Young Thrash Driver

I concur, 31 years old and everything bloody hurts these days

Are those your photos? ie, did you cut it open yourself?

I hear Prius' get pretty good fuel economy.

Yeah, I don't want anyone knowing the Mrs Mazda6 is registered in my name. Shame...

I have seen the same 4.4 X5 in Rotorua and then Tauranga over the last two days driving about with smoke billowing out from underneath, driver apparently oblivious. Hilarious!

I do remember reading about moves to use A.I. for mundane legal work in the U.S., fewer lawyers oh what a shame I am a dairy farmer. We will be around for a bit longer yet for a few reasons- fully automated farms exist but the terrain required not so much in NZ; robot milking machines are a thing but the cost is prohibitive as most farmers are already heavily indebted; the fact that to make these systems pay for themselves you need to farm intensively (efficiently) which we are told is naughty these days; also there is not yet any robot that can deal with all the situations and problems on the spot that occur in day to day farm life, however the technology exists to augment and complement what we do.

Sooo... what will you be doing with the old block?

Could be an option to drill a hole in the bottom of the sump and install a plug?

@Olaf, isn't that an M62TU? In which case the timing chain guides will fail.

Electrical problems, in a Singapore import? Pull the other one, guv!

Have a poke around on RealOEM etc, I have further homework to do myself but I have found my E39's horn sounds so feeble because there was actually two tones used between the various markets, it needs a set of NZ "tone generators" I think they call them. Even the wife's Mazda sounds more manly...

The older M3's are all fun but I think once you grow up M5 is the only option. I couldn't consider a 3 Series again until all the kids have left home.

They would... you'd get told "Bro, your bike's wheels look gay!".

X3 suffers from what I call "Boxter syndrome" ie it says to everyone you couldn't afford the marque's better model.

When my front struts went I got most of the stuff in that kit. Pretty sure the spring perch/ seat would be a waste of time- mine were fine at ~220K km. The bump stops, dust sleeves and spring shims were toast, I'd probably make up a kit from OEM instead of mostly Genuine BMW but that is just my Scots heritage shining through. As you were, soldier- you are on the right track!

The threaded shaft on one of the boot gas struts snapped today. Then we went to the beach and I took the key swimming. Oops

I bought a manual E39 for well under 5K, do I have to leave this discussion now

Pietong- without malice, all the very best buddy. As far as the best place to go, that would be BMW... however these don't require too much special as far as ordinary maintenance goes. Good luck.

Cant help sorry, but- 10 litres!!! It is supposed to be mixed 50:50 with distilled water, so 3 bottles (4.5 litres) will be heaps.

You might have to go all 3pedals and head down the tyrerack route, unless you are willing to try Federal or Nankang's etc "good" tires just for a laugh Have had the Falkens, pretty "meh" to be honest

Powerstop Engineering up here in Tauranga repair these, the repair is not trivial and needs a full bench test afterwards. It cost $700 to do the last one I sent them. Sorry if you are finding limited help, MINI is kind of the orphan branch of BMW.

Saw ETHRTY at The Mount today, she's looking sharp Andy.

It's hard when it's you who is the monkey with more muscle than brains... I once pulled some studs out of a hub trying to undo wheel nuts. Turns out they were left hand thread.?

I seem to remember OP has done a cooling system refresh... @Arma? I never removed the injectors the 2nd time I did this job, there was no need so I left them alone. The other thing worth noting is the bolt that holds the remote +ve terminal is easy to snap and not available to replace if you do break it, WD40 it to death and be gentle when undoing the nut.

Yeah there's a few "While I'm there" jobs. I took the opportunity to do full CCV system replace, both intake elbows, valve cover gasket, both heater pipes, all the o-rings on the oil filter housing screw-on cover, dipstick o-rings, and of course intake manifold gasket which was rock hard both times. Both receipts ran me about 300USD from FCPEuro, but not all the parts were Genuine BMW. No "special" tools required from memory, but you will need a torx socket set and I found a set of gasket picks useful for getting the broken ends of the heater pipes out of the head, and I found a mix of 1/4'' drive (access is tight on some of those nuts) with a wobble joint and bigger stuff was needed to remove the nuts on the intake mani. Be prepared to be horrified at the state of the plastic pipes...