Hi everyone,
I've posted a bit on RMS but never really had a members car thread (except for my Polo a few years back).
I decided i'd post this one up, not that I necessarily have many plans for it, but more just to keep on top of maintenance and anything that I do to it over time.
Going back a little, around March 2021 I decided that it was time to change the car. I had a Clio 200 which I had for a couple of years at that stage. It was a great car and sounded great with an induction kit. Handled really well, but bar going crazy, it was hard to extract more power from.
I eventually narrowed the search down to a V8 coupe. This led to test driving two cars, a Jag XKR 5.0 supercharged V8, and the more obvious choice, an E92 M3.
The Jag was superb, acceleration like I have never felt, really a missile on the test drive. The other half genuinely asked that I didn't buy it, as she would be worried every time I went out in it.
The second option was the M3. I have longed after an E92 for a long time. I love the look, I think they have aged really well, so I set about finding the right one. I viewed one in Bavarian which was quite tatty, and frankly the service we received was beyond poor. I swore I'd never darken their door again.
I ended up buying a Monte Carlo edition from Banbridge, trading in my Clio. Low miles, pretty good condition and a lot of history (although not BMW).
On the drive home, the dashboard lit up. Gutted, I rang the dealer, who sent me to a mechanic who diagnosed a faulty wheel speed sensor. Grand, the car has been sitting a while sure these things happen. Over the course of the next few weeks I had multiple wheel speed sensors fail, as well as a gearbox fault appear on the car. Fearing I had bought a lemon, the car was returned to the dealer (with much to do!) and I took a brave bit of a hit. In the end, my gut feeling was right as I have since seen the car for sale again, this time with rod bearings and throttle actuator work all completed.
I took the head staggers, and replaced the M3 with an NC MX5. I have had an NA and NB in the past, and loved them. The MX5 was bought from someone on the forum, and genuinely one of the best cars I have ever owned. Never gave one bit of bother, it was a folding hard top and a sport, so it had the LSD.
I ended up selling this foolishly as I was going back to the office in Dublin a bit more, and in the depths of winter with rising fuel costs, commuting 120 miles 3 days a week was not ideal in the MX5.
Myself and the other half decided this would be a good time to try and put some money away, get some work done to the house yadda yadda yadda. We both decided to downgrade, so we sold her Kia Optima to a dealer and bought an B6 A4 avant for me, and a mini cooper D for her. (on a side note, the Kia was a great car but very hard to sell. We sold it to the dealer back in December 21/January 22 and its still on his forecourt. Good value but very hard to shift.)
While the A4 did its job for commuting up and down, carrying the dog etc, I really missed having something interesting to drive. The mini gave us its fair share of problems, needing a turbo, dpf removal, egr delete etc shortly after we got it. Then the A4 began giving problems too. It was the problematic multitronic gearbox which had had a fix last year. The vibrations through the cabin got worse and worse, and eventually it was giving the flashing PRNDS on the dash. Not good. The car was essentially parked up on the driveway a couple of months back, and basically not driven again bar the odd short run around town.
We then seen a nice petrol Scirocco for sale on the forum. I was in the middle of moving jobs to something fully remote, so this Scirocco was to scratch the fun petrol itch that I had (as well as give us a running car while we got the mini up and running). We took a run up to Ballymoney and bought the car. It had a little intermittent fault related to the throttle body, but it didn't appear serious. Since then, I replaced the throttle pedal, cleaned the throttle body and the fault seemed to clear. Until one day the car would not start. Scans from VCDS pointed us towards timing chain stretch
.
Thankfully I have a good friend who has done a lot of work to his Edition 30, and suggested we tackle this job ourselves to keep costs down, and at least we could get started as mechanics wanting to take on the job were hard to find. This job was started in the middle of July, and is still not complete due to availability and needing parts etc. The car is currently in the below state:
Right, so whats the upshot of all this?
A4 - basically undriveable due to a recurring fault in the gearbox.
Mini - driving and commuting for my OH (however I cheaped out and bought a turbo core, not a turbo. this is starting to show signs of a bad rebuild so a new turbo will be on the cards again soon lol)
Scirocco - on axle stands, awaiting the engine to be rebuilt and both bumpers and front wings sitting in the paintshop to be tidied.
And I don't have any means of transport, never mind something interesting! I've still been trawling the classifieds throughout this saga, keeping tabs on M3s as, while my last one was not great, it was fantastic the few times that it did actually work in my ownership. I knew they couldn't all be like this, and a few weeks back I spotted this mineral white E92 in Bavarian. It has a Novillo Palladium interior, which did not look great in the photos, and given my previous experience I didn't contact them for a while. Eventually last Thursday I gave them a call, and arrange to go view it on Friday. The salesman James was brilliant. Gave me a really detailed walk around of the car by video on Thursday evening, and could not have been more helpful on Friday.
Finally, deal done. I collected the car last night, and it is in great condition. The Palladium interior did not look nice in Bavarian's pictures at all but in person it is really bright and I love it much more than the black interior I had in the last car. It has full BMW history, and most importantly, a full years warranty. I haven't taken that many pics of it yet, see the couple below, but its a fantastic drive. Pilot Super Sports all round, and it feels extremely planted compared to the Monte Carlo one. I am loving it. Spec is below too for future reference for myself, but honestly I am so glad I went back to Bavarian for the car.
I don't really have any plans for it, and certainly nothing that will impact the warranty! The only thing at the minute will be maybe the 2.5 pipe mod. Does anyone know someone in Newry or nearby that can do it?
Apologies for the saga, but I thought I would write out the atrocious luck we have had with cars over the past 15 months. Hopefully that is the end of it, the plan is to get the Scirocco on the road for my girlfriend, and hopefully do some trackdays in it myself. The A4 was traded in against the M3 (which was a nervy drive to Belfast and apologies if anyone passed me struggling up hills on the A1 yesterday!) and the Mini may or may not stay once the turbo is finally sorted.
Thanks for reading!
I've posted a bit on RMS but never really had a members car thread (except for my Polo a few years back).
I decided i'd post this one up, not that I necessarily have many plans for it, but more just to keep on top of maintenance and anything that I do to it over time.
Going back a little, around March 2021 I decided that it was time to change the car. I had a Clio 200 which I had for a couple of years at that stage. It was a great car and sounded great with an induction kit. Handled really well, but bar going crazy, it was hard to extract more power from.
I eventually narrowed the search down to a V8 coupe. This led to test driving two cars, a Jag XKR 5.0 supercharged V8, and the more obvious choice, an E92 M3.
The Jag was superb, acceleration like I have never felt, really a missile on the test drive. The other half genuinely asked that I didn't buy it, as she would be worried every time I went out in it.
The second option was the M3. I have longed after an E92 for a long time. I love the look, I think they have aged really well, so I set about finding the right one. I viewed one in Bavarian which was quite tatty, and frankly the service we received was beyond poor. I swore I'd never darken their door again.
I ended up buying a Monte Carlo edition from Banbridge, trading in my Clio. Low miles, pretty good condition and a lot of history (although not BMW).
On the drive home, the dashboard lit up. Gutted, I rang the dealer, who sent me to a mechanic who diagnosed a faulty wheel speed sensor. Grand, the car has been sitting a while sure these things happen. Over the course of the next few weeks I had multiple wheel speed sensors fail, as well as a gearbox fault appear on the car. Fearing I had bought a lemon, the car was returned to the dealer (with much to do!) and I took a brave bit of a hit. In the end, my gut feeling was right as I have since seen the car for sale again, this time with rod bearings and throttle actuator work all completed.
I took the head staggers, and replaced the M3 with an NC MX5. I have had an NA and NB in the past, and loved them. The MX5 was bought from someone on the forum, and genuinely one of the best cars I have ever owned. Never gave one bit of bother, it was a folding hard top and a sport, so it had the LSD.
I ended up selling this foolishly as I was going back to the office in Dublin a bit more, and in the depths of winter with rising fuel costs, commuting 120 miles 3 days a week was not ideal in the MX5.
Myself and the other half decided this would be a good time to try and put some money away, get some work done to the house yadda yadda yadda. We both decided to downgrade, so we sold her Kia Optima to a dealer and bought an B6 A4 avant for me, and a mini cooper D for her. (on a side note, the Kia was a great car but very hard to sell. We sold it to the dealer back in December 21/January 22 and its still on his forecourt. Good value but very hard to shift.)
While the A4 did its job for commuting up and down, carrying the dog etc, I really missed having something interesting to drive. The mini gave us its fair share of problems, needing a turbo, dpf removal, egr delete etc shortly after we got it. Then the A4 began giving problems too. It was the problematic multitronic gearbox which had had a fix last year. The vibrations through the cabin got worse and worse, and eventually it was giving the flashing PRNDS on the dash. Not good. The car was essentially parked up on the driveway a couple of months back, and basically not driven again bar the odd short run around town.
We then seen a nice petrol Scirocco for sale on the forum. I was in the middle of moving jobs to something fully remote, so this Scirocco was to scratch the fun petrol itch that I had (as well as give us a running car while we got the mini up and running). We took a run up to Ballymoney and bought the car. It had a little intermittent fault related to the throttle body, but it didn't appear serious. Since then, I replaced the throttle pedal, cleaned the throttle body and the fault seemed to clear. Until one day the car would not start. Scans from VCDS pointed us towards timing chain stretch
.Thankfully I have a good friend who has done a lot of work to his Edition 30, and suggested we tackle this job ourselves to keep costs down, and at least we could get started as mechanics wanting to take on the job were hard to find. This job was started in the middle of July, and is still not complete due to availability and needing parts etc. The car is currently in the below state:
Right, so whats the upshot of all this?
A4 - basically undriveable due to a recurring fault in the gearbox.
Mini - driving and commuting for my OH (however I cheaped out and bought a turbo core, not a turbo. this is starting to show signs of a bad rebuild so a new turbo will be on the cards again soon lol)
Scirocco - on axle stands, awaiting the engine to be rebuilt and both bumpers and front wings sitting in the paintshop to be tidied.
And I don't have any means of transport, never mind something interesting! I've still been trawling the classifieds throughout this saga, keeping tabs on M3s as, while my last one was not great, it was fantastic the few times that it did actually work in my ownership. I knew they couldn't all be like this, and a few weeks back I spotted this mineral white E92 in Bavarian. It has a Novillo Palladium interior, which did not look great in the photos, and given my previous experience I didn't contact them for a while. Eventually last Thursday I gave them a call, and arrange to go view it on Friday. The salesman James was brilliant. Gave me a really detailed walk around of the car by video on Thursday evening, and could not have been more helpful on Friday.
Finally, deal done. I collected the car last night, and it is in great condition. The Palladium interior did not look nice in Bavarian's pictures at all but in person it is really bright and I love it much more than the black interior I had in the last car. It has full BMW history, and most importantly, a full years warranty. I haven't taken that many pics of it yet, see the couple below, but its a fantastic drive. Pilot Super Sports all round, and it feels extremely planted compared to the Monte Carlo one. I am loving it. Spec is below too for future reference for myself, but honestly I am so glad I went back to Bavarian for the car.
I don't really have any plans for it, and certainly nothing that will impact the warranty! The only thing at the minute will be maybe the 2.5 pipe mod. Does anyone know someone in Newry or nearby that can do it?
Apologies for the saga, but I thought I would write out the atrocious luck we have had with cars over the past 15 months. Hopefully that is the end of it, the plan is to get the Scirocco on the road for my girlfriend, and hopefully do some trackdays in it myself. The A4 was traded in against the M3 (which was a nervy drive to Belfast and apologies if anyone passed me struggling up hills on the A1 yesterday!) and the Mini may or may not stay once the turbo is finally sorted.
Thanks for reading!
