Olaf

21 August 2018. 170338kms CEL came up while I was bedding in the brakes. Quick check this afternoon, they found the intake boot had come loose - big air leak, over-fueling, running rough. All sorted now, codes cleared, running like a Swiss watch. ?. Thanks Page European!

Welcome, Chris! Beaut cars, and a great drive. Winger BMW recommended I keep my keys in use in rotation, so they dont get a chance to go flat. HTH.

You want a BMW specialist, someone intimately acquainted with the N62. It's a complex motor, and needs all the right gear for re-timing valvetronic if the heads need to come off. Hopefully it's not your coolant transfer tube (becoming a recognised issue with the N62). MBI should cover. Here's a hint. http://www.bimmerzone.com/product/PRT-AGA-PIPE-N62.html Best of luck. Let us know how you get on.

talk with ethirtyandy... use the bimmersport goodbastardexpressservice.

Willdo, thanks Eli. I've just bought new belts, my thermostat and waterpump were replaced 2-3 years ago.

damn! I just bought a new fan thermostat. Would have bought your leccy fan immediately if I'd known.

Welcome, Boston. Look forward to seeing you at the cars and coffee this weekend. You’ve scored a beaut e39, and sounds like you’re heading in the right direction to keep it that way ?

Went out and did the bed-in on an early-morning drive today. Successive cycles of around 80-100 down to 10... cool downs, then rinse and repeat. Feel has markedly improved. Measured temps at start of cooldown (LASER thermometers are the coolest of toys tools, eh?), found left rear rotor 10 degrees (33%) hotter than the others, wondered about a lazy caliper. Seems to have come right on the run back to Wellington. Now just a (fresh, new) CEL to check.

did you also check for vacuum leaks and split intake boot as @Eagle suggested?

17 August 2018. 170,166km. Replaced front and rear brake rotors (genuine BMW) & retaining screws Replaced slider pins and boots front and rear Replaced front and rear pads & sensors (Hawk Performance HPS) Replaced handbrake shoes and hardware (OEM Pagid) Flushed and replaced brake fluid Replaced sunroof seal (Genuine BMW). Out tomorrow morning to bed in the pads.

$500? Where was the accident, Taupo?! ^ this!

If it became a rort for two underwriters as you say, a third and fourth would enter the market, increasing competion and lowering prices. That's what this is about, right? Price vs Cost. The Cost to the community of these uninsured asshats is far greater than panel damage. EDIT: and if the true cost of owning a motor car keeps an uninsured asshat off the road, I'm happy to pay more for my insurance!

I disagree. It's really simple in Australia: no insurance and no safety inspection passed, no rego. Drive car without rego, you're f#$%ked. It would be no harder to implement that here in godzone than any other scheme. Then it's simply a compliance thing. The insurance companies would no doubt be happy, as their revenue would increase covering effectively the same risk they're currently - indirectly - covering for their insured drivers.

Hey, Kyu, sorry to learn of the accident. Delighted to hear nobody injured. Great to be able to walk away from a stack.

wow. sounds like no control with you shop. with myus, I have my own suite. A street address, telephone number. I have secure access to my suite on-line, get to select what happens to each shipment... wait for others to combine. I get emails (and app notifications) when another item arrives. I get packaging options, freight co options... it's all down to me. total control. I get free photos if they think there's damage; I can pay for photos if I want to inspect regular shipments.

I do the same thing with MyUS, and prefer to pay FedEx or DHL because the service is so much better. I'm getting M3 performance for the price of a 320i ///M.

Yep, fair point, Kyu. I failed to include my assumption that one provides all the necessary information, when initiating the shipment. that, and I have pointed out the contrast - NZ Post will not phone the addressees phone number to initiate contact, instead sending a letter. FedEx calls ahead proactively. I regularly praise the delivery efforts of MyUS and FedEx. And sometimes even DHL, though the courierpost connection makes it more haphazard.

I beg to differ, Kyu. Freight forwarding is fairly straightforward, so one should naturally expect a range of service running from ‘good’ to ‘great’. These threads are useful to establish how far outside of that range some of the operators are. Not everyone enjoys my favoured provider, MyUS. I’ve never seen a bad word in print about shipitto. On the other hand, the regularity of people reporting disfavorable - or even plain dreadful - Service from YouShop is impossible to ignore. As you say - know what to expect? In closing, I’d suggest nothing about standard freight forwarding is special, unless there’s exceptional service. ?

Goodness. Fancy a business specializing in freight forwarding forgetting to inform their customers of their address change. You’ve been visiting Baltimore? Here’s your theme tune, then:

yeah, having suffered the bruised pride when cracked the new windscreen on my e46 recently, I decided I should pay the professionals to lower my risk. It's a rational and cold decision. ?

I've used them plenty. they only charge if it's over the limit. when I'm bringing in company stuff, I use my client code... somewhere along the line I pay GST - whether it's with the carrier, or through my cashbook and GST reconciliation.

in a recent development, flying saucers were spotted in Wellington's Eastern Suburbs this morning. The craft appeared to be made of aluminium and a ferrous metal painted to look like aluminium... despite its obvious weight, it flew, hovered, and generally disturbed BMW owners in the vicinity.

Slightly west of that - I recently had the misfortune to have a large shipment (necessitating an NZ Customs Client Code), sent via USPS... which links with NZ Post here. That’s the weakest link. Hours (not joking) spent on the phone with various NZ Post reps. I don’t object to paying for brokerage; though I do expect something approaching *service* for my money! The crowning glory was, having paid my fees for GST, Brokerage, Insoection etc and the parcel was moving again, trying to arrange a redirect. 30 minutes on the phone with numerous reps, claiming nothing could be done until the parcel reached Highbrook. WTF? I challenged that I had no way of knowing, as the only updates were ‘regional processing’, and local Wellington inconsistent at best. Giving up, I turned to their website and found I could initiate the redirect immediately! Their call Centre staff don’t have a scooby, don’t have the right scripts, and their processes are totally broken. It took nearly a month to get my parcel. I wasn’t concerned about time to deliver, what was unreasonable was the amount of my time that NZ Post consumed. I should invoice them. /rant Contrast that with FedEx (who I usually use for shipments from MyUS.com)... Saturday morning phone call “Hi Mr Olaf, FedEx here, advising we’ve emailed you about a package that’s on its way to you out of the USA. Just call back with your credit card number, pay the import fees, and we’ll have that to you on Tuesday”. I paid Monday morning and arranged for it to be held at depot during the same call. It arrived Monday midday. FedEx don’t even charge for the brokerage! NZ Post are completely broken.

we came back (many, many years ago) with USD, opened a USD account here and sat on it till we found a house. Someone we knew had access to the Treasury info, and we knew that if we waited around nine more months we'd leverage a sizeable drop in the rate. But we'd found the right house, and moved forward; life can't wait, and the significance of an extra $15k (which was a lot back then) on deposit is soon eclipsed by mortgage interest rate changes, repairs, and valuation increases as years and decades pass. ?

awesome work, Chris!