Spudooli

Thanks Brent. I'll give him a call tomorrow, and call you if I need parts.

The A/C in my E39 has stopped blowing cold while idling. And in Auckland it spends most of its life idling. Once some revs are up then there is a good amount of cold. The A/C pump is somewhat noisy too. I'm picking the 2 are probably related. Before I throw myself at the mercy of the Yellow Pages, can anyone please advise an A/C repairer I can take it to to have that solved? Maybe central Auckland or North Shore. Thanks

I have one on my car that I don't want and will never use. I would love to remove the weight penalty of it. It's one of those convertaball ones with the 2 different sized balls (a little bit like me). It's all yours for free if you can get it off and return my car to factory lightweight. I'm in North Shore City, DM me if interested.

For the sake of completeness, this problem resolved itself in Monday morning rush hour with the fan belt coming off just as I got onto the Auckland Harbour Bridge (of course). There was no way in hell I was stopping on the bridge, but as I got to the top the temperature gauge got well into the red bit. Drove it off at Shelly Beach road off ramp, stopped as soon as I could and called a tow truck. A bolt on the power steering pump had backed out, allowing the pump to twist. I'm assuming that under load the pump twisted, loosening the belt which caused the pump to stop providing steering assistance. Anyways, a secondhand replacement pump has been installed and all is well, aside from the fact I've had to top up the coolant 4 times since getting the car back.

If I push my E39 540i hard round corners, the steering gets heavier and heavier the faster round the corner I go. Basically what happens is that if I go fast enough round a corner then you'd need to be stronger man than me at some point to put in any more steering correction. I can even induce this virtually no steering assistance at a give way intersection if I accelerate hard enough. I first noticed this on the Desert Road at Christmas round one of those 35km/h corners. Is this speed controlled or steering angle power assist reduction completely normal or do you think my power steering pump just can't keep up? I never feel like I've pushed the car past what its capable of. Or maybe my noodle arms just need to spend less time on a computer.

And one more thing, stop using IE and move to Chrome. Your whole life will be better.

Norton is a virus. It pops up windows asking for your credit card, makes your computer slow and is unnecessarily difficult to delete from your PC. All of which is some of the definition of a computer virus Download Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free, has widely been acclaimed as being the best, is updated constantly, is virtually invisible and doesn't slow down your computer. I've been using it for a long time on a lot of PCs and never had any trouble. Don't give Norton or any others any more of your money.

It has an old keyless entry system in it so that will be using some power. That combined with some old wiring for an alarm I don't fancy my chances of extracting it. Checked all those other things, they're all ok. And I guess the battery is about 4 years old.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I'll shout myself one of them battery maintainers for Christmas and make it really easy to connect/disconnect. Yeah I should drive it more often. But after only owning E28s since 1997, the E39 by comparison is such a thoroughly nice place to be and its novelty still hasn't worn off after 3 months of owning it.

My E28 has now been in semi-retirement for 3 months. He's had a trip around the block most (read every other) weekends. But now, the battery has had enough and won't start. He got a jump a couple of weekends ago and a longer trip out on the motorway to compensate, but only 10 days later, battery says no. What's the solution here from you guys with semi-retired cars? A trickle charger? Is it safe to leave said charger connected the whole time between fortnightly thrashes around the block? I want to keep the E28 because I love it more than I love my kids, but if he won't start then there is going to be problems between us. Advice, please, for semi retired cars than need to start first time every time.

Yep, what he ^^ said. Sorry Dejh0n, it was a bit of an inside joke sorry. I bought Beemn's 540, so was offering him his piece of junk Japanese import MKII nav unit back to him.

I'll have a spare MkII Nav unit laying about soon from my 540 if you want better graphics ;-)

Today I kerbed a wheel. I think for the first time ever in my life. And what makes it worse is that @Beemn had the wheels perfected by Arrow Wheels before I bought the car and now one of them is somewhat less than perfect.

The changer has been passed on now to a suitable charity. In this case another E39 owner.

With prior apologies to those of you here earning a living from selling these things... I've just replaced the CD changer in my 2001 E39 540i with a Dice/Audiovox Mediabridge. But I can't bring myself to throw the 2.35kg of CD Changer into the wheelie bin, so if you want it, it's here for you to pick up, for free. Was working perfectly earlier this morning. It even comes with a free CD that I left in the cartridge before I powered it down, but can't be arsed plugging it back in to get out. It's Tears for Fears Elemental, if that makes any difference to your purchase decision. The 80s was the best decade for music, of that we are all certain. Pick up is on the North Shore. I wont ship it anywhere other than via the wheelie bin. PM if you want. Don't if you don't.

Thanks. Now I do feel an idiot that it was something so obvious ;-)

Can someone please tell me exactly what this thing is called? Its rubber mounts are broken and I don't want to look like an idiot at Jerry Clayton's trying to describe it. Much prefer to look an idiot here... Thanks