Vass

Yeah, just utterly disappointed. Did my best to try and avoid this by asking around and going with a reputable shop but there you go... Luckily doesn't look to be too catastrophic but absolutely appalled by the lack of care. An engine builder mate of mine is gonna swing by over the weekend and have a look, will hopefully help me tidy up the rough edges. Was gonna start throwing everything together today, drop the crank in, check bearing clearances etc but will hold off now. Will see how we go.

Could try your luck with the Find a Load FB group. Plenty of folks lugging stuff up and down the country, often with room to chuck some more stuff on board. Didn't end up going through with it at the time but found a fella willing to bring a pair of front seats from Auckland to Christchurch for $200 a while ago, as an example.

Haven't managed to make much progress in the meantime but gearing up for a wrenchfest over the long weekend, I finally unwrapped the block and chucked it up on the stand. First time I had a proper look at it since getting it back from the shop a good two months ago now and... boy oh boy. What the actual f**k man. Just lost for words at this point. Especially pissed at the chipped and mangled edges where the block meets the timing cover and oil pan, which is prone to leaking even when perfectly straight. Will have to carefully file away and straighten those out. Pure and utter negligence. Not even touching upon the "cleaning job" they did. Loose dirt all over the outside still, thread locker in the threads and metal shavings throughout. Didn't expect it to come out clean enough to eat off of but f**k me... Would expect better from a backyard cashie job, let alone a supposedly reputable shop recommended by several local indie mechanics. If you're looking for a machine shop down in Christchurch, you'd do well to steer well clear of Car Aid. What an utter shitshow. On a lighter note, stopped by Seal Inniovations today who helped pick out a nice new viton O-ring for the cylinder head oil non-return valve (size 015 - 14mm ID x 1.78mm c/s if anyone's wondering). Beats paying US$80 for a whole new valve.

Still a good few of them out there being used properly. Was a good wee fleet of 3 or 4 at the Ashley Forest Rally Sprint last weekend too. Gave a few 4WD's a run for their money. Way more fun to watch too.

Ari Pettigrew absolutely hauling ass at the Ashley Forest Rally Sprint.

Love the glue coming loose from the door seals

Yeah this whole thing stopped making any sort of financial sense a long long time ago. I'm afraid of keeping a tally of how much has gone into it so far, already beyond what I originally paid for the car I'm pretty sure. Will probably add it all up when / if I get her up and running. Will make for some grim reading I'm sure. Did a bit of googling out of interest. There do seem to be some differences between Phantom Grip and RacingDiffs, mainly the added friction shims that seem to reduce risk of metal shavings from the plates. The latter does seem to have a whole bunch of positive reviews although under abuse some people have managed to wear them out, seemingly without any catastrophic consequences though. That said, don't think I'll bother with it in the end, might just save up and go for a "proper" LSD, eventually, as Jared suggested. Way way down on the priority list though. What needs doing on the DSC front? Just coding it out completely? Speaking of seats, I got a lead on some X5 heated leather seats from a guy up in Nelson that's got a yard full of about 50 bimmers. Heading up that way for a rally event at the end of October so will grab them then. Should be largely plug & play, apart from wiring in the heating function and switching over the seat belt buckles. The button panels seems fairly abundant on eBay as well so should be doable. Don't expect them to do much better at cornering but should be heaps more plush and comfortable otherwise. Last missing piece from my interior leather conversion. Not sure I get the reference. Is it to do with that tunnel or something? Pulled the brake calipers apart the other evening to check whether I need new pistons added to the next parts order. Rears look fairly good so thinking they're fine to reuse. The fronts have a bit of scoring and some plating finish starting to flake off on one of them. Otherwise the internal surfaces look pretty good. Wondering if that bit of scoring on the fronts is enough to warrant getting new pistons or should do fine? Not awfully expensive those but don't want to be throwing money at something that doesn't need it either.

Yeah might skip on those, they're like US$35 each. Did a bit of snooping on the topic and apparently BMW also classifies the clutch pivot fork and throwout bearing guide tube as wear items that should be replaced with every clutch job... Of course they would I guess. Seems a bit excessive.

Yeah good shout! Still have a few more bits to order so will throw that in. Might do the other seals too. Cheers

Asked around for some more opinions and advice regarding the state of the head. Responses ranged from "completely unacceptable" to "not ideal/would have expected better but shouldn't cause sealing issues". Had a couple machinist - engine builder mates have a look too. Said the gaskets tend to seal better if the surface is a bit roughened up but this seemed way too coarse. Ended up taking it back to the shop on Friday. Said they'd clean it up, and that this is how they send all of their work out. Apparently I'm the first to complain. Nice one. Got it back today. Seems a wee bit better I guess. Still looks all sorts of mangled but at least nothing catches on the nail anymore. Impossible to get it back to what it was of course. Didn't want to take any more material off so this will have to do. Will have to trust them that this is good enough... Did a quick check with a flat edge and looks nice and straight at least. Did take a shop vac to it which blew out quite a few bits of metal shavings so didn't even do a particularly good job of cleaning it out. Will do another thorough clean prior to reassembly. Unfortunate wee episode but... onwards and upwards.

With the engine still a bit of a shambles, was nice to finally get some wins on the board over the weekend. Got the gearbox very much ready to drop in. Now just the small task of sorting the engine... Spent an absolutely stupid amount of hours cleaning it all up with all sorts of drill bit brushes. Impossible to get it perfect but at least isn't as caked up and crusty as it arrived. Then refreshed all the shifter pins, reverse & 5th gear detents, new shift lever and all the shift linkage bushes, new metal clutch fork pivot as well as new oil. Also threw on a new reverse light switch. Probably didn't need to but at $7 figured I might as well. Did a bunch of digging online, people seem to go with either 75W80 MTF, pure ATF or a 50-50 mix of the two. Read a few accounts of shifting being a bit notchy until the gearbox warms up if using 75W80. Seems to be climate dependant to some degree too. Went around BMWorkshop and B&T who both recommended ATF so I went with that. Good enough for them - good enough for me. Will see how it goes. The set of special punches form Street Driven Industries came through who also threw in a set of plugs for the shifter pins that I'd been struggling to source. Did charge me a rather silly US$10/each but was the only place I could find them so figured what the hell. Happy to lend the punches out or sell them on if anyone wants to do their detents as I probably/hopefully won't be needing them anymore. As is typical for these, she was clearly suffering from 5th gear lean. Reverse and 5th especially needed some effort to jam into. Pulling the 5th gear detent out, was pretty clear it had seized up and chunks of the inner sleeve it was sitting in were flaking off. Bit of a mission getting those out, literally have to destroy them before they let go but very much doable. Got myself an E60 shift lever and ZHP gear knob from Schmiedmann, as per @Eagle's recommendation. Seems only a few mm's difference but probably does change the geometry enough so it doesn't feel as much of a row boat. Threw the shifter linkage on to play around a bit. Rowed through all the gears, of course whilst making manly engine noises. Shifts seem much smoother and more effortless now so was definitely worth doing. Onto more serious sh*t now.

Glad you're okay, hope the car is too. A silver sedan door shouldn't be too hard to find. There's one at the Christchurch Pick-A-Part that I know of.

FOR SALE signs in front of houses. House gets sold, some f**ker drives all the way out to slap a big red SOLD sign on it and leaves the bloody thing sitting there for another 3 months. Yes well done, you've sold a house. It served its purpose. Take your shitty sign and f**k straight off. Tempted to start setting them on fire.

The hell... You're right, that set of control arms is saying $83 for shipping. I then tried the H&R springs I was looking at and shipping on those is $193... Springs shouldn't be that much more bulkier/heavier than a set of control arms, would they?

Shipping might be a killer though. Was looking at some lowering springs, shipping was like $220 US in itself.

No, absolutely nothing like the state they're in now, looked close to immaculate when I took the valve cover off. Wouldn't it come all rough as guts from factory if that were the case?

Bought my Macbook Pro back in 2016 I think. Right after they announced the new version ones with the light strip, no magsafe and no ports, I walked in and bought the older version with all the ports, a maxed out 13" with i7 16GB ram and 512GB SSD. Was a great wee machine for a year or two whilst I was travelling for processing photos and videos. Then after a couple of OS updates it all went to sh*t. Using the same software I'd used all along, when editing photos, it would take 5-10 seconds to reload a single picture every time you did any tweaking. Rendering a 3-minute video went from 1.5-2 hours to 6+ to the point I had to leave it running overnight. Battery life went out the window too until a couple of years ago it stopped holding charge altogether. Not gradually either, one time overnight just stayed at 0% and shut down the moment you disconnected the charge cable. Fair enough, had a brand new battery put in. Nowadays just use it occasionally for light browsing or watching DIY's in the garage and have a full tower PC for more serious work. Even with a brand new battery, it now holds just 3-4 hours of charge with just a browser running. Love the design of it but would never buy a new one, especially with all the idiocy of having no ports and endless dongles and adapters. Feel like Windows has caught up of late too with 10 & 11 where it's actually aesthetically minimalistic and pleasant to use once you turn all the crapware off whilst having all the functionality you need. Considering just installing Windows on it now to see if it would liven it up at all.

After a very long "one to two weeks", I got the call yesterday telling me the head work was done. Jumped straight on it and went to pick it up. Great to see some shiny parts. Work done: Even got a bit of a discount for the long wait. Was pretty happy until I got home, flipped it over and, umm... really don't know how to feel about this. I took it straight back to the shop to see what that's all about, the guy was completely unphased and assured me it's nothing to be worried about. The head gasket surface is of course the one that has to be absolutely perfect, and it does look to be fine. The valve cover, thermostat, exhaust manifold won't be under anywhere close to the same pressure as the head but damn, they're still sealing surfaces and to have score marks that catch on the nail and all sorts of chipped edges all over the gaff surely isn't ideal? Changing valve covers and thermostats previously, I've always been super careful not to scratch any of the surfaces, always stopped short of even using scotch-brite out of fear of damage, this just looks like it's been dragged along a gravel road. Had a chat with a mechanic mate of mine who also thought it shouldn't cause sealing issues but definitely would have expected a tidier finish from a professional shop. I guess I can live with it so long as it works and seals fine but am I right in being concerned at all, or is this just purely visual?

Yeah I should have a few spares as well, or just scavenge Pick-A-Part. Not much point buying new.

Sort after

Wonder what the actual differences are with a regular Msport wheel, flappy paddles aside. Bottom tri-spoke trim looks to be bullet grey or something as opposed to black. Apart from that... 🤷‍♂️

The incentives baked into the system that have driven social media to what it is today? The drive for higher profits hijacking and weaponizing basic human psychology? The over-commercialization and commodification of literally everything? No semblance of any sense of a moral good, only what's good for the bottom line? Decisions, legislation, actions that are objectively necessary to curb any of that never being taken or implemented because they're "bad for the economy"? When you take a bigger picture view and look at the core incentives baked into the foundation of the economic system, it all becomes painfully inevitable.

Fixed it for you.

It's all video games' fault...

Honestly, I was shocked by the driving culture when I first came to New Zealand. Or not even so much the culture as just piss poor driving skills, basic knowledge of road rules and borderline criminal lack of attention. In one instance, I had to slam on the brakes three times within barely half an hour. One person straight drove out of a driveway onto the main road right in front of me; second was driving in front of me, randomly started pulling over to the left side of the road, without indicating, then proceeded to turn straight around by chucking a hard right, cutting me off as well as a car in the opposite lane; third I was standing at an intersection, going straight, lights go green, I accelerate and the dude in the opposite lane obliviously proceeds to turn right straight in front of me, with a cop car right in the front row of the side road, who just sat there like a muppet and did nothing. To me the whole licensing system seems idiotic. There's nowhere near enough oversight when it comes to actual driving education. You could very easily turn up to a driving test with absolutely zero prior driving experience, then luck out with passing a test and be set to drive for the next 50+ years. After what, barely an hour of actual supervision? Short of police intervention, that's literally all the oversight you get. How low a bar is that? No wonder so many clowns with decades of driving under their belts still struggle to grasp the proper use of indicators or a f**king roundabout. In my native Estonia, it's mandatory you do a minimum of 40 hours of driving with a licensed driving instructor before you're even allowed to sit a theory test. Then within 2 years of getting a license, you have to do a "Slippery Driving Course" before you get your full license. That involves doing an obstacle evasion drive on a skid track. It's wild how difficult it is to keep even a tiny front-wheel drive car pointing straight doing as little as 30km/h. Humbles you right up. There's still hordes of idiots on the roads, but at least they've been given a set of basic skills and knowledge by a competent operator prior, so you don't see as nearly as much stupidity on the roads. All the dedicated exam cars are manuals as well. It's an annoying and expensive process when you're in it, but damn it, looking back, I'm very glad I had to go through it. I got lucky with my teacher as well who used to be both a police man and a rally driver. He was very harsh at times but was a great teacher and really knew his sh*t. Similarly to what @Jacko touched upon above, there was also a great sense of professional pride and even competition amongst the instructors. The main criteria they were aiming for is to get the highest percentage of students passing the state exam on the first go. My instructor was sitting at something like 96%. All that meant that there was a high bar of entry to even be allowed to register for a state exam. It wasn't unusual for people to rack up as much as 80 hours of driving before the instructor deeming them ready. As opposed to here where all the driving education you could easily get away with is a quick sesh with your dodgy uncle in a New World parking lot. Makes me cringe every time I hear of another speed limit getting lowered or all this crap about millions being "invested" into Mission Zero or whatever the f**k. How about investing in proper education instead? You won't legislate away stupidity, but what it would do is instil at least some basic tenets of a driving culture in new drivers before they're allowed to independently hit the road for the first time. Wouldn't make much of a difference for a number of years or even decades due to the sheer number of cretins already grandfathered in, but it'd be a start. Either that or make every single road 40km/h I guess...