Harper

How do people let them get that bad. Makes me sad.

Thank you, their one looks like the cheapest option. Will grab one of those. Still, $65 makes the eyes water when it's essentially an airplane neck pillow.

Gearing up to do a track day in the M3 soon. Most tracks seem to say they require a foam neck brace? I have a helmet and suit already, where can I buy the neck brace? Is it actually necessary, is it something that is policed? They seem pretty pointless in terms of safety.

No worries. I assume you've seen the set of nogaros that someone had trimmed in CSL materials. They look very OE when done that way. The manual sliders are a very basic mechanism so I'm sure the release handle would be an easy thing to fabricate. Hopefully the gap between the pillar is passable. I look forward to seeing what route you go.

Thanks mate, yeah I'm over the moon with them. They are infinitely better than the stock seat for me. More comfortable, the grip is so much better. The sedan sliders have significantly more travel. Attached a couple photos below with a ruler. I tried to take decent photos but it's quite hard to show because of the depth. The ruler is a bit longer than 300mm and is super close. It's within 5mm of a 300mm gap. When I spoke over the phone with NZTA they pretty much said when it's that close it would just be down to whoever is certifying it and whether they believe it's unreasonably difficult to get in or (more importantly) out. The other issue is the routing of the seatbelt. In the above photos you can see I have it tucked by the backseat which is what I do when getting in and out, but in it's natural state it is going across that entryway as a result of the cutout at the hip on the seat. Again, NZTA basically just said it would come down to the certifier whether the seatbelt unreasonably hinders exit. My guess is the combination of the gap being so close to 300mm and there also being a seatbelt in the way would result in a fail. You could eliminate the seatbelt issue with a different seat design like cobra nogaros which are closer to the CSL design in that they do not have a cutout and the seatbelt runs over the side of the seat bolster. Or Recaro Sportsters which can tilt to get more access etc. And that's not even mentioning the need for a rear release lever for the back seat. Summary is, I wouldn't bank on passing cert while retaining the rear seats if you have two fixed back bucket seats in the front, even though functionally the backseat is perfectly usable. For a perfectly legal setup Recaro Sportster CS's are probably the best bet, but they are not a true bucket seat.

100% if someone wanted to they could but that would require some planning or a thief skilled in a very niche area, which given the type of person to steal a car seems unlikely. Hopefully the CCTV footage provide some insight but it's probably way more likely it just got towed with the intention of parting it out.

Pretty sure a lot of the more modern BMWs are actually easier to steal due to keyless ignition systems and comfort access. E46s are more challenging from what I've heard. It's not impossible but requires a bit more technical knowledge than you'd expect the average car jumping rat to possess. I could be wrong though maybe theres some easy way to bypass the EWS.

Saw this car out by the airport once, had to pick my jaw up off the floor. Pretty much dream spec on one of these for me too.

Yeah super curious how this was stolen without a key. Thought the EWS on these made that super difficult.

Definitely, it's a super cool fabric I love mine. An E30 M3 I saw with mtex in it on instagram a while back: But when you're doing a whole interior the cost of the fabric adds up fast... and with there being so many cool period correct fabrics available for the E30 I'd probably end up going one of those routes. You're welcome to have a poke around mine to see what you think of the fabric in person if there is another meet sometime soon.

The comfort seats are really sad looking compared to the sport seats most of them have. Anyone know if there are any M-texture M5s in NZ? I'm guessing not since they are crazy rare.

Might as well make the most of the shipping cost and grab a carbon roof while you're there.

Karbonius is the best quality carbon csl bootlid, I don't know of any other option that doesn't fit like garbage. The karb one fits perfectly from what I've seen as does everything else they make.

Karbonius

Sold? Man these don't hang around long.

Supposedly a pretty normal S62 thing, just the timing chain tensioner. Probably not too expensive if that's all it is.

@balancerider 2005 M3! Not many around. Vin says SMG maybe was converted.

These are super tempting. I've thought about just grabbing one and immediately doing the bearings diy. It's not that expensive and not that complex of a job. There's no other car you can get with a 5L V10 for that money.

It's a trashy colour too. Why spend all that money to downgrade it from it's factory titanium silver?

Yeah these don't come up often. Seems a reasonable price as well. Won't last long I'm guessing.

Bought mine for under $1000, rust free. Owned by an elderly woman for the last 10 years and full service history for that period. Bought some GTA wheels for cheap. Went to a scrapyard where there were a few 156s and came away with bilstein shocks and an aftermarket exhaust for $200. It's treated me very well for what I'm in on it. One day I'll look at dropping a 3L in it in place of the 2.5 but for now it does the job well.

Good eye. Sure is. Was using it as a daily driver when I had to commute pre-lockdown. V6 Manual, cool little thing and bought it for jelly beans too because they seem to be worth nothing.

Some cool stuff to add here. New alcantara wheel. Went with royal steering wheels from the UK over someone like Cobywheel cause I don't like the way they just wrap over an original. I wanted to retain OEM thickness etc. The other option was one of the European guys on ebay but half of them can't use the stock grey 9002 alcantara and use 9040 which is much darker. I already have 9002 on the gear/handbrake levers and boots, so matching was important. Not to mention the ebay guys are significantly more expensive. Went with black stitching instead of the tri-colour. Not my thing, and I have black stitching everywhere else. Overall fairly impressed given the price. There is some slight bunching at 9 and 3 on the wheel but pretty good. This section in particularly is rough on the cobywheel and was the reason I was looking elsewhere. The cobywheels have loose material hanging off here because they are just wraps. Other than that over the last few weeks I have rebuilt some sedan sliders and mounted the recaros on those instead of coupe sliders. Significantly more travel on the passenger side and makes rear seat access better. Unfortunately I fried my phone and lost the photos but I just cleaned them down and painted them gloss black. I also decided I would have a go regluing my A and C pillars which were sagging (again lost the before photos). I had seen people suggest using a glue stick. I was sceptical but figured if it didn't work I would just replace them anyway. To my surprise, it worked super well and they are still holding pretty firm a few weeks later. We will see if they survive the summer. Replaced the headlight lenses and removed the angel eyes. Photos don't do justice how much of a difference fresh lenses make. Before: After: Replaced all the window seals for fresh ones since the old ones were dry and disintegrated, and a fresh center hood grill as well (lost the before shots but they were knackered). In a happy place with the car for now. Time for a breather.

Tbh probably not 100% necessary. Just a decent health check if you already have a k+dcan cable and want to suffer through bad youtube videos on how to use navigate DIS. No break in. Just drive the tits off it.

The beisan instructions are pretty comprehensive, follow them and you should be sweet as. You don't actually need to replace the exhuast hub given yours hasn't critically failed and the tabs are intact. Once the oil pump disc has the new drilled holes there should be no slop between them, but there's no harm in doing it. Given you are replacing the oil pump disc instead of re-drilling your existing one, do the ISTA/DIS test and pressure test as well since the tolerance between the inner surface of the pump disc and shaft are fairly critical in the oil pressure produced. I think that was a problem with the early beisan discs and likely fine by now though. As for the s62 diaphragm springs, I think the idea is that they slightly reduce axial play in the shaft but I wouldn't bother. I used my stock springs and my vanos unit is silent, seems like beisan doesn't even sell them anymore. The bulk of the power loss will have just been from the flattened seals on the vanos pistons, will feel like a new car when you're done. Fresh seals make a big difference to the low end pick up.