m42b32

I do! I have the full license, didn't know it could disable TPMS either, that's cool. 

Got a call from the shop this afternoon with some updates. They figured out what was causing the misfire issue and it was not the coils. After rewiring the original m50 coils back in they tested it out and the issue once again presented itself. They then pulled the injectors and ran them on a test station to find that supposedly a couple of them were staying stuck open. Threw a different set of injectors in it, did a pull and the issue appears to be gone. I do feel a bit frustrated as we went down this rabbit hole of diagnosing these coils, ecu and wiring just to find out the main cause of the issue was not related to any of that and was just a few bad injectors. I am glad to hear the issue was resolved though. They did ask if I wanted to wire the b58 coils back in but I told em to just leave the m50 ones in. They had it on the dyno this afternoon so if all goes well I should be hearing from them early next week!

This aged well

Sounds good to me. We'll figure out a day. 

Prime parking spot. I had an awesome time at the Bavarian Classic car show today. 

 

Thanks to @Jdesign for the tip on these! Snagged three turbine covers from a guy here in MKE the other day, now I just need the fourth to complete the set (and provide the motivation to finish them lol)
 
Let me know if any of you ever find a spare single one, I need a left side cover and fan (3611-2226273 and 3611-2226275, respectively). I have four genuine center caps so I’m good there.
Condition isn’t bad at all, the center caps are beat up but all functional, and the paint on the fans is actually quite good. Same for the black fan pieces. Even got the OEM hardware with them!
Pics:
 

What the title says - looking for a left hand side cover and finned piece for style 20 m-system turbines. I know it’s a long shot here, but maybe someone has a friend of a friend. I don’t explicitly need the center cap but will certainly buy one with the cover if available to have a spare. 
 
Pic for attention:

 
Help me make my threesome into a foursome!

So I was working on my basement over the weekend and went to move the original seats from this car. As I carried them across the basement at an awkward angle a coin fell out from somewhere deep in the seat and went pinging across the floor. I figured it was a quarter or something. Nope. It's a 1988 Austrian 1 schilling coin. 

 
I did some googling and Austria switched to the euro at the start of 2002... so either someone went on a European vacation and lost a coin when they got home, it's been in the seat since the car was built, or the car spent some time in Europe. Either way it's pretty neat. 

So I was working on my basement over the weekend and went to move the original seats from this car. As I carried them across the basement at an awkward angle a coin fell out from somewhere deep in the seat and went pinging across the floor. I figured it was a quarter or something. Nope. It's a 1988 Austrian 1 schilling coin. 

 
I did some googling and Austria switched to the euro at the start of 2002... so either someone went on a European vacation and lost a coin when they got home, it's been in the seat since the car was built, or the car spent some time in Europe. Either way it's pretty neat. 

So I was working on my basement over the weekend and went to move the original seats from this car. As I carried them across the basement at an awkward angle a coin fell out from somewhere deep in the seat and went pinging across the floor. I figured it was a quarter or something. Nope. It's a 1988 Austrian 1 schilling coin. 

 
I did some googling and Austria switched to the euro at the start of 2002... so either someone went on a European vacation and lost a coin when they got home, it's been in the seat since the car was built, or the car spent some time in Europe. Either way it's pretty neat. 

So I was working on my basement over the weekend and went to move the original seats from this car. As I carried them across the basement at an awkward angle a coin fell out from somewhere deep in the seat and went pinging across the floor. I figured it was a quarter or something. Nope. It's a 1988 Austrian 1 schilling coin. 

 
I did some googling and Austria switched to the euro at the start of 2002... so either someone went on a European vacation and lost a coin when they got home, it's been in the seat since the car was built, or the car spent some time in Europe. Either way it's pretty neat. 

Havent taken a trip through the ol' c-list in awhile.
Nice E34 540-6
https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/wsh/cto/d/lake-elmo-bmw-i-6mt/7643768844.html

X5M's are getting cheap!
https://chicago.craigslist.org/wcl/cto/d/aurora-2011-awd-bmw-x5-44-litre-twin/7634386770.html

Z3 track car
https://racine.craigslist.org/cto/d/franksville-bmw-z3-race-car/7643853073.html

@P_Roloff this one is for you..
https://milwaukee.craigslist.org/pts/d/milwaukee-bmw-e34-throwing-star-turbine/7638985866.html

Thanks!
Yep, putting my order in today. My first real ride over the weekend exposed how not great they were. No panic stops needed but I don’t want to have to rely on them as they currently sit. 
 
That’s kinda what I’m thinking, it’ll be a good chassis to grow into as far as ability while still keeping it reasonable as far as price. Were your eagle setups problematic out of the box or is it more of a wear over time issue that they can be fiddly with?
I stopped at wheel and sprocket the other day and they said they can order one in for me anytime when I want to test ride, so once the e28 is running and ready to get gone I’ll have them bring one in. 
 
I did see a 2020 X-Caliber 8 for $800 on marketplace this morning though, which is tempting 😂 I think I want the Roscoe geometry though

Make sure to aim for the bushes by the front porch, they could use a good water! 

Let’s take a ride on the bugline trail and water balloon JOEBD2’s house 👍
Cant go wrong with Trek. Don’t overlook Giant or Marin as good budget options. As the worlds largest bike frame producer Giant makes frames for Trek and many others. They usually end up having slightly higher end components at the same pricepoint.
W&S has become a Giant dealer within the last few years so they are easy to come by.
 
Checkout www.99spokes.com
it has a great comparison tool which helps you understand where on the totem pole certain components rank.

Reviving this thread!
Finally replaced my old Trek 3700 hybrid (ridden hard and like 4 sizes too small) with a still slightly small 2009 Trek 1.2. I’ve wanted a road bike for awhile now for the rail trails around here, and combined with a really nice 4-bike Thule hitch mount carrier (FB marketplace score for $80), I’m now set to get some miles done. For $350 for the bike, I’m pretty happy. Shifts smooth, rides nicely, really clean for the age, it seems well taken care of and hard to beat for the cost. Even has a carbon front fork!

Brakes kinda suck though (common complaint when it was new) so I’ll probably toss some more aggressive pads on it and see what that does. I put Kool Stop’s on the afrementioned hybrid and it went from mushy to tossing me over the bars if I wasn’t careful, so we’ll see if that does it.
 
I mentioned it elsewhere, but I’m also thinking I’m going to sell the e28 (zero time to use it or wrench on it) and dump the funds into a hardtail MTB, likely a Trek Roscoe 8. I’d like to go new on that to save the hassle of buying someone’s abused or worn out stuff. If anyone has any alternative recs to that bike, I’m all ears. I’m definitely a noob when it comes to bikes but I’d love to learn more. 

Show was super chill and low key, good people, some cool cars.   Awesome time, just sharing some drone footage
 

A lot of sweat labor this weekend. Almost 24 hours between Friday and Sunday to paint correct and coat the car.

Everything to do the job.
Chemically and mechanically decontaminated the car before correction. This means strip wash, iron remover, and then clay barred.
I hav never seen more iron deposits on a car than this one, example below.

Iron remover doing its job.


There was a lot.
This step made a significant difference in the overall color of the car, the color job "popped" a lot more. 
This step took about 6 hours including drying, jacking car up and removing wheels(iron removing them as well) and taping off to prep for correction the next day.

Found @MPW3RLee's vice grip in the process.

Start of a long day of polishing and coating.
I used a Rupes polisher with Meguiars microfiber cutting pads with Jescar correction compound for the first pass.
I then used a foam yellow pad with Sonax perfect finish to complete the process.
This is the lightest color car I've ever corrected and it's much more difficult to see where you've been, what you've done, etc. The before and after's are not nearly as dramatic as they were with my E30(that had dead paint though). I didn't take any pictures because it was really hard to show the difference, but the improvements were notable. Much more clarity and depth. Not concurs ready though, it's an almost 15 year old daily so I didn't want to spend 20 hours alone polishing this.
I followed the correction with Gtechniq CSL for the base layer, with 2 coats of Gtechniq EXO V4 including the wheels. I did this on my E30 and loved the result. Added quite a bit of gloss to the finish as well.
It probably looks the same as before, but some pictures. I also took the badges off so I could correct everything, and will probable leave them off. I like the clean look.




Some small details as well.
New wheel center caps. The existing ones had this gunk on it that I thought was some kind of road grime or hardened fluid, but I think it was actually the plastic corroding. I tried to pick it off and it removed all the finish beneath. Instead of spending $60 or whatever the going rate for real center caps is, cheapo Amazon ones it is.



Looks much better. If these fail quickly I'll just buy OEM ones. I will need to get new roundels front and back as well at some point as they are showing signs of failure but still relatively good condition.
And finally, fixing my turn signal. When I took these off months ago to polish them originally, the little metal clip on the back fell into the fender. It's been double sided taped since. Cheapo Amazon to the rescue again, but not for the turn signal itself, but for the metal clip. A new OE turn signal is almost $40, and mine is in good condition, so I bought these cheap ones just to get one of the clips.

Gross.

This is what I needed. Threw these in the garbage promptly after. I had to pretty much destroy the plastic stalk to get it out any way.
 
I didn't polish the front bumper because of how scuffed it is. I would like to do an M sport bumper this year, but I would also like to do a new set of headlights at the same time as you have to remove the bumper to replace the headlights. I would like to do the projector headlights as well, but I STILL have not found a definitive source of someone completing this swap except for one video that is rather vague despite every thread saying that this has been discussed ad nauseam. 

Finally got the VANOS unit installed and the car buttoned back up. Decided to forgo the anti rattle kit and just do seals because it wasn’t making noise and I just wanted the car back together. Idled rough on the first start, but then shut it off and restarted and was much better. Powerband is now smooth again without the rubber band effect when VANOS kicks in, yo! and overall drivability is way, way better. Hoping to see some MPG improvements too!
 
Going to start driving this to keep miles off the E91, this still needs some things here and there but mostly minor stuff. Rear suspension work will probably continue to get put off, but 🤷‍♂️

I guess I do have a little update here. Earl told me last week that he plans on moving the engine for this car to my shop as he is tight on space with moving. So having everything in the same spot again is forward progress! 

Prime parking spot. I had an awesome time at the Bavarian Classic car show today. 

 

160k
After much thinking and hunting around I finally came up with a solution to put 5x7 speakers in the rear parcel shelf without cutting big holes or looking like someone landed a UFO back there.
 
Before I did anything with the speakers themselves I figured now's the time to refresh the parcel shelf itself. I had a spare standard speaker parcel shelf so I used the markings on the back and opened up the speaker cutouts and moved the mounting clips to the premium speaker layout. Since every parcel shelf is now faded to a lovely shade of light blurple I gave it a couple coats of black duplicolor vinyl/fabric dye and cleaned up all the plastic parts.

 
Once that was done (and after letting it dry for about 3-4 months), I got into swapping things out. With the old parcel shelf out, I added some sound deadening over any holes in the sheet metal and a few spots that made a lot of noise  when tapping on it. My thinking on doing this was it should help the speakers perform better/keep more sound in the cabin/maybe reduce some road noise bleeding through from the trunk.

 
Side note: I've always hated the tan rear seat in my car ever since I put it in. Its in really good shape and the original plan was to dye it eventually, but I realized I have a perfectly good black sedan back seat sitting in my basement. My car is a coupe so the seat isn't a perfect fit, but I also happen to have the rear carpet section from that sedan so I swapped that in as well to get everything looking as factory as possible. While it still isn't blue, it looks so much better. 

 
Back to the speakers. After much hunting around and thinking, I came across these speaker grills from a 90's ford van/ranger/etc. that had an identical grille pattern to the kick panel speakers in the front. I found someone selling NOS ones and ordered a pair. With the new decklid in place, and the grill/speaker (Polk audio DB+ 5x7 coaxial) in hand, I designed and 3d printed the adapter to make it all work. 

 
The adapter has slotted holes to screw into the factory e30 parcel shelf premium speaker clips so you can shift them around and maximize speaker clearance, matches the profile of the ford speaker grilles, and spaces the speaker up high enough to require no hammering/cutting of the sheet metal underneath. It is printed in ASA which is UV stable and should have zero issues dealing with the heat inside a car parked in the sun. To finalize the fit and finish, I screwed the speaker grille to the adapter and sanded the outer profile as a unit to get rid of layer lines and align everything perfectly. 

 
I obviously didn't want a gray speaker cover, so that got scuffed up and sprayed black with adhesion promoter and SEM trim paint. The adapter was then sprayed with adhesion promoter and filler primer, sanded smooth, then another coat of adhesion promoter to re-coat any exposed plastic, textured black paint, and a final top coat of SEM trim black. I did this same process on the tweeter pods and it's held up perfectly so far. 
 
With everything painted it was time to mount it all up! Here is the adapter mounted to the parcel shelf: 

 
Then the speaker gets mounted to the underside of the ford speaker grille. To fit the speaker I did have to remove a trim ring/spacer from the top side of the speaker and use a tin snips to remove the outer mounting tabs/trim a bit of excess material on the other mounting tabs. Also, because of the placement of the wire connections, I bent the connectors outwards 90 degrees so that they would clear the parcel shelf without having to cut a notch in it. 

 
I then mounted the speaker assembly to the adapter in the car and went back and did the whole thing a second time!

 
Couldn't be more stoked on the end result! It looks very factory and the sound improvement over the previous 5 1/4" coaxial speakers is huge. 
 

Prime parking spot. I had an awesome time at the Bavarian Classic car show today. 

 

Yes sir alien engineering. 
Not totally sure if he keeps his eBay store up anymore, but he is super active on the boostede36world Facebook page.
 
mid post edit - looks like he has his own site now 
https://www.alien-engineering.com/product-page/alien-engineering-bmw-m50-m52-m54-s50-s52-solid-lifter-conversion-shims