REKIII

The time has come to replace my wife's W body Impala and we both wanted a SUV as a replacement. I kept in mind that I wanted to go used BMW over newer economy because while I find the interiors nice in newer economy cars the road noise still speaks to the quality underneath.  It's the curse of growing up with these fine used automobiles knowing how things could be. The goals for this vehicle were really for long trips on vacations or at least day trips. After being impressed with that F10's condition I rented off Turo and @timmer's diesel thread, a E70 35d was the only vehicle we considered looking at. The desire also formed long ago when I worked at the dealership too, I loved driving the E90 and E70 diesels when they were new. They were my go-to errand runners when I had the choice. Father @andyhundley also told me they regularly service 10 of these at his job with no major issues after the EGR is "fixed".
I know its a pretty crazy car market right now but I don't feel like the prices on these have inflated much if any. The v8 X5's are the bottom because of their reliability and the diesels are just above that because its different. I saw many 80-120k examples for $12-15k on the market. CoPart auctions were often going for $8-10k as well for clean titled vehicles. Cinnamon Brown Nevada Leather interior was a must for me so that narrowed my search by quite a bit though. I initially looked in November and prices were a little lower on average then but I didn't see any winners at the time. Around the holidays this popped up in New Jersey though and after a week of contemplation I finally made the call. 
Being a 1 owner, clean carfax with recent service and being at a Euro specific car dealership really sweetened the deal. I'm really glad I looked back on @suspenceful's E70 thread as well because he mentioned using Lemon Squad for a PPI. Jeff at Torch Light Motors was happy to have them come out and inspect the vehicle and I was impressed with their report. I've attached it for those interested, really detailed and 94 pictures all around and under along with 3 short videos. 
Timing worked out pretty perfectly too as @BMWben is currently stationed out in Newport, RI for training before he moves to Japan. Along with a few other things out east I wanted to do, I figured why rent when I can buy? That and along with the Impala giving my wife some more trouble we decide to pull the trigger. Im flying out to Newark, NJ on the 28th and I'll spend a week out east and drive home on the 6th after a weekend of skiing in upstate New York at Whiteface. 
2013 BMW X5 xDrive35D
Deep Sea Blue Metalic
Cinnamon Brown Nevada Leather
Convenience Package (ZCV) - Comfort Access was a must for me
Cold Weather Package (ZCW) - Same with heated seats, heated rears was a bonus. 
Premium Package (ZPP) - All included in ZCV - The Rear view camera with top view I always loved using. 
Option 300 Space Saver Spare, not originally equipped but it has it! Thrilled this doesn't have run flats anymore. 
New Continental ExtremeContact DWS tires

LemonSquad460341.pdf

World is kind of geared for a family of 4. Finding a car to fit a 3rd car seat starts to become a challenge. The 3rd row seat requires a contortionist to get a kid strapped in the 20point harness these days.  So, you go out and get the "swagger wagon" for the whole family, and you windup having the wrong car half the time when you go get them from the sitter. just get the "Hoovie Van" and you'll be all set.
As far as family dynamic the more the better.  once you get past 4-5 the older ones help out with the younger ones. but, when it's just the 2 of you, the biggest change is from 2 to 3. it's a whole different ball game. you go from playing "man to man" defense to "Zone". You go from controlling the situation to just containing the explosion.
good luck with getting that boy. You have a 50/50 shot.  My grandfather was a farmer and wanted sons to help on the farm. He wound up with 5 girls (youngest is 2 years older then I) and 14 of 19 grandsons.  I got 3 boys because my wife wanted that girl.  Now that they are teenagers, she is glad 'cause she says she couldn't handle today's girls.
  so, god give you what you can handle.
 
 

Wife and I had many discussions about the number of kids we want, and we settled on "anything more than 1."
 
Wife was an only child and hated it, I had 5 siblings and loved it. I'm thinking 2-3 would be ideal, but I'd like at least one boy.

Eh. I felt going from 1 to 2 was a bigger transition than going from 2 to 3. 
Everything works itself out and you adapt. Our plan is to have one more. And when that happens, we'll figure it out. It's definitely easier with two them able to walk longer distances, so when we walk downtown the two older ones can walk or ride scooters or something. 

Was looking at Groms on Facebook Marketplace and came across this, lol
I trimmed the video, but c'mon 

@Jdesign might have some of your needed bits.  He seems to have a warehouse of parts/cars, etc. 

Mocked up a bracket to mount the reservoirs. I drilled the holes in the rain tray, added grommets and ran the lines to the masters. I ran into a small issue that I might be able to solve quickly once I pull everything back out again. The middle reservoir line is right where two layers of sheet metal split, so one side might need to be trimmed from under the dash. I am NOT looking forward to that.

The new joints showed up, and to my surprise, the second time is a charm. Everything fit perfectly! (Minus the fact that my D shaft is about 4" too short, HEH ) 

Under the dash its REALLY REALLY tight to the master. I actually had to shave the mounting bracket for the pedal box and the master itself to clear, but it looks like its going to work!

 
Here is the engine bay side of the D shaft and the new U joint to replace the one I made previously. It looks much nicer and is a lower profile than what I had. 
I ordered all the lines and fittings for the masters and started to mock all of that up as well. My biggest challenge with that is figuring out where I want to drill more holes for the bulk heads in the firewall. It already kind of looks like swiss cheese, and I figure I will weld all the holes shut once I paint the engine bay, but I rather get it right first than have to revisit it later.

the welder has created a sim car cage with pvc.
im ded. 

Well I spent most of my saturday trying to sort out my steering column issue. It turns out that none of my current options left me a happy camper. I did get myself an early model non-airbag column but the way it fit was very unfortunate. not only did it put the steering wheel angle back at the bus driver position that I hated, it also pointed the face of the wheel a good 5-10 degrees toward the drivers door. Apparently the hole in the firewall is different on the late model airbag cars.
Here is the two columns side by side

Here you can see how dramatically left the column faces

Here is the bus driver angle 

So my plan from here was that it would be easier to make my airbag column work. Below you can see how close one of the masters is to the splines of the column. I drew a line in red that shows where the shaft needs to go. Notice that my line is a "Z" as it not only has to go to the right, it also has to pivot down. 

This is my solution; use a flaming river double U joint to make the "Z" and then a D shaft through the firewall and a second U joint to mate it to the Z4 rack. the second part im still not sure I have all the puzzle pieces yet. I previously made an adapter a few pages back in this thread to mate the Z4 to my column, but now I am using a D shaft, I will likely have to make a different adapter. I just ordered everything and will have to figure this out when I have everything in my hands. 

If anyone knows the spline count on the shaft of a Z4 rack, please let me know. I looked high and low and found nothing. it measures to 18mm on a caliper, but I had a hell of a time trying to get an accurate spline count. It is NOT the 17mm 54 spline that is commonly used.

This last weekend I got the opportunity to go to the Rolex 24 with Michelin and it was absolutely amazing!  The race was awesome but the people we got to watch it with made it even better.  Our hosts were Paul Gerrard (The American Stig, Grand Tour), Didier Theys (Winner of Rolex 3x, Sebring 2x and 3x Lemans podiums), Butch Leitzinger (2x Lemans winner, 3x Daytona winner) and Kelly Williams (CASCAR driver and Pfaff motorsports driving coach).  We got to do a lap of Daytona with Paul in an M5 CS which was absolutely insane!  You think you've driven fast until you drive with a professional driver 🤣.  Doing 165 around the oval and 100+ through the infield was an experience I will never forget.  These guys did corner tours with us and had us looking at the driving in a whole new light.  The way they can diagnose what's going on and verbalize it is seriously impressive.
 

Cosmoline is a sealant / rust proofing that was applied to engine bays of E30's during transport. For the short duration it was on for transport no discoloration is usually observed, and dealers were supposed to wipe it out of the engine bays and apparently there was even a bottle of mineral spirits shipped in the engine bay to do so. Most dealers did not, and after the vehicles start seeing heat and use the sealant yellows and hardens, becoming very difficult to remove. 

Circa ~2005 BMW was still shipping cars covered in a heavy wax coating that was pressured washed off with high heat water.

I made a table
It was plenty of work, and I love the way it turned out. 
Turns out I still don't have any good pictures of it, here's what I've got! 

We're making things over here! ABS plug worked great and a spacer for the otherwise flat 944 booster.
 




 
Played around in Cura and found how to make multiples and it placed them for you. Super neat. 
 

I think the bed leveler and improved springs are going to go on before I do more printing. As I do more reading that seems to be some improvements that make a lot of sense. 
 
Got a little nerdy with the printer enclosure. Put in some cheap led strips. I wanted to have light in there to help see what it’s doing since I also plan on putting one of my spare Wyze cams in there so I can watch it when I’m not in the garage, but, it also looks neat. 

PETG is definitely a pain.  PLA is the easiest and most forgiving material to print with....it is also one of the worst for making useable things ad it is not super hard, not very temp stable and not UV protected at all.
ABS is a little better, but smells horribly when printing and doesn't hold size very well.
The cool thing is that there are a ton of people out there who have tried a ton of different things, so no one is reinventing the wheel at this point.
Also, if you are interested in a bed leveler, I have an extra available, the Creality BL touch.  I also have an Ender-3 Silent Motherboard.  They were gifts from other relatives for my daughter.....they were not paying attention to what I was getting.

I've had a few people reach out to me asking to check back into WIBimmers... and I realized it's been way too long since I've updated this thread. So much has happened since my last update a year and a half ago.
My Instagram and YouTube channel are where I post most of my content. Be sure to follow/subscribe if you're interested in keeping up with my BMW builds!
I'm currently in talks with Billiam Mason (BMB Autowerks) about a built engine. The 135i engine is finally ticking/knocking internally after all of the 750+whp abuse. My goal is to get something that can handle 900whp and maaaaaybe throw a bigger turbo on it. He recommended a 6875 Gen 2.
Here are a few pictures/videos to enjoy.







 

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/2698733837097713/?ref=search&referral_code=marketplace_search&referral_story_type=post&tracking=browse_serp%3A23c0d20d-4c54-4465-8eb1-05aaa356157a

 
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/411836060576877/?ref=search&referral_code=marketplace_search&referral_story_type=post&tracking=browse_serp%3A62bebacd-8603-4d0b-989f-a45f2f36ceff

L84ANL

Before you order the wheels, look into the squared option....rears on all 4 corners.  They look pretty good on the front and get rid of a bit of the understeer.
Congrats on the car, looks amazing.  I still can't believe what the e39's are going for these days, M5 or otherwise.

So this should be arriving next week:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2003-bmw-m5-131/
 
Easier to just post the listing so I don't have to type up a diatribe. I stumbled across this auction which only had 3 hours left on the timer. So I scrambled to pore over the photos and documentation and come to realize this is actually a super legit Dinan car with everything except the wheels and flywheel. (dinan flywheel was installed but removed later).  lol @ $29k when the car was new in 2003 for all that Dinan shit. Even has the 3.45 differential. 
I have utterly 0 plans for this car other than to get stock wheels or apex arc-8 - basically something that allows me to run BMW centercaps - and then drive the shit out of it. 

That thing looks super cool AND amazing.
You need to go full Dan Bilzerian in that last pic and take the shirt off.  There are Lady wibimmer members too.....I think....well....probably not.  But if Ramplesauce comes back he'll like it.

To connect the crossovers with the door speakers, they both have to route to the cross over. One way shape or form, some wire has to pass through the door for either the tweeter or the door speaker. I was not about to drill a hole through the molex connector in the door loom(which is how I saw people were doing it). And I don’t want to have a miscellaneous wire hanging in the door. Next time you’re back, you can hook it up and route it for me😁
I am using the tweeters, just have them connected to the factory tweeter harness.
Thank you to @YoungCRfor creating a separate thread for this. What I should have done from the beginning.
I said I would be done with mods, and I kind of lied. Albeit, this one isn’t a new item, but more of a rerouting. I was tired of having my phone cable strewn over my center console area from having to plug into the Sync ports at the front of the console. I also couldn’t ever close this roll top door at the front of the console due to this cable running out of it. The importance of the cable, is that it connects my iPhone to the truck to utilize Apple Car Play. Since this isn’t a 2021, I do not have wireless Car Play and have to have a hard wire connection like a peasant.
The solution? Drill.
Pulled the shifter trim surround off and was able to make some small holes in a couple of places to allow me to snake the iPhone cable through the structure of the center console to allow me to still use the function of the cable, but have it “hidden”. 
 
This took me about 10 minutes, $2 in grommets, and made my center console area way more orderly. Love the result.

Same experience looking for an F250 XLT diesel in velocity blue.  I came across a couple where the “market adjustments” were astronomical as well. I’m holding out for a bit since my F150 still does what i need it to.

Agreed on the interiors.  Ford is way ahead.  Looked and looked for an F250 Lariat Black edition Diesel and couldn't find one, dealers that had them wouldn't deal on my truck, dealers that didn't were offering me the moon for it....so weird.  So, I found a Sierra and made a deal.  Very weird, but I made out OK.
Your coworkers truck looks great!  Ask him if he's interested in a RPG bumpstop kit, or fender liners, or mudflaps, or 2" drop shackles or Cobb Tuner.  All new in box (except the cobb, I'd have to see if it can be sold or if it's permanently married to my old truck).  I have some parts to get rid of..... hahaha.