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Welcome Lance, love the dish. About the colour of the car, do you know the name of the last car's colour? You should be able to find the sticker with the colour code inside the engine bay (on the underside of the bonnet for E39 I think) of your 540. It'll say if it's a metallic.

Impressive. Front bumper is slightly reminiscent of a Merc?

Ah right. I haven't been to that end yet... will have to next time! Cheers

You can get any BMW in any colour you like through their Individual program. There are Dakar E39 M5's around as well.

By wharf do you mean near the Westin hotel? I've been there but never managed to get such a view. Where exactly? Yeah, considering people were waiting for them to go off since 11 or maybe earlier, it was a bit of an anti-climax. Could have been better!

Nice shots James. Where did you set up? In the last shot is that the reflection off a filter?

Dakar Yellow was an M3 only colour but if you see non-Ms with them they were probably a BMW Individual car specified with the colour. There are quite a few facelift E36 Ti's with M3 colours - Estoril Blue, Dakar yellow etc, I think they were nearing the end of the E36 life cycle so decided to make put all these options on to shift stock.

You're right Cain, they do.

Gus, can the intake manifold be from any M50 car, ie: 320? I wasn't aware of differences between the 320 and 325's intake manifold.

Ray, any other lights (ie: ASC) or other symptoms? Best option is to get a shop to read the codes to find out then go from there.

Hmm, yeah I'm not too sure about the waterpump bit, just stating from my own experience so probably shouldn't generalise. Not sure where my receipts are so I will give you a rough estimate off the top of my head, going with brand new, OEM parts (Behr, Lemforder etc): Radiator - $500 Water pump - $200 Fan - $100 Fan clutch - $250 Hoses - $100+ Expansion tank - $100 Fan and fan clutch should be fine unchanged unless you have issues. So I guess budget for at least $1k in parts. As for labour, I did the work myself but it will take a few hours for a shop. Edit: With the year and KMs of the car, I think a cooling system overhaul is in order anyway so this is a good time to get it done - unless the E39 system lasts longer than an E36's.

If you mean the pictures in our signatures (such as the one in my post), you set it up in the 'My Controls' section. They appear with every post you make. If you mean attaching large pictures of cars (ie: your car pic, but not as a thumbnail) you can link to them after you've uploaded them to another site. Nice car, btw. Welcome to the forums!

Great video I don't know if she picked out all her mods herself... but if she did... she's got taste. Seems to like driving it hard too!

When the water pump on my E36 broke, it leaked. Seems to be the case with some others I've seen. On first thought it sounds like a thermostat stuck closed, just from the car going 3km before overheating, but it should have still been pretty hot since you only turned it off for 30 mins. I'm not sure if that cooled it down enough for the thermostat to close... Any unusual noises? How many KMs has the car done? What year is it? As for the water pump impeller breaking - on the E36 they started off with a plastic impeller that got brittle through time, they then went to a metal one and later on, a composite one which is the best. I'm thinking no E39s should have gotten the plastic type since the first ones came out in 1996? On the E36s the cooling system is usually changed as preventive maintenance, I would do it around 100,000km. I would think the same applies to other BMWs.

It looks great Greg! I'm with the others on the ACS banner, I think the car would look a lot classier without it. It's an M3 after all and can more than hold its own without shouting for attention. How about some interior shots, that interior looks hot.

That is just totally rice. Only put it on if you've been to the Nurburgring!

Ouch. Hope the driver wasn't hurt too badly.

Just wondering if that may be because the people who do put AMG badges on their non-AMG cars generally cannot afford to send their cars to the dealer? Ricers are generally younger.

Have you checked with BMWorkshop? They are reputable and you should go there if they are open. As Grant has said it sounds like it's the fan clutch. I would expect it to cost upwards of $200. If it was the water pump it should overheat all the time, not only when you're idle. As for coolant, I wouldn't use anything other than BMW coolant. It's blue in colour and sold in 1.5L bottles at the dealer (concentrate) and costs ~$14.xx + GST per bottle. If you buy Prestone concentrate from Repco/Supercheap etc it costs $30 for 3.75L. To me paying that little bit extra for BMW coolant is well worth the peace of mind. And you'll only need around 2 bottles anyway depending on what the mix is, I usually do 40-45% coolant. What colour is the coolant in your car now? If it's anything other than the BMW stuff, I would drain it all before putting in the BMW stuff, mixing them may not be a good idea. As for water, I use distilled water - NZ Pure Dew water. I buy it in 10L containers from Countdown/Foodtown. Make sure to bleed the system well after doing the coolant change - the water level being high may be due to air in the system and could cause the overheating. AFAIK water has more heat carrying capacity than coolant, but we use coolant to raise the boiling and lower the freezing points of the water and for its anti corrosion properties. If coolant could carry more heat then it wouldn't make sense to use water at all other than cost.

Oops forgot about that. I'm sure they have it on the engine block somewhere, but yours should definitely be a M52TUB28 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_E46 Happy Birthday mate!

Happy belated birthday James!

Great to hear About the engine, Put the last 7 characters of your VIN into www.realoem.com. It'll tell you what engine it is.

Do you mean the door mouldings? I included that under 'trim level'. But I don't think it applies to every model, ie: E39 mouldings on M and non-M are the same. But I could be wrong.

Putting aside $1000 per year sounds about right. You'll probably be good in some of the years then a major issue comes up and takes it all. Btw, doubt the M3 stuff will fit on your car, very different engines, E46 M3 has individual throttle bodies. Does yours have the M52tu? And if you haven't already, you should check out www.e46fanatics.com, it seems to be the best E46 resource. May I ask what model Honda you used to own? I have just done the opposite of you - BMW to Honda. Hoping it will be relatively problem-free.

Welcome! On the subject of HID/xenons, you don't want aftermarket xenons (ie: rebased kits). You want OEM xenon, the headlights will be different (though you can't see the differences from the outside, and there will be a bracket on the back of the headlight which holds the Hella ballast. Aftermarket xenons are the crap on the road that gives everyone glare and gives xenon a bad name. The E39 is a great car, it's very nice to drive and looks very good. As has been said, it will be a plus if the cooling system has been done. Try to get one with service history. Get any potential car scanned by a good BMW shop (either dealer or independent) before plonking down your cash. Pre-purchase inspection at the dealer will cost you $130 + GST from memory, very reasonable for the peace of mind.