Olaf

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!

The leather's just losing it's pigment from the tanning process, through wear and exposure to sun (UV), and heat. it can be successfully restored, to give it more protection and to last for decades longer.

I'm watching Luke Cage, with my Son. Life is good.

great to see you're underway with this again, Francois!

the Bimmer spent the whole time wearing smugface.

more life from it? you said it won't go into reverse! There is no more life! I was typing out the same thing dirtydoogle said above...

last time I did it, worked out at about $6.50/litre... contrast that with retail 4l packs.

there ya go - the real oil. buy the fluid and filter for the good used unit that you get to replace your old shagged one...

if you're going to do a fluid and filter change in the hope it fixes it (buy a Lotto ticket you might get lucky with one or t'other), assuming it's DEXIII fluid it runs BNT do 20l of Fuchs ATF at very reasonable prices.

calling @kiwi535 time to revisit the 1er, this time with a little more chilli!

hey Jimmy, welcome to Bimmersport. Nice looking e32, sir! Suggest you subscribe to the Wellington Meetings room, then you'll get wind of all the Wellington meetups organised. BMW Car Club Wellington Crew have a monthly pub meetup first thursday of the month at 1812 in Johnsonville (Bimmersporters always welcome), and there's coffee meets, cruises, and other adventures throughout the year.

the way they've cast Bunta is great fun.

Welcome, @JacobQ gotta love a V8 e60! I think on the whole Dynamic Drive is pretty reliable, so hopefully not too difficult to sort. We need pics, man. If only to satisfy the e60 desire! cheers

happy days. I've found there's a movie adaptation of Initial-D on Netflix NZ. Instead of being awful, it's AWESOME! Finished an interesting week in the office, enjoyed a glass of pinot watching this. Recommended. Very funny.

very pleased you avoided, mate.

careful mate, you'll get arrested for the latter. ? on a serious note, I was wondering how you were getting on with that plan. If you buy pork, will your 335i remain?

I'm suitably unimpressed with the drop in the kiwi against the USD. GBP? Be worthless, soon.

yep, if you're stashing coin to bring back, the extra leverage is a bonus. esp if you're saving for a house or similar.

10 August 2018. 170,136km. Replaced rear window seals (upper, and lower). Some outstanding service from Novus at 138 Adelaide Road, Wellington. Big shout out to Reuben (member on here)! My second experience with Novus, and again, very positive. I decided to get someone else to do it, after my recent experiences with the windscreen in my e46... it was the right move. So here's what a typical aged seal looks like on an e60. they're a trim part; you don't need to remove the glass to change them out. A wrinkly old seal, yesterday PS: if you're ordering the seals, there's two pieces. bottom rail (which even has a velvet seal to the bottlid), and the top (which includes the sides). There's the version (for top and bottom, respectively) for double-glazed/armoured, and the 'normal' version.

Looks fab, John. have heard the Turbos (and GT3?) are the safest bet for crank and seals, use same block, separate from the rest and built to different spec. There’s your business case justification for boost ? PS: within 3 weeks my e60 will be in a suitable state for you to drive. Brakes with 2 weeks, I reckon. I’ve a boot full of new rotors ?

Good outcomes all round, Charl

I have to challenge you on your populist Labour viewpoint here, Graham! The charge that the NZ Health system has been run down over the past ten years presupposes it was in a good state to start with. It was not. Successive governments, regardless of branding, party, or resident health minister, have under-funded, and perpetuated mismanagement in the heath sector for decades There have been large numbers of missed opportunities for betterment since the 90's and even before. Any government will tell you retrospectively that they did the best they could at the time, and you can be sure they did. If you had the opportunity to read the cabinet papers, and follow the decision making trail and Governance, I'm sure it would all read well. You can be sure that our elected officials truly did what they thought best, within the constraints at the time. The retrospective view always gives greater clarity, and is clouded if you don your blue-blocker sunglasses. It would be significantly healthier (pun intended) to acknowledge it's all a bit broken, and look to the government of the day (today)to put in changes that will truly make a difference. It's futile blaming one side or the other; these things were decided by our government of each time... the consistent thread. The cost to do this? I'm sure it's a number so big that the budget would need significant rebalancing, and a great deal of courage. As much as our system is seen as broken, it's a lot better than some of the other countries I've visited. NHS excepted; my limited view is that the NHS works pretty well. I certainly agree that the massive number of semi-autonomous DHBs in NZ is a total and complete waste of resources. Perhaps someone could code up an online game called Fantasy Niuzillund Government... a bit like a cross between Championship Manager, The Sims, World of Tanks, and SupermarioKart, only instead governing NZ Inc (or use the NZ Collective skin, if you prefer)... one could trial radical healthcare restructures (note I avoided reform), and find the funding to make it stick, all the while managing the flow-on effects of short-changing other areas of the economy. It'd be a hit! Cheers