Karter16

Haha I was waiting for someone to say this :-) Yeah I said what I said knowing that it doesn't hold true for all his points. It was more directed at the comments around the likes of the S54's rod bearings, etc. I was just making the point that a performance engine means more maintenance. As you say there's also examples of poor engineering and cost cutting. (and also marketing al la "lifetime fluids" etc.). So while I agree that BMW have had their share of issues, I'm not sure that I'd go as far as saying "BMW Engines Are Gigantic Pieces Of Sh*t". I guess it does come back to the spectrum. In my case I have the performance of the S54, and the high maintenance costs to go with it, which I'm happy to pay for the performance I get. If I'd bought an N42 equipped car expecting something at the Toyota end of the spectrum, and I ended up paying maintenance costs in line with an S54 then I'd be pretty hacked off. TL;DR - totally get where you're coming from.

So on 1 end of the spectrum you have a Toyota Hilux, which as Top Gear "proved" a while back you can pretty much blow up and it'll still run. And on the other end of the spectrum you have a Formula 1 car which needs an engine rebuild every race (or more frequently sometimes). There's also a performance difference between the Hilux and the F1 car..... Basically you choose where you sit on that spectrum. Once you've chosen where you sit, you need to make sure that you perform the maintenance necessary for your chosen location on said spectrum. If you don't you're going to have a bad time.

E46 318i (my first car) Pros Economical. Great handling. Cons 0 - 100: yes. Sadly not worth spending money on to maintain. E46 M3 Pros Everything the 318i is and everything the 318i is lacking. Many fast. Much performance. Best car ever. Cons Subframe needs much love. Vanos needs much love. Rod bearings need much love. It would be more economical to buy petrol and set fire to it in a pit. Much performance = much maintenance costs. Will suck all of your money because you love it so much. (this is also a "pro"). Basically the E46 on the face of it has a whole bunch of cons, but that's what makes you love it so much. It's the most E46 an E46 can be. Handling is amazing. Driving experience is amazing. If it was just a standard performance car it would be boring. It's right on the edge of engineering and design and that's what makes it fun.

What would make me happy is if kiwiplates let you design your own side panels for their Euro plates. I'd happily pay $369 to get euro plates with my own graphics in the side panels. I just don't like their standard options...

Welcome!! Love the E34 - looks great in white. What other BMW’s have you owned?

Welcome Brian - nice car! Do you have any plans for it at this point. Anything you're wanting to do to it?

Picked these up recently to add to the collection :-)

Pretty sure it's the engine number. (same number that's stamped on the block (usually near one of the mounts I think)). I'm guessing it's so that you can easily locate the engine number, and also ensure that your engine is matched to your chassis?

One of these is not like the other...

Spending nearly 2 hours waiting for Windows 10 to update to the Fall Creators Update...

now that would be a cool custom build!

One of the reasons I'm going to so much effort to keep mine stock

Haha - we got pretty close to making the same mistake The welded spacers on the front brace look nice - good work!

Thanks - yeah I've been keeping an eye on eBay, trademe, etc. thought I'd check in here as well in case anyone local has anything. Cheers! Matt

you could try: https://learn-german-easily.com Sorry - couldn't resist. The advice above is probably much more helpful! Good luck - hope you get it sorted!

I'll post up photos here when I change it :-)

Something a bit simpler - this arrived in the mail today. Since my car didn't come with it's manual and service book, etc. As part of my restoration efforts I've purchased new ones to go with it. This original item is in awesome condition in spite of being second hand. Very pleased with it. I've put 1200km on the car since the rod bearings were done. Will be doing about another 800km and will do an oil and filter change. Will then be on to regular OCIs.

Hi, Probably a long shot so many years later, but interested in any E46 M3 sales brochures & other original printed information for circa 2005 E46 M3 coupe (including SMG). Cheers, Karter16

Wow! Looking awesome Nathan!! Great work and loving how clean everything is So glad you've got a build journal now and I can follow along!!! Keep up the great work!!

Well I've gone through the thread and changed all the images across to Flickr - here's hoping Flickr don't change their TOU any time soon!!!

Yeah spot on - apparently photobucket are now charging some obscene amount to host pictures, which I'm obviously not going to pay. So I now have to transfer to another host...

Update #20 So the car went back in again yesterday - Alignment on the rear closer to spec, so will let the car settle over the next couple of thousand k and do another alignment then. The car also now has it's WOF We've got to put a couple of the plastic undertray components back on, and replace the temporary zip ties on the steering boots with proper clamps, and then this round of work on the car is officially complete. Have done about 100km on the car in the last couple of days - all in Auckland traffic but good to be back in the car and running in the bearings. So stoked with how everything has gone, and now that the major maintenance work is done I can start thinking about what comes next

Yeah I've read that, and it's interesting to hear that that's always been your experience as well. It certainly makes sense given these cars were designed as left hand drive cars. It does seem a bit odd though that the rear-right camber can't be brought into "factory" spec though right? It's a bit hard of course in that I don't know if the car was out of spec before we started. In hind-sight it would have been good to get that checked before we started. At this point I'm thinking its just worth letting everything settle for a bit and then check again. Would be interested in your thoughts :-) Cheers, Matt

Update #19 So the car went in for it's WOF last Monday. Failed on the handbrake, but everything else was Alignment went fine, they noted that the rear left was sitting slightly higher than the rear right, and as a result they couldn't quite get the camber on the rear-right within spec (it's only out by a very small amount). They also did the driver's airbag recall at the same time. After the wheel alignment, as I expected the dash lights all went away. The codes I was seeing were all related to the steering angle sensor not being within calibration. Once the alignment was sorted the dash lights cleared themselves, and scanning the car shows that the codes are now historical. Today we sorted the handbrake adjustment and checked the rear to make sure there was nothing obvious. It's all looking as it should, so the plan is to drive the car for a while and let it settle in, and see if the rear comes back into adjustable range or not. If not then it'll be a bit of work to measure everything up and work out what's causing the issue. Haven't done many miles in the car given it doesn't have a WOF, but what I have done has been The improvements from the new bushes and shocks, etc. have been much more noticeable than I was expecting. I wasn't anticipating such an obvious improvement. Driving over rough bits in roads is much quieter and less of a "crash" than it was before, and because of that interior rattles and squeaks are correspondingly much less. I haven't had a chance to drive the car "spiritedly" and won't be while the rod bearings are running in, but I'm looking forward to when I do, to see if I can feel the difference then as well. The car's going in this week for the WOF re-check and once that's done I'll put some "run in" miles on it. Planning to do another oil change at about 1800km, just to clear out any dirt that might have entered the engine when we had the oil pan off. Anyway - nice to get a bit of a feel of what the car was like when it was new :-)

Thank you! very helpful information - much appreciated! :-)