'Oddjob' aka 2002 330i Touring

[Sf_Manta]

Jhonno said:

I've not heard of the O2pilot mod.. Might have go.. Mine doesn't consume excessive amounts, but maybe 1L every 1500/2000 miles.

From what I've read, it'll reduce it significantly from that point.

Still, more work yesterday given the rear right caliper decided to finally fail after 20 years on the car. This involved having to strip out the brass slider upgrade I'd installed to improve pedel feel. These needed a bit of help removing with the vice and a dead blow hammer to drive the caliper off the slider.









Went back in and went off to Mallory for RetroRides today.

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B'stard Child said:

Sf_Manta said:

Went back in and went off to Mallory for RetroRides today.

Good work

What were your impressions of the show?

Was good but left me with a bit of a sour taste after my car got barred from entering, later confirmed by the organisers by instagram that my car had been elegeable but someone at the gate wasn't aware.

Otherwise, there was some interesting cars, link for the pics here: https://imgur.com/gallery/m1D58VY

[Sf_Manta]

Jhonno said:

Sf_Manta said:

B'stard Child said:

Sf_Manta said:

Went back in and went off to Mallory for RetroRides today.

Good work

What were your impressions of the show?

Was good but left me with a bit of a sour taste after my car got barred from entering, later confirmed by the organisers by instagram that my car had been elegeable but someone at the gate wasn't aware.

Otherwise, there was some interesting cars, link for the pics here: https://imgur.com/gallery/m1D58VY

Barred from entering?!

Yup, some muppet on the gate refused to let it in cause it's on a 52 plate. They didn't know BMW's and i saw 4-5 other E46's which had snuck in on private plates. Have spoken to the organisers and it's a grey area they're working to resolve.

[Sf_Manta]

B'stard Child said:

Sf_Manta said:

Jhonno said:

Sf_Manta said:

B'stard Child said:

Sf_Manta said:

Went back in and went off to Mallory for RetroRides today.

Good work

What were your impressions of the show?

Was good but left me with a bit of a sour taste after my car got barred from entering, later confirmed by the organisers by instagram that my car had been elegeable but someone at the gate wasn't aware.

Otherwise, there was some interesting cars, link for the pics here: https://imgur.com/gallery/m1D58VY

Barred from entering?!

Yup, some muppet on the gate refused to let it in cause it's on a 52 plate. They didn't know BMW's and i saw 4-5 other E46's which had snuck in on private plates. Have spoken to the organisers and it's a grey area they're working to resolve.

Sent to public parking rather than the Retro/Club Show Field I think he means - either way not a great situation - Late "registered" examples of cars first manufactured from before pre-2001 are eligible to display.

Unfortunately you do need a fairly good car knowledge to be able to cover this and "no modern plates" is the accepted criteria for show field which is where the "grey area" issue comes into play.

Pretty much that, didn't get into the show area as my car was a 'grey area' and unless you know what you're looking at, the rule doesn't work. The rule works 90% of the time, just hoping my suggestion of a approved list of cars that are elegible that covers this grey area resolves it. I'm all game for lending a hand to help develop this list if it resolves this issue.

[Sf_Manta]

Bit of an update given I've had a week booked off this week, hitting the big 4-0..

Yesterday was spent doing a service on the handbrake mech, though needs new discs and pads soon for that too, so end of the month job there. No pictures though.

Today's job was to resolve the very crusty springs, and they arrived from KW yesterday. Today up went the car, first time i've been able to get it fully up on axle stands





Rusty front spring to show how bad they'd gotten, the dampers meanwhile besides a bit of grime on them, were still pretty much mint.






New bush for one of the dampers also got installed, despite bieng a complete PITA to refit!






All back together, just needs a coolant flush and that's about it.

[Sf_Manta]

d_a_n1979 said:

Lovely stuff!

They've not weathered very well have they!

Can you powdercoat them and sell them on, or are they past it?

They're pretty past it, they've done 5 years on the car, so i wouldn't want to sell them on.

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Still, few months on, just paid the tax bill for another year all.. £360 for it

And I'll be heading up to CAffine and Machine on Wednesday 21st December for Strassenkultur evening if anyone wants to meet up for some drinks and food.

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Well, small disaster last night. Went to warm the car up and try and unstick the windows which had frozen in the cold weather by blasting the heater on full while driving around.

Driver's side made a few clunks then went down, went back up then went down... rapidly and didn't come up. Which is 99% the regulator's gone. :
No pictures yet but the glass is fine, but a very cold drive home and the car's been confined to the garage for the moment.

A quick order from C3 BMW and a new regulator should be here in the next day or two.. just means me getting cold installing it.

[Sf_Manta]

d_a_n1979 said:

I had that with my one of my E39s...

Turns out the regulator was frozen and just needed defrosting! A few blasts with WD40 and then lithium grease and it was fine...

Might be worth investigating...

Talk about sods law though

Yup, C3 to the rescue though, should have the parts tomorrow and will tackle it on Saturday

[Sf_Manta]

Jhonno said:

If you haven't replaced a window regulator, have you even owned an E46?!

I have , one of the rears, just go back a few pages

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So we're all back up and running , ready for Strassenkultur night at Caffine and Machine tonight.

Didn't get many pictures while replacing things as daylight hours were short, but ended up getting another window regulator from Euros after UPS didn't deliver on time and when it did arrive , didn't look anything like what the original looked like ..

So in went the Euro's one with a new motor then managed to get some fresh butile tape from BMW to stick back the vaper barrier properly as someone had been inside the door previously and made a bit of a mess of it.

[Sf_Manta]

First post of 2023, and the car's had a good deep clean as it was in dire need of it. Wheels off and some rust treated and sealed.

















All done but no polish as the rain decided to stop play right when i finished drying.. ah well

[Sf_Manta]

Thanks for all the compliments on the car so far.
Small update, and probably the easiest fix to date.
Broken off the leather strap used to lift the false floor up in the boot. Had some spare black webbing strap left over from securing the fire extinguisher so.. 15 mins later, one new strap all secured and ready to work.

[Sf_Manta]

Alright, so spent a good 5 hours or so prepping / cleaning and checking the car over for next week at Retrorides weekender including some tracktime.
Insides got cleaned, car got jacked up and a full deep clean and polish including the wheels.

There's a few minor marks and scratches but she still shines up pretty well.












Also got my show plates through and drilled to fit nicely.

Edited by Sf_Manta on Sunday 14th May 15:54

Edited by Sf_Manta on Sunday 14th May 15:54

[Sf_Manta]

B'stard Child said:

Sf_Manta said:

Alright, so spent a good 5 hours or so prepping / cleaning and checking the car over for next week at Retrorides weekender including some tracktime.

No idea how you managed to blag some track time - honestly no clue at all

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Will have to say, Retrorides Weekender is absolutely epic, if you've not been, do take a look at the Gathering in August or next year.
And got some pictures from Goodwood, querying about getting some more at the moment.

Edit , found the youtube tags don't work for clips so.. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxF2owsxhCzOOoKs6K2PhkB... for a nice tyre smoking launch

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Finally got around to uploading the videos from the Retrorides weekender, also got a few pictures, but need to pull those from the main pc.
Also did some servicing over the weekend but forgot to get pics, oil change went... messily as i missed my drain tray and had to wash the drive down after mopping the mess up.

Also bled the brake / clutch systems and found my rear pads are practically gone and the fronts are low.. so £280 bill from Demon tweeks for fresh pads.. will get pics on Saturday.

[Sf_Manta]

Well then, it's been an eventful few weeks for me here.

Firstly back at the start of June, I prepped the car for a trip to the south of France to that 24 hour race many of us enjoy watching, and for some like my self had the oppitunity to work at in the past, and this year certainly didn't disappoint. The on track action being absolutely epic as well as getting my car on the PH stand at the Great British Welcome at the 2nd year i've visited as a spectator.

Spent a few days prepping the car for the trip, including an oil change, new brake pads and a fluid flush on the brake system as i had a trackday the day after i got back from Le Mans to attend. This plus my rear washer pump deciding to fail and a quick trip to Euro's to get a replacement





Day before the trip, car was all stickered up at a friend's place with another friend's chariot, a Jaguar XFR Le Mans edition if i recall? Aka 5.0 V8 and supercharged . which made my 261bhp 330i look sluggish. Still both cars were loaded and driven out and back again with only one issue being the jag's washer pump decided to forgo living anymore.



Once back from Le Mans, off i went to Donnington for a trackday there as I'd been invited for a well known Youtuber's birthday bash at the trackday which proved pretty fun.



Morning went well, got some good time in the car and was getting faster as the day wore on till right before lunch when i took someone out for a passenger ride when.. this happened. I caused a red flag for the first time ever in my time doing track days and had to suffer the tow back to the pits as I couldn't select any gears.







This meant no more running for me that day and the slight issue of getting home from Donnington, easily a 70mile drive and no means to select gears.
however, a suggestion of "This your tool box? got a big screwdriver handy?" resulted in some drilling of the remains (hence the hole) and this was the result



Amazingly it worked reasonably well, and i got home without any further drama, though also made me think of it as a perfect anti theft device.. how can you drive a manual car if there's no gearstick?

Still i needed to replace it and thankfully I'd kept ahold of my old shifter setup, which after a little tweeking and 2 hours rolling around under the car to wrestle it in means i've got at least something that's looking back to stock for now. I'm already talking to the vendors about a possible discount on a replacement as when I asked about it, turns out they'd had a design change post when i brought my kit likely due to failures of this nature.





Least that's gonna work for now till i can look at a replacement, as I'm having to currently start over with my house hunting as I had to recind on an offer due to issuses and a vendor that refused to budge on price.

[Sf_Manta]

Thanks Dan

Update on things, BMW's had new rear tyres ready for this weekend, and will get cleaned (again) friday evening.
House wise, found a place 3 days after i recinded on the last place and offer was accepted. Place comes with a much nicer garage. Just waiting on the paperwork.

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LanceRS said:

Well done on the new place, we are currently doing the same. Hopefully I will finally get my garage.
Are you moving far?

Moving up to Northampton once it all goes through.

Had a cracking day out today though at Bicester Heritage at PH's 25th birthday, brilliant day out. loved it and couldn't believe how many people here were a fan of my car to be said