Allanw

E53 X5's are only 5 seaters anyway... 7 seat Touran with some go is in the making now, no going back!

D'Oh! Good on the honesty front though - I wouldn't have told everyone, but you might save someone else doing it

I wasn't going to go retard-low... hoping for sensible-low: no form over function!

Brilliant! She's a clever Girl! I hope you have your firearms licence. Boys are VERY careful after hearing the sound of a pump-action just before the door creaks open to reveal the father standing there with both hands on the firearm, aimed at the floor between the two of them..... I have 3 boys, so I don't get to do it Shhh... it's just a VW really Some of the Porsche boys get REALLLLLLLY upset if you mention how many of the parts interchange with VWs... including the Beetle

I've not seen one in real life, but I like a low-ish X5 - I always wondered how they'd handle, and how low you could safely go..... I guess there is a right way, and a wrong way, and the Kiwi way is usually the wrong way! It was a tossup between building a low-ish V8 X5 2WD manual, and something VW Touran based... Touran won!

If you're crossing the centreline without overtaking or turning, it's an easy one I agree the licensing system should be harder! There should be a certain % of the population who aren't capable of passing the tests, and the testing standards should be altered to reflect that (continuously). I think 75% would be a good number

If you have something old that's been looked after you'll be fine. Every car can have it's issues, and sometimes a little more on older ones... though being more simple, they're sometimes easier to limp home or fix on the roadside. We've got a 1929 Ford Model A, and it's not been restored, but looked after. It wasn't used as a "machine" all it's life, so has survived relatively unscathed - not like the ones used as Tractors on the farm 86 years is a pretty good run! It's still in better condition than most cars on the road are!

Ahhh... that's you... apparently you read too many forums too

That sounds JUST like a car maintained by a normal kiwi owner.

realistically, ANY E39 you buy needs suspension - they're either poked, or have just been done! Most Kiwis (who we know SUCK at looking after cars) will have just replaced the odd part here and there, and left the other part owrn bits to wear the new bits faster. A complete rebuild really tightens them up. The suspension eats itself faster that the cooling system melts!

no... that's like saying your 750i is the same as a chery - does the same basic thing... Mallowpuffs and Kit kats are like you took the tunnocks stuff, and processed the hell out of it, then smeared it with marmite before eating. Seriously.

clearlight.co.nz cut/polish and recoat them - was quoted about 180. I assume that's what novus does for that kind of money??? prefacelift lenses are available cheap, especially on ebay, but some have heaps of hideous looking writing (dot markings etc) on the front face. Facelift are harder, because the lenses are very expensive separatly, and can be impossible to get the old ones off. Brand new halogens are cheap - the first set I got from Hello nz for $700 and something a pair. I then got a genuine xenon retrofit kit from europe for about $900 landed.

England just phoned - they said "Pack up, Piss off! YOU'RE FIRED!" Three best products to come out of England, EVER: Tunnocks Tea Cakes: Tunnocks Caramel Wafer: and my Falcon Oven (it's not rusty, doesn't leak oil, and it's only had one electrical problem, that only cost $20 to fix!)

Just watch their shipping! One order from them was going to be US$300... ended up being US$65 elsewhere for the exact same order! I just ordered a bunch of VW stuff from a US DEALER, because it was US$250 CHEAPER, shipped! The US Dealer prices were just under 50% of the NZ dealer trade prices I got, even with shipping included, and GST upon arrival.

People tend to drive where they look - bizarre how often you see a dead straight bit of road, with only 1 tree to hit, and it's had a car wrapped around it - they look at it thinking "MISS THE TREE" but end up aiming themselves at it..... It's like drivers who look where they want to go, but ignore where their car actually has to go to get there... wander across roundabout lanes, hit kerbs, cut people off etc, but don't even realise it. There's a guy at work like that... I don't go anywhere with him!

Not sure if those trees up the road have recovered from your excursion into the bushes yet I've personally driven over 400,000kms on Northland roads in work cars alone, 2 accidents: 1 "foreign" driver failed to stop at a roundabout and hit the left rear of my car as I exited the roundabout. No injuries, $5500 damage to my car, 5 weeks without it, his written off. 1 "local" driver, on my side of the road (skid marks started 1m out from the apex ON MY SIDE), on a VERY remote gravel road, offset head on in my van. I stopped with my tyres in the mud on the left side almost against the bank, she is a retard. Had to drive 20 minutes to a phone. No injuries, $8500 damage to my car, 4 weeks without it, her's was a RAV-4, so I was glad it died a horrible death! Bonus I honk at ANYONE over my side of the centreline AND have it on camera. Has happened more than once to a cop car too!

P.S. Tunnocks!

Just finished some a few weeks back, that came into NZ with a hippy-chick friend. Dunno if she declared it> I suspect so! Also got piles of tunnocks <<< FAR more important! FYI: while you may have a longing for english marmite, is really does taste like they forgot to put the flavouring in it and I can only assume it thickens to a usable consistancy in the english "weather" Tunnocks... don't forget the Tunnocks.

Doesn't everyone? Have you SEEN the people they give licences to???

does on Windows 7 You need an adapter for anything pre-OBD2, and I don't know what functionality it has. It does quite a bit on our E39.

Yu'll be allowed to park in FRONT of your shop now

or BMW Scanner 1.4 from xcar360.com for about NZ$40 shipped. BMW specific, and can be used to change some stuff :-)

Keen on swaps for a jetski?????

E39 wipers are great! I get sick, sitting in little Jap car passenger seat with one eye looking out the cleared windscreen and one eye out the wet bit - some of them are REALLY bad! E39 is clear for both eyes, regardless of the side I sit on! Our VW Touran is even better - BOTH wiper pivot on the outside, so the wet triangle is behind the rear view mirror!

I like the little places! I use a local place - Ubernet. I once had a problem with our internet, and it WAS a fault on my network. They offered to come out and change the settings for me, when they set up the voip phone I was ordering. I had another problem with dropped connections, and they phoned ME and told me I had an issue with my antenna, and someone would pop out if the time was OK and replace it - I hadn't gotten around to calling them yet! Then last weekend, we had a fault where the Voip phone worked, but the internet wouldn't. Sorted on the phone, with a guy who KNEW what he was doing, in about 10 minutes - turned out to be a cable fault at my end too! The cable I tested it with was faulty too, which confused us for a few minutes too. Sure I only get 10 mbps, but it's always the speed I pay for (their slowest option) or faster, and I don't use any Telecom/spark stuff - my house isn't connected to the phone netowrk at all It took Telecom so long to diagnose a fault when I tried to hook up our house, that I arranged an alternative. Then when our firends built down the road 18 MONTHS later, the same fault still existed and it took them 6 weeks to get a phone line I also live in the country, and 10mbps is a shitload faster than anyone else out here gets anyway