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No more ticky diesel like n52! After hunting around for a good exhaust cam and bearing ledge and no luck I pulled a good one out from a pickapart car. I should’ve done this the first time round i opened it up, the old cam had alot of play resting in the ledges. Happy days! Cleaned up the replacement : Doesn't look out of place… Result! IMG_4400.mov

Replacement bonnet got given the same treatment as the rest of car. Before After

A couple of years ago I saw a little white 2004 E46 316ti for sale on the side of the road near where I live. Asking $2500. But it had some panel scrapes down the left door & 3/4 panel, although not too obvious at a casual glance. After a test drive in the hills nearby, I offered $2000 and drove it home. A few days/weeks later I noticed puffs of smoke when driving around town. Sometimes quite a lot. One time waiting at the lights outside a packed Sprig & Fern it tried to lay down a smokescreen. Checking later I found the oil filler cap full of creamy gunk. I thought I'd blown a head gasket. A bit later the starter motor failed completely close to home. It was off the road for a few weeks as I sought instructions to take it out, and had to order some torx ring spanners from overseas to get the top bolt out. $400 for a new starter, and $100 for a new CCV valve with insulated hoses, I eventually got back on the road. $300 for a couple of new tyres, new WoF, and I was back on the road. The transmission is a bit of a reluctant up-shifter, and sometimes goes into diagnostic mode on cold mornings. I ordered a transmission filter from Latvia or somewhere, but it arrived with a damaged gasket. Got a refund without sending it back, and ordered another one from Aus. Got the Caltex oil waiting for me to feel in the mood for getting dirty. In the meantime I've got quite a nice little non-smoking motorcar. Not much poke, but heeeeaps of fun on a winding road like the Takaka Hill... A couple of days ago I saw a little silver 2006 E91 325i for sale on the side of the road near where I live. Asking $3000. But it had a slight ding in the driver's door and a couple of very minor defects, although not too obvious at a casual glance. After a test drive in the hills nearby, I offered $2600 and drove it home. Sh*t I hope it goes better this time...

yes these are common too! 3 bar pressure regulator BTW

Think NZ couriers are sh*t. Ordered 3 things: One from wellington, one from CHCH and one from Highland park Auckland. I'm in Browns Bay. Wellington was next day. CHCH took 3 days. Highland park was just over a week... Pass the parcel.

Yeah that's crazy. Doesn't even have the M5 body kit anymore. If you wanted an M5 racecar, pretty sure you could grab a stock one for ~$40k, strip it and sell interior, body kit and other no longer needed parts that'd pretty much pay for a roll cage. What's a BBK worth, $5k max? He'd be lucky to get half of that asking price.

The aeros quite subtle! https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/130i/listing/5254891721

Cool fix to sort rattles. Also good on door card clip mounts 😀

Sounds like the exact issue I had on mine when I first purchased it. Turned out to be the fuel pressure regulator causing the issue.

Disassembled the front seats in the E30 as there were a few niggles, sorted all excluding the stuffed backrest shocks, which will be replaced one day. The drivers side backrest bolster had broken and missing plastic piping and a split wide open seam for a few inches. I sewed a new run of piping using the original nylon core around some spotlight vinyl, then sewed that into the two parts of leather using the existing holes so as to not make a ‘tear here’ line(leather needles have a blade which cuts as opposed to separates the fibres). Happy with result.

Long time no see. This car will be for sale soon, I'll list it on BS before TM, it's a fantastic platform with all the upgrades and a ripe candidate for a manual swap if you're so inclined. Why? This:

Ze Germans were pretty organised when it came to the holes and they are in the same place for most of the E30 spoilers. As SJ says the SE Lip and bigger Tech I lip both fit in the same holes. The SE is fairly common and can be got quite cheap, the Tech I is rare and expensive.

The towbar saga. One feature that the car came with was a folding electric towbar which seems a bit excessive and sure has some 'wank factor'. However, being able to fold the towbar away at the click of a button is quite handy. It tucks away completely and has no impact on the look of the car when not in use. The only gripe I have with the towbar is the complete lack of a feature we use quite commonly in NZ, a 1-5/8" towball. Quite infuriating because you only ever find that out as you go to hook up a trailer. I should've thought about it really, being a euro of course its going to have a 50mm towball. Eitherway it needs to be fixed. I had two options to start with, either take a grinder to it, using a whole bunch of templates, measuring and loads of patience. Or, pay someone to machine it down for me. The first option really is a sh*t idea, however this appealed to the side of me that really doesn't like paying for the services of other people when I know I could have a go at it myself. The cost of machining is around ~$500, which isn't too bad in the scheme of things, still hurts though. The other issue with these two options is that I would still be stuck with only one of the two towball options (although 50mm is uncommon it still pops up just enough to be annoyed you don't have both options). I removed the towbar from the car and had a good clean behind the bumper while I was there, this car used to live up a gravel driveway so everything has a dusty coating. I removed the electric actuator and unbolted the ball and arm from the bar. I knew this was going to be a longer process so I put the bumper back on and left it for a few weeks, which I'm glad I did. I was yarning away to my mate Tony who came up with the idea of using a "convert a ball" style setup. Its essentially a 1" spigot which the balls slot onto and a pin slides across to lock it into place. This is the perfect solution as it is much easier to create a cylinder with a grinder than it is to make a sphere, and it also means I'll have both towball options. I borrowed Tony's towball setup off his Audi and I got to work modifying mine. My plan of attack was as follows: mark a centreline on the ball and slice off a plane parallel to that, with a flat surface I then create an opposing plane on the otherside of the ball. With some flat surfaces to work with I can chop it back into a square section. At this point it would be wise to drill the cross pin hole. Chopping off the corners until a 32 sided shape remains gives an approximate cylinder with hopefully a diameter of ~25.60mm. Then rounding it out would make it into a circle and taking just slightly more off would bring it down to 25.40mm in diameter. To get all this done I used a hacksaw, angle grinder with a 60grit sanding disk, some emery cloth and a file to remove material, for measurement: a digital caliper, ruler, various markers and a decent eye. After a solid few afternoons slaving away I ended up with a pretty decent result. The fit is better than the "convert a ball" spigot so pretty stoked with that. The next three afternoons involved me absolutely wasting my time while I tried to figure out why the mechanism wouldn't release when clicking the button. Turns out you have to reset the actuator by holding down the button for 5 seconds. Got there in the end. While I was at it I lubed up the swing mechanism with some fresh grease and replaced the grade 8.8 mounting bolts for peace of mind. Overall a successful project, glad to have it sorted.

Had a decent go at cutting and polishing. Lots of trial and error along the way but getting the hang of it… Test area to see how hardy the paint is. On to cutting the fr guard. Then the sides and the roof, which I never thought would come up well, lots of deep scratches. Gave it a wet sand first. After cutting the sides and roof I expected this sh*t to appear under bright lighting.. Up until now i’d been using a rotary polisher so i switched to a DA and got rid of most of it. Happy how it turned out Got the hatch and bumpers to do. Won’t bother with the bonnet until i can find a straight one with saveable black sapphire metallic paint.

I think we all knew it was something along those lines. Still dont agree with the deleting on the thread though.

How will you ever experience the joy of getting $2 stuck in the hinge, and then spending an hour to get it out, simply so you can open the lid and get the rest of the 50c coins.