Neal

Have a couple of small dents left from Smith & Smith last time they replaced my windscreen. Take them off your list with a decent classic such as yours !

Either will do a good job, have taken various BMW's to them both over the last 20 odd years. Vijay has been around for a long time. Was funny to see his service stamp on my old e30 323i at 20,000km then again at 320,000 km's. My e36 325i has been going to Jeff Gray for the last 9 years and 165,000 km with no issues. Safe bet either way.

My reply was tougue and cheek as well, I'm hoping he'll see this as we've been looking at some of his companies house listings from time to time. If he could just find a way to include this in a house sale without the wife knowing I'd be a happy man . He'd have a laugh at the Hyundai .... How about it Blair ?

Um no , he owns the local realesate company. His daily is some kind of compressed V8 with AMG on the back. Your looking at a "Sunday" driver. I wonder if he'd include this in a house sale ......

music varies a bit, but always seem to have a faithless CD in the car Probably played "Killer's Lallaby" the most .... Stereo gets a good workout with this track It finishes .. "No surprise couldn't hear that" "Closed my eyes as he steered that old black BM home again" "Not knowing how and not knowing when"

Without starting a religous war my comment on bass timing was based listening to a number of audiophile systems over the years, attending a number of SQ sound off's and also on back to back listening on B&W top line 800d & 801d .These retail in NZ for $40 k plus. 800's have dual 10's verse the 801's single 15 and had a top end amps and CD / Dac combo worth an additional $70k. The dual tens in my view where far more musical as did the person buying them. A couple of muso mates that play bass guitars prefer bass cabs running 4x10's rather than 12's or 15's. This is for the same reason. At the end of the day it's what you like the sound of. Having run free air / IB / IB with passive radiator & isobaric enclosers I'd agree on the IB are best / easiest for sound quality. These days I just run a single 10inch IB with passive radiator which gives a very small box size. It's given the boot back and is a good tradeoff between size and sound quality.

Just to had to the confusion I'd recommend using PhoniexGold amps and Boston Acoustics speakers combinations. PhoniexGold are a USA brand of Amp that is near Audiophile class without the 3-4k budget and often the higher end amps come up on trademe for a third of retail. This brand of amp has been the basis of many top USA car stereo winning vehicles. I have one of these amps from the 1990's which was produced for the 100 watt competition car stereo class. With the engine off it's rated at 25 watts x 4 (12.5 volt rating). With the alternator running (13.8 volts) and 2ohm speakers it produces 75 watts rms x2 and 150 rms + for the bass channel. The power and control of this amp is fantastic They've had a recent name change to Rodin. http://www.rodinaudio.com Speaker wise the Boston Acoustics Pro Series are worth an audition. Boston Acoustics are a USA audiophile speaker company that also produce car stereo speakers. The Pro series speakers build quality is extremely high, have amazing power handling levels and have a handy 3 ohm loading which will take advantage of higher current amplifiers and make them produce more power than with a normal 4 ohm speaker. The crossovers have high end capacitors and these speakers produce a extremely good sound stage for a car speaker. Depending on you music tastes you might get away with a sub , however , A 10 inch sub will allow you to hear the lower octaves that are normally lost to road noise or to smaller speaker rolloff. You could listen to some 12 inch subs, but unless you spend mega dollars you'll find the timing of the bass being slower. (eg B&W 800d verse B&W 801d) For you BMW a sub sitting in the boot firing through the rear arm rest is a good way to go. BMW have been considerate enough to allow for a ski port that goes through the arm rest. If your car does have this as standard if you take out the rear boot lining you'll notice that BMW have tac welded a panel behind the arm rest. This is easy to remove and can be put back in place when you wish to sell the car. I've mounted subs this way on a couple of BMW's I've owned. Check out Mikes E30 sub install , In my view this is the best way to do bass in a bmw http://www.bimmersport.co.nz/forums/index.php?showtopic=8920 The ski port panel that can be removed without causing warrant of fitness issues http://www.bimmersport.co.nz/forums/index....ost&id=7432 Alternatively just use the "transfer function" that occurs with Bass in a car. Have a boxed sub in the boot and the bass will transfer through the metal of the car and into the cabin. You'll need a bit more power into the sub, but you'll still achieve a reasonable level of bass. http://www.caraudiohelp.com/newsletter/cabin_gain.htm Head unit wise , I’ve fallen behind , but I’d look for time alignment features , decent DAC’s , sub out / control. Some of the better sony head units have 24 bit burr brown Dac’s. The sony joystick remote that can be mount on the steering column is brilliant. All the functions of the unit can be control via this without having to take your eyes of the road and leaves you hand close to the steering wheel as well.

Glad to hear you didn't come off ! What an ahole of a driver. Pitty you horse didn't kick back and put a nice hole throught the grill. Personnelly I think everyone that drives should also try other means of using the road , eg ride a horse , motorcycle , cycle to gain a better apperication of what consideration is required for other road users. Most people with half a brain would know that many horses can easily be spooked and can throw the rider off. If I'm on my motorcyle and need to pass a rider / horse I'll stay way back , pass on the other side of the road and have enough momentum to pass with the clutch pulled in so the bike is at an idle when passing (Italian VTwins are a bit on the noisey side). I'll coast of as least 30 meters before re-engaging it. I do the same thing in the car (Although it's a lot quieter) Keep safe ! PS, I two have a green BMW , but I haven't let the Wellington region for some time.

Didn't know that Golf GTI's where known as radio's but $500 seems about right for a Golf GTI

If you can picture an overweight 40 something going grey and the hairs thinning a bit with a mullet I think it would be called a muppet ! Still....... always lusted over the Mad Max interceptor ...... things you'd consider doing for a car ........ I think the old interceptor would be interesting on a dyno though.

Makes me want to build up a Ford XA coupe with a 671 supercharger and a clutch kit for the supercharger ...... without the studded leather gimp suit

Saw this or a similar car during a London Motorcycle show a couple of years back. Was part of a stunt team. The carwhich was about 1/2 size sounded like it was motorcycle engined powered. It must of had some kind of front wheel locking device as the driver got out of the car whilst it was doing dougnuts on a dime. The driver was showing excellent skills on what was usually a roller/ iceskating ring. They also had a team of extereme style motorcycle jumps. Very cool show !

I'm an IT Network Manager for large NZ govt Ministry. Been working with / building/ managing large computer networks since the late 80's Have a small property rental company on the side for hopefully early retirement. Don't have a company car as such, but use the 325i / 328i for our 25,000 km annual commute. Whilst "DINC's my wife is an accountant hence our modest cars. Spare dosh goes into property and some discretionary income goes into Italian motorbikes and a coupe of old Mk1 Mini’s.

A lot of the performance (or lack of) you get is down to the over subscription rates of the service. ADSL2 won't do much for the end consumer unless the approperate levels of back haul network have been engineered correctly. It may help speed up NZ hosted sites , but unless more international bandwidth has been purchased it won't make much difference to the responses you see on your screen. A large area of the expense for ISP's is the wholesale cost of international bandwidth. Normally this is the highest area of over subscripton for NZ traffic with most of NZ's internet traffic being moved on the Southern Cross fibre cable system. I think you'll find that the term Quality of Service is more about the priority of one traffic type over another rather than the quality or error rate of the cable between your home and the exchange equipment. Most NZ ISP's don't run "QOS" for consumer based networks. Having flash routers can help with the service your getting as they have improved technology which can drive copper pairs faster and may have newer error correction protocols than older equipement.

We had a 1985 323i That we traded at 330,000 kms. Seemed like it could still do plenty more

I've used Blair Wright (By the station) & Arlington Motors in the past. Both have been excellent in colour matching the paint.

I've heard excellent bass out of tube subs. The 10 inch should produce good fast bass in you X5. Otherwise if you’re after something more discrete it could be worth importing a JL Audio stealth Sub which replaces the small factory sub. Cost wise though it would be considerably more than the fusion but JL make top quality subs. http://mobile.jlaudio.com/products_stealth...php?fit_id=1556

Can't speak for the Viaduct but used QV quite a bit when assessing potential rentals / equity gain houses. Was a good guide for the market last year with the information worth the money ($70 dollar report). The market is a bit fickle at the moment so it's a bit hard to predict prices.I'd be interested to see how close property valuers are at the moment. We aren't using QV in the same way as the more recent data closely reflects the market peek from last year. Largely we are using the concil sights for property GV values and are working down from that. Doesn't seem to be many cash / finance aproved buyers at the moment so it seems to be a "buyers" market. Get yourself a copy of " Home Truths" by Martin Hawes if you haven't already done so. It's a good read from understanding the game point of view. Lower cash offers with quick settlement times seemed to be getting through now which wasn't the case late last year. This worked well for us over the last week, a few bargins to be had at the moment.

Try http://www.jaycar.co.nz for your sub grills. The key is to have a fairly open weave , or just at more power.

Have a section full of mature trees and no lawn ........ops and four cars & two motorbikes in the garage. The good thing is that I can only use one at a time. We do the recycling stuff and turn stuff off.... but we are not exactly green

Gidday Reaper36 http://www.bimmersport.co.nz/forums/index.php?showtopic=8286 should cover this off for you. Personal choice would be Boston speakers powered by decent amps. Hi end sony has good bang for buck as well.

Both she and a Ferrari would be high maintanence

One of the Longhurst e30 m3's ended up being written off against the NM500 start / finish wall (yellow car) was there another car ? (he was lucky to survive that one) Didn't Jim Richards drive a 635csi in the first couple of NM500's . I think John Billington QC also drove one as well ?

You also have to look out for ICE gear as well. I jumpstarted a car that had broken down in the middle of no where so couldn't really leave them stranded. Was careful and connected to earthing points on the body , then the two positive terminals of on the battery. All seemed ok They drove off happy. I'd left my stereo on whilst doing this. Drove off, noticed a lack of Bass , the Alpine Subwoofer Amp ended up having it's PSU fried.

Had the airlow sensor / meter replaced on my old e30 323i , whas doing the same thing , fine from 2- 6krpm , A real pig below that.