Crazy Dave

Gonna miss seeing it in the car park at work

The guy at Tait had a silver 540 touring but he left the company about a year ago. His was pretty rough but also had the kids booster seats. Unless your thinking of mine which is a Silver 525 touring at Taits

Hi Steve, Welcome to the group. I read your post on the radio but it would seem that you reside in Wellington so not easy for me to recode it for you. Not sure who in Wellington can do that. Good luck with what looks like a great car.

So when is there power on the washer heaters? What switches them on? Now that it is winter here in Christchurch, I would be interested to know? The original tubing does get brittle, but I found that clear plastic tubing from the Mitre10 garden section, with the ends heated in boiling water fits really well.

If you end up having to acquire the whole mirror, mine is starting to de laminate and so I am just after the glass. However I need one with the electrical dimming and heating connectors.

Well it did NOT seem like a good idea at the time. Initially in the morning the beams would be pointing up in the tree tops and the next they would be pointing 2 metres in front of the car. Identified the broken adjusters as the problem and when you grab the back of the lamp units they wobble up and down. I thought that if I disconnected the leveling motors then the lamps would still move around when ever I went over a bump and the beams would be all over the place. However they seem very stable and it has gone through 3 warrants now with no issues. The downside is that it is giving me no incentive to get on and fix them.

That write up looks promising - So where is the best place to get replacement adjusters?

Mine have been broken for a while - never got around to buying the crappy little replacement plastic rods that break. I just disconnected the headlight leveling motors, set the beams up and it passes a warrant every time. (I don't drive at night much) I did take one lamp unit out once and tried to separate the lens from the rest of the lamp. Gave up in the end and went away to think about it. ..................... Am still thinking about it.

Hi All I was just about to add the speed camera database to a recent map disc, but as another forum member pointed out, my database is quite old with some of the cameras no longer in the reported positions. Anyone know of a recent reliable database? The AA website seems to have a reasonable list but I need it in a CSV or some sort of downloadable file.

Mine came with these Now aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder, however these are EASY to clean.

It should be noted that I also have the High beam lamps on my E39 set as 50% brightness Daytime Running Lamps so I should have been reasonably visible.

Something I have is one of these http://www.carcameradirect.com/?no1selling-carcam My one has front and rear facing cameras and records while the the car electronics are awake, however in light of events like this I might just wire it permanently on. It records to SD card in HD and overwrites the oldest recordings. An example of it use is here when someone went through a stop sign in front of me http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=vb....5713&type=2 Now with a big capacity SD card and wired permanently on you have a small chance of catching external events. Of course not much help if they break in and see the camera.

Hey Greg, Am interested in knowing how you get on with the Car Kracker. It seems that you take out the 6CD changer and put this unit in its place. It then (from a music point of view) allows you to play MP3s of an SD card or select an AUX audio Input when you select CD on the front panel. I see it wasn't designed to work with the 16:9 screen but just wondering how it works with it. I know your car is set up in a very similar way to mine - Bluetooth, Digital TV, reverse cam etc so I will be interested to hear about the audio side of this wee unit.

I have one of these kits - Got it because the dye had worn where the seat belt rubs - seems to do a pretty good job. Must give the rest of the seats a good clean sometime. I happened to be passing through Timaru the other day and stopped at Subway for lunch and parked opposite Pelle. Would have gone in for a chat but it was Sunday

Welcome, Wanna see pics of both cars I was working in Little Rock AR last week and shopping in Tractor Supply Company (for kiwis, thats a Mitre 10 Mega for the rural Agricultural sector) and got chatting with a girl who worked there who had a 328 (from memory). I told her about the wealth of info available on this forum so hopefully we might see her and a few other Americans on the forum in the future. What stuns me is the cheap price of BMWs in the US. Pity the steering wheel is on the wrong side.

Hi Andy, I may well have one of those at work but unfortunately I am on the plane tomorrow and out of country for 3 weeks. If you still have no luck and can wait until the end of the month, let me know and I will have a search. Cheers Dave

Hi Andy Passed it tonight on my way home - Looks good - Must stop and catch up with you sometime

I know my adjusters are broken however I have not got around to replacing them yet. (Really struggled to get the lens off when I tried) So at warrant time I unplugged the leveling motors and manually adjusted the beams to what I thought was correct. I took the E39 in and asked if I could check it on the beamsetter before they did the warrant. They agreed to this and they were a bit low so wound them up. The left one reached the end of the adjustment travel and was still very slightly low but the mechanic was OK with that. So now I just need to get a set of adjusters and tackle those lenses again. Now I assume the bayonet fit bung on the top of lamp with the little lever inside is to change the beams for driving on the left or right. Can someone confirm that or advise otherwise.

Gidday Tim, Ive just arrived back in country and am catching up on all the forum posts. I did the ULF fit to mine and have some notes on removing the Jap phone and fitting the ULF. Dont use it much but it pairs to my Blackberry fine. We should catch up again sometime and you can have a look at what I have done. Cheers Dave

Thanks for the offer of help - Wouldn't a chat to just talk it through - I will PM you So I pulled the left hand lamp out this weekend. Stripped it down and into the oven for 10 minutes at 60 degrees. Then a reasonable amount of levering but could not get the lens to part with the main body. I did not want to break anything so I stuck it all back together to await a rethink. Hence the reason for a chat :-) I did disconnect the adjuster motor drive cables to stop the lamps being driven up and down

Stick your hand through the open window and then hit the one touch auto up for that window. (the door needs to be closed) The window should hit your arm and then go back down a little. (Disclaimer: dont blame me if you chop your arm off) I did not know the car had this feature until the dealer I bought the car off had to replace the wing mirror. When they put the door card back on the crossed the Tweeter and safety plugs (they both have the same type of plug) The tweeter would not work and the window would not auto up (coz it thought something was jammed in the window)

Hi Grant and others, FYI info I set up this unit today using the Vanity/Mirror light supply as suggested. While in there, I checked out some of the other wiring. Both the main interior light module and the Sun roof switch have 15 minute delay logic on them but they are not a power source, just a logic level. In theory a simple FET circuit off one of these logic levels should switch a 12VDC feed on and off.

Cheers Mate

Just got back in from working in Malaysia for the last fortnight, and bought a CarCam DVR. Nice wee unit that mounts on the windscreen and continuously records from 2 cameras (facing forward and rearward) to an SD card. Now rather than having a messy cable down to the cigarette lighter socket, I would rather find a 12 V source up in the rear view mirror, interior lamp area of my 2001 E39 to tap into. Preferably Ignition switched or even better still, operating on the 15 minute go to sleep power. I have always struggled with the WDS diagrams and will just have a poke around and see what I can find up there, but just thought someone might know. Cheers Dave

Hey Matt and Andy, Im at Taits at 558 Wairakei - We should catch up for a coffee sometime Our Cafe would work