martyyn

He is apparantly the nuts when it comes to fixing alloys, but he is a total slack ar$e when it comes to customer service. I tried several times to get him to sort out my alloys but he failed to return phone calls and never replied to my letters. I even drove up to see him as I was told he was that good, but he was still un-interested in the work (redoing all four of my 18' M-Pars) and again failed to send me the invoice I needed to have the insurance company approve the work. Four hour round trip wasted because he couldnt be bothered For the Wellington guys I was talking to the boss at Taraniki Street Tyres the other week and he can do all this sort of stuff now (even 18's) and will give a BMWCC discount too. Cheers Martyn

Hmmmm my experience of this was vastly different.The company I worked for in England decided it was better to make everyone in a 200 person strong finance company redundant and move to Ireland. The IT section alone was 45 people. They advertised extensively for programmers, DBA, BA's, Unix people, web people, the whole shebang.......they got one applicant who was straight out of polytech with no commercial experience whatsoever. It may be cheap for the companies and they may get massive tax breaks etc but in IT there is a massive shortage of skilled people. A major issue in that is the cost of living in Dublin. It compares with London these days and the salaries are around half of what you can earn in London. Its wound up costing them a fortune because they now have to outsource everything back to the UK and have even re-employed some of those they got rid of and fly them to Ireland and back each week. This was not some poxy two-bit outfit either. It was a massive worldwide financial organisation taking care of the leased and financing customers of Dell computers worldwide. Just one example obviously, but an example of where Irelands policies may look good in the short term, but under the surface its not as rosy as people might think. Cheers Martyn

Yep filled up both the 740 and the Subaru gt-b wagon the other day, was 161 dollars for the two of them :drugs:

Didnt have to replace any of it. I went to a place in Petone and they took care of everything. The striped the interior and treated the lot, it took them three days ! With the 15'cross spokes it was all over the road, especially with the ASC switched off. With the Aplina's it stuck like glue :mosh: Ive never had so many people try and drag me off before. In the first week I had the car I even had a 4x4 giving it some at the lights when it pulled up next to me. Straight line speed was no problem, but cornering in the 15's was terrible. It all changed with the Alpinas, have 265 on the rear made all the difference. All the power was put to the floor and the cornering was sensational with the suspension set to sport. Oh man at 4k revs the V12 just sings. The V8 is a great sound, but it is no comparison to the V12.

I just posted a link in the Rides section mate.Cheers Martyn

Finally got a bit of time to sort this out. I suggest if you want to stick photos of your car up on the web to check out cardomain.com Its dead easy and you can save the bandwidth on here ! CarDomain Pictures

I can resist no longer ! Since Ive been over here my 740 has averaged 16.9 mpg (14.3 l/km). I can easily have that down to 13mpg (18.6 l/km) if I only use the steptronic to give it a good hiding, but if Im cruising then I can get around 25 mpg (9.7 l/km). My 750 was averaged 13.6 mpg (17.85 l/km) over 2 years and the best I had on a run was 20mpg (12 l/km) Cheers Martyn

I would have another 750iL without blinking an eye. For every horror story you read about, there are dozens of people driving them with no problems. They are actually easier to work on than the V8's because they are simply two engines bolted together. Although you do have to take half teh car apart to replace anything as there is not a lot of room under the bonnet ! Ive seen them in NZ go from anything between 10k - 20k. There is no way I would pay 20k for one though. If they have had the oil changed regularly you can expect at least 400k kms without too many problems. Something to consider though is the rear LAD. If there is any oil leaking at the rear, just walk away. You can replace the self levelling suspension with standard units, but in the end you pay the same price because you have to take care of all the pipework ferrying the fluid everywhere and it is expensive. They are sensational cars for not a lot of money. When you think of the options they had and remember they are 15 years old its incredible. I have pictures of mine somewhere if you want to see them. In fact as Im off work this week I think Ill sort out my cardomain site and stick them on there ! Cheers Martyn

I wouldve thought the plate on the 528 was worth something to an MG owner.Can you sell plates like that ? My first car was a mazda 808 with the plate GT 67. I found out the other day that it had appeared on a 1967 Mustang in the earliy 90's Cheers Martyn

But the thing is though that BMW are doing exactly that themselves. They cant shift the 318's to save their lives and they have been (for some time now) selling them with the full M treatment.Seats, skirts, wheels and an M badge on the boot. Someone at work bought one and everyone was all ga-ga over it until I pointed out it was only a 318. The pipecleaner sized exhaust was the dead give away. They all thought I was jealous !

Boat....barge....I prefer to think of it as total luxury The e32 750iL was supposed to come in at around 1900kgs with the cross spokes on it (I think you call these basket weaves). I had the 17' Alpinas so that would add more than a couple of kgs extra. Those things were huge :mosh: The e38 740 is supposed to come in at around 1940kgs if I remember correctly. I was surprised as the 750iL has an awful lot more toys to play with and its considerably longer aswell. I imagine the 18' Mpars would make a difference to the standard weight aswell.

Looks quality Bravo, well done mate.

BOAT !Thats harsh As for stability, I had one arm of the center rest, one finger on the steering wheel and was chatting away to my wife quite happily whilst doing 135 mph in the 750iL. It wasnt even trying. But once I realised I could get quite used to the 'cruising' speed I remembered what it meant for the police to be caught at nearly twice the legal limit ! Its quite amazing the difference a decent amount of weight makes. How much do you boys come in at anyway ? I may have 289bhp but with almost 2 tonne to pull around Im not going to be winning any 0-60 times !

Im not even going to join this conversation.

Welcome to my world My 750iL had the long range tank, 105 litres, now that was some serious money to fill !

Are we going to draw the line at standard Bimmer's though ?I dont know if we should be allowing any 'hybrids' I wouldnt mind seeing if I can hit the 155mph limit on mine...Ive done 135 but ran out of road rather quickly at that point :drugs:

Do you pull your own teeth or go to a dentist ?Do you cut your own hair or go to a barber ? Do you sort out your own financial matters or do you go to a financial advisor ? Do you fit all your own parts or do you go to a garage ? If you have trouble with the law you get a lawyer. Stop making stupid comments about it being a closed shop that you have no control over. If you dont like someone else taking care of business for you then spend a small fortune in time and money and get yourself a law degree and do it yourself. Perhaps you need to spend more time in the real world and less time reading the odd book or contemplating the gladiatorial aspects of the modern world.

I went to the guys in Porirua and although I was impressed with the service and the finish I was not impressed with the fact that the colour they have put on the front is more green than the blue colour I have on the rest of the windows.I knew they wouldnt get an exact match but I cant believe they couldnt get a better match than they did. I intend to get them all redone at some stage but Im not sure I wold go back there unless I could see what they would use and I was happy with the colour. I paid 120 dollars for the two fronts, but they said for the whole car it would be more like 400-450 as they would have to take the old ones off which wasnt difficult it would just add to the overall time. Everyone I spoke to in Wellington recommended them so they must be doing something right. Just cant remember their name

What may also be of interest is that in Europe plates are read by cameras and not by people which is what they still do here.This means that in Europe there is almost a 0% chance that the offender will get away from a ticket because the plate cant be read compared to the 20% of plates in NZ that cant be read by a person with a magnifying glass. Ive seen an MG around Wellington with an Irish euro plate and have certainly looked into getting some euro ones for myself off the web. The thing is as Personalised Plates get more and more flags and dealer stickers on them as options the less 'exclusive' they make them and the more likely you are to get away with having a slightly different font. Andrew, Id love to see a picture of your plates, just to compare the fonts. Cheers Martyn

Ebay in the UK has a rule where if someone bids an amount that they are willing to go up and that amount is the reserve, then no matter what the bid increments are that bid goes on the auction.So in this case, the previous bid was 4k, if the new guy says he will bid 5k and 5k is the reserve, his bid goes in at that. Then at the end of the auction if his is still the top bid the amount to pay goes back down to the 4k plus the next bid increment and the buyer and seller can negotiate from there. Very confusing and it catches alot of people out. I just wish I had the money and the space. As someone has already said that car in parts is worth at least 10k. I wonder if the seller really understands quite what he has. 5k for an Alpina B12 is criminal whether its going or not. I would put an educated guess on the fix being something pretty simple. How much it would cost to fix in NZ is anyones guess. Cheers Martyn

Have you tried having the headlights on at the same time. Some fogs dont come on until you have the lights on.Otherwise start with the usual suspects, fuses, bulbs etc. Its always a process of elimination this one. Cheers Martyn

What series of NYPD Blue did you steal all this from ? Its so laughable I nearly fell off my chair.

Damn Sic, Im getting to like you more and more every day Seriously though, the mans right. There will always be people spouting off all kinds of things, but if your pulled over, just knowing your basic rights and being polite will work wonders. I know a couple of police officers who are all good people (slightly twisted maybe - but good people) and my wife is a lawyer. So Ive heard so many stories that people have made up trying to get off of things its not funny. Dont make yourself look any more stupid than you need to. Cheers Martyn

:bowdown:

Mate, i love your hot crx.. sfhrn.---- Cage, I had a pair of shoes sent from the UK for ten pounds. Would expect the packages to be roughly similar in size, if your thinking of sending your 'bear' thing. Setting up an ebay account is free (you dont have to put 10 bucks in to be an authenticated member - what a rip off that is). If you do buy from ebay, check the postage rates very carefully and always make sure you have it in an email from the seller how much they will charge you for postage. Its the biggest scam on ebay to sell something for 5 quid and charge 15 to send it. Cheers Martyn