Allanw

Are you sure the sump is leaking? The oil filter housing is far more likely - it wet's the entire bottom of the engine too. Oil - You want BMW LL-01 AND ACEA A3/B4 in either 0W-30, 0W-40, 5W-30 or 5W-40. Castrol Edge at Ripco in 0W-40 A3/B4 is about $97 retail. Penrite 0W-40 A3/B4 is $50-something. There are others around, but tricky to find (although Repco is never usually the cheapest place to find anything, unless you have a good trade account). Theoretically, just about any oil will work. If you're going to follow the oil service lights on the dash, get the proper stuff. I get pretty much everything from Milland - he get's me genuine when I want it too.

I think the 4k/h thing works to a certain extent... purely because people actually THINK about driving, instead of sitting in a car waggling the wheel and levers. I can't believe how many drivers clearly have NO CLUE what's going on around them, or even where their own car is placed on the road. I have Dash cams, for those who aren't capable of staying over their side of the centre line, and are complete 'tards. They'll either end up with a police complaint filed (had a guy done once already for almost taking my whole family out "testing" his new car, didn't even have the camera then) or on you tube . I've got some spare cheapy chinese cameras, with an actual working memory card (Apacer) 8GB for $45 posted if anyone wants one. If you buy one somewhere, DON'T use the cheap-arse chinese memory cards that come with them - they usually aren't reliable. I'm prolly gonna fit one front and back of each car.

Hmmm... withdrawn.... says reserve was $29100! Wonder if it sold, or he changed his mind

I think you'll be well impressed with the manual, after being used to the auto. The M54 is a really flexible engine (after the vanos seals are done especially), it will pull well from low rpm (1500ish, but gets a lot better from about 2000), and is very happy to rev. They sound pretty nice too!

Stopping suddenly makes me ill. Ahhh... you've seen those brakepads too!

He's travelling over 55metres per second - that gives him less than 1 second to recognise the need to stop, and react - applying the brakes. Those brake tests quoted do not take that into account - they're rating just the braking performance once the brakes are applied. Those tests are probably not on any random piece of road (or entering a tunnel, going over a brow, turning left). They're going to use a flat, straight, dry, clean road (edit... probably a track not road ).

They don't account for reaction times.

It does say the visibility in the tunnel is only 200M - you MUST be able to stop within the distance you can see, on a road like that (half the distance on some other Roads). It'd be pretty impressive to see it stop from nearly 200km/h in just 200M!

I did!

I know a lot of people don't understand oil (or think they do, but don't). This link was posted on another forum I read. It explains oils in great detail, without going into too much specifics. http://ferrarichat.com/forum/faq.php?faq=haas_articles It's a long read, but very interesting!

Oh yes, but the shorter you go, the faster it'll get there (to a point, obviously). You can't have too much acceleration The grunt of the 540i overcomes much of the gearing gaps anyway. You're probably only sitting on 1800-2000 RPM at 100kms aren't you? If you were at 2500-2800, the acceleration after traction is sorted would be epic! Ours is at about 2600 (I think) at 100kms, and it will easily overtake in 5th at that... and it's only a 525i (3rd sounds cooler though )

Mount the relay out by the lights (One GOOD relay would be fine for both lights), tap into the wire for one of the factory highs to feed through a fuse then direct to the relay coil, and then instead of earthing the other side of the relay coil, run the earth back to the new switch and just use the switch to earth the relay coil - less wiring, and certainly less live wiring runs - you can connect the other side of the switch to an earth under the dash, instead of having the live from the high beam running all the way to the switch and back. There's very little load on the feed, and it saved having to run a power wire all the way to the dash and back to the relays. The only real difference with a separate feed for each aux light, is if a fuse blows, both aux lights will go out on a single feed. Not really that major. However, fitting two relays isn't much more work. I'd certainly move that Aux switch to the other side of the relays (earth side).

Weirdly... a 540i Auto is NOT geared well for hardcore acceleration. A shorter final drive would give some gearing advantage

I liike threads like this (I'm known for causing them often enough!) Nothing wrong with a good story. Even if it's not entirely true, it's probably somewhat interesting. Actually, the less true it is, probably the MORE interesting it is. Anyone read the Herald lately?

LCI is just a ghey name for facelift. Somebody had WAY too much time on their hands to come up with that.

It could do better too. I've seen you drive

Haha! What noise is she making?

I called Shane Speight, but he was away - forgot to call today went home early and spend all afternoon sweating, and bolting things onto the "A". There may be another on in between, I haevn't looked that hard yet.... weirdly enough, the one we have was given to me by aja540i Yeah... that's just weird - at some stage, they're going to need a bigger car! I don't think they'll get 4 big kids in there! If we get to 4, I'll have to get serious about the Unicorn hunting - nice, manual, people mover... which would probably just end up being another (later) VW transporter, or mine with a 3.0 Subaru upgrade.

Hmmm... are we talking Production sedan? Does the E34 M5 count - Weren't they the last handbuilt "M" cars? and the E39 M5 went into standard factory production? 1. semantics /sɪˈmantɪks/ noun [usually treated as singular] The main purpose for internet forums. The study of discussing the meaning/interpretation of words or groups of words within a certain context; usually in order to win some form of argument.

E30 SE's are nice. It's weird how so many are manual. GLWS... or not

Only 6 airbags in our E39 (none in the back anyway - looked at retrofitting for later though ) As it turns out, I already have a Graco Junior Maxi - not sure when they're allowed in it though: long trips and holidays are easy - they're usually in the Kombi (which would actually fit 4 wide if there were belts for it! on the rear two rows) Changing seats sounds like the sensible Idea, but I'm not always sensible

That's always been an interesting idea to me! A proper revvy motor, but also still has heaps of torque. 540i's aren't that hungry, but they can have expensive engine issues. I really like the 6's, and with a proper gearbox (with 3 pedals), aren't slow at all.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=659865892 offered for $7500

Nice! Do you have the electric rear blind? There's one of trademe for $88 or $66 or something - apparently not too hard to retrofit - I have it up all the time in ours. BUY A GARAGE!

Hmmm... I already got 2 random seats - It didn't look like 3 would fit, but I could try it. I think now they have to be in a seat until 7 - not sure how that will work for my 3.5 year old - he's a little muscleman, but is also so tall that people ask him what school he's at ... He's the same height and weight as his 9 year old cousin! (she's a dainty wee thing though). Without the seatback (at least) the seats could move back and give a bit more space. I think one day when I'm bored, I might whip the seat out and take some real measurements, and see what there is to gain. Cheers.