[E30 e39 e46 owner]

Thanks gents, my son wants a detector and I thought I would get him one for his 21st. He drives a e90 with the n52 330i 6 speed. It’s a nice car and he’s a good kid that works at the BMW plant in Greer, SC.

I’m aware that getting your kid a radar detector is counter intuitive and it does make me pause, I got him a ‘87 325e for his first car when he was 15. All I had to do was describe to him how to drive a manual trans car and we set off in the neighborhood, took him about 3 minutes to be road worthy. I bet he would stall out a ‘80’s vintage 4 banger though, these I6’s are too easy, lol.

His birthday on 30MAY will be 5.56 ammo and a radar detector. Life’s good, right?

 

[E30 e39 e46 owner]

There's a beautiful E34 touring for sale near me. Manual swapped 540iT... I need it!

Single-Family-Owned 1988 BMW M5

Bid for the chance to own a Single-Family-Owned 1988 BMW M5 at auction with Bring a Trailer, the home of the best vintage and classic cars online. Lot #101,727.

bringatrailer.com

E28/e34/e39 hot rods are on my radar, that dang ‘88 M5 really gets me going. Heck, any car with a m30b35 gets my full attention, S38 GTFO, dream.

 

[bmdubya1198]

Ah, that's cool that he works over there! I've wanted to stop in at the Zentrum for a LONG time and do the factory tour, but haven't had the chance to go.

 

[E30 e39 e46 owner]

The cars&coffee Sat is at the plant but my boy has to work lol he’s out and I’ll just sit it out. First C&C at the plant. Usually at the Michelin grounds in Greenville.

I have only been to the car club museum and the performance center, which is outstanding. Lucky that my CCA chapter is in the region. Wish I had the time to do driving events and other driving events.

 

[Nfs021]

I think that M5 will go for at least $50k when all said and done.

Anybody know or know anyone who has a gaming chair? Need to replace my crappy office chair. Barely had the thing for 5 years and it's all worn and the cheap pleather is peeling like me after a nasty sunburn lol.

Supposedly many people are ditching standard office chairs for gaming chairs, because they hold up better. Makes sense saying gamers spend hours in them so obviously they want something that'll last. Heard some of the higher end ones like Secret Lab are great, though very spendy.

 

[bmdubya1198]

Yeah, my office chair had been peeling for a while. I’ve had it for at least 6-7 years though.

At my shop in my little “office”, I have a basic mesh back chair probably originally from Walmart or something. Bought it at Goodwill for $8, it’s great for there! Lol

 

[Nfs021]

Gotta love those Goodwill bargains lol.

Will get a non pleather chair though, that's for certain. Annoying as hell when they peel. Makes an absolute mess and gets everywhere. Would love one of those fancy real leather executive chairs you can lounge in. Holy crap are they expensive.

Meanwhile I think I already lost the new diff mount bolts and nuts I just got the other day. D'OH!

 

[bmdubya1198]

Yeah, the peeling pleather is a mess. Those chairs get STUPID expensive though. Time to make a base for an old E39 seat! lol

 

[E30 e39 e46 owner]

Lol, my desk chair is pristine, there’s a recliner right next to my desk that I spend most of my time in, I only sit at the desk if I have to. There’s your answer, buy a recliner and a cheap desk chair.

 

[Nfs021]

There was a place long time ago that made office chairs out of actual C5 Corvette seats. I almost bought one. Be great to rig up a E38 contour seat as an office chair and still be able to use the electric adjustments lol.

Recliner would be nice, but I fall asleep way to easily in those lol.

 

[u.nanimous]

Rob Siegel (Roundel, bimmerlife and the Hack Mechanic author) wrote about a Recaro office chair.

On another note...the good news I unsubscribed from the E53 section because I won't be purchasing an X5 so that's one less forum to check on, the bad news it is going to be really hard to find the right X3. I posted a few weeks back about the wrong X5 and a road trip to Indiana, well Monday we took a shorter drive (37 miles) to look at the right X5 and she still didn't want it because it is too high. I was standing at the door when she got out and it was a big drop for her, should only be 2-4" more than the X3 but I guess when you're only 5'2" that's a big difference.

So if anyone knows of a '04-'06 X3 3.0 with a panoramic sunroof (preferably working but definitely not leaking), heated seats and steering wheel, working radio and preferably black on black within a few hours drive of Ann Arbor Michigan please let me know.

 

[bmdubya1198]

Yeah, the X5 is noticeably quite a bit taller than the X3. I actually have my dad's old X3 at my shop right now diagnosing a battery drain and non-functional AC for the current owner. Turns out the heater valve is jammed... typical E46/E83 stuff it seems. That should solve both issues. Now we wait for the part... I tried OEMBimmerparts.com this time. We'll see how it goes, they had the best price, and I didn't need FCP's "warranty" on it.

 

[Nfs021]

FINALLY! Got those damn stuck nuts on the left side exhaust hangers off the car. Got the nuts removed using a nut splitter. Absolute RPITA trying to get it all with barely any room to manuever my hands and the tools. One of the nuts I couldn't get the splitter right because of the way those cheap square hangers are. So I had to split little of each side. Then loosen the nut with a pair of pliers while holding the stud as tightly as I can with my old Craftsman Robo-grip pliers. God I love those things! Loosened each nut to where I could finally get it low enough for the splitter to fully split the bastards.

The downside though...yikes

Luckily my friend who works in welding said he can fix it no problem. For the time being I'm using new original nuts with a larger nut acting as a spacer so the new nuts won't get jammed in the upper part of the stud that isn't threaded like the old ones were causing the whole mess to begin with! Still have to use the robo pliers to hold the stud while tightening them down. But it works, that's all that matters and I can still remove them. I have some little aluminum spacers I'm going to use eventually. Need to cut them in half though since they are too long.

So much nicer now without the obnoxious rattling back there. And most importantly, I can remove the exhaust entirely for when I do the drivetrain/subframe work. Eventually I will get the proper factory heat shields and exhaust hangers and have a exhaust shop fix that s**t properly. The sucky part is I did buy heat shields with the hangers from Clemster on M5board back in 2020. However they dissappeared. Honestly no idea what the hell happened to them? So annoyingly, I'm going to have to buy more from him again. Just wish I could find out the shop that did such a botched job on this car to begin with so I could do the same to their heads!

 

[computiNATEor]

Those exhaust studs were trouble on my car, too. They were so bad on my Midwest car that they ended up pulling straight out of the chassis. I was able to get replacement studs using the double-nut method on a scrap chassis’ studs at E39Source. I forget the part number, but you can order them new. I used red loctite to put the replacement studs back in the chassis, and obviously replaced the nuts, so I don’t think it’ll be an issue again.

 

[computiNATEor]

They’re the same as the stud used near the rear muffler on non-M cars, and last I checked were expensive for what they are

 

[computiNATEor]

Yup. 18211433080. $25 each, ish

 

[bmdubya1198]

$25 for a stud? What could those be, M8 or M10? Hardware store it is! lol

 

[Nfs021]

Good lord, almost as bad as giubo bolts. Which funny enough I did buy from ECS for their "Limited Quanity" sale at $19 each. Only bought three since the new driveshaft comes with a new giubo and the three bolts that hold it on. $57 for 3 bolts is a joke. But hey that's three for the price of 1 ½. So I'll take it lol. Now are back to normal crackhead $39.

Friend has a good plan. He is going to actually cut out the studs and part of the panel in sized sections. Reinforce them better. Tack the panels back in and final welds then clean up. Said he did same thing to another friends car years back that has a similar setup and been solid since. Was worried the metal is too thin for the work, but he says it won't be an issue.

 

[bmdubya1198]

All this welding talk makes me want to get my E30 done finally so I can just worry about dropping in the M50 rather than body work... which I despise. Need to cut out the battery tray and repair all of the rusted crap.
I really need to get something done on that car already so I can actually get closer to driving it. So naturally, I'll move my attention to other stuff instead! Replaced the thrust arm bushings and ball joints on the X5 today to catch up on some maintenance. As usual with my luck, that won't solve the creak in the front end, which I discovered was the other control arm. Oh well, those are easy enough to replace anyway. Just have to wait for some to get here. Regardless, these needed to be done. They were certainly creaking too. Plus the right ball joint boot was destroyed. Interestingly, the joint itself felt fine lol.

Maybe tomorrow I'll knock that deer dent out of the passenger door. Then the next thing on the list for this is to decide whether to replace the pads and rotors, or resurface the rotors and use the Textar pads I have on the shelf that are practically new. I hate to create brake noise, which seems to always be a problem with resurfaced rotors. The brakes vibrate a bit under harder braking, but otherwise stop really well with the Akebono pads. The rotors are still pretty meaty too, so I hate to waste them.

 

[Nfs021]

Doing pork chop repair. Using some JB Weld plastic putty and ew what a mess! Old tube didn't do this? The more I kneaded, the stickier and messier it got. And now it won't even stick to the plastic. In the trash it goes. What a waste.