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Got the rear parcel shelf done this morning. Went for the grey duplicolor @Sammo suggested. Came out pretty nice, looks a bit darker in person but would be hard to match OEM colour as using the black coloured spray would be too dark. Think it will go well with the grey houndstooth fabric regardless. Big difference from the faded blue it was!

Was just about to post this 😄 Absolute crackhead pricing. Dude is a car salesman and doesn't even know his V6's from I6's. Needs to be disqualified from owning cars.

Been following the channel for a good while now and was happy to finally see an E46 featured, a Touring no less. Props to the dudes doing their research, felt like they got the vast majority of the info spot on. Worth a watch. PS. Spare a thought for the Aussies only ever getting the Touring in 320i form for some weird reason. No idea what that's about.

New treads on, flares arrived and test fitted up rear to be goo’d on

2003 BMW Z4 3.0ltr V6 for 24.5k! https://www.trademe.co.nz/5356761361

As little as possible 😁 depends on ratio and condition, $500-1000 at a guess? Yep - has been the hardest part of this build to track down by far.

Really interesting question and responses, most of which I agree with. Things have changed over the years! Bellars used to allow customer supplied parts (early/mid 2000's), I know because I did that a lot with the M3. It doesn't surprise me that many no longer support this. As above, if you have a good relationship with a not-too-big shop, they will often accept customer supplied parts... there are a few members here with shops that will. Main reasons for not supporting this are discussed above in this thread but, let's be honest, the bottom line is they make no margin off customer supplied parts and, for better or worse, that's their choice. I have had recent success requesting work at a shop and indicating (with links) what I could land the parts for and advising them, that if they could match that price, I'd get them to order the parts directly (basically from FCP or Spareto). The shop set up a trade account with the vendors, got the parts cheaper than I could and made a little margin, I had to wait a few weeks for the booking (for the parts to arrive - also a challenge with the NZ BMW network because they keep very little in country), but I paid the same as I would have buying the parts directly, the shop made a little margin and was happy with the (genuine or OEM) parts, and we all walked away happy with less money lining BMW NZ's greedy pockets. This problem wouldn't exist of course if dealers didn't want to put a 100% margin (or more), on parts. This is not a problem unique to NZ but BMW NZ really takes the piss.

Full lci interior swap done, much nicer than black on black. Been busy getting my white 130i for sale so not much attention to this one for now. Didn’t make track day last month but planning to go 29th June.

I fundamentally disagree, if you have 'have' to use TM, then you're opting to play by their rules, or reduce your potential market. Most people listing like this are trying to avoid public disclosure, divide and conquer, it's totally suspicious and the principle reason there are a ton of people like me that just won't consider it. It's like people saying "as is, where is" hoping that potential victims don't understand the legal implications of such a statement. Anything less than 100% transparency, as is the case here, is caveat emptor and even Caesar himself would say to walk away. I'm also not sure why somebody would consider it logical that this approach would mean less tyre kickers relatively speaking - there will be less interest for sure, but most likely the same proportion of time wasters.