i_love_cars
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Posts posted by i_love_cars
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Yeah the good news is the tires on the car right now are able to be swapped. 285 in the rear isn't quite ideal fitment on stock wheels as a 275 but it's also not really going to hurt anything. The first thing that will be happening in Spring is the swap. Brand new style 65s are not cheap but it's hard to find them used, much less in a condition that I demand aka perfect. So I will probably just order a set from ECS
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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.
- REKIII, suspenceful, patsbimmer1 and 4 others
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I will send a PM out to those who are attending with address information. My E46 isn't track-ready yet (the new 4.10 diff came with a bad bearing fml), but my friend is letting me use his 720S for RA on Thursday and i'm picking it up tomorrow so I will probably get acclimated to it by doing a beat run to solidify our cruise route for Saturday.
The poll results are looking like we will do Option 1 which is show up anytime between 9-10:30, socialize till 11 and then we drive till 12 or 12:30, and arrive back at my place for lunch. Stu and one of my other friends with a boomer Corvette (C5 in grandpa gold with a black bra on the front) will be there so based on the results here i'm expecting it to be 10-12 people.
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2 hours ago, The Full Banana said:
Sounds fun! I would be especially down for a driftless area drive someday.
I have some good routes out that way from some full-day cruises I've done in the past. It's tough to get most people in our WIBimmers group for more than like, 90 minutes of driving. Driftless would be a commitment lol 😂
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On 9/5/2021 at 9:27 AM, AJK430 said:
Gunmetal Grey I’m wondering if you ever have anything to say that’s not generally derogatory. Every time I see anything on here from you it’s condescending.
I think he's just being realistic.
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I've been totally MIA as landscaping is now done and I'm trying to get the garage as close to "done" as I can before the snow flies. So before it gets too late in the season I want to get this going. Last week on Friday I took a day to go west of Madison and make a new route towards Mt. Horeb/Spring Green area which I unfortunately discovered was wayyyyy too long. That's what happens when you go on Google earth and just start point/clicking on roads. I am going to cultivate that - next year in 2022 I will lead a cruise out that way based on my findings. AS FOR 2021, we will be stuck in the Holy Hill area doing one of my more normal routes.
I am looking to do a group cruise on October 2nd.
Meet up at my house in Lisbon just south of Hwy Q off of Lake Five rd. I am kicking around a couple of options that people can vote on.
Option 1: Arrive anytime between 9 and 10:30, cruise starting no later than 11 a.m. on a route that is roughly 60-90 minutes. I will have coffee for those who want it. Arrive back at my house by 12:30-1 where I can have smoked ribs ready for everyone (i can do like 6 or 7 racks at a time on my smoker which should be plenty for our group). I have a loaded up fridge with a couple hundred cans of good ass fuckin beer at any given time, and enough seating outside on my patio for everyone. When we get back from the cruise I could toss some hot dogs on or something cuz those are super fast to cook, if anyone doesn't like pork ribs.
Option 2: Same as option 1, except instead of eating lunch at my house, we go 2 minutes up the road to Joe Mama's off of Hwy Q which has outdoor seating and good food, but decidedly more Harleys and annoying truck bros. Choose this option if you don't want to eat any smoker food or if you just hate me.
Option 3: Similar to option 1, except show up late morning at like 11 or 11:30 and eat lunch at my place, then we do a cruise starting at maybe 1 which could be extended driving up towards Road America and back, probably closer to a 2.5-3 hour cruise instead of the more local 60-90 minute around Holy Hill. This option is of course better for driving, you still get to eat good smoked food, but it does chop up people's Saturday more since it's like, basically from 11 until 4 or 5 p.m.
@B C you are welcome to drive my E46
I will probably for sure have Stuart involved as well although he's not on the forums anymore - he will probably drive my E92 or Z4, and I will drive whichever car he doesn't.
I have another long-time friend who isnt a BMW guy but he lives 3 minutes away and we have done lots of cruises/track events together and he will be in. So I probably have 3-4 people I know will be in to start with - trying to get a head count for who else would be committed to October 2nd.
I have a 2-day track event at RA on Oct 16-17 so that weekend is out. Soccer tournaments for the kids most other weekends. As such I'm not going to provide an alternate day. October 2nd or bust.
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I went out of my way to login to WIBimmers this morning specifically so I could find the post I knew you would make about this car, and flag it as Liked.
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This is still happening, timetable has been pushed back due to weather and contractor being busy. Patio starts this week in a few days which means driveway should get poured in the next 2-3 weeks. Most likely will try to set something up for July or August.
- P_Roloff and The Full Banana
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So concrete will be getting poured at my new house in the next 2-3 weeks-ish. The driveway is 100' long and 35x50 off the garage. Lots of room for cars to park.
I have been kicking around the idea of hosting a 1 or 1.5 hour C&C for people in our smaller circle (local BMW friends (WIBimmers), and some of my other car friends, this is not a public event), followed by a cruise. Some of you know that I built my house intentionally about 1 minute away from the start of my Holy Hill cruise route area. We are very close to Hwy Q/Platt. I have room for people to park and congregate outside, and I would be willing to provide good coffee (Colectivo probably). Rather than doing a 2-3 hour C&C, my thought was to do a shorter gathering and then spend more time driving. The nice part about this is that because of my location, it's a great jumping off point to start a cruise up to RA as well. So potentially I'm thinking of hosting this on a few days this season where it makes for an easy half-day (4 hours or so including time at my house and roundtrip to and from RA) for cruising that isn't going to dominate your whole day, but as part of that most likely would do this during IMSA or Vintage where you can optionally make a day out of it to watch some races.
I would probably look to start these at a reasonable hour of the morning, like 9 or 9:30 a.m., rather than the 7-8 a.m. starts most public C&Cs have. Get to driving by 11 or so. For the shorter routes around Holy Hill area, it would usually be 1-1.5 hours of driving, so back in time for lunch. There are several good places to eat very near my house and by Holy Hill - Joe Mama's, Sloppy Joe's, and Freiss lake pub. Alternatively on any days that we do RA cruising, you could just eat there.
I would probably try to limit this to like, 7-10 cars and I assume that's the most people I could get to actually show up anyways. I'm sure I know a few people here locally who would be interested. Most of you know I do pretty good cruise routes so shit would be legit, right now I'm just trying to gauge interest. If it's a small enough group of people I may just reach out to people individually for scheduling. Nothing is planned or set in stone yet, this is just an idea I started to come up with.
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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:
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Just popping in to say how sweet this thing is. Those dyno numbers are also absolutely nuts, really goes to show how much a proper tune makes a difference.
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On 11/21/2020 at 11:10 PM, damnboy037 said:
Damn, how many toys do you have?
As any true car enthusiast knows, the answer to that is always "not enough" 😆
- damnboy037 and m42b32
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9 hours ago, YoungCR said:
Wow! Thanks for the new wallpapers. How did this opportunity come about?
thanks bud. I'm part of a private group that had been looking for a world-class photographer to fly in to Wisconsin to shoot our cars, and with the COVID restrictions Pepper has been grounded internationally since March when he had to ditch a shoot he was doing for Lexus in Siberia. So we were able to book him and just split cost up between 12 cars. He was here for 3 days and it was probably the most fascinating time I've had talking with a car person. That guy's life has been so interesting, and he was really down to earth and humble. We had all kinds of cars being shot - a couple of Mustangs, a 370z, a Subaru, a huracan performante, mclaren 720, AMG E63S wagon, R8, GTR, and a couple others. All of the cars received a lovely treatment as far as photos were concerned. I downloaded the entire set and will be rotating some of my favorites as wallpapers. My friend's orange Huracan came out amazing since it was shot at sunset.
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On 10/12/2020 at 8:19 PM, YoungCR said:
I was thinking "I_love_red_bmws" but Even red BMW's wouldn't be accurate, the E46 M3 and E46 wagon were not red.
The prices were too good to pass up! Imola would have been the preferred color though, by far.
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As noted, I don't have any crazy plans for the car so this thread will be mostly dead but I did just get the car back today from my detailer. 4 days of paint correction, headlight restoration, ceramic coating the car and wheels with Kenzo IGL, and proper interior treatments. Photos don't do it justice - Imola is truly gorgeous when it is this cleaned up. He wet sanded the entire car. Just above and beyond service. It pretty much looks like a new car now. If you look extremely close you can find a couple blemishes still but the paint is 98% new car quality again. No more fog in the headlights either.
- P_Roloff, Jdesign and patsbimmer1
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On 10/12/2020 at 9:06 PM, GunMetalGrey said:
Fixed
The ball is in your court...
Car looks awesome, I always like me a red vehicle, and the z4 with an s54 seems like the perfect combo!Proper fix! Definitely have been roaming around today with the top down and heater blasting while it's in the 40s 😅 Stopped by LMT to say hi to TJ but he unfortunately did not have his roadster there
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1 minute ago, B C said:
The aux. fan controller cannot run the fan at full speed and the needle climbs while lining up in grid/idling for more than a minute on a hot day unless I am running the heater on full attempting to induce heat stroke.
Running a stock aux. fan and hard wiring the puller to a temp switch that lets it run full speed is the other option being considered.
I'm going to come over this weekend and inspect this fuckery for myself. I don't buy the story
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I have been ghosting the forums for quite a while as I've been busy with building a garage and a small attached house to sleep in, so nothing BMW-related to discuss. I hope everyone has been well in this crazy ass year we are in.
10/9/2020 finally acquired a 2007 Imola Z4MR that I have been seeking for many months now. It has been a rough search since the spec I want is not the most common - Imola over black, titanium or carbon trim, heated seats, no nav. Most of these cars are black, or have nav, and many Imola examples have woodgrain trim or a tan interior.
I had a WTB post on zpost forums that got buried in the classifieds 5 months ago, but a kind soul tagged me a couple days ago on an example that had just gone up for sale on 10/7 and it was local in Waukesha. I pretty much assumed it was going to be a shitbox because how could I be so lucky to find an example that's decent for sale this locally to me? Turns out it is a really nice example very mechanically sound, interior is very good in all the places that matter - cupholders are fucked but who cares they were clearly an afterthought by BMW in the first place. None of the usual Z4 roadster issues are present like cracking center console or busted seat belt holsters. It desperately needs to be cleaned, and my detailer will have his hands on it soon for paint correction and coating since there are quite a few scuffs and expected chips from an 07 with 80k on the odo.
The car came modded with aFe intake, Stromung mufflers, BBS CI-R wheels in 19" configuration, and ZHP shift knob.
It's interesting to drive after having owned the E46 M3 because while this car is decidedly an S54 power plant, it is still somewhat removed because the Z4M has the same manual trans as the standard Z4 3.0, it does not have the same trans from an E46 M3. It doesn't feel the same. It's extremely fun to drive, just different.
I don't have any big plans for this car so this thread will likely die but I wanted to have it here just in case.
I have an Imola problem (E39 M5 thread)
in Members BMWs
Posted
Yeah i won't be ordering till spring, I also have a lot of research to do in general on the car. It is crazy, and I do feel like I'm mostly parking my money since they are becoming collectible at this point. There was a 20k mile 1-owner example, not a Dinan car or anything, and it sold for like $75k yesterday. Insane