Allanw

DO IT!

Haha! Maybe I should let her pick my next real gun! It might be exciting She actually brought it for my boy after he had a jab at the Doctors. Because he was excited, she fired the first shot in the car! It's FCUKING loud - all 6 caps tend to go off it one explosion. I may need more. Foe safety testing!

Just reading about The Diesel Guy and the trouble he had with that RC car... Wife comes home with this: They should probably be recalled.... but I want more!

I don't have any hard and fast rules to what is a classic for me. It doesn't have to be all that old, to be fair... maybe that's related to me being in my 30's (Early thirties... only just!) Dad has a 1990 325i SE, which I think fits the bill - it was a "significant" model of car - the E30 is what really put BMW on the map, in NZ at least. They just look "right" and do so many things so well. I've also had a Suzuki Cappuccino - One of the best modern-ish classics - very quick for their size, but handles like a go cart, and ALL the feedback in the world. Proper front engine, rear drive. Can be a real handfull in the wet... like the E30 :-) I've also got a 1972 VW Beetle. Obviously a classic but very vegemite - you either love 'm, or hate 'em! Not classic... I think it's WELL past that, but we have a 1929 Ford Model A too. Though technically a Vintage, I think you could argue it had classic status for a very long time, and has simply surpassed that title. While not as many were produced as the earlier Model T, they still brought motoring to the masses! I think "classic" is a very individual thing, but it's hard to think of modern cars ever becoming "classics", unless they are something really special.

Seriously - I laughed out loud! People are looking.

Nah - I'd let them work out the UK thing for themselves. I think those are probably just market/age differences. the SE was never an official "factory" model as such - it was a bunch of options ordered locally to make the spec what they wanted really - a UK SE could be completely different from a NZ SE, and other countries didn't even HAVE SE's. I wasn't meaning to imply yours wasn't as SE, just that there are differences. Basically, people are going to buy or not based on what they like about each car, you just need the correct buyer to come along

About time I took this a little off topic... What's this guy smoking?

Yes, panels and lights etc needed... yours already is though

Not being critical, just a point: Yours doesn't seem to have all the same gear as the NZ SE's have. The NZ ones have the touring style side skirts (body colour), shadowline, body colour lower front grilles (possibly lower front lip too - not all do, but that may be due to replacement of broken ones), rear headrests. I don't know how much is the year thing either though - the NZ ones were only 1990 on. They didn't have the window handle blank in the doors either (maybe a year thing too). NZ ones had no headlight wipers, no mtech suspension or steering wheel - they had the "sport" wheel. Yours may have been options added at order time anyway I guess.

why a 318i or 320i? Either get a 318i, or get a 325i or 328i. The 318i is pretty cheap to run, the 320i usually isn't (especially if they're auto)! A 325i or 328i can actually end up using LESS gas, but can go better when required. They're also more liekly to be manual.

Go to somewhere like www.realoem.com and enter the last 7 digits of the chassis number/VIN.

Maybe I shouldn't say this..... but you might want to know..... some extinguisher powders are corrosive... apparently it's the class "ABC" ones.

it IS a 735i - Vin confirms it.

I'm looking for an E39 rear top strut mount, so I can get all the measurements and see how to make a spacer to lift the back of our car (The M-Technic II is a bit too low for where we go!). I've already done the fronts If anybody has just the top mount, that would save me pulling it all out and have to make the spacer while it's all apart

Looks like just fronts would work anyway - it looks a bit like its going uphill all the time

It's a pretty late E34 touring - It's what I was looking out for when the E39 showed up... Shame that ones auto though :-( It's probably not a bad price - the Tourings are always quite a bit more expensive than a comparable sedan. Someone who knows E34 can better sort you out, but If that has a sunroof, they are very complex and fairly troublesome. Good manual conversion candidate!

No, I think it's probably more likely related to the early Vanos not actually doing as much - it's basically only 3 stages, on only one cam. The M54 in particular, is prone to it, and they are infinitly variable between two points, on both cams. Apparently the 3.0 is affected more, and can actually stall from the issue, during cold idle.They use the cam timing to heat up the cats, and also reduce idle emmisions etc, depending on the engine temps etc. They have to make sudden changes upon opening of the throttle etc, and with the leaky seals, it takes longer for the oil pressure to overcome the leak. The exhaust cam is retarded during cold idle to increase the overlap, and heat the cats faster. Opening the throttle means it has to quickly alter the cam timing to provide more power. Eventually, the seals can get bad enough to bring up fault codes, which is when BMW would fit a new/rebuilt Vanos unit. It was a problem in the US and UK, which probably have much better servicing regimes than the average NZer would stick to! I'd wonder if doing the seals on yours would improve the power delivery? I have no experience with doing it on the earlier engines. The 3 stage thing is probably easier to control though, whereas on the M54, if it's constantly advancing the cams as revs climb etc, it may struggle to keep up with the rate of the revs rising??? It made the most difference at low RPM on ours though (possibly related to the lower oil pressure at lower revs?). I think it's one of those things that people don't notice getting worse, like shocks or similar, because it happens slowly over time. Then when it's really bad, other symptoms show up. I have been told BMW brought out software changes for the M54 to mask the symptoms too. I don't know if that's true, but some users on other forums reported better running after "software updates". Our car has no build up under the rocker cover to suggest any problem with oil, or the changes. Even the entire Vanos assembly was immaculate - the O ring is the wrong material though - it was like all the plasticizers had come out, leaving a shrunken, hard o ring. I could literally snap it by folding it over. I'd be worried if they'd used the same material for something like the rear main seal! The only thing I've ever seen that bad, was valve guide seals of on old aircooled VW - they were probably 40 years old, and would have been hellishly hot on an aircooled head.

I think I need to do that to a 7 seat X5 for the Mrs

At least the back-end looks better than an E60!

SE's look awesome! It's the little details that make them, even though most people don't even notice the little things.

You'll probably be lucky to have them last 100K Ours was 117 K and 10/11 years??? Absolutely poked! The seals in mine didn't really seal any better than the piston did. Seriously - the piston actually fell out under it's own weight with the old seal. I could move the piston side to side in the housing, and it touched the sides and "clicked". The movement was easily seen with the naked eye. It affects some engines more than others. The M52TU and M54 have double Vanos, and at least on the M54, it's infinitly variable - affects them a LOT, based both on what I've read, and what it did for our car. The low end torque was very noticable. My Vanos Thread

MID is piss simple if you're vaguely techy. I brought the new cable, but not the heat and stick one. Seriously easy to do, as long as you line up the pins correctly on the LCD/ribbon. I used nail polish remover to clean off the goo - just make sure not to damage the tracks on the board. I then tidied up with a fibreglass pencil. On the LCD side, i scratched off whay I could with my finger, then a TINY bit of nail polish remover to tidy up, then fibreglass pencil again (Was worried solvent might eat into the LCD edges). You can get cheap MIDs on ebay sometimes with pixel problems, and repair your self, if you want the BC button. If you don't have the BC button, I assume you don't have high OBC??? I don't know what functionality you'd gain???

Could have a vacuum leak too, or really bad Vanos. Or sticky ICV Probably need to see some live data

I saw the specs BMW recommend for water to mix with coolant somewhere. The majority of town supplies in NZ MORE than comply, but if you're worried, find someone with tank water to fill up. I doubt many garages use distilled water! Some people also go overboard recommending stuff, but don't know what they are talking about - some have said to use RO water - DON'T - RO water is "empty" and will dissolve anything it can, like aluminium. If nothing is dissolved in it, it WILL dissolve anything it can. We have to use SS pipes here in the hospital for the RO water, otherwise things disappear - the plug hole in our sink dissolved (brass) from it, and the main cast iron drain from our workshop down to the basement sewer did too. We had to bypass it all with plastic pipes :-) The minerals in water are dissolved in it. They won't deposit them selves in the system, unless water is continually evaporating off and increases the concentrations. The town water here in Whangarei has a hardness of about 50g/m3. In the car cooling system, that would be .25 grams max, dissolved in the coolant, assuming 50/50 mix and about 10L. There are some other minerals etc, the the amounts are similar. I don't stress about it, but then I have tank water (which has minerals in anyway) PS: most of the water in Europe is hideous, and probably doesn't meet the BMW specs. It probably still gets used.

You mean ///M 318i