PranK

Looks great! Its gonna be super fun. Welcome!

Damn that looks tidy. Does it make bearings quiet?

Only for slow connections and some mobile users. The pics load eventually, was just an FYI.

Looks great. 1700kg? She's a bigger girl than she looks! Duncan your linked images are huge. Some are around 9mb even as thumbnails. When linking to your own images the site can't resize them properly. Just FYI.

Digging this D. Nice one.

Oh cool, thanks for letting me know.

Careful. 🤣

Going to do rear wheel bearings and rear subframe poly bushes next. I have Whiteline subframe inserts (they're supposed to take up the empty space in the bushings) but its still too soft. I did consider going solid aluminium subframe bushes but they can cause stress cracks in the body and the subframe so I'll just go with the black poly bushes instead. The car is super squirmy when giving it a bit.

I know, but I'm banking on just enjoying it soon once I've fixed things. I want to get some upgrades done soon rather than repairs. I'm relying on my experience with the 330i that once you get to everything that previous owners neglected it can just be a reliable tracked street car.

Post a link and I'll add it.

Welcome @DraftySquash! If you open an image in Dropbox, just right click it and 'copy image' - you can then just paste into the editor here. I have fixed your images but the auction pics just linked to the same pic twice. With the engine temp, are you saying you've only ever seen the car at temperature? I think if its sitting idle and the temp is in the middle, it sounds ok. Just keep an eye on it if you're worried and see what happens in traffic as thats the real test. @Murray_Calavera we've been in this new house almost 3 years and I haven't gotten the garage cleaned up but as soon as its tidy in there a Quickjack is my first purchase! Especially with how often I have to lift the BMWs! 😭

Yeah but I found that using the controller wheel tilt thing was just as bad as the stick in terms of graduating inputs. I need that force feedback. I'm super keen to get some LC pedals. I'm not about setting up some crazy rig, my setup now is very budget but even at this level I'm enjoying it so much more. The new Thrustmaster (could be the worst company name in history) entry level LC pedals come in around $350 I think which is doable. Pedal control is my 100% focus for improvement in GT7 and ACC. When you get it right (or at least not wrong) there are significant gains to be had.

Its not always like this! 🤣

Ok, so the stupid new headlight is in default BMW "blind all the eyes" mode, pointing far too high. Screwing the adjustment screw did nothing, so I pulled the screw out (all the teeth on the plastic cog were broken) and I can just manually push the adjuster forward or backwards, which "fixed" it, but now I have no adaptive control. 😒 I might pull the adjuster screw out of the old headlight and see if replacing that will help.

This is why I use it. I simply can't get partial steering inputs with the controller let alone throttle/brake inputs. Its just not a fun game for me at all with a controller. I've been playing a bit of ACC lately which is another beast entirely.

Hubba hubba 😍

I haven't done anything here, I'm assuming whatever liquid was in the tubes has just dried out with driving as its back to a beautifully smooth idle again. Might have been a little bit of water as some got into the bay when I was putting the new cover on. I was working in the driveway during some pretty wet weather which wasn't ideal.

Did a bit of a repair on my headlights over the weekend. The drivers side headlight turns into a swimming pool every time it rains, so I bought a replacement. Got a bargain at $380 with the next cheapest being $550. I had to swap my angel eyes bulb, Xenon, high beam flasher and indicator over from the old light and once I opened the new one it was just so full of sand and shit everywhere I reckon it was a Simpson Desert recover vehicle or something. It was terrible and I now know why it was cheap. Anyway, after swapping my main bulbs over I thought I'd clean up the install of the angel eyes bulbs in both drivers and passengers headlights. The wiring in the headlight is just cracking so badly and rather than pull it out to replace it, I just fed some heat shrink down over the cracked parts to protect it. Also cleaned up some joins. The factory pre LCI angel eyes are like an orange/brown and are hideous. I also wet sanded and clear coated the headlights but it was probably too cold. They're better than they were but not great still so I'll have another go shortly as I can do this on the car. I also had to replace the adaptive controller on the new headlight, the last one had clearly been very wet and was filled with sand. I had a replacement one here as they are not exactly reliable.

For me, the ultimate wheel car combo is an old one, but you cannot dispute it. Its the R33 GTR wheels on an S13 180sx or Silvia. I once heard somebody say that these wheels look great on everything except the R33 GTR and I tend to agree. The next ones for me is BBS RS on an E30. Oh, and lastly, its any number of combinations of Nismo LMGT(1/2/3/4) on R32/3/4 GTR. Hit me. What's your fave?

I forgot this from last month. A small one but made a difference to me. My gear knob and boot was just so gross. I hated looking at them. I really wanted a genuine BMW Performance knob and boot but they came in around $500 or so which is just stupid. So for months I watched eBay and found a dude selling a set from the states for about $200 delivered. I had to perform minor surgery on the boot as LHD is different but I got it to fit and it looks so much nicer. I love them. As much as I can love an auto shifter at least 🤣 Now the surround looks gross. I guess I'll just keep going until the grossness is all eliminated!

So, some plans for the old girl... Blackline LSD - Given the cost, its doable over the RacingDiffs LSD conversion. I can get it landed for about $1200. Currently I'm the only car in the family that can't get up Bec's mum's crazy steep and slippery driveway. All other cars are fine but I sit spinning one wheel. How embarrassment. An exhaust - I'm not sure what I want here but something just cat back as I can't hear my exhaust at all from inside the car and I need to constantly check tach on the track to see if my shift was accepted (gearbox wont allow high rev downshifts and I need to check the gear or tach a lot to make sure it went through because I can't hear it). Either solid aluminium or super hard poly rear subframe bushings - The back squirms a lot at the moment, if I give it anything at all on a slight turn or on unhappy surface it just moves around too much. Apparently very little nvh with the aluminium bushings but these can damage the underside because they dont give anything. A little undecided. I got a replacement headlight for my 'fish tank' headlight. I'll sand both headlights back and clear coat them. I've found this is the best way to restore horrible BMW headlight covers. Rear adjustable camber arms - I'd like to be able to dial a little bit of camber in on the rear. I would still like a cheap fixed seat to swap in for the track. I flop around everywhere in the stock seats despite them being the M Sport seats. I'll need to change my oil filter housing gasket soon as I think I have a small leak. I'd like to check the condition of my intake/valves because the direct injection doesn't clean them up and if theres buildup I'd like to clean them. Tho, I don't see this as much of a common issue in AU over the US. I'm not sure why. Thats all I can think of.

1:53.837. ya happy now?

I do have a tiny tiny misfire occasionally but I think it's because I got a little fuel down into a plug tube so I'll pull the coils out and see if I can dry those out.

Ok, so here the embarrassing 'fess up' post. Here's the crack, or broken part of the old valve cover. Pretty obvious break and in hindsight it's quite the face palmer 🤦‍♂️ but let me explain why I didn't think this was a problem. This side part of the valve cover is an additional piece, it protrudes from the main valve cover and it's also where the fuel rail mounts..... You can see the rail at the bottom and you can see this external piece hanging off the side of the cover. It almost looks sandwiched in this pic. Here's another cover with that side piece ... On top of this, when looking at the inside of the cover, there were no openings(*) for that section. So I really just thought I'd broken some crispy plastic mount for the fuel rail.... Until somebody drew my attention to the air openings at the BOTTOM of the cover, not INSIDE the cover. So, I had a ginormous PCV leak. The cover needed to go and I should have taken everybodies advice and got a new one in the first place. The original one is just fried, its really brittle. It was nice to have the new one be really snug in position and the screws were slightly tight to do up which was completely different to the original ones that almost undid themselves.

We're back! The new valve cover arrived on Friday and I fitted it Friday night and in the rain on Saturday. The car runs perfectly! Also as it gets through the residual oil there's less smoke which is really nice. Hopefully that's all gone after an hour long drive today. Anxious me will go around the whole cover tomorrow with a mirror and torch to make sure gasket is where it should be and that oil is also where it should be. It was a much tighter fit! As you'd expect and I did the torque sequence twice as it kind of settled into place. I might go around it again just to be sure.