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Upgraded to a genuine ‘M’ illuminated gear knob for one of the e31’s - made it work and period correctish too! Not sure if its right to get excited about a gear knob, but hey, i am haha 🤣🤣🤣. Thanks to @qube for a great deal - top member!

Anyone got a set of backline taillights for an e82 135i?

Corolla, if reliability and cost are top considerations. Golfs can be “ish” but $1k/door central locking failures on Mark 5s, aircon compressors on 4s and earlier 5s, 1.6 manual Mark 5 transmissions fail. And maybe finding something that runs on 91? Nothing European in this price bracket will be “set and forget”, maybe find out what the post-purchase repairs budget will be and if you/someone else can do maintenance and tweaks? Might be being the voice of doom lol

for our household it’s looking like an additional $3.5 k per year , but might be able to offset 1,500 with working from home a couple days a week. kind of glad the car doing 20,000 plus kms a year is a turbo diesel running 6.5 L / 100 km verse the other option was looking at which would have be closer to 12 L / 100km. looks like we will be up for $20k per year to run / park / service the two vehicles.

Was wondering how long it was going to get there - oh well, fair enough haha 😁 At least it hasn't got to 'it's part of 'the establishments' master plan to inflate petrol/oil prices along with the introduction of the gas guzzler tax (or whatever its being called) to make the national shift to EV's - oops sorry - a younger, less polluting and more efficient national fleet faster' theory. Just saying 🤣 I have to admit that this is the first time I've contemplated a more 'fuel efficient' alternative as it will get a lot more painful running a bunch of V8's - but the smile factor! Even have thoughts of a diesel or, yup I'm saying it, an EV - the in-laws electric trike is looking like an attractive proposition!! But in all seriousness, for me, the part I'm most worried about is the ripple effect and the impact this will have on certain groups in our society. Its tough now but things will only get... a perfect storm is a brewing...

Agreed. I'd focused on petrol-engined vehicles. The existing RUC charge is unreasonably harsh on those with private, smaller-engined diesel and mostly economical vehicles. It's simply not been changed to accommodate the change in diesel engine technology. EVs are going to see an RUC introduction at some point. It'd make sense to extend this to all road-using vehicles.

I'm just waiting for the day the Government introduces some arbitrary registration system based off something like engine displacement, where you pay more for registration the bigger your engine is. Can see something like that happening very soon.

At this point it is.

Has the price of petrol gone up or something? I hadn’t noticed, would have thought someone might have mentioned it.

Thanks @qube i did - tapped into the ashtray light wiring which will never be used again for its original intended use lol. All up took about 40min to do. No electrical shorts or fire so a very happy chappie 😎. Now just need to drive at night or early morn to get the full benefit haha 😁

Mandatory visit to Nada Bakery after that for an award-winning pie to settle your stomach!

Discussing purple tag rack - in principle - with certifier last weekend in context of my M42 repower (into factory manual) with 6 cyl discs F&R, he explained that to cert the rack, certifier requirements increase (a higher ticket for the certifier), and a bunch more calculations (I'd expect related to the bump-steer test that @nick496 mentioned earlier). The purple tag rack swap is pretty standard. Spacers (not dodgy ones), e46 inners, e36 outers, Astra/Barina linkage, and sort out the hoses/lines (the greatest variability). It should be possible to supply cert details of previous cars with the same setup. I do like the idea of the line kit from UK, but it's pretty pricey with the freight and exchange rate costs, though very high quality and well made. HTH.

My experience was the manual swap is straight forward if all factory parts are used. Like Nick said. No repower and a factory driveshaft/cross member should negate the need for hoops. The guy I used has done lots of race cars and E30’s. He did pick that my clutch line to slave cylinder should be clipped to the bulk head noting the vibrations over time could fatigue the fitting. I also had to do a brake test. 100-0 x3 stopping within 4 secs. So make sure your brake system maintenance is up to date. My swap was done 5 years ago so have had 10 WOFs since and never had any issues either but it does feel good to have the car ‘legal’ now and not have that WOF anxiety like I have in the past. Good luck, car looks great!

The news this morning has had me looking at frugal diesels for longer trips. I have access to a Smart Fortwo for around town activities which it handles superbly. However, on the open road you do feel a bit vulnerable in a Smart car, especially with the quality bumpy roads which make it hop and shift around the road like a grass hopper. Wish I had bought the manual 320D touring that was for sale a few weeks ago! Can't seem to find many decent modern(ish) manual diesels for under $7K. Have noticed the price of hybrids and electric cars going up too. I remember when BMW i3s could be had for under $30K. Now the cheapest is a little over $30K... I'm about to buy a battery charger because I can see my 540i getting minimal use this year. Last year it wouldn't sit for more than two weeks ever, and was usually driven a couple times a week (as it is stored away in a garage away from my house so I would swap cars and keep it for the weekend). I did over 5000km in it which I thought was pretty solid considering the lockdowns and what not. I also wonder what ramifications of the petrol prices will be seen in the car market. My guess is that really desirable and rare stuff (i.e manual 911s, e39 M5s etc) will remain at their current prices or continue to appreciate, but more common stuff like W204 C63s which had been regularly seen doing daily duties in the past, will soon flood the market as people can't afford to run them, and don't see the value in having them as a weekend toy. I think people may also think twice about buying a weekend car as they struggle to pay for fuel in their daily drivers. Although on that vein of thought; desirable weekend toys like M3s etc. may become more desirable as more people switch to super mundane daily drivers like Leafs etc and subsequently crave a really special and engaging machine for the weekends. In which case your average daily driver that isn't particularly fuel efficient will potentially be worthless. Only time will tell though! Without getting too political it doesn't take a genius to understand that minimum wage rising is just going to boost inflation further. Costs of production will increase for firms that are already on their knees, and of course that extra cost will be largely passed onto the consumer. It does not take a genius to interpret that minimum wage rising is going to hurt low income earners more than benefit them! I would not be surprised if we have protests very soon pertaining to the cost of necessities because it genuinely is out of control. Let's just say I'm counting down the days until the next election.

The cost of fuel at the pump has increased dramatically over the last few months. There was the usual big money-grabbing increase before Christmas, sustained through New Year, and a slight drop in early January. Since then though, it's been an inexorable increase. 1c/litre a day looked to be an average at one point. Lots of the usual noise about how bad the NZ govt is at managing this, and the tax they're taking. Yes - it's a significant contributor, but if the fuel companies didn't increase price, the govt percentage wouldn't compound the problem. I've said elsewhere that a cap on govt taxation would be a way that the public can be helped. Take a time and price - let's say $2.50 per litre - and once the price of fuel reaches that, the government doesn't take any further tax. However, that doesn't address any transparency issues that the public may have regarding what the oil companies are making vs govt taxation. A better way would be a fixed amount. Without going through all the tax take calculations, let's say the govt takes $1.50 tax on a litre of fuel. A huge amount of money to be sure, but we could expect the govt to be able to say that 30c is spent on x, 27c on y, 2.6c goes towards wrestling mats for one-legged black lesbian mothers of three or more children, 40c goes towards... whatever. Fix that figure. Any change in fuel price is purely and simply at the behest of the oil companies, and is clearly calculable and obvious. It's also far, far simpler for the govt, the filling stations, and so on. It can 'hide' any cents/dollars per barrel taxation, but the public won't care about that. They'd have a clear view of the tax take. Refineries... Lots of fuss and blame being laid at the govt feet for the closure of Marsden Point, a privately owned entity. All the fuss about that, and the offshore barges - all private owned/used. No govt involvement. Should there be? Maybe. Australia is nearly 30x the size of NZ, and has 4 refineries for the entire country. From an Oz standpoint, an area the size of NZ doesn't warrant consideration, and certainly not it's own refinery. Finally... Profit. Oil companies are raising prices at a time when they are making ever-increasing profits. Oil companies are also taking subsidies from governmental institutions... And they're not paying a 'reasonable' amount of tax on the profits they are making - lots of offshore obfuscation around ownership and finance. Clever move by the petrol stations. Announce a price increase, empty the filling station tanks so they can fill right up while they can still get fuel relatively cheaply, and then hike the price up to what the new barrel cost is. There's a LOT going on in this area. A lot of behind-the-scenes long-term planning, all the way down to individual and corporate profiteering with taxation somewhere in the middle. It's incredibly complex.

The 1.5l toyota that sips 91 will be seeing far more km on the odo...