Matt

Over the weekend I cleared out the skuttle panel drains, gave the door car membrane a good going over to make sure it was sealed, and replaced the door card clips with the ones with the foam seal. Perfect timing for the rain that came on Monday and no water seemed to come in, so hopefully that's all solved! Thanks for the tips Brent and Dan.

The rain over the last couple of weeks has revealed a pretty decent water leak into the passenger footwell of my 130i 😞 Any tips of where to look? I can't see anything running in around the door, the plastic trim and carpet that runs up to the door is all dry, but up where you'd rest your feet is soaked! No sunroof so it's not that usual culprit. Could it be windscreen seals? Any tips from people who've had similar would be much appreciated!

@Jacko has changed to the SMF in his car, I went for the DMF again in mine when I had to change it, I got the LUK kit from rockauto. A while back we had a quick drive of each others cars back to back, the SMF definitely makes the clutch much heavier but gives it a bit more feel and a sharper biting point. Given mine is daily driven in traffic, I'm really glad I stuck with the dual mass, but if it was just kept as a second car for fun drives the single mass could be a good option

The LCI plastic valve cover has the bolts you don't need to replace. They're actually captive in the cover and can't be removed (except for the two in front of the valvetronic motor but they can also be reused). A couple of things to consider, if you haven't already. Make sure you also replace the valvetronic motor gasket is that is very prone to leaking too. While the cover is off it is also a good time to replace the eccentric shaft sensor (and gasket too) as that is prone to failure and you have to remove the valve cover to do it. Also, the crankcase breather hose is really hard to remove from the back of the valve cover and also easy to break. If you're careful, you can reuse it, I bought a replacement when I did it because if it does break you don't want to have to wait to get one. Lastly, the plastic valve covers themselves can be prone to cracking, so there is a chance that you replace all the gaskets then find out you actually need to replace the whole cover. Also, the PCV is integral in the cover so if that fails, you also need to replace the whole cover. For this reason I replaced everything when I did. It turned it into a pretty expensive job but there's enough labour that you don't really want to have to do it twice (or more)...

Ditto this for me. Supersprint backbox with resonator delete. A bit louder than stock and still no drone. If I could do it all again I probably would've tried to find an N55 135i backbox instead and probably saved a bunch of money, but I do love seeing the supersprint tips sticking out the back!

Quite a few haha, I have a showroom thread with all the detail here: But in a nutshell, Full Birds B1 suspension kit with Quaife LSD, M3 front control arms, camber pin mod, bmw performance short shifter, Simota carbon intake, MILVs and tune, supersprint backbox, 135i brakes, BBS wheels, and a bunch of 1M style interior bits. Spent WAY too much money on it all haha but oh well, I always enjoy driving it!

That's me! 🙋‍♂️ Sadly the car is deteriorating cosmetically, will probably need a respray sooner rather than later, but still such a fun car to drive every day

I've had one pretty similar to this in my car for a few years now, I bought it from aliexpress and installed it myself, wasn't too difficult, just a bit of a fiddle to fit it all in. I went for the add-on version to go with the original screen just because I don't like the way the replacement android screen ones look, perched on top of the dash like they do. I also like being able to fold the screen away. It's a bit low res, and every now and then they can have a weird bug but it normally comes right after restarting the car. All in all I'd totally recommend doing it, gives all the functionality I need!

The workshop manual says to remove the slave cylinder and completely depress the piston for bleeding. There's a special BMW tool to keep it depressed but it should be easy enough to do a makeshift version

My drivers side headlight has just started flickering on and off this morning!! Got caught out by a couple of decent puddles in the rain last week, and my car lives outdoors anyway so I'd say this is exactly what has happened to me! Where did you get your replacement ballasts from, Dave?

Mine are H&R so they've been that way a little while now. I also use the HEL braided lines

Pretty much the same as what I have on mine (except my rears are ET45) and no issues at all for me

I got my battery from here, a Varta E39. Would never call it cheap but they seemed to have a better price than other places I looked at the time

Yeah it pretty much stayed the same as it was after the MILVs and flash. Although I never used to get as bad as 11.5-12 l/100km unless I was really stuck in traffic. Living in a really hilly area (Titirangi) really doesn't help though, a cold engine driving straight up hill is a thirsty combo!

Haha I know what you mean, it is hard to be restrained at times! But unfortunately I do 400+ km per week so it makes a pretty big difference to the weekly bill!!

Some of you might have noticed my car disappearing off trademe, but I didn't sell it! I actually did start to get some decent interest with some offers not too far off the asking price but in the end that just made me realise that I didn't really want to sell it afterall. It is way too much fun and I really couldn't see anything I wanted to drive more for similar money. On another note, I'd been getting pretty terrible fuel economy in it, averaging 11.5-12 l/100km on my daily commute. Having seen how much better fuel economy other people get I was wondering whether I had faulty injectors, or something else wrong to make it so bad. Then I decided to try driving it a bit more sensibly, and now for the last 6 weeks or so I have consistently averaged around 9.5 l/100km on the same commute!! Just goes to show... 🤣

I second this 😅

Funnily enough the F20 has never appealed to me as much as the E87. The fact they only ever seem to be available as autos here doesn't help, no matter how good an auto it is.

Haha sadly a GR Yaris is way out of budget, but the want is definitely there! I have colleagues with JCW mini's and fiesta STs so need to line up drives of them sometime soon and see how they stack up. Focus ST would be cool, but I agree the prices are ridiculous on them

Something odd has taken over my brain and I'm actually thinking of going FWD. Current contenders are R56 Mini JCW, Fiesta ST, or perhaps a Megane RS265. Audi S1 another possible choice, but I think the 4WD detracts rather than adds to the appeal for me. I hired a Megane RS265 over in Australia a couple of times several years ago. Did a few thousand k total. Was absolutely blown away by how awesome it was to drive on a good road, probably the most exciting car I've ever driven, but I don't think it would be a great daily driver round town. That's what first got me switched on to how much fun a FWD car can be. Given that I drive ~80km per day on my commute too then something a bit smaller and more efficient than the 130i is pretty appealing at the moment, hence the JCW or Fiesta ST as options. Of course I could keep the 130i as a weekend car and get something small and boring as a daily. But with 2 kids, I don't really get that much weekend time to enjoy driving anyway, so I'd actually rather have the fun car as a daily when I'm on my own then something boring/electric as the weekend car when I'm just driving them around places. One of my previous cars was a Mk6 Golf R, which was fast and it was fun, but not that involving to drive, the 130i is on another league for driving kicks, and it also made me realise I'd much rather be driving a manual car every day than auto or DSG...

Cool, will definitely keep that in mind. I actually have pretty much all the original parts sitting under the house still too 😅. Plus other new spares that i haven't even fitted yet! Will see what happens in the next little while anyway. I need to go and test drive some of the possible replacements I have in mind, maybe that'll spur me into keeping it anyway 🤣

Haha if I had more time and space then putting it back to stock and selling all the parts separately would probably be the best option, but I'm sadly short on both space and time!

Yeah I am torn about it, it is already the longest I’ve ever owned a single car. I’m sure it’ll be one of those ones I wish I’d never sold but such is life. I think you guys are both right, it is a fair price for a very particular buyer! Let’s see what happens anyway, not really worth selling it for much less than the asking price but it’s probably not the best market to be selling a 6 cylinder petrol car either…

Soooo... After 3+ years of ownership (and way too much money spent on mods 😅), I've kind of been hankering for a bit of a change, so with the cheaper listings today on trademe, I decided to list my 130i for sale. I might be biased but must be one of the best of its kind, along with @Jacko's. I'll add more details in the listing when I get a chance this weekend, but most of the details are in my showroom thread too. I've priced it somewhat optimistically, but I don't think you could replicate it for this price so will see if any interest comes in. Listing here... https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/3725261859?bof=eCbHFMa8 Feel free to PM me here too if you're interested

Hi @Angelo! There are several common oil leak locations, main ones being sump (as you said), oil filter housing, and valve cover gasket. They're all easy enough to do but a tad labour intensive, particularly the valve cover gasket, which can require the whole valve cover to be replaced if it's the later plastic one and it has gone brittle. Other common failure points as they get older are water pump and starter motor, plus coil packs can start to fail but they're cheap and easy to replace. Ideally you can find one that has some history of at least some of these items being addressed. Otherwise, they don't all happen at once but just be prepared. Plus as Dave said, there's lots of general wear and tear items that need replacing as they age, just like any car. For reference on the sump gasket, I had mine replace at East Auckland BMW (main dealer) and they charged something like $750-800ish (I can't remember exactly). From my experience with BM Workshop, I wouldn't necessarily expect them to be cheaper...