gjm

I'd not say Whincup lost - his team did. Running out of fuel is all-but inexcusable with all the technology the teams use. Component failure (like a starter motor) is much harder to account for. Mostert & Co did exactly the right thing. They knew Whincup was short on fuel, and pushed, and pushed until he ran out. One the the best aspects of the results (for me) was that the top 4 cars all came from different manufacturers. That shows there is competition in the championship, rather than having one manufacturer run away with it. Makes for a much more interesting, and exciting, series. Good weekend all round for Mercedes. (See F1 results.)

No worries.

There's what I would consider some 'funny money' being paid for properties... Still, the buyers obviously consider it worthwhile. I saw this - Investors move in as first-home buyers fold - and chuckled at the quote from the Property Investors organisation. If investors can make a big enough dent in the properties available at the lower end of the market, they will be able to make a quick killing when the deposit restrictions are lifted. Of course, that means first time buyers will have to borrow more than before, and so the cycle starts again.

That was my thinking. They look to be perhaps et20, and the E46 needs 40+, especially at that width.

I really like them. Don't think they'll fit an E46, though. :-(

So far out of my league / price range, but maybe someone here would like it? Apparently 1 of only 2 NZ new. http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/bmw/auction-784767094.htm So much car. So much (to me) money and yet, the advertiser still can't write a grammatically correct listing, or even check their spelling!

To recap - I've rebuilt the nearside front brake caliper. The piston has ssen much better days and there was rust above the seal land... I've treated this and polished it, but there is pitting so I'll be replacing it ASAP. To be fair, at the distance covered it's probably about time for some open brake surgery so I'm going to investigate what is available. If I can find stainless pistons I'll use them, but if not, there are kits available at reasonable prices. Even pattern calipers are available, but I trust ATE to do a good job so I'll look to rebuild rather than replace. Certainly the car seems to be running much more smoothly since the caliper rebuild. I'd not noticed, but I suspect a very slight vibration has been there for some time. Hopefully we'll find we regain some of the economy that has been missing for a month or so. I have a feeling - nothing more - that I may need to look at wheel bearings, too. It's just a feeling. I get them sometimes. There's no rumble or similar, but... So, to answer Jeevan's question (again ) costs so far have been very reasonable. I thought I was into LCA bushes but they seem fine. However, it looks as though it is time to do some preventative maintenance by way of brake overhauls and the like. I'll inspect the hoses and if any need replacing, will get a good braided steel set. It's not a case of upgrading components, but as they wear and need replacing, I'll use good stuff rather than the cheapest option. As detailed earlier the discs and pads were replaced not so long ago and while the ones fitted don't give the best 'feel', they definitely work well. Oh - WoF, today. I suspect at least two of the tyres will fail, in which case a set of Michelin Pilot HXs will be fitted. Standard rim size - 16x7, with 205/55-16s. I'll get an alignment done, too - Tyre Tracks in Kent street, Frankton, will take care of it. Chris is a good guy. (And I'll be looking for a set of 205-50/16s for the Merc - the 55 profile would probably be OK with rolled and flared arches but is a little ambitious for a standard fit, on ET37 rims, at least.) About to pass 257000 miles. 413,600km. Oil and filter again today, too.

Never did find the bleedin' bleed nipple. Right - it's all back together. Copious amounts of Mr Castrol's red rubber grease on seals and the slider pins, lots of molybdenum disulphide on the brake pad 'arms' and the caliper pad slides, sparing use of copper grease on any threads. I will be doing it again, as I want to replace the piston. The thread Jooles linked to at the top of the page includes a pic of two pistons - this one came somewhere between the two in the picture. I thoroughly cleaned it (180 grit wet'n'dry was needed, then steel wool, then polish) but there is pitting above the seal land, and that's not good. Looks like the pistons aren't stainless, but more likely a hard-chromed steel. Bleeding was easy. Some hunting in the garage for a piece of clear(ish) tube to use on the bleed nipple turned up the hose from a Camelbak. I've never had one, so thanks go to the previous occupants of the house. My daughter did the foot pedal honours. Test drive built up to some aggressive, just off lock-up braking. No sign of any issue. Fingers crossed. I'll be ordering a couple of full kits, including pistons, to do both sides. May even take a look at the rears - no point doing half a job.

Got it all back together again. Test drive - instantly noticed it felt better. Couldn't 'persuade' it to misbehave. It may be a little thing, but it does seem to have made a big difference.

Possibly one thing less to worry about. But where did I put the bleed nipple? Yup... I'd swear it was withe the wheel bolts and caliper bolts, brake pads and retainer. But, no. Nowhere to be seen. <sigh> I'll cannibalise one of the ATE calipers I have for the Merc.

OK - this is frustrating. Learn from my mistakes, folks. I bought seal kits for the two front calipers from BMW. These do not include a piston. They cost... A lot of money. You can buy this - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261453411443. Double the price for NZ$. Double again to cover both sides. Add $50 for shipping the two kits to NZ (this is a guesstimate) and it is not just cheaper than buying the BMW parts, but you also get the pistons, and the assembly greases required. Alternatively, just buy a couple of these: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/231053828298. (Or similar.) NZ$120 (plus shipping) for a new caliper saves a huge amount of hassle. I've not been in touch with Paul at Milland or anyone else to ask for prices. They may well be able to offer something similar. I was in a hurry to try and get this sorted. Instead, it's taken a lot longer, cost more money, and will need doing again. Grrr.

I suspect this caliper (at least) has been apart before. Anyone who has worked on cars for any period of time will know what I mean - it feels like someone has been there in the past. It happens. What follows could be due to it not having been correctly reassembled, but could as easily be down to use. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt - it's worked fine for at least 12 months and many kms. Now isn't the time to suggest a problem is due to something someone else has done. The piston was showing signs of corrosion. on the outside there is a land where the seal sits, and having removed the seal I could see orange in the land. There was also signs of corrosion on both sides of the land, but (fortunately) no similar signs in the caliper. However, the lips around where the seals go in the caliper are rough, but this doesn't appear to have affected the seals - there were no signs of brake fluid leaking, anywhere. Removing the piston was interesting. Typically a couple of pumps on the pedal should see the piston pop out of the caliper, but this time it took 7 or 8 full depressions of the accelerator. The 3rd and 4th presses saw some significant stiffening of the pedal, too. I'll be checking the master cylinder once this is done. (Incidentally, it looks as though you should use a syringe or a funnel to get brake fluid into the reservoir - pouring straight from a bottle would require some luck given you can't get the neck of the bottle close to the mouth of the reservoir.) Given the apparent unavailability of a piston in NZ - especially on a Saturday afternoon! - I've thoroughly cleaned everything, and will reassemble with my fingers crossed. If it works, then great. I'll source new pistons (one for the other side, too) and rebuild again anyway. If it doesn't work... Looks like I may have a VOR until I can get parts.

Yup. At the very least, it'd mean some of the money earned here and spent on rent (here) stays in NZ, even if only in the hands of the government. At present, NZ is a buyers market for property. Buy now, rent, make money, sell, make money, and minimal tax implications for someone domiciled offshore. Even those people working here and sending their earnings 'home' are, or should be, paying tax. And I agree about immigration. Aside from the families coming in on the back of 'my son/daughter/father/mother/etc' lives there, there is a significant influx of very capable individuals from all walks of life. (I like to count myself among this second group of people.)

I too am concerned about the overly tidy nature of this area. That a glass of red wine can sit on a work surface speaks volumes - 'round here, it'd be a bottle with the top on so nothing could fall into it.

Pokeno is already pricing up and up, in part due to the milk factory being built there, but also because farmers know it is far more profitable to grow houses than grow crops. This does lead to another huge problem. Water. The Waikato river is almost a single source for mains water, and it cannot sustain the growth of development we're seeing. House prices in Waiuku are on the up. We know - we've been looking. We don't want a mansion, or a farm - 3 bedrooms and 1000sq m of land please. A Kiwi quarter-acre. There are just 3 such properties listed in the entirety of Franklin on Realestate now for under $300k, and one of them is section on the Awhitu peninsula. Bear in mind that buying any of these requires $60k as a deposit. Essentially, if you want a family home within commuting distance (and I'm calling 1 hour commuting distance, and not accounting for the dire traffic on SH1 northbound) of Auckland central, you'd best be prepared to spend money that only a few years ago would have bought significant acreage. I could answer this in some very blunt words, but as an immigrant to NZ myself, I had best not - we're not yet citizens, just permanent residents. That said, we've been here just over two years, and will apply as soon as we meet the 'Presence in New Zealand' criteria. The requirements for this are: "... to be present in New Zealand i) for a minimum of 1,350 days in the five years preceding the citizenship application; and ii) for at least 240 days in each of those five years" This is pretty lenient - you could be out of NZ for 3 months every year (as some people I know are) and still qualify for citizenship. There are a huge number of people entering NZ each year who do not speak English as a first language (or in some cases, at all) and who have no intention of ever becoming naturalised Kiwis. It'd be tough on us (my family) but a ruling saying only those people holding citizenship are eligible to buy property here would make a huge difference to the housing market. There would be endless cries of 'I've lost money on my house', but typically only those who bought as an investment would actually lose out. Most other people would simply not make as much profit as they had hoped. Anyone finding themselves in a position where they have to move (within NZ) for work may be adversely affected, of course. I don't pretend to have all the answers. On a related note - NZ has been described as 'a lot like Britain 30 (or 40, 50) years ago. If that's the case, why is NZ seemingly hell-bent on making the same mistakes Britain did/is? Doing the same thing more than once and expecting a different result is a sure sign of madness!

Bit late - this is for yesterday. Pulled the nearside front brakes apart. Cleaned, greased, and it made no difference. Should of pulled them completely apart. Tomorrow. Today I found the Castrol red grease I wanted for the slider pins.

That'd be a fool's errand. NZ has a history (roghtly or wrongly) of high interest rates, and I anticipate that while the (frankly ludicrous) requirement for a 20% deposit will be waived, interest rates will rise. They have to - National has ~$60bn (or whatever) of debt to repay. I think Dave may have an excellent point. Immigration isn't to NZ - it is to Auckland. And that spells disaster. Admittedly much of the business centre is in Auckland, but much of the immigration we are seeing is either unrelated to that business, or is seeing a net outflow of money from NZ as a result of work performed here. (I could stereotype about some of the immigration taking place, but let's not go there.) But that's not property prices. Sort the railway. A commuter service between Auckland and Wellington would open up many areas currently accessible only by car. Business would move to those areas, and so would people, easing the housing problems in densely populated regions. Instead we have policy that will see the cramming of more and more building into smaller and smaller (and more and more expensive) areas. There's no doubt purchasing property in those areas as little as 10 years ago is now proving to be a most astute (if accidental) financial investment. Me? I'd like some land, and a little peace and quiet, please!

I'd go 1" smaller on the rim diameter, but that's just me being picky. Very nice indeed.

SUVs with big thirsty engines use lots of petrol, and cost lots to run. LPG doesn't change the thirst, but may make the cost more acceptable. Correctly installed in an engine optimised for LPG, there may be some loss of performance or economy, but these installations are newer and the purchase price (of the conversion, or a converted vehicle) is much higher. Older vehicles with older-style LPG implementations are thirstier than the petrol version they are based on, and offer less performance. Of course, if you have several hundred hp, losing 60-80hp may be less relevant than the savings in fuel costs. (I don't know what effect using LPG has on torque output.) Arbitrarily, a diesel SUV could return 10 litres per 100km. A LPG SUV will use around 16 litres per 100km. $1.10 per litre for LPG, $1.50 for diesel... Include RUCs and based on these figures, the LPG vehicle is cheaper to run: the LPG vehicle could almost use 20 litres per 100km before becoming the more expensive option.

Average income in NZ is around $1000 per week. That's average, not median. The median is lower at around $900 per week, and is a more relevant figure. The median house price in NZ is around $420000, or pretty close to 9x the median income. Since 1995, wages have increased by around 75%. House prices have increased by around 175%. House prices are running away. It happened in the UK, and buyers there had stamp duty and capital gains to contend with. There's no such disincentives here. OK - so what I've said are huge generalisations, but it paints a particularly bleak picture. Couple this with the requirement to have 20% of the purchase price of a property before the bank will give you a mortgage, and it's a wonder anyone can buy a house. Investors, of course, love it, so prices continue to rise.

Thanks Jason. Pads were new a few months ago and wear appears even. Nothing obviously wrong there. The sliders may have been sticking. May still be, of course - they were dry, but I've cleaned and lubed them. The pins were a little more tricky as I was unable to find either silicone grease of red brake grease anywhere... I smeared the teensiest bit of Moly slip on them. The bracket seemed to slide freely in and out, but I'll keep looking for the correct grease. So, it's into the deep end, so to speak. If the piston has seen better days, I'll polish it up and put it back. I now have a litre of Elf Dot4 fluid. May as well make use of it.

So today, having taken a day off work, I removed the caliper form the hub. This was, in fairness, a bit of 'half a job' - I've not (yet) disconnected the brake hose from the caliper, nor have I removed the piston. The sliders that the pads run on were dry, and it seemed possible the pads had been sticking. The pins were also not lubricated, so I rectified both problems. Lots of cleaning, lots of brake dust. Reassemble. Test. Unfortunately I was easily able to provoke the vibration behaviour, and this time checked Kelvin's suggestion. Yes - the nearside front rim was significantly warmer than the offside. Back in the drive, lift the front nearside, and the wheel was hard to turn - the brakes were binding. Leave it a few minutes and all seemed well again. It could be that the piston is sticking - the inside of the piston, the bit I could see, is quite rusty so possibly not stainless. (Thanks for the suggestion Jason - I had hopes!) But it could also be a fluid return issue (although I think this is unlikely, having flushed the fluid a few months ago). The piston is favourite culprit at present. The problem is... What do I do if I remove the piston and find it is duff? BMW don't sell them. I can clean and replace it as a temporary measure, I guess, and search for a new piston. Or carefully measure it and get two made in stainless (one for the offside, too). I'll do some RealOEM stuff later and see if the calipers are common across several vehicles. I suspect they are. I've not used my seal kits, yet, and the seals I could see seemed fine. No sign of any leaks of any sort. I suspect I'll be using them sooner rather than later, though..

Hadn't noticed any temperature differences, but hadn't checked. I should have. Got the wheel off to sort the caliper seals. Disc and hub spins freely. No binding whatsoever. Today... Sticking piston. Incidentally, BMW don't sell many caliper rebuild kits, and the kits they do sell don't include a piston. Wish me luck.

That's much more like it. Actually, 50 acres of that in convenant bush would suit better - the 5 acres left would be ample for a couple of beef, 2 or 3 sheep, chickens, veggies, and a lawn. And I could explore my land whenever I felt like it.

When we first moved here we looked at having Miss M attend Epsom Girls Grammar School (EGGS, to the locals). To secure a place at EGGS, you need to live in the catchment zone. So we went house hunting. An agent came up with something for us. A nicely modernised villa. 3 beds, 1 bathroom, open plan kitchen/dining/living. Easily managed gardens (I think they were his words) and off street parking. Actually, it was fairly nice. More of a 2.5 bedrooms, no gardens and the front had been concreted to provide the parking. Total land area may have been 400sq m. This represented a bargain, excellent value, and an amazing, rare opportunity. (Agents words. I clearly recall them 2 years later.) At $1.24m. GTFOOH! (I'm sure you can work out what the letters stand for.) I suggested the agent was having a laugh, and questioned how something so small could possibly represent 'good' value at a price so high. He seemed shocked at my comments, and appeared sincere in his belief that this was a 'good buy'. I'm sure it sold. Not to us, though. We'll stay out of the city, too.