aja540i

Picked up my newest old toy today, 1998 e39 530d touring, ex Ireland import, 197k Miles, no wof, no reg, started a list of what needs doing to turn it into a road legal, reliable tow mule, 1) EVERYTHING!! will start with a thorough cleaning inside and out and go from there....

Keep an eye out for a second hand BOC branded machine, they pop up on trade me from time to time, we have 3 BOC machines at work and I have 2 at home, they just don't give any problems. Consumable parts are also easy to get for them. Higher duty cycle is worth paying a bit more for, it is a good indicator of how ruggedly built the machine is. I haven't got experience with any of the combo mig / tig machines but 180 amps should be plenty for what you want to do, it will run 0.8mm mig wire and you will be able to make holes in things!! Any machine that size will need a 15amp plug to output full power.

You will need a pressure pump to supply water to it, so the filter should be on the intake of that pump, flow is a bit on the low side, but still far better than any diy electric job!

Didn't fail the WOF on them, just mentioned it on the check sheet.

Took the M5 for its WOF last week only to be told the rear brakes disc's were on the wrong sides! Continental offered to swap them for me, for $300! 1 hour on Saturday and they were back where they should be. They must have been like that for the whole time I have owned the car because I haven't ever had them off! Before... after...

I like how you consider 2007 to be a "modern car" !

Leaky cooler?

I got mine from BMW, about $65 IIRC, not sure if they will still have them though, I think 2015 was the last version on DVD.

Throttle actuator? The M5 did something similar when one of its died, not sure if the V8 ones are a common fault or not but the V10 ones definitely are.

I would be very surprised if one $20 bottle of octane booster would increase a full tank of gas from 91 to 95 octane, and if you need 2 then it's only $10 difference and a hassle!

I did an exercise many years ago when I had a Mitsi Legnum VR4 and ran it on the different grades of fuel, both with and without octane boosters for a period of time each and carefully measured the economy of each, 98 with no octane booster ended up being the cheapest option, ($ per km) of course the prices are all vastly higher now than they were then but it is possibly still the same result. I'm not prepared to run the M5 on anything but 98 and the Leaf doesn't care how much petrol costs so I won't be repeating the experiment.

I have one from Super cheap ( i think its branded as a tool pro) That i use on my big petrol water blaster and it works very well, I also have a small ryobi water blaster and the small ryobi foam gun that fits it, it does work but the foam is a lot thinner and more watery, it runs off the car a lot quicker, I suspect this has more to do with the lower pressure and flow of the water blaster than the design of the foam gun. I can also water the snow foam mix down quite a lot when using the big foam gun, but I have to use it neat in the smaller one to get any kind of foam.

Could have been for a kill switch or hard wired radar detector or similar.

What are you on about, there's yellow plastic tape everywhere!!

I can't see them ever offering both at the same time. Having said that, the new M3 is probably no smaller than my E61 so I could possibly live with it, not that I am in the market for a brand new BMW anyway.....

Terrible news! I assume this means no M5 wagon in the future. ?

Fuel economy in the 540 wagon is a bit on the high side too, mine used to sit around 14l/100 km but the noise was worth it!

Not enough mud on it, try again!

It has a few glitches, crashes the music app on my phone occasionally, a bit clunky to navigate using the idrive controller, and if I want to use the CD player I have to open the glovebox and switch it over, but it does everything I want and it is a fully reversible installation if I ever decide to take it out. The price wasn't too bad, I bought direct from the Dension website.

I got a dension adaptor for my E61, not perfect but it gave me what I wanted and kept all the factory functions as well.

Got some floating centre caps for my birthday, I suppose that means I have to get my ass into gear and refurbish the wheels.

Picked it up from Continental BMW, diff out, all new seals, back in again. No more oil leak! BMW club membership paid for itself and more, approx $300 off the total bill, happy with that.

12k ono? ?

Possibly done during compliance in NZ.

Ah, with that chrome sMg badge on the centre console it is DEFINITELY worth 70k!!