rxsumo

The E28 glass shouldnt be any different (except for glass tinting) through the model range (same as E12). The seller should know the model ranges, might pay to check if the material for a '85 is the same for a '88, if it is then I'd walk away.

VIN details if anybodys interested Chassis number BC37533 Vehicle code HB62 Series E34 Model 520i ( 520i M50 ) Body type saloon Catalog model ECE Production date 1990 / 10 Engine M50 Transmission Automatic Steering Right Catalyzer YES

E12 and E28 are pretty much the same interior wise, If you want to try out our M535i for size...let me know.

I'm selling off some of the wheels I'm unlikely to use 17inch E39 M5 replicas http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=135086950 16 inch BBS RS These are a staggered set, but two of the rims are damaged, and I havent bothered checking out whether they can be repaired or not. The damaged is to one of each (front and rear), and is cracks on the inner rim (I think one crack on the front rim, 2 cracks on the rear rim) http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=135088411 If you already had a set of RS's in this size it would probably be a good buy for spares. Reserves are quite a bit lower than BUYNOW

A tidy E34 535 is likely to set you back less than 2K, why would you go down the repower route? If you find a NZ New one, it will have a number of the options that the 520 probably wouldnt have as well. Talk to Brent, he has probably all the bits you are likely to need if you want to go down the conversion path

Not necessarily....... Our manual box was opened up at 140K, as it had an issue dropping out of first occassionally. There was some bearing wear, which was suspected to be the reason that the car was dropping out of gear, but the syncros were basically shot. The manual box by my reckoning would cost about the same as the auto to rebuild. The boxes require geniune BMW parts for the bearings according to GearTech, and they are FN expensive.

We are on our third E34, we have owned a '90 535i manual, an '88 535iA and our current 540iA. At the current market prices the E34 represent good value for money, although watch out for the "plenty of spares". Our local European Car speciallist wrecker isnt getting any more E34s because they are too old. For our use, daily driver generally only driving 20K per day, the manual is a waste of time, and is unpleasent to drive in bumper to bumper traffic (you will find leg muscles you didnt know you had). After owning the sixes and now the V8, I wouldnt go back to a six. The V8 has the same fuel consumption around town, but the V8 is more economical on the highway, as well as having 30% more horsepower. We paid just over $4K for the V8, being NZ new, its got leather, climate air, although it didnt get a lot of the options that the 535's got....like electric seats...dipping LHS mirror...sunroof (althought this is a blessing it gives me more headroom) Common issues with the E34s...... Plasma displays on the Instrument panel die, but can be repaired. Heater valves can get sticky, meaning heater runs hot all the time, can be temporary fixed with a "gentle" tap. Front control arm bushes/ball joints die, giving a 100kmh shimmy, we replaced the whole arms with some Meyle units off EBAY for around $300, and these had the HD 750i bushes fitted.

The engine is the cheap part but it depends on which "era" the engine comes from. Say $500-$1500 for the engine. Gearbox: Suggest that the easiest way to find a gearbox is to find a manual E28 528 or 535 wrecker, and hope nobody else knows about it. Suggest you wont pay less than $800 for an E28 unknown box, oh , you want to be a bit careful with what year you buy, as the middle ones were a bit dodgy. An E34 box would be a better box (depends on what its going in to), talk to Brent as I think he currently has a kit for sale.

I've just brought the NZ dealer release manuals for the E34, and if its a NZ new car, and a 535 it will have a LSD

Have a look under the rear seat, you might find a sheet of paper with a whole swag of three digit numbers printed on it. This is the car's build sheet. Have a look for 209, that is the code for the LSD Otherwise as Paul has suggested have a talk to your friendly dealer

Our E3 3.0S was a private import from the UK back in '73. I thought that it would be cool to get hold of the information about the car prior to it coming over. I have the original ownership papers for the car, and when I ran the original owners details through whitepages it came back with the same address as in the ownership papers. As a long shot, I wrote to the original owner, to see about the car's history before it got to NZ, and yesterday I got a huge email back with heaps of history, with all sorts snippets of gold like where the car was originally supplied from etc, as well as a few of the more memorable moments with the car. He was definitely an enthusiastic BMW driver as this snippet about a drive into Europe shows. "With four of us on board on the Paris - Calais motorway I cruised for 15 minutes at 100mph, then 15 minutes at 110mph, 15 minutes at 120mph and then 15 minutes flat out (about 128mph depending on gradient - I did see 130mph with the rpm's nudging the redline) - in the hour we covered over 110 miles. The only car to pass me was a BMW 30Si. We won't talk about fuel consumption!" I'm glad to see that it wasn't a pampered luxury car in its early life. Has anybody else tried this this exercise with their cars?

Slightly off-topic, but this is the media/car dealer lead horseshit. With the exception of cars that are being imported under the 20 year rule, modifed cars, SUVs and heavy transport, the source countries from where the cars are being imported all have some form of emission control, which is the standard Land Transport are adopting...either the Japanese Standard or the Euro standard. Generally for the economical life of a car, the vehicles emission control shouldnt need to be touched (perhaps replace a cat) So assuming that we are importing used cars, that are built to the correct emission control standard in the first place, and the car is in good mechanical condition (ie the car isnt a POS), then thats what we are already importing (in theory). So with the exception that the emission standard will raise the year minimum for used Japanese cars from mid '95 to '98, which I suspect the majority of imports now fit into anyway, how is this going to raise the cost of the cars we import substantially? However what the emission control laws will do is get rid of the ability to import POS SUVs and Heavy/Light Transport Vehicles. The majority of vehicle related emission problems come from vehicles that are in daily use doing big mileages with big engines....Heavy/Light Transport, (and company use cars). The used Trucks (and Buses) are likely to increase in cost because the cheap (no longer able to be sold on the Japanese Domestic Market because they dont have emission control) vehicles, are no longer going to be imported. They said that the frontal impact regulations would stop the average kiwi buying fresh imports, I dont see that Enterprise Cars has closed up and gone out of business.... so I dont see that the introduction of emission control regs will be any different.

Not as bad as the previous Wellington BMW Agent. This is a few years back.... Guy walks into the dealership, and buys the top of the range 3 series touring for around the $110K-120K mark. 3 weeks later the guy gets offered a business opportunity in Oz and needs to get out of the Bimmer to finance the business. Dealer....how much do you need for the business? Guy...$56K by next Friday Dealer...thats what we will give for your car. Friend of ours is in the market for a new wagon, pays $56K for this wagon as the guy wasnt going to give it to the dealer. On the next Thursday, dealer rings up the guy, and asks where the car is, as they have a buyer for it. They had sold at again at $90K. Then the threats started when the dealer found out that the guy had sold the car on....sort of stuff like no warranty etc etc. So they made a profit on the initial sale, and then were going to try and get another $34K from it three weeks later So $14K on the X5 aint that much at all

TradeMe Masters of understatement Wheel is described as having some curbing Looks farked to me

It time to reduce the fleet again. We have for sale a 1970 2500 automatic. This is a remarkably original car in really good condition, and really good to restore back to original or use as a base for a project. The car has a low mileage, and low owners (1 family I think), and for an E3 very little rust. The engine/trans is out of the car, as the car had head work done around 10 years ago, and the engine was never fired up, so the head gasket never sealed. As with any E3 that has been in storage all the ATE 4 pot/2 pot calipers will need freeing up or rebuilding. Rego is dead so the car will need to go through revinning The car also has most of its original "trinket" stuff like keys, tool roll, owners/service manuals etc, even a can of touch up paint. I have a good running 2.5 engine from a E12 525, plus 4 speed box and pedal box that will go with the car along with all of its original running gear. I'm looking offers on the lot. The car is in storage some distance from home so advance warning of viewing would be advisable PM me, if you are interested

Its time for a garage clean out. I have a set of triple 45DCOEs with manifolds for a M30 "big six". These came off a E3 that I brought a few years back owned by Tony Devos. Tony said that the jetting was for a 3.5 litre engine The carbies have reputed to have been stripped and cleaned and rebuilt and have never been run since rebuilding. The manifolds and air cleaner elbows are supposed to be geniune Alpina items, but are not marked as such. There is a fabricated air box that would attach to a FI style air cleaner on the RHS of the engine bay. There are some linkages for a E3/E12, but they arent that flash. I'm looking for $1500 for the lot PM me if you are interested

mileage tampering in Japan, happens for the domestic market as well as export. the Japanese domestic market doesnt like cars with over 100K, so once the car gets to that stage the value drops off dramatically, car dealers are car dealers and will do anything to make a buck....so speedo's get tampered. I have a mate that is a dealer in Japan, and one of his biggest problem is buying off auctions and finding that cars have had the mileage tampered with....and thats for his own yard in Hiroshima. Even buying NZ new doesnt stop mileages being tampered with. It was common in the 70's and 80's for dealers to run their demo cars for months, without speedometers being connected, especially buying stock in October or November....run the car on "d" plates for a few months and sell as "new" ex demo car in the new year registered....you ended up with a car that was a year newer than manufacture date...... I know of lots of people that disconnected their speedos to keep the mileages down on their cars..... Easiest way of buying....look over the car and drive the car....you will see how good the car actually is. A "babyed" 10 year old car with 250K on the clock, will be nearly always better than the same car that has done 20K that "grandpa" has driven, not serviced, and hit every kerb between home and the RSA.

My thoughts on the run: Excellent choice of roads, and novel directions that worked, at no stage did we look like getting lost, which is a miracle to achieve when using cryptic style instructions. So pat yourselves on the back, you did good in my books. The Cafe stop was also a really good choice. Things that I reckon would have improved the run (and why in my opinion). Some idea on how long the run was, I didnt have a problem with the length, but I also wasnt expecting it to be so long and hadnt really prep'd for it. Most of these runs would have normally wrapped up by 2-3 pm which is what I had anticpated, especially with the early start at Johnsonville. Being totally random and disorganised, first thing on Sunday, I had thought we had a coffee stop at Foxton, so didnt bother with breakfast etc, so by the time we actually stopped for lunch...I was sortta hanging out for food. So what I think would have improved the run, was to tell the people that it was an "all dayer", or stopped the run at the lunch break, and I would have added a coffee stop at Foxton....Laughing Fox? So all in all, we had an excellent day out, probably the longest run the E3 has had since coming out of the shop (a good thing), and somehow we won .

It all really "horses for courses". Within the fleet we have 5 NZ New Cars, 1 English import, 1 South African import and 1 Japanese import. Personally I wouldnt touch a "modern" car imported from Hong Kong or Singapore, and I have a preference of NZ New for my E34s, as the NZ spec cars are generally better spec'd than the imports. Service history isnt really that important, as in my experience, Dealer servicing typically goes out the window with the first couple of owners. I dont have an issue with Japanese imports, most of the stories about the cars sitting for hours in traffic jams, in my experience are just that....stories, and as somebody has already mentioned, for Japanese cars, especially sporting variations, the JDM cars are the best ones to buy.

from realoem Part 41618138748 (ENGINE HOOD F WIDE KIDNEY GRILLE) was found on the following vehicles: E34: Details on E34 E34 518g TOURING, Euro E34 518i SEDAN, Euro E34 518i TOURING, Euro E34 520i TOURING, Euro E34 520i SEDAN, Euro E34 525i TOURING, Euro E34 525i SEDAN, Euro E34 525ix TOURING, Euro E34 525ix SEDAN, Euro E34 525td TOURING, Euro E34 525td SEDAN, Euro E34 525tds TOURING, Euro E34 525tds SEDAN, Euro E34 530i TOURING, Euro E34 530i SEDAN, Euro E34 540i TOURING, Euro E34 540i SEDAN, Euro E34 M5 TOURING, Euro E34 M5 3.8 SEDAN, Euro Looks like most models of E34 to me......

From what I've read all E34s got the wide grille from '94

I've got some BMW Geniune Rear Mudflaps for an E32 to sell. Brought off Trade-Me as E34/E32 items, there is no way they are going to fit a E34, and the BMW tag actually says E32 Mud Flaps. I suspect the fitting instructions are common....not the mudflap. So these are new, with all the fitting kit and instructions, although the bag has been opened. $50.00 or offers PM me if you are interested

I wouldnt use Jeffs, from personal experience, damage to my car, plus many months to sort out. While they have trucks around the South Island, they are generally only using transporters for Boats in North Island, so they are likely to contract North Island work out.

I would suspect that the car is in fact a British E34 M535i rather than the SE that it was advertised. However is ad does have some issues: TradeMe Ad says NZ New VIR says: Registration details Registered overseas: Yes Prev. country of reg.: United Kingdom TradeMe Add says: 4 Owners VIR says: Ownership (9 New Zealand owners) I think he is fairly hopeful at $10K, considering we have a fairly tidy one in a dealers yard that hasnt moved at $9K. I thought however that some of the contributors to this thread might find the Ad funny

Looks like you have the opportunity to buy the red one again. Last week sold for $3400 http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Motors/C...n-123903910.htm This week for sale for $10K http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Motors/C...n-125363382.htm