e38king

Great to hear from your Glenn, I work in Highbrook so will pop in and catch up with you in the next day or so provided you aren't too busy 

Hi everyone,

The wife has decided she would like an X3 as her 'new'  vehicle.  I have seen a few on trademe for the 14-17k mark.  From my limited research it seems we should look for the facelift version with the 160kw engine.

Any thing else we should be looking for?

Any issues to look out for ?

Cheers.

As has been mentioned, firstly check for locating rings. IE the wheel should sit snugly on the hub without any movement up and down with the wheel bolts removed. If the tyres are correctly balanced it will more than likely be the control arm bushes. It is a very common problem on E46's. I used to come across it alot when customers were upgrading from 15's and 16's to 18's or 19's.

if you have any spares that you don't want send them to Starship Hospital. Always great to help out kids who are not as fortunate as our own.

Locating rings are easy enough to buy and then they will fit perfectly without the rangi mods

yes true, but 17" and 18" are different etc

the easiest way to tell is that it will say Ronal or OZ and/or AC Schnitzer stamped into the back of them and also will have AC Schnitzer on one of the spokes, all of which cannot be done on reps due to trademarks etc.

This ^

If they are genuine they will have the markings cast into the back of one of the spokes. It should also have a TUV on it somewhere. TUV and JWL standards are pretty much the same except it costs an arm and a leg to get TUV certification. This is the reason replica's don't use it, as it would make the cost of them too prohibitive.

ok fronts sound like the correct ones for a 5 series

but rears are wrong ,even for a e28 as the e28 and e34 rear trailing arms are the same part number

maybe they used some spacers maybe around 10mm etc to get enough clearnace for tyres to fit in the back of the e28 ,

as the e28 dont have as much space in that area compared to a e34

and i doudt you could get a proper low offset 10" wide in the back of a e28 with decent width tyres

without modifing the gaurds

i actually cant even think of any car that would run that combo

17x8.5 et12

17x10 et28

sounds like a missmatched set of wheels????

i agree

a bit late but they are not mismatched rims, they are from a 7 series. All 7 series run a slightly higher rear offset.

They best way to get the wheel off is to hit it with a rubber mallet. Can you spin the rim around at all by putting the car in neutral. If so this will let you bang it at different points around the rim. I would also be putting down an old blanket under the rim as Murphy's law says it will pop off at the wrong moment and land on the face putting bug scratches on it.

have only just come across, looks awesome Jon! Looking forward to the updates.

It was a promotional vehicle for Unique Tints, obviously they do car wrapping as well

Dude $35 an hour is $70k+ a year. Think about that.

Not to sound rude but maybe you need to think about it...... out of that $70k has to come rent ( jump on Trade Me to see how much a workshop costs a year to rent), Wages, GST, ACC Levies, Insurance, depreciation on equipment (or leasing of equipment if you can't afford the initail outlay).. the list carries on and on. Buying or renting specialist equipment is not cheap, especially all the latest diagnostic equipment. Now see how much you have left over. Ask Glenn, I bet he wouldn't open his doors for $35 an hour.

The other side of the coin is labour cost. If a shop only has a lift and some hand tools they should be charging $35 an hour, not $80.

Even $35 an hour is 100% markup on the labour cost which is incredible.

Any shop should be happy to do labour only work unless they already have a full workbook.

Have you ever run a business?

How much do you think a good mechanic is paid these days? $35 wouldn't cover the wages, let alone the associated expenses, etc

Secondly, Glenn and the likes are right ... tyre shops hate people supplying their own tyres - it basically takes all their margins away. Remember it's not just the margins on the tyres itself, but also the overall volume they move.

Having run a very successful tyre shop we fitted very little of people supplying their own product. It is not just the labour cost associated with fiiting the tyres, but also the risk involved if for example you scratch a rim or tear a bead on a tyre. Who pays then?. Charging to fit $35-$50 to fit and balance a tyre that usually costs 3-4 times that amount is not good business sense. We had fantatstic equipment and great staff so it never happened personally, but I can imagine it has plenty of times.

I was told the other day of a respected tyre shop who quoted on a set of premium tyres only for the customer to turn up to get them fitted after having bought off the net. After fitting them the customer had saved about $50 per tyre. Here is the good part, one of the tyres developed a fault. The customer took it back in to the tyre shop for a "warranty claim". The shop then proceeded to take the tyre off, have a look at it and then charge him for it ( as you do being in business). The shop agreed it was a warranty claim and gave the customer the tyre and told him to take it back to his place of purchase for the claim. Apparently it took the customer a couple of weeks to get it sorted out. When the customer questioned the manager about it, he was told that if the tyres had been bought through the shop, sorting the claim out would have been part of the service they offer, it would not have cost any more and the claim would have been sorted in 48 hours! In the end buying form the net actually cost the customer more time and money.

Moral of the story: Service can't be bought from the internet, and even though the initial price may seem cheaper - it is not always so.

Not to sound too negative but I doubt you will have much luck, especially on the 01/01. I wouldn't want to be doing labour only on either of those two days, or if I was it would be at a pretty decent rate. You are effectively cutting them out of business by supplying your own tyres and brake pads and the double whammy is you are asking them to do it on almost a public holiday.

bump

where are you located? If you can let us know then someone will be able to recommend a local repairer

Are these same wheels required to have A,B,C or D stamped on them or are we to assume the worst? D`s exported to NZ.

Assume what you like

Unfortunately, the only way to tell is to go and visit the factories. Most of the A factories in China actually make OEM wheels for a lot of major car companies. I have seen Mazda, Toyota and Honda wheels being made.

You could also assume that all the worst replacement parts are also exported to NZ.

I have to agree with the tyre comment made above. Having worked in the tyre industry for over 10 years, you find that most people simply do not know the differences between tyres. Unfortunately they see something that is black and round and assume they are all the same.

At the end of the day you always get what you pay for. I have had a number of people ask me why there is a difference in price in tyres. My most common response is that to get something made cheaper you have to leave something out. These cheaper tyres tend to have less rubber, less steel and less denier cords in the sidewall. Less money spent on research and development etc.

Wheel factories in China have A through to D ratings with A having all the relevant structural testing facilities incl x-ray and are required to test at least one wheel in every 40. B rating is one in every 100. D rated needless to say do not have x-ray or are required to test any wheels, so in fact there are differences in quality. Having visited wheel factories in China you will be amazed how many actually make OEM wheels, as well as aftermarket wheels. The majority of OEM wheels now are actually cast, not forged due to the prohibitive cost in making OEM forged wheels. Specialist models like the M3 etc still use forged wheels due to their limited production run.

A lot of people on here seem to be bagging "replicas" yet how many of these same people use aftermarket brake rotors, control arms etc which technically also are replicas. Take a lot at the tyres that some of the members use, I bet they are not all running OEM replacements. Brakes and tyres are probably more important to safety than a wheel.

I am not defending the "replica market", just offering a balanced point of view.

Having a big clear out in the shed and actually forgot I had these. Standard Personalised Plate reads Too Tempting.

Replacement cost now $899 - will take $600 ono

They look like some kind of aftermarket wheel. Definitely not a factory wheel

"Manage Ignored users" tab under "my controls"

done, cheers

I enjoy looking and occasionally contributing to the forums here but there are a few members on here who's opinions are so one eyed, negative and a waste of time. I can't be bothered entering into a 'keyboard warrior' scenario and I realise they are entitled to their opinions. However, it would make my time on here so much more enjoyable if I didn't have to read their posts and could just block it out.

My question is:

Is there any way to do this?

Looks awesome, everything ties together nicely.

I am not normally a fan of black grilles, but in your case it works

Well done!

they should bolt on without any issues

at the end of the day you get for what you pay for both tyres you have said about will offer the same type of life from the tyre and grip levels etc depending if you want to spend a fair amount more on your tyres then look at the likes of the coopers and other higher end tyres but if you are only using them for road/highway use you are not going to get a great deal more out of them for the money spent. my 2cents from been a supplier/fitter, not a sales man.

I agree there is not much difference between the Bridgestone/Dunlop, but after having owned a set of Cooper's I would not go to anything else. Sure, they initially cost more, but when you work out cents per km, the work out far cheaper. I met a guy the other week who was well over 70,000km on a set of the CS4 road tyres, he reckoned he would get 100+.

For city and Highway go for a road type tyre best one in this gategory with some off road/ gravel drive quality is the Bridgestone 680,----------- or the Toyo Proxes ST is also a very good road option if you like directional tyres (I dont)

Cooper don't do the sizes for thew 19's on my X 5 in NZ apparently they dont last as for the other sizes when you check their web site the figures are 50, 000 and 60,000 for specific tyres and not the claimed 80,000

Just more marketing bullshit - buyer beware as usual.

Just because they don't do a tyre that is suitable for your application, it hardly makes it marketing bullshit as you so eloquently put it. I have got a couple of mates who will get well over 80,000km on the AT3. One mate had the 20" LTZ on a new Hilux, sold it at 95,000km and the tyres were still warrantable.

BTW - nice work on recommending tyres that are not available in a 265/65R17, which is what the OP was after.

Take a serious look at the Cooper range. They are made in America and by far the best in the market, they even come with a warranty up to 80,000km and not much more than a Bridgestone or Dunlop. Outhandle and outperform both of those brands in every way.