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Front subframe out ready for the sump gasket job. It cleaned up real good and I swapped the M3 steering rack on ready to go back in. Before that though there is lots and lots of cleaning to do to the underside of the engine bay, then new sump gasket and engine mounts can go in. Probably my favorite but about having it completely apart is to clean it spotless.

About time for another update. XHP - In my last post I mentioned I was going to drive it for a couple of weeks before throwing Xhp at it. Yeah nah not a chance, managed to wait all of 4 days before buying a license and flashing it. I started with stage 2 and quickly moved to stage 3, now just playing around with the settings, mainly torque reduction, rev limiters to match the dyno graph power, torque limiters and all those similar. Definitely made a big difference in waking up the gearbox, even in D it feels much more modern. Having a gear indicator in D and S is also nice too. Will keep playing around with the settings and see how it goes. Heated Seats - I found a set of dakota leather heated sport seats on marketplace and decided it would be a worthy upgrade for the wagon. A little bit of leather cleaner and conditioner softened them up and I threw them in. Still a bit of work left to go here, need to add in the extra wiring on the car side of the wiring loom as well as source an LCI IHKA for the heated seat buttons and figure out the coding. The seats also came with lumbar adjustment which is kind of nice. Wheel Spacers - The car already had a set of 12mm spacers on the rear, but it left a lot of be desired in both front and rear wheel fitment. I bought another pair of 20mm spacers to test out on the rear and switch the 12mms to the front. The front is now sorted, very happy with the fitment and no rubbing at all. Will lower it a touch to match the rear too. The rear still has a bit to go, with only 225s on an 8.5" wheel there is some stretch which I need to get rid of, once I get some 255 or 265s it'll help a lot. CP3 R90 Pump - An R90 popped up on FB and I couldn't help myself, don't see many floating around and this one was from darkside developments and has been refurbed already. Will pop it on the shelf and install later on down the line. To make any use of this I'll need to retune so I'm not in a rush on this one. Unfortunastely the connector on the fuel control valve is damaged and the seller didn't know at the time because it was still wrapped up, however I believe the valve is the same on the R70 so I should be able to reuse it, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Water pump and thermostat - The m57 thermostats seem to slowly open earlier and earlier over time so that the engine never makes it to operating temp. Mine was ok but thermostat was opening at 83-84. Also replaced the water pump while I was there, the M57 pumps seem to be ok but they have a plastic impeller that is eventually going to die with all the heat cycling, replaced it with a metal impeller version. Overall the job was pretty straightforward. The waterpump did come with an extra nipple on it that isn't used on this car, easy fix by chopping off the end and tapping it for a 1/8" NPT fitting. A bung and some thread sealant later and we were back on track. The AC belt also caused some issue, given I hadn't read ahead to see that I would need a special tool to turn over the crank it took us much longer than expected to get the belt on. The final solution involved Tony under the car with two prybars turning the flywheel through hatch in the bottom of the bellhousing while I used a screwdriver to get the crank to grab onto the belt. A bit like mounting a tire. This all turned out to be a total waste of time, on my way home I flicked the ac on and noticed it not getting cold. Turns out the belt had shredded itself and got thrown off the pulley. The belt that came off was 5mm longer but the one we mounted was correct on realoem, will try the 5mm longer one and see how things go. Now that I've gone back to look at realoem it looks like there were two options an 830mm and an 836mm, the latter being forthe s1cba co2 package, which seems like a co2 refridgerant version? I've got R134a so I'm not sure why the 830mm won't fit. And lastly a good sunday wash. This photo really makes me want to lower the front more to match the rear.

Interior back together, skanky to swanky conversion complete inside. Rear wiper is trashed, the usual issue, $40 on aliexpress for a new one Now the real sh*t starts, looking forward to sorting the headlights out will look way better when polished up. Yup, and the all belts and tensioner... things been leaking for so long everythings just soaked in oil

And a little interior update. Bought a new gear gaiter, handbrake boot and armrest cover and recoloured my leather to a sexy cinnamon brown. Not sure how well the vinyl door card inserts will wear but I have some spare leather I can recover them with if required.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/5430229231?utm_source=tmm-savedsearch&utm_medium=email&bof=ffdclawW Lovely. Just lovely.

Nice work! Might as well remove and clean the vanos solenoids and filters whilst you're in there.

Road legal baby! Didn't want to splurge on new tyres not knowing if it'd pass otherwise so just borrowed the wheels off the touring since it was up on jack stands anyway. Drove it in for the inspection and was shocked when it only needed a few minor bits to pass. Both rear rego bulbs were blown. Easy fix. The passenger seatbelt was slow to retract, which turned out to be a weird one. It didn't look like it had ever been touched or that the panels had been off but the belt was somehow twisted. How or why that happened I've no clue. Had to twist the belt at the top pivot point, the belt buckle and at the base rail. Since I was messing with it, I also gave the belt a good clean and removed & wire wheeled the metal cross bar since it was all crusty and was catching on the belt. The wiper one was also an odd one. The driver side one was leaving a spot untouched right in the middle of the wiper. Threw on a fresh set of wipers which I thought would fix it but it barely improved the situation. I then noticed that the middle of the wiper was barely touching the glass. Figured the spring in the wiper arm itself had stretched out. I had a spare one laying around that felt a bit firmer so just replaced the whole wiper arm, which also only barely improved its function. Ended up giving the glass a good clean, a quick polish and some SiO2 coating which didn't eliminate the issue completely but got it to a point where it passed anyway. Might have to revert to the oldschool truss-shaped wipers instead of the fancy aero blade ones. Super odd. Took it in for reinspection and voila, she's all WoF'd & reg'd. The brakes was the main bit I was worried about since the rotors looked a bit pitted but they don't have a lip, the pads have plenty of meat left and it stops fine (or as fine as it would with its tiny 316ti brakes) so the inspector was happy that the pitting would clear up just with a bit of use. Happy days. An almighty service is on the cards before I put it into regular service. The main issue as it stands seems to be the thermostat being stuck open since it's taking forever to get up to operating temperature so will hold off driving it too much until that's done. Might as well do a full fluid flush at the same time and replace some common to fail seals and gaskets, and probably the PCV. Tossing up whether to preventatively do the valve stem seals too before returning the timing tool kit that I've borrowed. Gave its wheels a good scrub too. The front tyres have a wee bit of life left in them but the rears are completely bald so will have to get a new pair of those at the very least. Will try to keep the scope creep in check and avoid the cheap daily from snowballing into another moneypit.

M42/M44 hybrid is in and running, I also converted it to a rear battery setup as well while the engine was out. Looking forward to the first drive to break the new motor in. Phase 2 will be getting some ITBs on it, and installing the Bilstein b14 that have been waiting to go in.

Some more progress. Got my hardware back from zinc coating, all Organized again now. Got the rear subframe back in. Along with new rear inner brake lines. got the steering rack fitted up into the front subframe with some spacers I machines. Also swapped on some new e36 outer tie rod ends. just waiting on rear wheel bearings to show up and I can start putting trialing arms back in.

I saw this very car prowling around the backstreets of CHCH a few days ago, and can confirm that they do in fact look as stupid in the metal as they do in the photos. And up until that moment, I thought that Chrysler Group had reached peak cringe with the PT Cruiser.

Also a lock at my exhaust setup for those who it might insert. Muffler has a bypass pipe to the valve side and has the first camber pipe wrapped. The resonator has also been wrapped. And the mid-pipe has been crossed over and had some added in to make it equal length like the laptop exhaust.

Hey guys Recently picked up this 130i which I'm sure you will likely recognize. Seriously awesome car and I couldn't be happier with it, major props to Dave for it putting together! Am on the hunt for some cool genuine parts which I will make a post for at some point. Love all things Honda and BMW, I've attached some photos of my other cars. Excited for the future of this mighty 130i 😁

If anybody needs it, this is the tyre bays email: [email protected] Got a price on some PS5's as below, fitted and balanced: 235/40/18 $319 255/35/18 $423