KwS

Just front and rear strut mounts. Don't want the adjustables poking their way through my towers.

Ah yes, that time again. It's not my M3 if it doesn't involve rebuilding the Vanos at some point. If anyone has forgotten, I have previously rebuilt the Vanos unit on my old M3, and what a nightmare that was. Lesson learned, don't use cheap tools. Being that this car has 300,000KM on the clock, and the previous owner has no history of the Vanos ever being rebuilt, I felt it was prudent to do it. This made even more sense, since when I first got the car I ordered a full Beisan rebuild kit, as the Vanos was completely dead (turned out it was just a sensor issue), so had a kit sitting around. The previous owner had the Vanos off the head back when they had the head work done, but when I asked, he confirmed that it was not rebuilt at the same time (argh, the hardest part is taking it on and off, why not do it then?!). This gave me some hope that maybe it wouldn't fight me like the last one did.... or on the flip side, there was a chance the previous owner had been kind enough to round off the bolts or something on reassembly. Anyway, with a nice clear day off work, I got stuck in. I won't do much step by step work in this post, as it's covered in my previous rebuild, and also on Beisans website. One reason I had been putting the job off a little bit longer was that the valve cover wasn't leaking, and I really didn't want to pull it off again in case it starts to leak. Oh well, Here goes. Argh, bugger, so much for not leaking. This little bastard never seems to want to seal. It's a new gasket, with a new rubber washer... and it's still leaking. The inside of this engine is bloody amazing for 300,000KM. Its obviously been looked after and well serviced. The previous M3, with 100,000KM less, was almost black on the inside. This is lovely and golden brown. Before you can do anything else you must get the engine up at TDC. This involves having the No.1 cam lobes for intake and exhaust pointing up and towards each other and making sure the crank pulley mark is lined up. I had a hell of a time last time, as the Beisan instructions are incorrect, and the timing mark is hard to find, tucked down behind the crank pulley. Strangely, on this engine there seems to be a critical change. Not only does it have the marks behind the pulley, but it finally also has it stamped into the front of the pulley! Not sure if this was a South African Market difference or just a difference between 1994 and 1995 engines. I still had to use my old iPhone to see it, but it's better than having to try and see it behind the pulley. As expected this little piston nut gave me some anxiety. To undo it, you use a 7mm spanner on the nut and a 4mm 6 sided socket on a ratchet to hold the shaft still. The 4mm hex is well known for just shearing off, and then you're having a bad day. Thankfully although it was tight, mine came off just fine. One part I have been asked about was to give more details on the removal of the oil pump driver when removing the Vanos unit. This is a little disk that sits on the back of the unit. It's circled here My previous unit was so sludged up that the driver disk was stuck to the unit, but in this case it was nice and free. The risk here is that if dropped, it takes a swift one way trip to the bottom of the sump. Turns out, it's easy to keep it in place. Use one hand to hold and pull the Vanos forward, and the other to hold the disk. There is plenty of space around it. The Vanos has been leaking externally leaving a mess down the front of the engine And on the underside of the unit Of course the unit got scrubbed clean, and the engine was given a quick scrub and clean. Removing the cylinder cover on the back of the Vanos unit gave me my first surprise. This is meant to have a seal pressed into it. The seal was sitting on the cylinder, having fallen out of the cover. It was well perished and crumbled when you so much as looked at it Organised chaos Part of the rebuild was to clean and test the solenoids again. I had previously done this when I redid the seals on the solenoids, but I wanted to be more thorough this time around. I got sick of having to try and jam the wires from the battery connector into the solenoid connectors, so quickly rigged up a tester using bits from the garage. Now all I have to do is plug the solenoid into the connector, plug in the 9v battery, and hit the button. Easy. I can use the same tester on injectors too, as long as they use the JPT connector. With the more thorough cleaning and testing the solenoids when from a nice click, to a firm crack every time they were actuated. I don't think it'll make a difference, but at least now I know they are working as good as they can. I also resoldered the solder points on the solenoids, as they were looking a bit old. I also chose to bridge the solder points. I don't know why BMW chose to run it through that little circuit board instead of direct (it literally goes into the outer solder point, across a track on the circuit board, and out to the solenoid via the inner solder points), but this is a common mod to ensure reliability. With the Vanos unit rebuilt, It was time to do the rattle fix on the splined shaft This one wasn't anywhere near as bad as the old M3s one, but good to take any play out of it. Reassembly was the reverse of disassembly. So, what's the story now? Well, the seals take a few hundred KM to bed in properly, but already the car has perked up down low and has noticeably more punch off the line. Up top is about the same, but it's quicker to get there. It's proper rapid. The idle issue has not changed. This is really disappointing; I was hoping it would be the solution to everyone that is having the same idle issue, but sadly not. Back to the drawing board on that issue. Since the WOF runs out at the start of next month I have decided to pull the car off the road shortly. I have a set of BC Gold coilovers and a purple tag steering rack to go in, along with some other bits coming from the States (thermostat, reinforcement plates etc). Once I get back from holiday, I'll book it in for a Cert, and see what happens there.

BMW does repair looms for for boot lids like the e36, maybe they have one for the e34?

Thats because NZ gets flooded with the Japanese rejects that have a claimed sub "100,000km" on them. Its a dumb mentality.

I love it, interior (excl alcantara wheel, thats nasty) and SMG included. Google says they were available in manual and SMG was an option. The CS certainly has some nice to have bits, if you were in the market it would tip the scales for me over a standard M3. Sounds like no subframe work has been done, which probably means to bearing or vanos work either.

Its a buyers market out there for sure. Good luck!

"just an extra 50c to change the transmission type. Increase your chance of sale by 59.3%!"

Buggered shocks can also contribute to bottoming out. Make sure they aren't leaking, but if it keeps bottoming out they're probably poked anyway.

But isn't SMG manual? ? Really though, that intake look real nice. Bet it sounds glorious up the rpm range.

Anything can be three pedals if you try hard enough.

The interior is nicer in person, and much nicer than a boring black interior. My only worry would be about dirtying the carpets, but mats will help that.

haha good spotting. The rear M badge looks tacked on to me. Maybe it was refitted badly after the paint. Looks too high.

Headunit, M badge on rear, and whatever is tacked on the side of the center console. I also wonder, did these come with dogleg boxes?

Only when nothing is broken ?

TuRD

That's rough. You break it, you bought it, buddy. At least that takes care of the couple of small cosmetic issues it had, I guess! It's a cool car and in damn good shape, can't believe no one has bought it. It drives really well too, with some nice punch.

Gosh that's ugly. It's fat and bloated, in the same places the mk4 was, and it does it no favours. You can't expect it to look like a mk4. Remember that the mk4 looked nothing like the mk1/2 or especially, the mk3. It's evolution. I think it's good. The BMW engine will be great, but I do think it priced its self out of the market a bit (lots of competition in that price point). But what did the mk4 cost new? I recall that was bloody expensive too.

Oh and can also 100% confirm what I said, that the ambient temp sensor doesn't do anything. Fitted one, temp on obc good, idle still rough.

Fixed the speakers today. Since removing the subs and amp I had no power wiring to the speaker amp (piggybacked from sub amp). Ran new power and ground wires direct to battery, with a fuse in the +12 line, which the original install was missing, just in case. Turns out the speaker wiring at the amp was all on the piss too. The front speakers are daisy chained so only use one output on the amp, so what's the other "front speaker" wire? Well, seems its only purpose in life was to make a cracking noise through the speakers. Without the subs, and having the speakers wired properly, I could finally have a go at tuning the amp. Now I have decent sound without distortion. Not perfect, but good enough. Better than listening to my leather vaders squeak on the leather armrest... The epic failures of the previous owner still keep haunting me.

I wonder if its related to this, http://response.bmw.co.nz/battery-terminal-recall or the other (overseas) recall for the battery cable.

It's pretty out there, for sure, but it's also a little spastic toy car that is made to be fun to drive. It's not ugly like the Kona, it's just a bit rice (some of the bits are also functional, like the rear wing). Either way, it is what it is. I think it's one of the ugliest cars on the road, but I guess the Kona does what it needs to do (including stopping some asshat killing you).

Golly they ain't an attractive car are they? There just, bits, everywhere. Nice colour though, I'll give it that.

That's the one I spotted a couple of weeks back. Bloody stunning in person! I haven't checked the codes but you could get M5 with the comfort seats, maybe it's that? Still, with the current climate how it is, it'll sell quick.

I had average shifting in my 335i (150,000km, Stage 3 and then 2 xHP tunes), with flaring on shifts and thumping on some shifts (usually 3-4) but not 2-1. Did the bridge and tube seals, new filter, and used Caltex Synthetic Multi-Vehicle ATF (dex 6). Reset Adaptions in xHP. Shifting got better but it still wasn't great. Apparently it takes a few hundred KM to relearn everything, and the car was out of my hands by then, but I was never happy with the trans. I suspect the zip kit would have fixed it, but I didn't want to invest that much into it. Before servicing the trans manually shifting down the gears to a stop would almost throw you through the windscreen with its lurch (had to downgrade from stage 3 trans flash as the rev matching was too harsh when downshifting). Wasnt good. The fluid was dark enough that I believe it was original.

Lifeguard 6 is the best fluid to use but hard to get. The bridge and tube seals may improve it, but the most common fix is a sonnax zip kit for the valve body. Pretty common issue and lots of info if you Google it.