehicle, I'll be keeping the factory E8x modules (thankfully the donor vehicle came with an MSD81) and aiming for full integration with the E39 instrument cluster via a custom CAN translator of my own design. The vehicle will have fully-functional A/C, DSC and cruise control. The translator I've developed has been proven in the manual HellBM 135d. The first step with the mockup car was stripping out everything not needed: Initial test fitting was performed with a spare N52 parts motor with a GS6-53BZ bolted up: With it generally looking good, an N54 parts motor was made available and put in instead, allowing test fitting of turbos, etc. Looking doable on the exhaust side: Going to need to do something about the rear turbo's coolant line: Enough sump clearance: Tons of room on the intake side: Some shims underneath to get it all lined up: Sway bar at full droop, clears ok: Just need to get an engine mount to join A to B and we'll be done in no time 😉 Bolted up a few more parts, still clearing ok: Starting to work on some mockup engine mount arms so that we can remove the shims, these will only be temporary: Looking pretty tight on the exhaust side: Onto some temporary gearbox mounts: With the temporary mounts made I could then start designing some more final mounts. A 3D print of the design for testing fitment: Same again for the gearbox: The exhaust-side mount ended up being rather tricky, requiring many iterations: Final design of the exhaust-side mount: While that was going on, I took a look at fitting the oil cooler - a factory item on E39 540i's built for the Gulf region: For fueling, I'm wanting to use an E82 135i pump in the E39 holder. The fuel lines will be the factory-fitted E39 M5 lines, filter and 5 bar fuel pressure regulator. Unfortunately, the E82 fuel filter sock won't suit in an E39, so a mockup adapter was 3D printed (in PLA, this will be printed properly in carbon fiber reinforced nylon). Another item to tackle is the coolant radiator, condenser, intercooler and power steering radiator pack. Initially I'd planned on using an E60 535i radiator but found the dimensions won't work in an E39. The E82 pack seemed like the best choice, here attached with some temporary mounts (again, will be 3d printed properly in carbon fiber reinforced nylon): 4 Picked up a 540i rear diff and half shafts, it should handle things a little better than the 530i items: Started mocking up a top cover panel for the radiator: The intake-side engine mount arm machined in T6061-T6 arrived: Fits perfectly: With the N54 having the A/C compressor on the opposite side of the motor (compared to M54), we started working on custom A/C hardlines. This one will run from the E39 bulkhead, around the back of the motor to the intake side, and will have a flexible section running under the manifold area to the compressor: I'm also working on some mounting brackets for it: The next items are sorting out the coolant / power steering / oil line situation which is underway currently. Unfortunately, the supplier sent the wrong size hardline which has caused a bit of a delay on this aspect. Another item we're working on is relocating the DSC module to behind the headlight - the E39 units often get baked in the factory location, leading to failure and other weird issues. The DSC module to be used is a DSC8+ module from a facelift E60 rather than the (unreliable, relatively expensive) DSC5.7 factory-fitted in the E39.

I also habe an rtd shifter with mini lever in my 135i. I reckon it’s a great shifter and very comfortable to use, but then again it’s not a daily driven car.

Guilty 🙋‍♂️...It's a RTD short shifter with the "mini" lever (believe it or not). I have tried a couple of the OE options for short shifters in the past with new bushings but have been disappointed with the slushy feel they both gave. An Auto Solutions shifter which retains that precise and direct feel that the RTD shifter offers but sits at OE height is next on the to-do list.

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.

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.

Wow amazing. All the best for the recovery. I hope you find a safer sport. Can I suggest motorsport excluding rally as your still have a high chance of going end of end in rally.

I get short shifters but what the hell...

Yet to crawl under the car since being back but did address the most in-you-face visual defect still present - the beat up cluster face. Someone must have whacked it in a fit of rage since the plastic cover was cracked all the way along the bottom and had one crack running almost the full height of it. Stumbled upon a used cluster being sold on Marketplace so grabbed it and swapped over the front panel onto the existing one. The mileage was looking quite dim and not fully illuminating - one of the small bulbs behind the LCD turned out to be blown, which I also swapped over. All lighting up evenly now, no dead pixels (knock on wood) and looking nice and crisp. Wifey's that wee bit happier.

The mighty tractor successfully survived its first outing, although wasn't left completely unscathed. The main issues we did encounter were to do with the transmission. On the way there I went for a brisk overtake and was met by a slight thump, a warning gong and a transmission failsafe message on the cluster, leaving the car stuck in 3rd. Pulled over, off-on and she carried on as usual. The first subsequent shift from 5th into 6th came with a slight jolt but smoothed out thereafter. Still accelerated and changed gear without issues unless you were absolutely mashing the throttle. Knew to take it a bit easier from there on but same thing did happen once more on the way back on an uphill passing lane. Seems like the same issue @euroriffic is experiencing although flagged up different codes, 4F51 - Gear check 5 in my case. Another less pronounced issue I noticed was that when steadily cruising between 50-60 & 70-80 kph at around 1600-1700 RPM, the transmission would produce a slight jolt as if it was shifting gears but would then just stay in the same gear. If I kept the revs constant it would do it roughly every 10 seconds or so, so I just started slightly accelerating out of that range. This did not generate any fault codes. I've yet to do any sort of service on the transmission so that'll be the next mission. Will do the mechatronic sleeves, new filter and fluid as a first stage and see what, if any difference that makes. Will note down the separator plate number and then look into doing new solenoids & Sonnax Zip kit in the future. The only other, more humorous problem we ran into happened on the final toilet stop on the way back. Upon returning to the car the driver's door handle decided it'd had enough and left me stranded like a muppet. Turns out it had succumbed to a very typical fault with the door handle carrier where a pivot point for the rod just breaks off. Luckily managed to do a hack fix with some safety wire which is potentially sturdier than the original design. Will add a new carrier to the next order to have on hand just in case though. Must not have been the first time the car suffered from this issue as the vapour barrier was rather crudely hacked up to gain access so had to get creative with some duct tape until I source a replacement. Why people do this kind of sh*t instead of just peeling it back is beyond me. Overall though, really happy with it as a road trip car - nice and comfortable, plenty of room, cruises as a steady 2,000 RPM at 100kph, holds the road well and just feels solid overall. I find myself being way calmer at the wheel of this thing than the E46. In the latter you're just constantly tempted to row through the gears and act a bit silly, whereas in the less rev-happy X5 is a nice relaxing cruiser that keeps the heart rate nice and stable. Clocked up a good 1,200km's across the 4 days, averaging under 9L/100km, which for a big 'ol lump isn't all too bad. There's definitely something up with the fuel level sensor though. Filled her up in Nelson, clocked up 650km's since and it's claiming to still have over half a tank left in it. I somehow doubt it'll do 1,300km on a single fill but would be beautiful if it did. Who needs a Prius, ey...

Tinkered on the sled a bit further. Got the torn CV boot replaced, the axle came out and went back in painlessly enough so that's the only obvious WoF concern taken care of. Also had a mate do his magic polishing up the headlights that were starting to go all foggy and yellow. Got the lights out to make the job a bit easier, which turned out to be way more involved that I'd anticipated - the headlight housing protrudes downwards and gets caught behind the bumper and you can't lift them up because of the radiator support so the bumper cover needs to come forward quite a bit to have enough room to wiggle the lights out. E46/E39's are a breeze in comparison. Just waiting on an order of chrome bulbs to swap out those yucky ambers. Same day the EGR delete kit arrived so quickly threw that in the next morning as well. Looks a quality kit from Bimmertune, took roughly 3 weeks to arrive which isn't too bad over the festive period and especially with shipping being free. The parts fit well at both ends and should permanently eliminate sludge buildup as a worry. Weight reduction. Taking the new sled to Nelson tomorrow, will see how it fares on its inaugural proper road trip and will dig into fluid services once I'm back.

Time for another update 😊 Some progress has been made on fabricating coolant lines. The current intention is to use an E39 diesel coolant reservoir mounted on the intake side of the engine bay, freeing up room on the exhaust side for the DSC module and vacuum reservoirs. Two aluminium pipes run atop the intake side chassis rail, one for the coolant reservoir to the heater core and thermostat, and another from the radiator to the heater control valve. The next step is to fabricate a hard line to connect these up to the thermostat. In other news, the final exhaust-side engine mount arm has arrived from manufacturing. Test fitting looks good, with only a small shim required on top of the engine mount to raise the mount up slightly, due to there being more compression in the engine mount than anticipated. With that in place, the gearbox mount design was finalised, propshaft angles were checked and the design sent off to be manufactured.