Vass

I think I found the diff

Wonder where that ended up. Would assume @Kees would have noticed it if it had been laying anywhere near the M5 itself. What a bloody waste.

This old gem has been discussed somewhere on these shores previously but worth bringing up again as the same old unchanged ad keeps getting relisted with the same outlandish asking price for several years now. A dereg, supposedly M3 shell with next to nothing left intact and random non-M body panels thrown on - at a bargain price of $7.3k... https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/car-parts-accessories/bmw/other/listing/5405301354 What the actual hell is this guy playing at? Is there anything there that's worth even a fraction of that? I personally can't see it. Only conceivable use I could see there being is to cut out the boot floor and rear arches for a touring M3 conversion or something, but even then the RH arch has very obvious damage to it... The sheer, unfiltered delusion to then put this wibble in the description too:

Happy to recommend Classic Cover, got my E46 insured for $15k with them with a $250 excess and $600 premium (including roadside assist). At the same time AA were only offering up to $6.7k cover at nearly double the premium with a $500 excess. For further comparison, got the car evaluated with NZVV (Christchurch-based so probably not much help in that regard), initial valuation cost $200 and every subsequent one is $100.

I wouldn't tighten it more than that, those threads are really easy to strip out. Wouldn't mess around repairing the valve cover either, just straight replace. Should be cheap enough from Pick-A-Part or similar.

Haven't touched an N46 in an E90 but am tinkering on an N42 in an E46 which is pretty much the same engine. That rear right one is a bit fiddly to get to but still easy enough, not might be a bit more room to play around with on an E46 for whatever reason, I'm not sure. I found a regular 1/4 ratchet and deep wall 10mm worked just fine, up to the point it was loose enough to thread out by hand. At least on an E46, the protruding stud is for a small bracket on the vacuum line going to the brake booster to keep that in place, then another 8mm nut that goes over top.

The plastic valve cover itself could be cracked, seems to be quite a common occurrence. Worth checking it over thoroughly every time it's off, cracks can be hard to spot being black plastic and caked in gunk.

Hope you're not dead set on a BMW. I'd be real hesitant recommending any small BMW petrol engines that aren't 20+ years old, which probably is a no go in this case. Most modern 4-cylinders are riddled with problems, which is manageable if you don't mind some DIY, but not something I'd go for if your main goal is trouble free motoring. And the ones that aren't will be well beyond that budget. Honestly, I'd probably look at something small and Japanese, a Honda Fit, Suzuki Swift or similar. Should be plenty to choose from in that price range.

Gave the spare exhaust a quick lazy polish before bolting it up and dropping the car off at the shop. Even on the way there I still hadn't fully decided on the final course of action - whether to cut out the resonator or the secondary cats. Sound wise both would probably have had the same effect but the smelliness of it all was my main concern. Had the guys at the shop start up a couple of decatted cars to get a sense of what life would be like cat-free. Don't know if I got an objective feel for it or if my sense of smell had simply been decimated from sniffing all the brake cleaner fumes over the years but it didn't feel as bad as I had feared so cat delete it was. Somehow turned out to be a bit more work than I thought it would be, they cut out a bigger section than I'd envisaged but the end result looked really nice, the welds were tidy and the sound exactly what I was after. This was a progress photo they'd sent through, I forgot to ask for a full underside photo at the end. I'll be taking the exhaust off shortly to fit new exhaust gaskets, refit the damper at the back of the resonator and finish off the polishing mission so will take a photo of the rear section then. Loving the end result, the purr at startup is awesome, has a nice deeper tone to it throughout with a tinge of the signature BMW rasp. Loud enough to be enjoyable but not loud enough to be obnoxious so shouldn't annoy the neighbours too much. Once warmed up it's still surprisingly quiet at idle but definitely feel a bit more kick when giving it some beans. Took it onto the motorway to see if there's any droning but all good on that front too. The smell isn't nearly as bad as I'd feared as well, probably would only ever be an issue if left idling inside the garage for a while. VIDEO: Cold Start VIDEO: dB Meter Test VIDEO: Before Comparison with the 325i Exhaust Took it out for a quick bash along the hills the other weekend with @Carbon and his Honda mates, as well as a certain infamous M5. The muffler-deleted V8 and well as my newly opened up exhaust reverberating off the surrounding hills was a bloody nice soundtrack. Have now clocked up a couple hundred km's on the new exhaust setup and couldn't be happier, a nice finishing touch. Quickly running out of things to improve on this car. Thanks again to @Gaz for the hookup. Wifey called me a bogan as I pulled up into the driveway so that's the mission well and truly accomplished.

Mangere https://www.pickapart.co.nz/eziparts/Display_Vehicle.asp?PriceListID=0&VehicleID=216197&$Location=112105099107097112097114116099111110122&LocationID=3&VehicleDesc=BMW M5 That's crazy tho, must be a blown engine or something major. Insane that something like this would end up at PaP regardless.

Got back to tinkering on this little nugget this past weekend. Since it was still misfiring, I decided to do a compression test to make sure the issue isn't with any of the valves getting jammed. Shockingly, the result was 225-230 PSI on all cylinders. I was a bit taken aback by such high numbers. I then noticed that I had disconnected the valvetronic motor and the eccentric shaft sensor plugs when removing the coils. Wasn't sure if it'd influence the results I reconnected them and redid the test, this time around getting 175-185 PSI on all cylinders. That ruled out compression being the issue. I then moved onto the smoke tester to check for vacuum leaks. Having removed the airbox and throttle body to insert the smoke tester adapter, I discovered a major f**kup, which turned out to be the cause of the backfiring - a vacuum hose from the EVAP valve was left dangling loose, unconnected from the intake manifold. It took a fair bit of force for it to clip in properly, not sure if I had missed it completely or hadn't seated it properly when reinstalling the intake. The throttle body and airbox obscure it pretty well so would have been easy to overlook but silly mistake on my part none the less. I went ahead and did a smoke test anyway, which didn't reveal anything obvious. I then took off the valve cover and rechecked the timing - all perfectly in time still. Got everything reassembled last night and did a quick test start this morning before running off for work - she now idles buttery smooth. Then took her for a quick test run after work - far from a pleasant driving experience as things stand, but at least she's back up and running! The tyres are barely holding air, the brakes are garbage, the steering is vague, the shifter sloppy and the AC compressor will likely grenade itself as soon as I press the button but felt a nice sense of achievement clocking up some 10km along some backroads for the first time in years. Will need a fair bit of love to be put back on the road but hopefully this means she's not destined for the scrapyard just yet. Happy days. It'll definitely need new tyres, and probably the rotors machined at the very least to pass but will book her in for a WoF to see what all she needs to be made roadworthy before throwing any money at it. Hopefully it's nothing major. I'm growing quite fond of this quirky little thing.

Could be a number of things. Might be a random stab in the dark but one possibility is the ignition switch. Had that on my E46 a couple of years ago, would just intermittently not even crank until I cycled the key 4-5 times, became more frequent as time went on. Cleaned it out and has been fine since. Could also just replace it as they're fairly cheap. Haven't checked but fairly certain it'll be a very similar part on the X5, if not completely identical. Worth cleaning out regardless as they can cause a number of weird electrical issues, access should be pretty easy too, just need to remove the bottom cover from the steering column.

I didn't even know clownshoes came with non-M engines... Why would you even bother

https://www.trademe.co.nz/5368550104 What am I missing here? Yeah, it's a clownshoe, which is rare I suppose BUT it's an M52B28 automatic...? LHD, imported in 2020, never registered in NZ and by the sounds of it whoever buys it will have to take it through compliance themselves... All that for $30k!? Is this insane or am I?

You might as well just get an automatic one and get it modified, can't imagine it being too costly. Main reason you wouldn't do it is that they'll require driveshaft hoops if modifying a driveshaft but since you're increasing power by over 50% you will need then anyway?

^ That looks like a good jack but feels way overpriced for what it is. Might not be spoilt for choice down Otago way but I'd wait for a bigger sales event at Repco or Supercheap. But that's just me being a bargain hunter, hardly ever pay full price for any tools nowadays. I myself have one of these. Cheapish no brand but probably made in the same factories as most others on the market, just without the brand name slapped on. I tend to look after my tools but a few mates have the same ones and they've hurled a tonne of abuse at them, still going strong. Find it to be good value, not sure if they do shipping tho or what shipping something this heavy would cost.

I got one of them adapters when doing mine, can't remember where I got it from but looks identical. Paired it up with some ancient, fairly low profile trolley jack I borrowed off a mate, but that's not the point. The whole thing ended up being too damn fiddly to use... Trouble I ran into was, even with the car raised to the max height allowable by the jack stands, the combined height of the trolley jack and the adapter was such that even lowered all the way, the transmission was left wedged in the transmission tunnel with no way of wheeling it out. It then became a whole new mission lifting up the transmission while trying to slide out the trolley jack from underneath. In hindsight, would have been much easier without that adapter, either resting the rear of the transmission directly on the saddle or a wider block of timber and manhandling the bellhousing end. Unless you've got some extra tall jack stands, I honestly wouldn't bother. Only ever "used" that adapter once and now it's essentially scrap metal on the shelf somewhere.

Was at barber shop last month, grabbed a magazine to flick through while waiting and stumbled upon this article, my turn came up just as I finished reading it. Very cool to see such well looked after oldies.

Thanks mate! Me too. On a side note, I found it rather amusing how we're moving in polar opposite directions on the exhaust front. Saw you were diagnosing the exhaust flap vacuum solenoid the other week to quieten yours down whilst I'm here raging about mine not being loud enough Also, happy birthday buddy! Have a good one, hope you get spoilt by the fam!

Had the pleasure of meeting @Gaz the other week. He reached out to see if I wanted to check out an Eisenmann muffler from a 330i that he's parting out, which naturally piqued my interest. The exhaust was still attached to the car, the exhaust nuts at the back of the headers had of course rusted themselves on and rounded out when trying to remove them so instead we fiddled around unbolting the stubby headers from the head and removing the whole exhaust in one piece. All part of the fun. The rest of the exhaust had rubbed through from dragging on the ground but I happily walked away with the muffler. Has lived a life but cleaned up quite nicely. Will give it a nice finishing polish prior to going on for good. The donor was an earlier, PFL 330i and the exhaust setup on it was different to mine, whether from factory or from being modified at some point to make work with the muffler. The main difference being the Eisenmann muffler being a single 59mm OD entry whilst my setup is twin 50mm OD pipes running all the way to the stock muffler. This would mean a reduction in overall cross section area so technically introducing a restriction but it's probably not enough to even notice in real life, not exactly a race car after all. The muffler itself is technically meant for a 316i-328i but did come off a 330i so will send it and see how it goes. I've got a spare stock exhaust setup laying around that I'm happy to have cut up. Have booked in with Flame on the 16th to get this thing made to work. I'm thinking retain the cats, cut out the resonator and put in a Y-pipe somewhere along the way. Can't wait to hear the result. Will no doubt be rowdier than it is, hopefully not too obnoxious tho. Will still keep hold of the stock setup just in case.

The driver's side headlight had fully deteriorated to the point where it wouldn't light up at all anymore, wet or dry, so it was time to properly address it. I picked up a rather rough, but fully operational spare xenon headlight from Pick-A-Part a few months back used it as a donor to repair the existing one. The donor had unfortunately had a rough life with a bunch of clips broken and bulbs held together with some RTV-like goo so it was just too beat up to throw straight in. The headlight disassembly task turned out not to be as daunting as I had feared. Was good being able to practice on the spare unit before moving onto the original one. I made several marks on the casing and adjustment dials to make sure it all went back together in the same way. Ideally, I would have swapped over the main wiring casing where the ballast plugs into but it was in a rather shoddy state with the casing cracked, bits broken off and goo holding it to the headlight housing instead of screws. The brown wire had also been pinched on the seal and cracked in exactly the same place as on the original headlight. Third unit I'm seeing it happen on now so looks to be a very common thing, weirdly enough. I decided to leave the wiring birds nest alone and start by swapping over the igniter unit, which seems to have turned out to be the fix. The original igniter unit was visibly "swollen" with the top & bottom edges bowed out, I'm assuming from absorbing all the moisture making its way into the headlight housing. On the moisture front itself, the lens seal had somehow begun to rot and was in an absolute horrid state. Almost impressive how bad it had gotten. Luckily, the one from the donor was in pretty good nick so I used that for now. Will order a pair of new seals at some point and replace both to future proof it. Unfortunately, it's one of those items that Spareto doesn't stock for some weird reason so will have to be a Schmiedmann order or a trip to the dealership. All put back together and reinstalled in the car, both headlights now fire up instantly so looks to be a successful fix, although she's yet to venture outside and face the rain. Hopefully it'll hold up just fine tho.

That was a massive oversight on our part. Should have checked timing as the first thing but I guess since we managed to get the car running and idling perfectly smoothly a couple of times we just assumed that the timing wouldn't have been the issue. It must only have been marginally out, not beyond what the valvetronic system could compensate for, but not consistently enough for some reason. How, when and why it skipped timing is a bit of a mystery. The car has 165,331km's on the clock. At 160,736km's it had a timing chain, guide, tensioner etc replacement done at Christchurch BMW so it hadn't even done 5k km's since then. Weird one all around. When picking up a spare valvetronic motor a year ago, it came with a whole valvetronic assembly that I parked up on a shelf but now came in quite handy. I figured since I'm disturbing timing anyway, I might as well remove the whole thing, give it a checkover and a clean. I started on the spare unit as a test run before removing the one from the car and tearing that one apart as well. The video series from BimmerZen was super useful throughout the whole process. Straight away it became apparent that the unit that came off the car was in real shoddy state. Whether from neglect during its life or purely from sitting for close to 6 years now the surfaces on the tappet arms (or whatever you call them) and eccentric shaft had become quite badly pitted and looked really rough. Luckily, I had the second unit on hand and between the two of them made up one decent one. All put back together, the car would now start every time but would run rough and want to die soon after. A few tries later, assisting with the throttle, it began running a bit more consistently but accompanied with loud pops which sounded like backfiring into the intake manifold. I then looked in the rear view mirror only to see a big while cloud from having smoked up the whole street. I then remembered that the fuel would have been sitting in the tank for near enough a year and probably wasn't in ideal state. Decided to drain it and replaced it with 10L of fresh BP98, just to give it the best chance at life. After a few more tries, probably helped by the fact of built up oil pressure, it would now run without stalling, but still erratically backfiring into the intake manifold. I was even brave enough to take it for a lap around the block, clocking up a whopping 1.2km whilst sputtering lightly. VIDEO That's the state of things for the time being. Showing signs of life but not quite back to full health. The backfiring could be something as simple as a vacuum leak, or a more serious undiagnosed issue that took it off the road in the first place. Either way, needs more effort (and money) thrown at it. Just not sure how far to take it. Would hate to jump in head first and start throwing money at it only to take it for a WoF and find out something fundamentally wrong that would make it wildly uneconomical to remedy. Ideally, I'd figure out a way to get it running smoothly enough for it to make its way to the inspection, get a full list of issues and reassess from there. More tinkering for another weekend.

Time for a long overdue update on this little piggy. Here's a summary of all my efforts over the past month or so. All our previous attempts had led us to believe the issue to be electrical and having found oil on the DME plugs I went further down that rabbit hole. I removed the intake manifold, revealing the junction box for the engine loom. I opened it up to discover a couple of plugs drenched in oil so figured I might as well remove the whole thing and give it a good clean. I traced the drenched plugs to the cam sensor wiring at the front of the engine. I also removed the cam sensors themselves to check them out. They were the older design ones with a thinner end bit becoming wider half way along with a rubber seal at the junction. That rubber seal had all but perished on one of the sensors and along with external leaks, seemed to also shooting oil straight through into the plug. I swapped in some spare, newer design cam sensors I had handy, as well as the crank sensor for good measure. I then went through the whole loom with contact cleaner spray, tidied up the whole thing and reinstalled it. I then moved inside, removed the ignition switch and gave that a good clean. Those are known to cause all sorts of erratic electrical issues and was good to eliminate as a possible culprit. One of the connection spots was really gummed up with carbon dust so could have been beginning to be problematic. I then checked all the fuses, both in the glovebox and whichever ones I could find in the DME box. All checked out fine. With the battery fully charged, I gave starting it a go. Crank, no start. The only DME code showing up was for the ambient temperature sensor, the one on the passenger side fender liner, which had of course gotten ripped out at some point in its life. I always thought that it's only there for the cluster display and the operation of the HVAC system so not sure why it was showing up as a DME code. Nevertheless, I spliced in a spare sensor and plug to get rid of the fault code at the very least. Code now gone, it still made no difference. It was only at that point that I decided to do the thing I should have done as the first step. I borrowed a timing tool kit from a fella I'd bought some parts from a while ago, opened up the valve cover and had a fresh peek inside. The intake cam locking tool was a real tight squeeze to install but finally went in, only to then move over to the exhaust side and find it nowhere near fitting. Bastard.

Been following the channel for a good while now and was happy to finally see an E46 featured, a Touring no less. Props to the dudes doing their research, felt like they got the vast majority of the info spot on. Worth a watch. PS. Spare a thought for the Aussies only ever getting the Touring in 320i form for some weird reason. No idea what that's about.

Was just about to post this 😄 Absolute crackhead pricing. Dude is a car salesman and doesn't even know his V6's from I6's. Needs to be disqualified from owning cars.