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Front accessories mounted including the underdrive pulleys that came with the B30 engine. Working on replacing some rusty exhaust flange studs from the headers and slowly marking all electrical plugs before pulling the manifold off the old B25. Trying out some metal rescue rust dissolver. Letting it sit 24-36 hours and seeing what it does. 


 

It didn’t say I’d take the snows off before we’re out of the woods. My name isn’t @Rekpoint

So it'll be your fault this year when we get 6" of snow in March.  Thanks for taking one for the team this year.

When do the cars come out of hibernation? I see rain early next week but I can imagine they will spray the roads with Salt/cheese brine/chemtrails afterwards though.
maybe not this saturday, but next? Hope so.

Can't wait to see what you do with a C4 Indy 500 pace car convertible!  

Mods please ban this hooligan 

You chose well

1) Are you going to install the Mk60 ABS unit from the M3?
2) You will want to spend the $25 or whatever on this program called ECUWorx so you can customize your settings and adjust your throttle mapping. Refer to the linked post here:
 
 The S54 is one of the earlier adaptations of throttle by wire. It is a good system, but the stock throttle mapping drives me batty.
Normal mode/komfort mode throttle response is dead off the line and very flat, sometimes making you feel like you may stall the car if you are trying to get off the line very gradually.  The rest of the normal mode throttle mapping is good and seems linear/natural enough.
Stock sport mode throttle mapping is insanity. Way too aggressive off the line and makes you accidentally slip the clutch if you aren't used to it/have been driving in normal mode for a while. The other reason I dont like the stock sport mode throttle mapping is it is so dead and flat near WOT, so when you are racing a Nissan Kicks SV for pink slips, teasing them along at 80% throttle and go for the WOT kill, you dont get 20% more throttle/power and can be disappointing.  I have experimented a bit with the throttle mapping and tweaked it to something much more natural and enjoyable. Some people even tune it so WOT in normal mode is only 70-80% WOT as sort of an "eco mode" and then get 100% WOT only when sport mode is on. Fun idea, but ive had some hairball left turns where ive needed full steam ahead and need all of the beans in an instant. 
What I ended up with turned out to be nearly identical to the throttle mapping on the Evolve tune. Since the MSS54 has dynamic timing advance, most tunes for the S54 wont do much more than adjust throttle mapping, remove top speed limiter, and will delete certain features that you ask them to. Some, like evolve will optimize the vanos maps a bit which is worthwhile, but a lot of the perceived gains are through throttle mapping, which is why ECUWorx is a badass little program. 
 

Pulled the car out of the garage for a rinse and re-installed the spoiler because it is very tricky to get the placement correct. I wasn’t satisfied with my first two attempts but it’s all good now.
I was able to try out the new parkIng brake components and can now finally hold the car on a hill in neutral! A functioning park brake is underrated. 

I also just received my M3 check panel in the mail. This will retain the speaker and heated seats buttons but give me the M3 “Sport” button which I was told is very important to how the car feels. 

Pulled the car out of the garage for a rinse and re-installed the spoiler because it is very tricky to get the placement correct. I wasn’t satisfied with my first two attempts but it’s all good now.
I was able to try out the new parkIng brake components and can now finally hold the car on a hill in neutral! A functioning park brake is underrated. 

Pulled the car out of the garage for a rinse and re-installed the spoiler because it is very tricky to get the placement correct. I wasn’t satisfied with my first two attempts but it’s all good now.
I was able to try out the new parkIng brake components and can now finally hold the car on a hill in neutral! A functioning park brake is underrated. 

I had the center waffles repainted as well to match the wheels. Purchased some eBay red BBS center badges for them as the BMW logos were pretty beat. Really liking the combination.
I also wanted to check on the car and make sure it was still there. Good news is that there wasn’t a lake of fluids underneath, just one small spot that I’m assuming is oil.
Going to charge the battery up and maybe let it run for a little bit next week when it’s warm.

Engine & trans have been removed. Couple snags here and there but came out relatively easily. There always has to be an oil spill in one way shape or form as well. Found a bad inner tierod on driver side and a sheared control arm bushing bolt on passenger side from someone down the line before me. Hopefully drilling and an easy-out will fix that. 


Next is transferring all the engine accessories over from old engine to new one, buying all new hoses/lines and prepping everything for reinstall. 

Possibly? Send me the part number  Ben plz

Identical pic from the bay of e
1742010 is what is on the throttle boy. 

Ben Plz'd

So after 2.5 years with an S4 pissing me off constantly due to half-baked features, I am back in a BMW. Picked up a 2021 X5 40i fully loaded with the exception of no traffic jam assist package because we have no real daily rush hour commute to deal with. The car had to be ordered to spec because people usually make poor decisions when they order these things, so nationwide dealer search showed literally nothing that matched exactly what I wanted. Crazy fast turnaround time since X5s are being built in North Carolina now and not shipping over on a boat, so it took about 3 weeks from the time of order until pickup at Umansky. 
Initially I went to IA since they were close, just to test drive and figured deals would be competitive regardless of what dealer I talked to because we're talking about a new car which levels the playing field quite a bit compared to the used market. This was just as big of a mistake as any one of you reading this would expect. Total horseshit. The sales guy we talked to was 3 months into the job, younger guy, unfortunately did not know about the bad reputation that IA has. I sent my spec to them, came in to chat, and they basically just offered me the current BMW incentives of $3500 total. So the car was 79k sticker, minus 3500 leaving it at around 75.5 for the raw purchase price. I looked at TrueCar and found most people around me are paying 74k for a similarly spec'd example. I talked to the sales guy and explained several things which I thought were well-reasoned arguments to lower the price. The first being that the going market rate is 74k, not 75.5. Also, they tell me they can't keep X3 or X5 on the lots and most of their sales are order/pickup. I said ok but you have 3 X5s on the lot right now as we speak, plus an X5 50i in the showroom, plus 2 of 2 allocations waiting to go into production this week that are not yet spoken for. That's 6 X5s that you don't have sold. Who is to say that your 2 allocations get built and don't also sit on the lot? You have an opportunity to lock up a sale right now for one of those if you would just be realistic about price. Plus I'm giving the dealership the financing kickback. So the sales kid goes back to the manager and as you would expect, the manager wouldn't budget at all because he's a piece of shit. Refused to even bother to negotiate in good faith.
So I called Umansky and immediately they got me a quote for 73,600 on the same car. I mentioned it to IA just to let the sales guy know that I wasn't wrong or blowing smoke up his ass when I said the car would be had for closer to 74k, and he was asking if he could talk to his manager about this offer from Umansky and try to earn my business. I said no, now you get to the learn why it sucks to be a sales guy with a shitty manager, because I already gave that jagoff a chance to negotiate in good faith and I presented fair reasoning in regards to your volume-based business. There is no more opportunity. I'm just going to buy the car from Umansky because they didn't try to jerk me around. 
So anyways, onto the X5 itself. The G05 generation is an insane jump up from the prior gen, and very much needed for BMW since they were starting to fall behind in the mid-size SUV race. The G05 really steps it up and puts it back on top as the overall best choice. I watched a ton of reviews and cross shopped it a bit and while the XC90 offers more luxury, the performance driving dynamics are not there compared to the X5, and the Mercedes GLE doesn't have the driving dynamics that the X5 has, nor the quality of infotainment. This thing feels really good and offers enough customizability in the transmissions, steering, suspension, and engine that it's fun for me to drive as well as the wife. The tech works way better than my Audi. Gesture controls and voice activation are spot on, the fit and finish and upgraded leather are supple, the massaging seats are way above what I got with the audi, comfort access actually works unlike my S4 which 60% of the time it didn't, the kick-trunk feature actually works here...and the list goes on.
In general a huge reason I went with the X5 is because BMW is still using a lot of obvious tactile response buttons that have satisfying clicks, not everything is behind a touch screen. I have a huge problem with how so many cars these days are trying to behave like a smartphone - I don't want to scroll screens and try to tap shit while I'm driving. BMW is still doing a good job of keeping real buttons in the mix for core functionality inside the cabin. The wireless carplay is really good, doesn't cut out like other cars I have heard of that drop connection. I had to order it with M-sport because obviously I had to order it with M sport... and I am very happy that there isn't any M badging on the exterior of the car. I added the "M" brakes which is separate from the M-sport package, and that's the only place you see any M logo badging on the car. I appreciate it because it's not trying to appear to be something it's not. I did get the 21" wheels which unfortunately come with summer tires only, 275 front, 315 rear, so the last week or so has not been driven at all. But with the air ride option, M sport, extended shadowline and the right wheels, it looks really good with the factory drop on air. 
I do intend to keep this car for a long time so I bought it instead of leased, and I paid $5800 for the extended BMW warranty which is 7 years or 100k miles. I thought that was interesting when you look at the cost of the car, and says a bit about how much they expect to go wrong. If you wait like 2 years into ownership and try to get the warranty, BMW will charge you almost 10k for it, and I did some rough math in my head and if you figure most people driving 10-12k miles a year, at time of purchase the 7 year/100k warranty makes sense to be cheaper, but add 2 years of time and you're still on the 100k mile limit, but now you have 9 years total ownership into the car with warranty coverage instead of 7. They are definitely banking on shit breaking after 7 years or roughly 70-75k miles, and none of it will be cheap to fix.
Overall I'm as happy as I can be I guess for what a modern BMW is these days. I do feel like the X5 is still pretty good in terms of balancing luxury with driving dynamics. Steering is appropro weighted in sport, and the car feels relatively precise even on air suspension. The B58 speaks for itself and the zf8 tuning is as good as it gets in an automatic transmission. Again, much better than my Audi, which thankfully will be leaving the stable in June.





 
Lowered in Sport mode:

 
 
 

This is my OCD but the badge placements are all over the board on the SUV's now. The X3 has it below the tails, X7 is awkwardly in towards the middle. This is a stupid thing to rant about but it bothers me every time I see it 🤷‍♂️

I had to think carefully. You were the only one that came to mind as far as M5 owners. @TehRaydarlover may still have his but he has been AWOL.
OP updated with clearer rules