Vass

Just the silver text ones being affected, for the time being anyway. No word on white text version but still good supposedly. No idea how. Look way better with the silver text though.

Get yours while you still can fellas. Following email being sent around by Kiwiplates, as well as there now being a disclaimer at checkout. Surprised it lasted this long tbh, the "issue" has been known for a good while.

Don't look at 2005-2012 320's, they've got the same shitty engine. In fact, don't look at any BMW that's not a straight 6.

Pure rage bait. He knows exactly what he's doing.

You see plenty of people ignore the problem and drive around in a cloud of smoke for years on end. Common does not equal normal. There's really nothing normal about it, a well designed, properly operating engine will not be burning anywhere close to that much oil. Those manufacturers claiming it to be "normal" are just trying to cover their ass and not take responsibility for putting poorly designed products into circulation. All those faults are fixable but often not financially viable, hence them trying to normalize it. Not sure where you're getting the $5-9k figure from, might be the case for a V8 or V12 engine, no way it costs that much for a 4-cylinder. I asked the local BM Workshop for a quote for valve stem seals for an N42/N46 earlier this year, got told $1.5k + GST. As a DIY it'll be a weekend of work, $100-200 in parts depending on any extras you want to do at the same time (spark plugs, vacuum pump seals etc) and a few specialized tools (https://bimmerzen.com/store/product/3/BMW-N42N46-VSCT-Full-Kit).

Not that I needed them but got myself a pair of Maxgear bulbs off Spareto, at 9 EUR a piece I just wanted to see what they were like. Couldn't tell you how they compare brightness or longevity wise to premium brands but look good enough to me. Not something I can justify paying 5x for a pair of bulbs. When it comes to ordering from Ledperf, don't expect a quick delivery. Put in my first ever order with them for some chrome indicator bulbs on the 2nd of October, got a shipping notification on the 4th and haven't gotten a single tracking update since. Coming up to 3 weeks now and no idea where the shipment has gotten to or when I'll receive it...

It'll be the valve stem seals... No idea how you're claiming it ain't blowing smoke out the exhaust if it's burning through that much oil either. For comparison, I replaced the valve stem seals on a mate's car ($1,500+ job if you take it to a garage), replaced brake booster (another typical problem on these), replaced some leaking coolant lines, thermostat and coolant plug at the back of the head. Tidy well looked after car overall. Has been up at $5k for 4 months, only message received was a scam, zero interest otherwise. The market is dead. $5.5k for a car with issues is optimistic, if not outright deceitful.

Have been trying to hunt down the cause for the rich running ever since the dyno day. Fuel trims were not a topic I was too familiar with so set out on a bit of an educational journey on the science behind it all. A bunch of Google'ing led me to a number of useful forum threads on the topic, including this priceless guide on reading engine logs by our very own @NZ00Z3. Despite being a Z3 loyalist , he's a bit of a legend over on the E46 Fanatics forums and an absolute treasure trove of information, helping countless people interpret their data logs and get to the bottom of their engine troubles. I've gone into greater detail documenting the logging journey over on E46 Fanatics but so far, even with the help of the hive mind, haven't been able to find the smoking gun - the LTFT's for both banks have anchored themselves at -8.6%. The engine is in great condition, strong compression numbers, fuel pressure within spec, tested for vacuum leaks, no engine codes. O2 sensors & MAF are brand new OE, the Rev Rise Test seems to indicate the MAF operating as expected. Have re-run the logs having swapped out various components without any change, including a throttle body, ICV & MAF that @Eagle kindly lent me. One of the case studies mentioned an instance of rich running being caused by over-oiling a rechargeable K&N filter, which I did run for a while. I swapped it out for a brand new stock filter, cleaned the new MAF as well as re-running logs with a spare MAF without any change. My latest attempts of getting to the bottom of it involved tinkering with the DME. I hacked up a spare body loom I had to make up a bench coding setup. Came out looking pretty crude but does the job well enough. Used a random old 12V, 1.5A charger for a power supply. I had a spare DME from the engine donor car which I used as a coding test rabbit and to eliminate the possibility of the original DME not operating correctly. I updated the DME to the latest MS430069 firmware, checked that it's running the latest EU2 tune, did an EWS delete, cleared all adaptations and threw it in the car. It started up on the first crank, ran fine so I took it for a drive whilst monitoring fuel trims. The signs were promising in the beginning but then slowly but surely the LTFT's started creeping their way down before settling at the familiar -8.6% for both banks after around 20 minutes of driving. With the original DME out on the bench, I flashed that to the latest firmware as well, cleared adaptations, threw it back in and sure enough the fuel trims were back at -8.6% within 5 minutes. One other suggestion was to test the barometric pressure sensor on the DME since that could also cause false readings if faulty. I did the test whilst the DME's were coming in and out. Read 4.95V between pins 2 & 3 and 4.06-4.07V between pins 3 & 4 on both DME's, which checks out, seemingly eliminating the DME as the culprit. Running out of ideas at this point, I should probably just leave it alone really. The car is still running fine, I don't explicitly feel any lack of power but knowing that something is not at 100% is still low-key eating away at me. As was suggested in the other thread, it could just be the type/grade/quality of fuel used in NZ that's behind it but then the dyno results and AFR graphs shouldn't have been as different between the 3 cars as they were. A few weeks back we took @Carbon's E39 for a longer cruise with OBD Fusion hooked up the whole time, his LTFT's never went beyond +/- 0.3% throughout. Few more things I might still try: Will take out the spark plugs and check how sooty they are - would seemingly verify whether the engine is actually running rich or if the DME just thinks it is. Might just throw in a new set regardless. They've only done around 11k km's post engine rebuild but they did go through the whole running-in process, which could have gunked them up somehow I guess? Did read/hear somewhere that it's best to hold off throwing in brand new spark plugs onto a freshly rebuilt engine, advice that I blatantly ignored. So many conflicting opinions on the best running in process that it's really hard to tell what the definitive best practice might be but new ones definitely won't hurt at this point. Might look at getting brand new injectors. Had the original ones professionally cleaned, the fuel pressure test didn't indicate them leaking at all, the trims for both banks are the same so should also eliminate any individual ones being faulty. Only thing that would make sense is all of them injecting too much fuel, equally as much so it quite a big long shot. Blocked cats? Wouldn't mind a set of catless headers but yet to come across a decent RHD set - Malian Exhaust ones are sh*t, as @Eagle has experienced, Gravity Performance don't ship to NZ and Super Sprint are $4k+... LS swap?

A short lesson in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Ordered in a pair of new washer nozzles. Being the fancy heated type they weren't exactly cheap for what they are - around $40 each. With the shipment nearly at my door, only then did I think to look up how common a problem this is and stumbled upon this thread, which immediately made me feel like an utter dumbass. A wee while ago I threw on a new washer reservoir cap, not because of it having anything wrong with it, rather just a visual thing. Didn't think to notice it at the time, but unlike the old one, the replacement was completely solid and didn't come with a vent opening. The fluid would heat up in the engine bay, pressure would build up and without a vent opening the only way out would be for it to push its way out through the nozzles. Physics, duh... Took the cap off, drilled a 1mm hole through the middle of it, problem solved. Threw the new nozzles on too since they were already here. Packed the order out with more unnecessary stuff to justify the shipping costs somehow, anything relatively cheap that I could think of really. Got a new fuel tank vent valve (just because I had an issue with the car stalling that once a while ago), a new expansion tank cap (started weeping occasionally) and a fuel filler cap (seal was starting to crack).

Nah there's no membership fee, it's just a small local group, not affiliated with BMW Car Club NZ, although some people are members of both.

A car forum dedicated to BMW's of all brands shaming someone for speeding. Fun times.

Didn't think there were any real stringent requirements. There's all sorts amongst the group - folk with project cars, newer models, classics, M-cars etc. Wouldn't think there'd be any prejudice against you either unless you did anything to explicitly piss someone off, which I can't imagine how you would have. The fella currently running it has been away in Aussie for the past few months so probably just not been keeping tabs on things as actively. He's a bit oldschool and prefers to do things over email instead of FB in general. There's typically a lull over the winter months anyway so not much has been going on of late apart from the monthly meets. I'm sure you'll get approved eventually. In the meantime just rock up to the next meet, no one's checking memberships at the door... It's every first Tuesday of each month, 6pm at the Richmond Club. Usually parked along the back fence, just see where there's a bunch of BMWs parked up and follow suit. I've only just started going again after my car being out of action for close to half a year. There were only a handful of cars and ~12 people at the last one but turnout should start picking up into the warmer months. I'll probably be there at the next one too, just seek me out or send me a message closer to the time, I'll make sure to come and say hi. I'm sure you'll fit right in, it's a nice friendly bunch.

Haven't heard of this particular one but seems similar to a few scams that have been doing the rounds. Usually a "potential buyer" will message you, come across as really interested in the car you're selling then ask for a [insert random abbreviation] Report as a pre-requisite for purchase. They'll spin a yarn how that's a deal breaker for them and how for whatever stupid reason they can't run and pay for the report themselves "because it's not their car" and how you're the one that needs to do it. What this basically does is feed your credit card info into their system and they then use if to empty your bank account or sell it off on the dark web... They tried to rope me into one of these one time, was some Canadian website with a similar layout. Not 100% certain that this is what it is but one red flag that sticks out is they just give a whole street as their address without a street number. Seems a fair bit of effort put into the website though - detailed enough to come across as somewhat legit, vague enough to not lead to anywhere in particular. If that sounds like a familiar scenario then whatever you do don't put your bank info anywhere near that website. If a buyer wants a report then they can pay for it themselves.

Can't see anything E30 about it, even got rid of the Hofmeister kink. Don't actually hate the look, more easy on the eye than the humongous bulges they're offering nowadays but how is this a homage to the E30 exactly? The round headlights?

Take just the AC belt off and check if the noise is still there. Take the rest of the belts off, spin all the pulleys by hand, check for noise. Must be something really obvious if it's that loud and instant. Are the belts routed correctly? Does the AC belt have the correct number of splines? There were 2 different types of AC pulleys, harmonic balancers and AC belts depending on production date. That's the first obvious thing I can think of.