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.

Something you may want to think about is how you are going to hold that panel in once its done. I am not sure that the little spring loaded clip that normally holds it will handle the weight and vibration of a 12 inch sub!!

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.

Finally figured it out. Turns out the C-pillar has two Blue wires with yellow stripes! The Reverse light has two yellow stripes, the other has only one stripe - no idea what that one does though... All works correctly now!

Wasn't Tony's. I've heard enough stories about them to not ever go there. Would prefer to hold off on shaming for now. If they start putting up a fight then I might change my mind.

Pretty pissed off with a company I took my car to for new tyres. They did a good job on the tyres (not that I can tell) but parked the lowered car up on top of a concrete parking space stopper thing... that had bolts sticking up out of it. I straight away pointed it out to them and with the manager watching tried carefully to reverse off it and of course ended up ripping my front bumper off.

And the nerve of the guy, he then tried to say it had been ripped off before because there were scrapes on the bottom and the paint stress cracks had always been there.

I got really upset with him and told him he was full of it and it ended with me being late for work and him having to talk to his boss.

Later he called me and told me he was sorry and they took responsibility and to get some quotes for repair.

Here's my dilemma. The first place gave it a 1 minute look and quoted a basic repair of $6-700, the second place spent 10-15 minutes looking at the wheel guard liners (I think?) which were broken also and quoted $1350 for a proper repair and the last place took a good look and ended up saying it'll never be the same and I would be better of getting it replaced.

So my questions are these:

What do I make of the widely varying quotes? Any suggestions on the north shore of reputable places to go to?

Or if I do need to replace... where do I get quotes for parts? I doubt anywhere would stock new e39 bumpers... and I'll still need to get it painted right?

The worst thing is, I feel like no matter what I do I'll still have a fight on my hands to get the tyre company to pay up.

rant over.

Tried a new relay from Jaycar. The guy tested it in store with 9VDC, hooked it up to the reverse light and still no go. There must be something weird with that wire. I'll try run some temporary cables from other lights and see what happens.

What about your earth?

The earth is the same whether I use the reverse light +ve wire or the stereo +ve wire so I would say the grounding shouldn't be an issue? I'll give it the once over to make sure though...

Test the relay first with a a separate 12 v

Yep relay definitely works with the red/green stereo 12v wire. I've also tested with car on/off too. Voltage at the reverse light measured around 11v too when the car was off, 13v when it was on... I'll try see if the repco guys can let me test another one and return it if it doesn't work.

I'm tapping into the reverse light wire in the C pillar of my e39 to trigger the camera input on my dynavin. But when I measure the voltage it's between 10-11VDC and doesn't trigger the 12v relay. I can't hook it straight up to the dynavin of course because the light check turns my reverse camera on every minute and I tried to change the light module to not check with navcoder but didn't have much luck. It mostly gives me errors when coding the light module... argh.

The cable isn't the thickest in the world but it's also not that thin either, I wouldn't say it's much thinner than the original reverse light wire.

Any ideas??

Good work. It's a PITA to get them perfect again... Mine are only surface good. Really need to crack the cases and do the inside of the lenses too. Might get the opportunity now I've discovered the adjusters are broken in one of my lights.

Yeah I should've done this when I did my adjusters a couple years back. Was such a hassle getting that glue soft I really can't be arsed going through it again.

This is one of those things I've been meaning to 'get around to' for ages. After the recent Auckland meet up I felt ashamed enough to actually make something happen. No how to's here, there's lots of them out there. Just before and after's (not quite complete though - rain came in after I finished the first). They're not even close to perfect - still lots of murkyness on the insides and some on the outside that I obviously didn't have enough elbow grease to get rid of but overall I'm really happy with the half hour of work and $60 worth of supplies.

Before:

After:

Comparison Group Shot:

Old and Dull:

Shiney and New!

I'm with Tower Business insurance and got a crack in the e39 windscreen with a rain sensor. Ringing up Tower the guy just told me they recommend Smith and Smith and I told him that was inconvenient as I was already taking it to Jeff Gray's to have work done so would prefer it was out of action for as little time as possible and the guy on the phone just approved it there and then. No quotes, no nothing. I got a claim number and passed it onto Jeff Gray's and told them I wanted the real deal and never talked to Tower about brands or prices or anything.

I've actually had a really good result with Tower Business, I think maybe they treat you a bit better because you're a business?? They're pretty damn cheap too at around $450/yr for full insurance on a 3L car for an under 25.

I would suggest everyone to investigate business pricing on insurance, you don't need to actually have a real business, just pretend you sell stuff and then sell 1 thing per year on trademe and hey presto!