jcerecke

Hey team, Turns out I'm getting Married in October! I've been tasked with getting cars organised, so far I have tracked down my fiance's first car (escort MkII) and will have that as car no1. I would be keen on a nice BMW for another. Wedding is in New Plymouth October 17th - lots of time... but also running out of time quickly haha. Anyone want to put their hand up? Happy to pay for something nice of course, but would rather the money go to a member than some rental company. (am also happy for mates rates of course haha) Cheers!

Hey all, For the last wee while (6 months at least) my 530i has been very slowly losing water, and more quickly losing oil. I've never seen an oil spot underneath the car, and had coolant system pressure tested and radiator replaced 2 years ago by Eurorec in CHCH. What can I look out for in oil cap/water reservoir that might give me more clues?

Thanks for the offer, I've purchased replacement parts now, as the valet have forked out, so they should be here in a couple of weeks. I think I can cope until then! Will check those thanks!

I really have no idea, the only thing I can think of is the guy washing it was using something pretty high pressure angled in the wrong direction and water ended up inside the car and dripped down to the amp.

Yeah they said they'd fork out. I got them a quote for a replacement amp at $1800+GST, so far the above design comes to a little over half that.

Took my car into valet on my way overseas and asked for a deluxe car wash. They did an incredibly thorough job, including washing the insides of my stock amp which is now dead. sh*t. I've been wanting to upgrade anyway, so figure now's a handy time. Here's my design, keen on feedback: First MiniDSP 2x4 taking balanced inputs from Dynavin FL/RL and doing a 2 way active crossover for fronts, full range for rear (passive crossovers) and one left for the sub. Second MiniDSP 2x4 doing the same but for the Right channels. Both sub L/R get summed together at the amp. Then I've got a Soundstream TN4.900D doing my fronts and a PN4.520D doing the rears. Both nice and small amps. Currently have a PN1.650D monoblock doing my sub and love it. At this stage I've still got the stock speakers, but am buying 4 Stereo Integrity TM65 6.5" drivers. If one either side up front sounds good enough I'll see if the other two fit in the roofspace at the back. Don't think I've seen any wiring diagram mention these speaker locations (most of what I've found is for the Sedan). Parts I don't have figured out yet are the passive crossovers at this stage... so may ditch the rear set all together. Would like some suggestions on some tweeters for the front too, and possible some mids, although I don't want to go too crazy. No big fibreglassing projects for me though please. Once was enough!

After many months of being super busy and only getting to work on this project here and there it's finally (pretty much) done! This is a SoundStream Picasso Nano Sub - purchased off ebay for some stupidly low price compared to buying it here. 600 or 650w should match nicely with the 450w sub. Testing the sound out with no door panel on. Now with door panel. I'm not convinced these bolts will hold to the plastic door with hot glue (and some fibreglass on top which was already breaking off). Completely stealth! End result: I'm really happy with it, will be sticking in some polyfill as I didn't quite manage to get the optimal volume. Everything is a super snug fit and the door latch is actually pretty heavy duty so no rattling. If the bolts end up falling off the door panel, I'll look into mounting it to the original sub mounting points but for now it's holding fine. Next on the fibreglassing agenda will be attacking the front doors panels for 6.5" drivers or maybe upgrading the rear downfiring drivers to some 8" peerless woofers I've got.

I'm by no means a car audio professional, but have been in the audiovisual installation industry for 7 years and have done all my own car stuff too, as well as a few friends and am competent. I'm happy to help out for a small amount depending on the size of the job. I have access to trade discounts for parts that I can pass onto you at cost too. Only really keen if it's on the North Shore though haha.

Yeah I know what you mean, I've had that on my mind too. I'm just going to have to figure it out as I go along. The existing clip is actually really big, and I was thinking I would add some spongy foam to the back of the enclosure on the outside so that you have to really push to clip it in, that way there's less room to vibrate. Got some fibreglassing done today. I must say it was harder than I thought. Takes lots of resin to saturate the mat and then all of a sudden it starts disintegrating while you're brushing it! I've done the top and four sides, still not sure about the best way of doing the bottom. I think I'll make some extra reinforcing ribs on the door and then cover it in foil and glass that as a separate piece but then how to attach them so it's strong and airtight and still some way of getting the sub in (would love to be able to rear mount it so it's completely stealth. Carving completed! Foiling the mould. Removing it from the door was a bitch! I found out later if you line your object with cloth/gaffer/duct tape it's easier. I ended up pouring turps all over the masking tape in an effort to release the adhesive... it actually sort of worked except left a massive goopy mess after it. At least none of it got on the carpet! First layer and a bit of mat is on! I'm going to run out of acetone unless I do all the rest of the fibreglassing in one go, or maybe I just buy more brushes. UPDATE: More work Cut the edges of the fibreglass away and removed the mould. Gave it a big sand, I got way more air bubbles than I thought! And now I'm covered in fibreglass dust because it was hot out and I didn't want to wear long sleeves/pants. Ouch! Tin Foiled the door and then glassed it... badly. There were too many fiddly bits and the chop mat was too coarse to cope so I'm going to have to redo a lot of it, but if gives you a rough idea of how it'll turn out.

I've experienced multiple problems with bad connections on my e39 battery terminals. Will start fine one second, shoot down the road then when I go to start it again nothing. An awkward climb into the boot space and a wiggle (not that my battery terminals are loose!) of the connections/cables brings things back to life and a proper clean of the terminals fixes things. I get nervous around the e39 battery though, with the huge 12v connector, I read somewhere that there's an explosive in there to cut the 12v line in case of a crash? Freaks me out.

Cheers for that. I've already checked out the CAF channel quite a bit. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of info on what I'm doing though - a no MDF build (although will probably use some for the ring). I talked to the guy from NZ Fibreglass for about 20 minutes who was really helpful too. This is where I'm up to so far: I took the door panel piece out and masked the entire thing up and then stuck it inside a box and threw a bunch of expanding foam on it. Tomorrow I'll set about carving it into the exact shape of the cavity and then glass over top of it. My ultimate goal would be to get enough volume to have the sub sit behind the panel completely hidden but I may have to mount the sub into the panel itself. I guess time will tell! Measure twice, expanding foam once. 3 Hours of masking! De-masked. Mid-carving test fit.

Thanks for the advice. I've been doing a lot of youtubing this weekend and I'm keen to do it myself now. I'll be only doing one so should be pretty straight forward. I'm hoping to build the box straight onto the existing interior door panel sort of like this but with fibreglass obviously: Question though, do you need to do anything special with bonding the fibreglass to the interior panel or will it just stick?

Finally getting around to upgrading the speakers in the e39. Just purchased the Stereo Integrity BM mkIV shallow 12" sub. This is the latest edition of a legendary shallow sub that only needs 14-16L of enclosure volume. I'd like to replace the existing sub above the battery with this one in a custom enclosure, but I don't think I'm skilled enough to do it alone. I just had a quick measure up and making it out of MDF would be a nightmare if I'm trying to get 14L as it would need 20 different sides of all angles to fit the nooks and crannies. So does anyone know someone with fibreglassing skills capable of making a box to fit snug in that location? I really don't know anything about fibreglass manufacture.

Or the guys out at Eurorec in Wigram. They would always be quicker to offer me advice on how I could fix something before offering me a price for them to do it. And they're a wrecker too.

I'd be interested in your results. I've often wondered if I could have a readout of the gear while in Drive/Sport mode.