Olaf

I think you're nearly there. This is the flip side of the 330i discussion that earned Colin his new @Young Thrash Driver Moniker. The market will always decide where the value lies, and whether your asking price overcomes their objections. It's the assessment of condition, mileage, options, maintenance against price that is essential, and where the prospective buyer perceives balance or great value, cash comes. Good quality maintenance makes the car more desirable though not always worth much more. If I had spare change I'd buy your 530i, it looks like a great example for me as a daily commuter, and I'd not have any significant maintenance for the next year. Hopefully you'll get some reasonable offers soon! PS - it's a WHOLE LOT OF CAR for the money given people spend twice that on an 8 year old Japanese import Toyota/Nissan/Subaru that has at least as much risk. I'd take a late e39 with the M54 every time! Esp. one that looks this cool.

^^ automatic VIP discount <blush>

(be careful though, you might end up with a youtube channel, and a stack of radar detectors!)

oh, don't get me wrong, it'd be good to know where they are... I was left wondering the other evening, it was near dusk, and the unit was just a little ahead of me in traffic. I was thinking it was behind. I missed a light, lost signal... caught up at next light and recognised the red mufti commode I'd spotted a couple of days before. For me, I dislike my cabin "lighting up like a christmas tree" at night when it goes off, hence my stealth mode operation. Helps maintain my night vision etc. Most folks like the visual info provided. These modern detectors with the OLED displays are probably very cool, assuming one can dim the display like dashboard lights. Well, we could do the radar geekfest, you put them both on your dashboard and be the rabbit... I've still got the 995 as well. Be interesting to see about your LiDar false positives too. (I read that most auto-cruise systems are K band not laser).

wheels may - with a little luck - be all good too. wonder if the motor and trans might be okay? loads of potential for a project...

I hadn't thought of that... I just looked at schmeidmann for 10 litres of ATF (ZF Lifeguard 6), same thing (including freight) worked out NZD30 cheaper from FCP! Going to look for a local supplier.

patience, patience.... they're still trying to get from SH16 to the domain! it's still jammed solid, and now there's no light!

that looks tres sharp. get the ///M badge too, Allan. I think your car's earned it.

I'm biased, I think they look f*#king great on mine! And yes, there are no issues whatsoever with 224/45 and 245/40 on the e46 saloon/wagon/coupe. Allan knows what he wants, we talked about 194's a while back. Fair enough to hold out for the Style 97s, and not settle. They'll look great on the 325Ti!

You're very welcome, John. it seems that BELtronics as a brand are disappearing, with Escort being the lead brand for that company. I'm sure there was a long study by management consultants that helped them figure out that the R&D and marketing costs of developing/releasing/maintaining competing products in the market was not efficient despite having greater brand coverage. (No slight on management consultants!). I'd been wondering for some time how they made that pay. When I picked up my 995, it was testing better for long range Ka (main threat in NZ), than the V1 of the time (there have been numerous hardware and firmware updates since then). I was shopping used and on a budget, and the 995 was the best value I could find at the time. Fast forwarding (below the speed limit of course, officer) to last year and a new unit was on the cards. I didn't hesitate to buy BEL again, though had I known they were getting out I'd have scored an Escort Redline instead. Today there are additional options, either built-in GPS, or linking to your cellphone. I'm not sure how effective GPS croudsourced updating is in little ol' NZ, given the tiny market, and the even smaller percentage of detector users buying models with GPS and subscribing or updating live data services. Cool idea though. I'd like to try a V1, though for me the arrows - with my style of use - offer no benefit.

Thanks for the clarification! One move at a time, nice. Subscribed

Looks like a cool game, although somewhat exclusive for those not running e30 and living in Auckland.

yeah IMHO K band is mostly an annoyance. Even my STi Magnum gives sod-all warning of fixed and mobile cameras, and it's unlikely your SR7 goes there (note: that's an assumption on my part, I've not checked), so yeah you might want to configure it off. You should be able to repair or replace the warning LED. Do you have a remote mute button mounted somewhere? That rig probably cost $2k plus install when new.

Hey Stu, back in the day (early 00's) the SR7 was pretty hot stuff. The manual is here (in case you don't have one). It looks like the configuration is very similar to my old BEL Vector 995i. It'll be mostly a case of switching off the stuff you don't need. The detectors by the plate will be your laser detectors, I beleive the radar horn antennas are elsewhere. Here's a pic I nabbed off t'interweb: By the looks of the tests from the time, the SR7 was very capable, and although these days is probably bested for distance and falsing by current 'top performing' dash-mount units it should give you pretty respectable performance for Ka and laser assuming it remains in good working order. Where the SR7 wasn't great was in stealthing tech against SPECTRE radar detector detectors, though this isn't such a big thing in niu zild where detectors are legal. I'm not sure if NZP use SPECTRE or similar. HTH

I remember talking to a bloke who turned his e36 into a mower on the infield, he was trying to understand what went wrong for him; there was a bloke with a very well-sorted dark blue e30 325i touring who was doing power slides in the wet all down the front straight. Tons of seriously cool cars in the carpark, including my not ready for tack abuse alpineweiss e30 325i Touring.

Jon, it would have been 2001. hard to beleive it's nearly 16 years I've gone from Londinium.

I have no problems with laser (lidar), when I've had "lay-zerrrr" alert there's a motorcycle cop or a car at side of road. I did look at V1, had loved the idea of one for years, decided on STi/Redline on basis of low signature for radar detector detector. I agree, there's not a large gap between the top of the top models.

@eliongater

I'm McLovin' it. it makes the commute easier/more comfortable/more enjoyable/safer. and being "my first V8" it's just such an experience.

Man, that's a result.

I'll have a look online tonight. I'll use that site I used for the SS Commodore vs 545i comparo. I think the Aurion was 3.5 or 3.6 litre. Spec battle this evening!

PS: in my last job, one of my workmates opined that I really shouldn't have a radar detector, in light of our work. I countered "hey, if our goverment wishes to broadcast on those frequencies, it's still legal for me listen! This is just a really high frequency tuned radio receiver with high selectivity and some cool programmable auto-muting features."

yes definitely worth it IMHO/IME; gives me sufficient warning to check my speed, and does so around two out of five days of my commute. I run a Bel Magnum STi. Escort Redline is basically the same (same company, different product line), but $100 more in NZ. There's a lot written on US sites about how much better the STi got with the hardware upgrade toward end of 2014/early 2015, and that sample variation now accounts for more than the performance gap between the two models. I'd run a Bel 995 for a few years before, and liked the voice warnings; there's different voicings between BEL and Escort. I run mine set up with no lights, no visual warnings on the dash. More stealthy. The only lights are on the remote mute on the cig lighter, so again, muting is stealthy - no visible hand to the dash. YMMV. You get different tones depending on type of radar/lidar. I get so little warning on Redflex camera vans or stationary radar, I think the minor diff's US to NZ not worth worrying about. If there is in fact a receiver bandwidth difference. I found it difficult to truly suss out the freq differences betweem US and NZ models. If you buy an STi you're welcome to make a list with me of the exclusive NZ programming features that the Road & Track guys were so f$%king cagey about, from mine. After shelling out the extra money to buy local, from R&T, I was left wondering why I bothered and figured I should have purchased from Amazon. In use? Worked example... doing 50-55 past silversteam station, as I pass the lights heading north onto the straight part of Fergusson Drive, I'll pick up mobile Ka coming toward me just after they've passed through the lights and passed Palmer Ave. On the highway, you'll get suffucuent time to check... about double what I used to get with my 995. And I get less 'noise' with my STi. Laser, not so much warning, though you should get scatter from other cars first. Instant-on radar? Nothing's invincible, man! Let me know how you get on. If you want to dip your toe in the water, my Bel 995 is cased and on the shelf, yours for $300.

the Aurion was economical on a trip, too. I rented them on a few 2000km trips in Oz, including a 'Sportivo'. They're good in the boat stakes too, compared with the e60. I'd like to drive a 530i.

much better to add a prancing moose badge, I reckon. Never did get around to buying some for my 855-T5.