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Does it make me an old man cause I want to buy it for myself?

Spent yesterday swapping out a rather tired 300km interior for a set in better condition. Front seats, back seat, front door cards, taking care of a number of sub-optimal aspects along the way... Along with a replaced very good paddled steering wheel and a new gear shift knob, plus a Aux input radio - has completely transformed the interior.. The old set is up for sale (last photo), going cheap $200? Average condition, electric sports seats, pm me... Next up... the diff bush...

2001 740i M-Sport $7000 Genuine Msport 740i. Ex Japan, build date 21-3-2001. 195ks Sports diff so quicker of the mark the a std 740. Sports seats and black sports trim. 18” Mpars of cause with lower factory sports springs , rides lovely yet still handles really well. Too many cars and we’ve had 4 years, time to go to a new home. Lots of work completed on all the normal E38 things, this is our third E38 and unique being a sport. Pros Mechanically very good. Told Gear box was refurbished by previous owner and never had an issue. Timing chain guides, water pump etc all changed 2 yrs ago professionally completed. $5k Lots of coolant hoses and pipes changed. All the nasty rear ones and almost all the front ones. Water heater control valve recently rebuilt. Power steering lines and reservoir replaced Suspension rear control arms replaced. Front arms and thrust set replaced this year. Drives beautifully. Replaced front and rear license plate holder for Euro ones from Japanese for a cleaner look. Interior headliners A,B,C and rear parcel shelf all professionally recovered. Perfect and like new. Radio unit updated to NZ for RDS stations. Inside lights all replaced with led for an updated and modern look Reversing camera installed and links to the video unit Cons Pixels on dash need replacing. Outside is very tidy for a 20yr old car with a few stone chips and general marks Tyres are ok and passed recent warrant, probably only a year left in them

To keep the certifier happy, I went ahead and wrapped the exhaust manifolds with "titanium lava" wraps. Will hopefully give some relief from heat in the engine bay. Fiddly job so I thought I'd give a couple of pointers. Start from the left hand cylinders and end the wraps on the collector portion. This allows you to do the cylinder furthest from the exhaust flange in one foul swoop, containing the ends of the previous wrapped lengths (hard to explain but hopefully that makes sense?). This stuff frays viciously, put a bit of tape on the end when your working with it. Trial wrap the portion you want to do, before you cut the length of wrap. The amount required is deceiving. Used plastic zip ties to initially hold the wrap in place so you don't waste the metal zip ties if you have to do it again. Pull the wrap as tight as possible through the whole process, this makes it look alot cleaner and will hopefully prevent it unwrapping in the future. You can get the metal zip ties super tight buy grabbing the tails with needle nose pliers and rolling the pliers to strain the tie. WEAR GLOVES. I know the fiberglass wraps are super itchy, unsure about this particular material but I didn't want to risk it. That's about all there is to it. Pain of a job but I reckon it looks good. I read alot about exhausts etc rusting out underneath the wraps either due to the heat cycling and/or moisture held by the wrap. This apparently happens to the cheaper manifolds. I guess time will tell how it holds up, I'll get a very audible alarm if the manifolds do rust out ?

Figured out why my windscreen washer stopped working. Soaked in WD40, knocked all the lumps of rot out, and it lives again At least until parts turn up to replace it.

OCD aren't unique, all places I've heard of charge a ridiculous amount for it. Yes, prep is critical but if you've just paid $750 for that, you shouldn't be paying another $750 for $40 of product. You could always get some place to detail your car and then apply the coating DIY and save $700. Check on eBay, sort by price and have a bit of a laugh, they have all brands there, some even selling the same product for $400 that others are selling for $40. I suspect they all come from the same, or similar factories, in China. Yes, they are hydrophobic, yes they repel liquids for a while and yes, they're not worth $750. As for scratch resistance, 9H or 10H is bug level scratches, not stone level scratches. They do make your car or wheels or whatever easier to clean for a while though. I'd love to be convinced some are worth 10 or 20 times more than others, with science, not marketing BS.

Yep, spill the beans, tell the story. And why do people on a public forum want/try to stay private? It's hardly a cocaine deal lol.

Some info from an industry site that might help explain things.

The 4 door looks great! It's a shame BMW missed this generation. The coupe is driving the best it has in 7 years / 80k now Ray! Thanks Sam / HellBM for the new dampers, steering coupling and diff/motor oil services. Feels like a new car.

Sold to 'Charles'. Who has complimented the seller on how well he looked after the car! ? So tempted to point out that the seller had only owned it for 5 minutes... Credit to you, Chester, for how well you looked after the car.

To bring the MotoMeter speedometer into alignment, first remove the cluster. I won't go into huge detail on this as there's already a heap of good write ups, skip down to the picture of the speedo removed to get straight into it. Remove the lower kick panel. Reach behind the dash and unwind too aluminum knobs, that'll let you remove a black access panel that sits below the cluster. Remove the two upper screws that secure the cluster brackets to the dash (there may be some lower screws to remove, if so I must've left them off last time I was in there for the coding plug). Now be super gentle with the cluster brackets. Pull them down slightly to jiggle the cluster forwards. Slide the cluster forwards toward the steering wheel until you can see the white and blue plugs at the rear of the cluster. Flick the black retaining clips up and jiggle the plugs off. This will give you more room to bring the cluster right up against your steering wheel. Now just slide the cluster to your left, towards the radio. The cluster should be free! Place the cluster face down on a bench and remove the 9 brass coloured screws on the back. 8 around the circumference and 1 in the middle. You'll be able to remove the blue section from the front of the cluster. Now put your misses red nail polish on the needles ?. You'll see another 4 brass screws on the blue section, directly behind the speedo gauge, remove these. The gauge will come free from the cluster assembly. Look for the potentiometer on the side of the speedo gauge. Total range of the pot is about 270 degrees. Turning it clockwise will reduce the speedo reading. Anti clockwise will increase the speedo reading. It's hard to tell, but I reckon turning it about 30 degrees reduced the speed from 120 km/h to 100 km/h. It was a lot of trial and error, making an adjustment, driving using a GPS speed app, making another adjustment. You could alternatively drill an access hole in the blue cover which would let you leave the speedo IN the the cluster assembly to make the adjustments to the pot. The rules in NZ are that your speedo can read +10%/-0%. Either way I'd try dial it in as close as to possible to your actual speed to prevent unnecessary kilometers being added to your beast!

Now you can go set some laps on the track with kids in the back seat and groceries in the front. Pointless car. Anyone buying this is driving it purely for the brand and look.

All NZ new E46 M3's are registered as 4wd.