Vass

3 hours ago, TonyT said:

If it's an agreed value policy then set the value at a figure you agree with. I always adjust mine each year, precisely because their estimate doesn't gel with the market. AA insurance wont bat an eyelid if you want to insure for more than they suggest.

AA has an upper limit on what you can set without having to go through the hassle of contacting them directly. In my case it was $8,350 with a yearly premium of $1,040.

Just played around with the calculator on the MAS website @Hazzy mentioned and there didn't seem to be an upper limit, not for getting a quote anyway. Put in $15,000 for shits and giggles and the yearly premium came out to $980...

In conclusion, f**k AA.

What happened to having too many cars?

The premiums going up isn't the shocking part. The fact that they at the same time devalued the car by that much as well is an absolute pisstake though.

AA Insurance.

With them for 5 years, only claim I've ever had was a chip in the windscreen 3 years ago that didn't even need a full replacement.

Policy renewal documents dropped in the inbox.

Yearly premium goes up by $100 whilst dropping the agreed value of the car down to $5.8k, a drop of 23%.

Nevermind the excessive maintenance and modifications, go find any 6-cylinder E46 Touring for any sort of money, let alone sub $6k.

Getting the car evaluated in the next few weeks and going with someone else.

Useless pricks.

15 hours ago, Chanderpaul said:

Sweet.  Cant believe how easily they die and during a f*cking heat wave.  How much for one shipped to Blenheim? 

Shouldn't be much, I'll package it up and get a quote tomorrow. Will send you a PM

More money than sense.

X2 M35i xDrive... f**k off.

30 minutes ago, Chanderpaul said:

Hey,  is the aircon fan blow resistor still available?

Yeah should have a couple spares.

How many k's has it got on the clock? Head gasket failures are fairly rare on M52/M54's, unless well abused and/or severely overheated. The milkshake in the oil could be something as simple as a clogged up CCV system, which is a pretty common occurance and one of the most commonly neglected maintenance items so that'd be the first item I'd address before jumping to a conclusion of a failed head gasket. Worth getting either way as you could just reuse it if you do end up going for an engine swap. Milky residue could also be caused by repeated short drives where the engine doesn't fully warm up so the moisture doesn't get a chance to escape.

I've done an M54B25 to M54B30 swap on my wagon and the difference in power is noticeable, although not mind blowing.

As far as squeezing more power out of it though, unless you go the forced induction route then the options are fairly limited. These engines are tuned pretty well close to their potential in naturally aspirated form from factory. Slapping on a pod filter is the most common mod but is more likely to lose you power as the stock air box is actually quite well designed. You could make some gains by opening up the exhaust a bit more but there aren't any budget options for catless headers for RHD cars so it quickly becomes a custom fabrication exercise and you'd maybe hope to gain all of 10hp. Aftermarket cams, ECU remaps, stroker kits, ITB's are options but none of those are cheap or simple and gains will be quite modest still. 

First thing I'd do is figure out what engine you actually have as something doesn't seem to add up from what you've said there. If it's a 325i then it will have an M54B25. If as you say it's got an M52 then it'll be a 323i or a 328i. Both M52's & M54's are relatively solid engines and can easily reach 400,000km's without needing major rebuilds but by this point all of them are likely to have various issues, from minor stuff like oil leaks to oil burning, failing coils, VANOS & DISA units etc. If you feel your current engine deteriorating then it could just be some long term maintenance items needing addressing.

In terms of swaps, depends on how involved you want the project to be. Easiest and cheapest would be to drop in a plug & play M54B30 which is the biggest engine that came in these from factory and would give a moderate power boost.

Other, more involved options that would require custom fabrication and indepth wiring shenanigans would be to swap in an M62 V8 or similar, or do an absolute madness and go B58. Or just turbo the engine you already have.

I wouldn't worry about it. It'll take you a good few hundred years to get anywhere close to $1,500 worth of oil topups.

1 hour ago, Harper said:

Probably, from what I hear from others that rebuild M54s often it's pretty much a given that the block will need to be time-serted but maybe it's different in the states where the advice is coming from. And I don't like the idea of going that deep and not machining all the surfaces, I know some people slap it back together but it feels wrong to me.

Yeah I got all paranoid about threads pulling out of the block reading all the forum posts on the topic but from personal, anecdotal experience, the issue might be a bit overblown. The engine I rebuilt turned out to be overheated at some point, to the extent that the head had gone too soft to use. Even still, the replacement head torqued down just fine and all seems to be ticking over alright a year or so on.

I even asked the machine shop whether it's worth timeserting the block preventatively just to play it safe, to which the machinist told me to stop being silly.

From what I gather, the safer and less involved preventative solution to the issue would be to use head studs instead of timeserting anyway, but there aren't any budget options out there on that front, M54-specific kits seem to be $400+ US.

I guess when the threads pull then the person is more likely to go on a forum to talk about it and look for a solution, whereas for every one time that happens there's 10 that torque down fine and go unreported so you end up with a skewed perception going by the number of forum posts alone.

There's always a risk though so I do get your logic, these sorts of projects do have a tendency of snowballing out of control as it is.

To add to the anecdotes, I pulled the pistons out of the old B25 block the other week out of curiosity. The engine had 227k km's on it and was known to burn oil with the yellow oil light popping up every few months. Wasn't a pretty sight.

3 minutes ago, Olaf said:

No need to pull the head, surely?  If you've removed the crank to do your big ends, drop the piston&rod assy out the bottom and presto.

It's getting the pistons back in through the underside that'd be the issue. No even surface to seat the piston ring compressor onto so you'd likely end up doing damage to the rings. Easy enough to mess it up even seating them from the topside.

I'm assuming it's these wee fellas you're talking about? I have a few spare ones, obviously stocked up at some point after that one mishap. Can chuck one in the mail for you tomorrow if you need ✌️

Awesome effort, love the attention to detail. 

I've had that battery tensioner thing snap on me before as well, remedied by getting a spare one from Pick-A-Part. If I understand correctly which bolt you're talking about, and also if that part is the same on an M3 as a non-M, then you can just get the bolt thing by itself and not the whole cable as you seem to insinuate? I should still have another spare one as well. Post a photo of the exact part that broke, happy to send it your way if that's the one I'm thinking. 

8 hours ago, Eagle said:

Rest of the car going to scrap dealers?

Yeah already gone, dropped it off at Pick-A-Part on Wednesday. Hardly anything useful left on it, managed to keep hold of the wheels as well. Rims were well kerbed up and tyres were shot but will try my hand at restoring those at some point. 

Just before Christmas I suddenly remembered Barbara wasn't the only BMW I owned...

I bought a green 320i parts car well over a year ago and it had been sitting in my mate's paddock ever since. Out of sight, out of mind so I managed to completely forget it existed until finally getting around to putting it out of its misery over the break.

Whilst scavenging for parts, I decided to also try my hand at some jobs that I hadn't done before, from smaller stuff like taking off door handles to removing the heater core and the front carpet without cutting it. Naturally, things escalated and I embarked on a learning exercise of removing all of the body loom in one piece - from the boot to the headlights and everything inbetween.

I've got a weird idea of "fun"...

Anyway, I've not got all the spare bolts, nuts, clips, grommets and brackets I could ever need, as well as snagging a few more bits for ol' Barbara.

The rubber surround on the driver's door was ripped and perished in a few places, something I didn't notice straight away but had been annoying me ever since I did. Brand new ones cost stupid money and most used ones will be similarly shagged by this point. Unsurprisingly, the driver's side one on the parts car was no different, but the passenger door one, obviously not getting as much use, was in much better nick. Luckily, both front ones are the same so fit perfectly. 

Another surprising find was the rear seat sound deadening. The one I had was long perished and only had a few random chunks left of it in a few places. The one in the parts car though - immaculate, all in one piece, no rips or cracks, the fuel pump cutout tabs still intact, as if the rear seat had never been lifted. Gave it a quick wipe and threw it in. Doubt it will make any sort of noticeable difference but does look legit. For the time being anyway.

Is that sales as in number of cars sold or amount of money made? If the latter then not at all surprising with the ballooning prices. 

Totally. That's why we should slam big red STOP 3 WATERS stickers all over the backs of our Ford Rangers and continue to let cows sh*t directly into the rivers... 

Bloody christ dude, of all the things to whinge about... "the youths are showering too much"!? 😂 Get a grip, seriously.

^ I did. 

For $48 a jug.

Buyah.

It boils my piss how short-sighted and surface level the whole "sustainability" discourse is nowadays. All blame and finger-pointing at the out-group without any deep and systematic analysis.

Both sides in this anecdote look to be misdirecting their frustration and missing the greater point.

The old fella in this article accusing the youths of hypocrisy, due to them supposedly "demanding" and not being able to live without all these products and services that were introduced to market whilst these youths were literal children and had no influence on anything.

The young cashier is misguided in seemingly believing that purely consumer decisions have the power to change anything. As if "green capitalism" is, ever was or ever will be, a thing. If every single person in society owned a tote bag and drank slurpies through a metal straw instead of plastic, we would still be not even an inch further from being completely and utterly f**ked.

Bottom line is - the capitalist system is built upon ever-increasing consumption.

More consumption = economic growth = good.

Less consumption = recession = BAD.

You cannot produce anything without creating waste and pollution. By gearing everything towards higher consumption and economic growth the system literally fuels pollution. To at the same time preach any notion of sustainability is extremely disingenuous.

So long as the economy needs infinite growth to function, any notion of sustainability is pie in the sky.

Either work towards fundamentally changing the fabric of society and decouple the economy from its cancerous addiction to infinite growth, or shut the f**k up about sustainability. You can't have both.

5 minutes ago, Cement said:

The annoying part was there was no obvious damage, the needles just didn't move at all or were sporadic ... I believe the internal gears get damaged or bent ?

Actually, the last time I was messing with mine, I thought I messed up the tacho needle. It would just flop down seemingly not attached to anything. Not being as well versed in coding it had me quite panicked as I thought I'd messed up the original cluster core and was dreading having to learn to virginise and recode the cluster somehow. Luckily, having I think seen Sreten do something similar in one of the episodes, all I did was take the needle off and give the rod a slight tap or two with a tiny rubber mallet that magically fixed it. Was a bit close for comfort though.

5 minutes ago, Cement said:

I did indeed remove the rings not thinking / knowing I could just swap the entire bezel 😂 Oh how I wish I'd simply done this hah

Actually, looking at yours again, I think the rings might be aftermarket ones that someone had fitted at some point before you. The ones I've seen have have all been almost flat silver with little to no shine. Yours almost look chrome.

Either that or there's several different variants of originals, in which case disregard my ramblings.

Yeah the needles are a pain. Not sure if luck or being super careful but out of about 15-20 I've removed I think only one time I managed to pull one out with the rod attached to it, and that was a sacrificial cluster anyway. Didn't know the whole motors were easy enough to remove though, well done.

Aligning the needles is a pain as well. I've had to go back and forth a few times and adjust them, one time had idle RPM's sitting at 500... Your kph needle seems to be sitting a bit low. Although knowing your skillset you can probably just program it to be correct without messing with the physical needle again. 

Did you actually pry the 330 cluster rings out of the casing? All I did was just use the whole front face of the cluster casing when doing mine. They're all identical anyway so is a straight swap without having to risk braking anything and getting glue involved. 

Yeah ran into the same issue, took me a while to figure out what the deal was. Noticed it only happened with larger images but anything up to 2 MB went through without issues so that seems to be the cutoff. I've just been downsizing the resolution prior to posting.

Not to push you into further scope creep, but I'd be tempted to do a full facelift conversion 😏 Shouldn't be too involved, just straight swapping parts unless the headlights are different type (halogen vs xenon). Can get a good quality brand new corner light + fender indicator set from Spareto for roughly $50...