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Time to reinstall the interior stuff. I was able to retain most of the dashboard innards (including the HVAC system) during the cage build, so this wasn't really that hard. Cut out a template to fit the dashboard pad around the rollcage, measure it again, use the template to cut the edges of the actual dashboard and slide into place. Well that was the theory, but despite measuring twice, once I installed the dashboard pad I found I had cut out far more than necessary to fit the cage. Turns out I measured from the windscreen without realising the dashboard actually finishes 4-5cm before it. The good news is that it fit straight in, the bad news is that there's an ugly gap in the da shboard on both sides. Such is life; I've kept the parts that were cut off and will look at a way of fitting them in a way that can be removed if/when I ever need to remove the dashboard again. I mentioned that I was keeping the HVAC system in the dashboard. Yes it's added weight, but as mentioned previously I'm both heavy and lazy, so removing it and putting in something lighter was never really on my radar. Besides, how would I get the A/C air into the car... yes, this rally car is going to have A/C! I've done too many events on stinking hot summer days to want to get into a hot car wearing double-layer overalls and helmet, and too many cold, wet events in the winter with fogging that the demister and Rainex just can't handle. So given this is just a play car and I'm not serious about results the A/C is staying. The basic dashboard pad fit in easily enough after the cutting dramas, along with the rest of the electronic components (instruments, HVAC controls etc). There was a large hole where the iDrive display was previously and I was tempted to take a trip to Pick-a-Part to look for a base E87 with the storage cubby in that spot but, being cheap, decided to just remove the screen and reinstall the empty plastic surround as a tray. Aside from having a hole in each end it actually works well for holding oddments and is the perfect size for the bluetooth workshop speaker, which will now be the dedicated "rally in-car touring stage entertainment system". Wanting to keep things neat and tidy I needed to fill up the hole under the HVAC controls left by the stereo and heat warmer controls being removed. After a bit of pondering and discussion with various people I went with cutting out some polycarbonate as blanking plates and gluing it onto the original fascia panel, then covering it with a carbon-fibre looking vinyl. For an amateur with no craft skills it came out remarkable okay - just don't look at how messy the hot glue holding it in place is (it's hidden). And once installed, along with a few other pieces of trim, it looked pretty darned good. I also went with putting vinyl on other parts of the dashboard trim to make it look consistent. Eventually this will have things like spotlight switches and the battery isolator switch mounted to it. The steering wheel caused a few headaches, thanks to me making assumptions and not measuring anything. While I was pulling the car apart I ordered a bunch of parts from Demon Tweeks, including a steering wheel and boss kit for fitting it. Of course I didn't consider that the steering wheel had a dish to it; I was planning on keeping the standard steering column which has reach adjustment, so of course I could just push the wheel closer to the dashboard, right? Oh, and because I have stupidly long legs I also bought a quick-release steering kit from Allports. The end result? The boss kit added 60mm of depth and the steering wheel dish was 70mm, added to which was the depth of the boss kit. I installed everything, hopped in and found that the driving position was very similar to that my Nana used to use. Or a NASCAR driver on an oval. Which is to say that it was all far too close to me to be driveable. So I removed the quick release and installed just the wheel and found that, while not perfect, the wheel was now far enough away that I could comfortably drive the car. But I couldn't get in or out properly. So in the end I threw money at the problem and bought a second steering wheel with no dish to it and installed that along with the quick release. Lesson learnt. Finally, I wanted to have some additional instrumentation for the engine - in particular the water temp and (ideally) oil pressure. And because the motor is much more powerful than anything I've driven before (and it's often hard to hear when on the gravel) I decided that a shift light would be worthwhile having too. Buying gauges for each task would be the easy option but would require work to wire into the car and mount, plus would end up being a few hundred dollars all-up for anything of decent quality. But what if I could find something digital to do it all? After a few hours of research I decided to take a punt on an Lufi X1 digital gauge from Ali Express. With shipping it came in at less than $150 so, at worst, it was the equivalent of one decent water temp gauge wasted. Here's how it looks temporarily mounted in the car for a bit of testing before I started stripping everything out of it: A few pros and cons: It connects to the car via OBD2, so is easy enough to install that even I can manage it! It can have multiple screens, each one user-definable. I've just stuck with one with the water temp and voltage, along with revs It has a whole lot of other display items I could add if needed, some of which may be useful if I had a turbo setup. Some of these (intake temperature/pressure etc) I've configured on a second screen but probably won't look at all that often. It doesn't do oil pressure or temperature, because the OBD2 feed on the 130i doesn't include it (which is strange since there is an oil pressure gauge on the instrument cluster) It has programmable shift lights across the top, but in reality it's not that easy to see them when I'm concentrating on the road ahead rather than looking at the dashboard It has programmable alarms, which trigger a separate idiot light. I've set this up with alarms for when water temp goes over a certain point (which sounds an alarm and lights the idiot light permanently) and as a secondary shift light (sounds an alarm and lights up 500rpm from the red line, so I have time to react and grab another gear). From doing some basic testing of it on the road (before stripping out the interior) it seems to work well. The idiot light is mounted on top of the instrument cluster and seems to be visible enough to get my attention, and the main unit is pretty responsive in keeping up with things like changes in the revs. Overall I'm pretty happy with it so far, albeit reserving final judgement on it until I've tried it actually racing. And finally, here's my nearly-finished "office". The Lufi (and the magnetic phone mount, for touring stages) are screwed onto the dashboard for extra safety and I've added some grip tape (same as used on outdoor steps) in front of the pedals to stop the feet from sliding around, rather than spending money on a proper foot plate. Next job up is the suspension. Most of it is sitting waiting to be installed but until I get the windscreen fitted and the seatbelt mounts installed the car isn't going anywhere, so that's going to be a few weeks away yet.

So I've become a bit tired of my 5x regular gauges and I'd like to display a wider range of data (A/F ratios per cylinder bank, maybe speed / rpm, some performance stats etc). Also want to get the space in the console back so I can install a proper Android Auto head unit or similar. As I've already got a micro controller in the car hooking into the BMW and Nissan CAN buses its only a short(ish) jump to displaying things of interest on a screen. I came across Waveshare who make a really amazing range of screens and ordered the 7.9" 1280x400 capacitive touch model. Its about the size of a single DIN unit which should work really well ... will drive this with a Raspberry Pi mounted to the back of it. Will run Grafana on the Pi and stream data to it from the micro ... which I will change from an Arduino to much more capable ESP32 also. Anyhooooo ... a picture is worth a thousand words so here is the display and a simple mock up dash running off the Pi.

2002Tii_M10_8v_9000rpm.mp4

Spotted this yesterday. Never seen one in person before. Cool looking thing

Hi all Very pleased to find a NZ Bimmer community. I just purchased my first NZ Bimmer, a 2017 F30 340i M-Sport, after driving my Nissan Skyline 350GT Manual for about ten years. I previously owned a 1989 325i which I loved dearly, then a 1998 523i, then a 2001 530d and now, finally, my now-dream-car. I'm also originally from South Africa, and have lived here for 12+ years, now a Kiwi citizen. Very keen to peel back the layers on this car soon and get some more of the unexposed power brought to the surface. Hope to see you all out there. Riaan

I've been around the rally scene for a few years, both as a competitor and am organiser. I started competing at age 12 in my father's Mk1 Escort, eventually progressed to an AE92 Corolla FXGT and won the local club championship as well as doing a few club rallys, and then did the usual mid-late 20's thing of getting married, having kids etc. So motorsport took a back seat for a while. Now that the kids are a bit older and the mortgage is under control I decided it was time to get back into doing some competing. Or perhaps it's just a mid-life crisis thing. For me motorsport is about having fun driving the car fast. Some people are out there trying to be as competitive as possible and winning at all costs. That's not me. Heck, on one gravel rally I was lifting off on the straights (doing 160km/h) because that was more than fast enough for my tastes! And when I did go after the club championship I didn't enjoy the racing because I put too much pressure on myself to get a good result. So coming back into the sport I want to build something that is fast enough not to get boring, slow enough I'm not going to scare myself silly, is reliable and, most importantly, goes sideways. Because going straight is boring and sideways is much more fun! After looking at what existing competition cars were out there that met my requirements (not many) and were within my budget (even fewer) I decided to go the route of building my own. I'm not a very good mechanic, so building a rally car from scratch means I'll be leaning on lots of my car club friends to assist with the trickier stuff. And I don't have an unlimited budget so this is going to be a case of spending money where it's going to be worthwhile (eg: good suspension) and forgetting about things that won't materially add to the enjoyment factor (eg: adding carbon-fibre roof scoops). The candidate vehicle I identified? An E87 130i - with 260bhp without making any modifications to the engine and rear wheel drive, plus ample parts availability for the inevitable meetings with banks and fences, I decided this was the best route to take. Here's the car I bought, in full lowered, boy-racer spec: The rough plan for the build is: Safety gear - rollcage, seats, belts etc Suspension - something strong that will handle rough rally roads without requiring repairs after every event Brakes - work out what can work with 15" wheels without having to replace the entire setup with a pedal box etc. And of course a bias valve to get some braking onto the rear. Diff - you can't go sideways properly without a LSD! (not without welding it anyway, which isn't the plan) Other - sump guard, under-body protection etc. And all the electronic nannies need to be exorcised from the car. Bureaucratic stuff - it's going to need both a MSNZ Authority Card and a LVVTA Low Volume Cert. The latter is always fun to sort out... As of starting this thread I'm already part way through the build, so I'll add posts over the next few days with what's been done so far. Thanks to family stuff the build isn't going particularly quickly but the car should be in a state to at least get out of the garage sometime before winter - I hope!

These guys https://www.brintechcustoms.com.au/all-products/n52-headers

Spareto.com will be way cheaper id bet. Fastest and cheapest place ive found these days by a good margin.

@pranilb 100% get the TRW ones, they're not "equivalent" they're the same thing, mine just came with the BMW logos filed off, for 30% of the cost. Edit: Ninja'd by Chris, and I agree with his sentiments about the rear, they don't do anything for the geometry but the do deflect (bend) differently and have better bushings, I'm not sure if they're any lighter actually as they have a lot more material than the non-M ones.

Thats the front end, the rears are likely TRW as well, but no idea on p/n. Not many change the rears as they are the same dimensionally as stock, just a bit lighter.

Hey Smithy, Havent been on here in a while but what a nice surprise you are now the proud owner of a mini! I love them and Ive owned plenty whilst in NZ. The N14 is not as horrible as everyone makes it out to be (if you are a car guy and a BMW fan you are already familiar with oil leaks and the like) Most notorious is the timing chain issue but its really just because these engines love to burn through engine oil and negligent owners run the engine dry so make sure to keep it topped up or change it every 8000km (still check in between - it should be 4L). Ive bought one before and drained the oil to find only 1.5L of engine oil come out lol.. after new oil the car ran perfect and no issues. Walnut blast and oil catch can are both good things to do! Good tyres will make a huge difference to grip and handling and then look at suspension bushes because most likely they are no good. Enjoy!! p.s. wheres the photos?

@SmithyInWelly - completely forgot you have done the 3l beemer - doh! Enjoy your new purrchase and hope to catch up again at one of the local events sometime

Oh I didn't look. Will check when I jump in next.

I am now the proud owner of an '08 R56... with an N14 😜 But in it's defence - it's Kiwi new, with very very very low kms and a good service/ownership history. Now to get it serviced; get some decent rubber on it, probably a walnut blast and an oil catch catch can, and do something about the horrendous factory audio with a 3.5mm aux in that makes music played via my iPhone sound like it's being listened to under water. But bluddy hell, it ain't half fun to drive! And yes Greg - I was originally thinking along the lines of a 130; but I've done the 3ltr Beemer thing (330i the M135i) and wanting three pedals pushed the price up beyond what I wanted to spend, not to mention there being bugger all on the market at the moment.

Wow an unwarrantable car due to rust issues for 18K - what a bargain!

Hmm... https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/3987284341?utm_source=tmm-savedsearch&utm_medium=email&bof=92CaS1YU

Chucked cruise control in mine tonight. Easy job. About 45mins and a button flick with bimmergeeks. Works well.

and some more Skope Classic Beemers that original looking 3.0 CSL is a wee honey

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

10,000km\1 year is a good compromise for most driving assuming a good quality oil I dont what your suburban roads are like, but city driving is typically worse for engine wear as you are doing more idling\engine run time, start\stopping, low rpm driving etc. Modern diesels tend to suffer carbon build up issues from people doing this and not enough highway\higher rpm driving to help keep it clean. 80,000-100,000km is a good time to change the transmission fluid. Seems to be what manufacture ZF recommends as well 100,000km\8 years.

I had this discussion with them, they are adamant the service intervals are fine, but I’m aiming for 12 month intervals with them, at the reduced cost, why not? Talk to The Gearbox Factory or similar about the trans.

Still havent had a chance to try fit them yet, reports are varied if they actually fit... I keep having to do this "work" thing, and its getting tedious. If you want something that definitely fits, the aussie option works and has proven significant gains, its just not cheap.

Thought I would make a thread to display some of the more interesting flooded cars that have/will be coming through the insurance auctions over the next few weeks. Pretty devastating how badly some of them got flooded. NZ New, Z4 Coupe: GTE Mk7 Golf: