vyking56

Unsure if I have a vanos or not, not worked out how to tell yet! It's the second gen 4.4L and the car is a 1999. I'm not interested in hacking out mufflers or making it loud, it was more finding out if there were any large bottle necks, strangling bends or restrictors in the factory system which are known to rob power. Am still undecided about the cat converters, removing those seems a little hit and miss wether it will make the ECU flip out or not. I've been happy to cruise around until now, but I got left in the wake of a stock (non XR) BA Falcon the other day because the 540 wouldn't exceed 60km going up a hill. Did some more driving over the weekend and it's started throwing up Check Engine Lights and on one occasion it locked itself into 2nd gear and I had to pull over, and kill the ignition before it would come right again. Sooooo what I thought was a strangling exhaust might actually be the car with the ignition backed off. Going to get the codes retreived and go from there. I would LOVE a supercharger kit or some sort of parrallel turbo setup, but I did get the E39 to stop me throwing money at the WRX and to keep the wife happy.

My 2c... Despite 10 years of EJ20 ownership - I still miss a good Subaru rumble. Hoping I can make the 540 sound half as good one day. Second to an EJ20, an RB26 with a large single turbo.

+1 for Californication. I'm also crack-hooked on The Big Bang Theory. House is pretty decent too.

Likely to have been covered numerous times before I know - but I'd love to get feedback from someone who has done this. What are the gains like from working a stock exhaust on a E39 540? I'm finding my M62T very flat and dull from 4000RPM onwards. When I'm in "Sport" mode it likes to go off hunting for red-line, and even with my foot burried there's two fifths of bugger all there. I do a lot of "hill driving" and I get better performance if I manually short-shift and ride the <3500rpm torque curve. So - has anyone either removed the cats or replaced sections of a stock 540 exhaust with positive results? I'm guessing they're very precisely tuned unlike most systems which have a great deal of room for improvement. Thanks! Gareth

Shutup Woman Get On My Horse can be summed up in one word. Epic.

Just to clarify some of the above ^ Deleting, formatting, overwriting, reinstalling the OS etc etc does not physically erase data & files, neither does re-partitioning or deleting the File Allocation Table. Once data has been written to a hard drive or storage device, the only way to prevent the recovery of it again is to over-write it "x" amount of times. Easily downloaded free software will recover deleted data from storage media, though disks which have been entirely filled with multiple passes of useless "1's" and "0's" are much harder to recover from without the proper forensic tools. Government and Military which deal with restricted data use tools like these below to declassify drives and devices; (Multiple sweeps of "1's" and "0's") XR25, Destroy. But devices classified at a levels above Restricted have to be physically destroyed. I have a secure destruction tool next to my desk. To the untrained eye, it looks like an 8lb log-splitter! Simple and very effective. But to answer your question - how much effort do you want to put into making your files non-recoverable? If you dont have another machine you can mount the hard disk drive into, physically copying "garbage files" over and over again until you fill the drive (then delete and repeat the process a few times) will do it. This tool is kind of cool Cipher http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315672 it will securely over-write (multiple times) all of the blank space on your disk. Best part about it is that you can do it from within Windows, so you dont need to make a boot CD or anything low-level.

Hi All, I bought a set of 8 mat clips for my E39. Only needed 3, so have kept 1 as a spare and am selling the remaing 4. I understand these will fit E32, E34, E38, E39, E46, E60, E61 Only asking half of what I paid, which I thought was fair.

Thought I'd update this thread. I settled on a pair of "Depo" lights - which was kind of a compromise between price, function and quality. I'm pretty happy with them - even though I had to go out and buy two pairs of H7 bulbs. They dont have the in-built height adjustment motors, but as it turns out the gearing in one of my original lights was broken so wasn't actually working anyway. www.depoautolights.com Total price (excluding the bulbs) was $400 US delivered to my door - 7 days after placing the order. If anyone is interested in buying something from this crowd, PM me - I've got a $5 credit which is transferrable. Here's a before and after.

The area you're in, age of the infrastructure and the distance to the nearest exchange is going to play a huge part, as is the age of the actual exchange and its ability to support ADSL2 or not. Telstra Clear / Saturn is usually pretty consistant because you're using their own fibre infrastructure and not leasing bandwidth and ports off a network made up mostly of decaying and corroded copper lines - as most ISPs unfortunately have to do. I'm lucky enough to live in a brand new sub-division which has decent under ground cabling to all of the houses. That makes a huge difference and keeps everything pretty consistant.

Plus Slingshot give you FREE usage "off peak". Midnight to 7am from memory, full speed upload/download with none of the traffic counting towards your data quota. Have considered moving from Vodafone to SS just for that. Not sure if it's a permanent thing or not.

You have to take what many sellers 'claim' on Trademe with a grain of salt. Some garages might not even notice such a modification at WOF time, whereas I'd expect a VTNZ station to definately fail the lights when testing for correct alignment and light throw. The basic inner workings of a Halogen/Reflector head light is very different to a HID/Projector head light, so as mentioned above, a HID/Reflector combination will essentially be throwing light everywhere and it wont be focused and projected as it would be in a factory OEM head light. Dangerous and Illegal. Plus the heat properties and electrical draw of a HID is very different to a Halogen bulb.

Half of you are probably rolling your eyes at seeing yet another question from me... but what can I say - BMWs are sooooo different to Japanese cars! Can someone please tell me what exactly this red twisty gadget is? I've read various E39 owners manuals I've downloaded and some imply that this is something to do with the alarm. Part two of my question... should my E39 have a factory alarm? I've only got one key for the car. The manuals indicate the veichle had as many as three when it was new... so, am I missing any functionality with the "two-button" key I have? It operates the central locking fine but apart from looking very worn and scungy, I thought it might be the valet key or have limited functionality... like not being able to arm the cars security system (again assuming it has one?) It's not uncommon for a low-end Japanese car (1999/2000 vintage) to have an integrated alarm or sorts, so I just assumed a 5-series would to. And I understand a replacment key is around $400 ex Germany from a BMW dealer. Mine is a 1999 E39 540i ex Japan.

PM Sent This is what I've got currently. Don't know why I didn't add these sooner!

Good to know Do they have in-built "angel eyes" just out of interest?

Yes that was a price I got for the pair. There is a HUGE difference in prices from the various Hella stockists - so it DEFINATELY pays to shop around. I emailed 8 different places in the Wellington region asking for prices on the part numbers... and one of them wanted $1900 +GST Yes and LOTS! Would probably work out cheaper to sell the car and buy a 2001+ factory facelifted one!

I acquired a set of factory 16s with brand new Kingstars for my WRX with the intention of pulling them off and running R888s all round. I ran them on the car for a while, just to see what they were like and oh dear lord they were bad. Even in an AWD car they had below average grip in the dry and virtually none in the wet... but what was worse is that the car became VERY unpredictable in all weather conditions. Unfortunately many sellers on Trademe advertise these as "sports" tyres because of their directional tread patterns - when in actual fact they are dangerous even for a commuter tyre. Tyres. You get what you pay for.

Indeed. $200-$300 more than the chinese replica's from Trademe is a small price to pay for such a quality product. Just for a giggle I'm tempted to price up the same items direct from BMW parts!

You wouldnt believe some of the chemicals and abrasives I've tried! They don't have the usual yellowness to them, the front right is so badly crazed and clouded I'd have to literally shave off the top 1/10 mm off to restore them... which is a pretty hard ask using the usual polishes and cleaners! I considered spending a few hundred less by replacing their covers (which is probably going to end up letting in moisture) but they'll still make the car look "dated".

Good call I've been onto Hella this afternoon and although I can't buy direct I can get them overnight from BNT! About $950 ex GST which isn't too bad I suppose for quality replacements and the conversion looms. So just have to do some saving up now I suppose for these and the M5 bumper!

Interesting about them being adjustable, I never noticed! Mine is a 99, so will probably have the same lights as yours does. I was thinking about a more abrasive paste but never thought of using a few stages of wet & dry... might give that a shot tonight. What makes them cloud up like they do? A combination of the washer jets and sun?

Hi everyone, Anyone had any overly positive experiences replacing their OEM headlights with aftermarket ones? Nothing overly wrong with my current factory ones other than they're cloudy and want the later model projector style units with angel eyes. I've tried a few different polishes and even a cut & polish cream on them, but can't get them to a state I'm happy with so am keen to change them. These really do it for me (umnitza.com) but I guess the light throw wouldn't be suitable for a RHD and shipping from the US would be a killer. Does anyone know or can recommend anything similar - but closer to home? Trademe have a few "angel-eye/projector" replacment units which come from Australia. About $800 landed, which is an expensive gamble if they turn out to be plasticy rubbish! Thanks

"Goose" checking out the new addition to the garage.

There are a few E39 540i's with better KMs floating around Trademe at the moment. Just a thought

Thanks jochen, I had a chat to Grant about this the other day, who was very helpful. I guess I was more wanting to know specifically what needed replacing and how easy it would be. Being completely ignorant to what was required I had a price figure in my head, but now knowing the full story I dont see it as a cost effective exercise so will be steering clear of the conversion - especially only having a 4:3 screen. Thanks again everyone for your help and clarification

My navigation is all set to English, but I only have the Japanese DVD. Is it just a matter of acquiring a NZ DVD, or does the system require further reprogramming / retuning? And if just the DVD is required, how easily and pricey would it be to acquire such a disk? Thanks... again!