KwS

Bit slow chap, look a few posts above

After a cheap 328i cluster. Must be in working condition but don't care about cracked plastic, KMs etc as it will only be for testing.

I have a basically new three spoke steering wheel. No airbag. Leather is almost unworn. Will sell for what it cost me as it doesn't work on my E36. $120 plus postage.

Not an issue, wasnt taking a dig. Just i remember it on here in the past, and obviously it either didnt sell, or no one has done anything with it since. Couldnt forget the bodykit lol. I think this was it. I see the same discussions as last time have popped up already,

I won't lie, its grown on me a lot. The only big spoiler i would want would be an LTW, but then i'd have to get the front splitter too to balance it out, but that wont happen any time soon. I may get an ebay lip spoiler for it at some point, as i think they look quite good.

Thats been on here before, sans running gear back then too.

Been using and enjoying the car a few times recently. Trying hard to crack the 300,000km mark, which is about 300km away now. Its been good but some minor issues are cropping up. Turns out my heater (on the drivers side at least) is stuck on, so the cruise I took the other day, in the hot sun, meant it got pretty toasty inside. Guess like my last M3, the heater valve on this one has probably had it. My standard 3.0 M3 steering rack is rubbish. They're known for being slow and feel dead (and its a 3.0 M3 specific rack, good work BMW), and thats exactly what mine is. Slow, lots of turns lock to lock, and feels almost completely dead on center. Will keep an eye out for a purple tag E46, or Z3 rack, which is almost a direct swap and much better speed and feel. The latest fairly major issue though is that I have once again been hit my the common "BRAKE LIGHT CIRCUIT - SEE OWNERS MANUAL" Check warning, indicating my brake light switch is on the way out, and when tested, I indeed had no brake lights at all. Lovely. Ill grab a new one of those shortly, so I can keep enjoying the car without being rear ended. I really need to clean the car, I havent touched it since it was driven down from Auckland by the previous owner. I feel bad.

Whether you hate dealers or not, they are the ONLY ones that can yay or nay the questions you have. Get over yourself, or do it yourself and warranty be damned.

That may be, as misguided as it is, but the only people that will be able to yay or nay what you're asking, is the dealer you intend to use. Do you seriously think all independent workshops are in it just for the love and not money? If they were, they wouldn't be open anymore.

I must ask, is it worth the time, effort and money? It's unlikely to be a "classic" being 99, yet isn't modern enough to even have yearly wofs. There are few cars I would bother doing that process again for, and sometimes it's just better to pay a little more for one that is already on the road.

Have a read of this regarding the whole process. It is slightly different on post-91 cars, but should be otherwise similar. https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2018/11/project-snicket-re-registration/ Vtnz had no issue with me doing the work as long as I filled out the paperwork and provided receipts/documents.

Have you thought about asking the warranty and service advisors at your chosen dealer?

Anyone looking at this should just look at the photos at the start of this thread (dont scroll down too far though!), and then buy it, and do it. http://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/208354/1973-bmw-2500-panel-repairs

Have i read something on here about different length release bearings? Might pay to have a quick search

It'll go in the bin unless you wanted it.

One last thing I needed to fix, so that the car would reliably start, was the ignition barrel. Sometimes it would free spin, and wouldn't start the car. I had encountered the issue a couple of times, including once on the drive home after taking ownership of the car, when I stopped to take some photos. That was a "oh god, what have I gotten into?!" moment. You turn the key and instead of turning the ignition switch, it just free spins in the barrel. It will turn over and over without doing a single thing. Generally if you turn it back to where you started, take the key out and try again, it worked. Problem is, it can get worse. It'll either get to a point it will never start, or it will fail to turn off and the car will remain running. With the starter now fixed, this was next on the list of things that would stop the car starting. I was reminded of this when during testing of the starter yesterday, the key decided to free spin. Initially I had the great idea of removing the barrel so I could install a screw into the housing To remove the barrel you first remove the EWS transponder ring with a flat blade screwdriver. Carefully lever and pop it off. Then remove the rubber o-ring behind the ring. The theory on the next part is to use a straightened bobby pin or paperclip, and to insert it into this little hole, when the key is inserted and turned to the first "radio" position, and the barrel is meant to pop out I tried and tried but couldn't get the damn thing to work, so in the end, I chose to leave the barrel installed. Instead, I grabbed a drill and whacked a hole in the bottom of the housing. I know from much research that where the hole is would go straight into a recess in the barrel. When a screw is inserted, it would lock the barrel and stop it from spinning. I started with a 3mm bit, and stepped up to 4mm for the final hole. The aluminium is quite soft, so easy to drill, and a coarse threaded screw will thread in easily without needing to be tapped. And in went the random screw I found in my collection I probably should've used one with a smaller head, but it just fits. Now test that the barrel no longer spins freely. Thankfully one of the keys that came with the car doesn't seem to work, and would cause the barrel to spin every time. With the screw installed, I cannot spin the barrel anymore. The key still doesn't work. Reinstall the o-ring and the antenna. This should completely cover the new screw With that taken care of, I could finally reinstall the lower trim that had been out of the car since December, finally making it look like a respectable car again. Now, *touch wood* I should have a car that starts every time, not when the starter or ignition feels like it.

Im well aware of this. The starter was sold under the part number for my Euro starter. Its an M52 starter as it has the threaded holes, not through holes like the M50 ones. Regardless, it works, and it works well.

Ugh, What a terrible place to hide a starter motor. I had to do it though, mine was getting worse and worse. Yet another issue I wasn't made aware of when I obtained the car, was that it has an intermittent starting issue, where the starter motor will whirr into life, but not engage the flywheel. This only seems to happen when the engine is hot, and usually it takes a couple of tries and then the solenoid will throw the bendix correctly, and start the engine. BMW loves to hide critical items, in terrible places. The starter is a good example of this. As something that shouldn't need to be replaced often, of course it's going to be hard to get at, and the bolts super tight/seized. Here it is, hiding at the back of the engine, under where the intake would be "Oh, that's not so bad" I hear you say. Well, here are the two retaining bolts. Oh come on. Why do they have to face the back of the car?! What isn't that obvious, is that they are up against the fire wall, so you would need a very specifically angled spanner, of a certain length, to get to them. A straight spanner does not work (I tried. Even purchased a lovely new set of E-Torx spanners for the job. Sigh). This is what is needed A 1/2" ratchet, six extensions, an adaptor, a wobbly, and an E10 E-Torx socket. Don't try to use a 10mm 12 sided socket on them, or you will be in a world of pain when you strip them. The main thing that was useful here, is that most of the extensions I used were of the wobbly ended variety, which means they can operate at a slight angle instead of being dead straight. Without this, it would've been much harder. First step is to disconnect the battery, lest you short the starter motor terminals and either run yourself over, or burn the car to the ground. Now you need to slide under the car, and undo the bolts holding the transmission mount brace on. I didn't need to support the transmission, the engine stopped it dropping too far, but you will need a small jack to lower it slowly and raise it back up again once done. Also keep in mind that the fan on the front of the engine might get mighty friendly with the radiator; mine was already removed, but keep an eye on that, or remove it. With the engine and trans tilted back, and the help of your lovely assistant in the engine bay (using handy dandy step ladder), guide massive undoing rod of power up from under the car, onto the bolts and then using your muscles in the limited space, crank that ratchet and crack them bolts. Be damn sure to have your helper make sure the socket doesn't slip off the bolts though! My bolts were well seized, and took all my muscles and then some to crack them. Before removing the bolts, it'd be a good idea to undo the wiring on the solenoid, as this can be tight. Once they are cracked you can undo them 1/16th of a turn at a time with your fingertips until they finally come out. You will probably swear a lot at this part. The starter should be free to come out once they have been removed. There is a dowel at the top that the motor sits on, apparently this can seize, but mine was OK. Employ some percussive persuasion if it doesn't want to play ball. Once mine was out, I stripped it down to see the dirt packed, rusty mess that it was, and straight into the bin it went. Now, replacements are damn expensive. A genuine, remanufactured one is about $200NZD plus shipping from your preferred overseas supplier (and they aint light), a brand new one, is about $1100NZD plus shipping. It's also M3 and Z3M specific. Being the tight arse I am (or more like, being sick of pouring money into this car), I went with a different alternative. A seller on Trademe, RareElectrical, out of the US of A, sells a lot of starter motors and associated bits. One of their starters that was listed, matches the part number for my starter, and states it will suit an M3 3.0. Its only $157 including shipping. Cheaper than a second-hand one even. I know it's not genuine, it's a knockoff, but the seller has good feedback, so it can't be all bad. I took a punt and ordered one. It arrived quick smart, and it looks the part A quick side by side with the old one shows the solenoid is clocked slightly differently on the new one. This is one thing I had been made aware of, is that a BMW M52 starter (from a 328i for example) will fit and work, but the inlet plenum will contact the solenoid. Well, guess that's that, this is an M52 starter. No matter, I can make it work. Installation is the reverse, except I did the bolts up from the top with a 10mm ratchet. I said a prayer to the car gods, and I managed to not damage the bolts. I would highly recommend copper grease on the bolts, and dowel, before installation, just in case you need to remove it in future. And the wiring goes on OK. You can see how far upwards the new solenoid is when compared to the photos of the old one above. I insulated the main terminal with insulation tape, just as a precaution, but ideally what I have seen done is to ziptie a small flap of rubber over the top of the solenoid. The plenum does come very close to the solenoid, so I used some washers under the mounts on the plenum, to space it up slightly. It gives me about 3-4mm space now, using two washers on each mount. This is enough to easily clear the terminals and not pinch the wires. Before I put everything back together, I reconnected the battery. No sparks, no smoke and no flames. It's a win so far. Turn the key, the starter turns and the engine starts up. Obviously without the intake on I shut it off quickly, but now I know the new starter worked, so back on went the intake. With it all reassembled, still no sparks, smoke or flames. The new starter sounds very good, it spins so much smoother and quicker than the old one, and with repeated testing, hot or cold, it starts every time the ignition barrel lets it. Great success, now I just need to fix the ignition barrel.

Progress on the BMW is slow. Unfortunately I fix one thing, and in the process find something else that is broken and needs more parts ordered. The idle was still rough and it bothered me. It's not like I don't enjoy the sound of a nice lumpy cam, but the car shouldn't idle like that, so something was wrong. I ran through the diagnostics in the BMW diagnostic software, DIS, and the only thing that came back as "unusual" was the idle valve reading (0 kg/h) According to this, the idle valve is shut, and not passing any air, yet it is still idling. It should be between 8 and 18 kg/h, not zero. As it states, if the reading is below 10, check for unmetered air. Unmetered air is any air that enters the intake after the airflow meter, so it's not measured by the airflow meter. This is usually caused by loose hose clamps, cracks in hoses/pipes, or a failure in the Crank Case Ventilation system (CCV). I had previously cleaned and checked the idle valve, so I knew that moved freely, and I could get the idle valve reading to change by opening and closing the throttle, so obviously the valve operates, it's just not "needed" at idle. The obvious points in the intake to look at are the intake piping and elbow between the airflow meter and the plenum. The elbow especially is prone to cracking, but after a thorough check my intake piping and elbow were fine. So the next thing was to remove the whole intake again, replace all the CCV parts/hoses, vacuum lines and O-Rings and see if that fixes it. I noticed last time I had the intake off that the CCV was looking rather ugly, with a coating of old oil on it. I did check and tighten the hoses, but that obviously didn't make a difference. You can see it tucked behind the idle valve It's a bit grotty. Ignore the buggered knock sensor in the background. It's not throwing a code, but is on the list of things to replace once I sort the idle issue. I pulled the idle valve and CCV out I had ordered a bunch of parts for this job, so set about replacing the ICV piping and CCV. On the bench the CCV was looking pretty average All the hoses had gone very soft, but none of them had cracks or holes in them. This big top hose in particular felt like it was made of jelly in one bend Here is the new CCV oil separator with the new hoses. I replaced all of them, including the hose to the sump (not in the photo) Both hoses on the idle valve had also softened a bit, but were in useable shape. Unfortunately I missed ordering the hose on the left in the photo, so had to reuse the one on there, but it was in good condition anyway. One of the hoses has this weird metal plug in it. Not sure what it's normally for, maybe something emissions related? When I fit the replacement hose, I put a small clamp on that plug too, just to be sure it wasn't leaking Everything under here was original, as shown by the date stamps The other thing I needed to replace, to see if it helps the idle, are the o-rings on the inlet trumpets. The old ones were flat, and as hard as plastic I found it very hard to find information on these o-rings, so had to order from BMW instead of using generic ones of the correct size. So, here are the sizes for future reference. 52mm OD 2mm thick The profile difference new to old is quite different. The old ones were so hard one snapped like plastic when I removed it Much better. I slathered them in rubber grease to help installation. No photo of it, but the Fuel Pressure Regulator vacuum hose got replaced too. That is in one heck of a nasty place to get to! It wasn't cracked, but was hard and would've failed eventually. Since the intake was all apart, one thing I wanted to try was to smoke test the throttles/vacuum manifold and see if there were any leaks post throttle. Since the previous owner had these off the head, I had my suspicions that maybe there was a leak there. There was certainly some precedence for them doing it wrong... I read on another forum about smoke testing using a small container (jar in this case), some incense, and hose. Light the incense (I used cones as they are smaller and fit better in the jar), blow it out so it smokes, pop it in the jar, wait for it to fill the jar with smoke and then with one hose leading to the intake, blow into the other hose. This blows the smoke into the intake, and if it finds a way out, it'll be obvious where it's leaking from I ran it into the brake booster hose. This connects to the vacuum manifold which then connects post throttles I can confirm there are no leaks post throttles now, which is good. I haven't tested with the plenum and intake piping in place yet, but I'll do that next time I have the MAF (airflow meter) out. If it's all sealed, there should be zero smoke escaping. With the intake off I took this chance to replace the starter motor, since it hides under the intake, and was intermittently not starting the car. I will have another post on that job though. It was not fun. After replacing the starter motor I refitted the CCV assembly, ICV, and then the intake assembly with the new o-rings. It was looking like an engine again, finally. One last thing to replace was the fan clutch. The one on the car was locking when cold, causing the engine to run cooler than desired, and making a hell of a racket. I finally gave in and purchased a proper 32mm fan clutch spanner off Trademe. This made the job too easy, and I now wonder why I never got one earlier. The old clutch had a date stamp in 2011, so obviously it had been replaced, but didn't last long. It seemed to be a decent OEM brand; Horton, which is apparently a Sachs original unit. My replacement I picked carefully. There are a lot of knock off clutches around which don't operate correctly, so after much research I went with the tried and true Hella/BEHR unit. This is widely regarded as one of the best ones to buy. It also has the proper bimetallic strip on the front, unlike the knock offs which usually have a spiral. It wasn't cheap, so it better be good! So after all that work, what are the results? Good news, the fan clutch works perfectly. Bad news, the idle is still lumpy. Strangely, the car runs and drives like a bat outta hell, and pulls very hard, but it just wont idle smoothly. I need to run the DIS test again to see if the idle valve is working properly or not now, and I also need to smoke test the whole intake. At this point though I have decided that I'm just going to drive and enjoy the car, without worrying too much about the idle. I want to check the valve clearances in the future, as I doubt they have been done, but I'll leave that for future Me to sort out.

Just because BMW supplies it doesn't mean its the be all end all of "right". Just means it's the fluid that they buy in bulk that covers spec.

So as long as its 5W30 or 40, meets LL01 or LL04.... its a win?

From the 07 335i manual

Anyway. I don't need one right now, but so i know for future, does anyone have a valve shim tool for S50B30/32?

A quick update, finally put some hard KM on the Dragon Sports, and I like them. Took the M328i for a hard drive this evening, and no matter how hard i threw it into the corners i couldnt get so much as a chirp from the tires. Lots of grip, and no louder than the Yokos and Maxxis on the daily. Not sure about wet grip yet though.

CCV and hoses, ICV hoses, intake O-Rings, FPR vacuum hose, all replaced. No leaks, still idles lumpy. The last thing i can think of, is could it be valve clearances? There is a tick from the engine, and i doubt they have been done. The head was off a couple of years ago and unlikely they did them then.