Beiträge von Stuart8er

Martin, I've a 3.6 LSD and it came from an E34 535 Sport, there's plenty of these still being broken and prices are pretty reasonable.
From memory I'm pretty sure that the LSD units in these diffs are made by ZF, they're big and strong, even a `tuned` E34 wouldn't have produced enough power to worry this LSD and as you say, the average 7 series owner doesn't generaly skip maintenace and hammer this car around.

Very basic diff checks;
Following these checks should;
A/ verify if it's got an LSD in it or if it's just an open diff,
B/ allow you to find out what final drive ratio it has,
C/ hopefully stop you buying a very heavy paper weight/desk ornament,

First things first, turn the input (prop shaft) flange, if the output flanges rotate in opposite directions it's an open diff (not LSD) so just walk away.
As far as condition goes, as long as the LSD (and crown wheel and pinion set) has had a good belly full of oil to run in it'll all be good to go, the easiest check here is to take the rear cover off and take a look.
With the rear cover off, what you're focusing on are the crown wheel and pinion (though you can hardly see the pinion gear so go by condition of the crown wheel, they have to run as a matched pair so if one's shot so's the other) and the LSD unit, nothing else really has a value and can be replaced for a couple of quid, unlike the LSD or the crown wheel and pinion.
With the cover off and LSD and crown wheel now visible the first bad sign is metalic debris in the remaining oil or a thick sludge in the bottom of the diff casing, or rust, either probably means trouble, if in doubt, walk away.
If the gear tooth faces of the crown wheel still have a nice good shine (no grey dullness) and you can see no visible wear, sharp edges or anything that just looks plain wrong. If the oil isn't dark brown or black, and plenty comes out all over your feet when you take the cover off, you can be reasonably sure that the diff'll be fine to use.
Check that there's a small amount of play when you start to turn the input (prop shaft) flange before it in turn starts to turn the crown wheel/LSD assembly, what you're feeling is the back lash, if there's too much it's either knackered bearings or worse, the crown wheel and pinion set are worn out (this is why you're looking at the condition of the gear teeth of the crown wheel, to see if any exessive play you may find is just worn bearings or the crown wheel and pinion set that's shot).
When you turn the input flange it should turn nice and smooth, you should hardly feel the transition from the gear tooth pairs meshing to the next as it revolves, any `lumpyness` is a bad sign and your looking for the reason, it could just be bearings.
At this point it's probably worth mentioning that you won't be able to `see` a knackered bearing, not unless part of it's just landed in your lap!
It's not exactly practical at a breakers yard to go through the process of checking the condition and the setting of the LSD, and if you did want to you'll probably find that most breakers yard owners wouldn't be overly helpfull by now, (not after you had to borrow his tools to take the rear cover off, and then spilt oil all over his feet) and will be at the point of "look mate, do want it or don't you?"
Either way, they're very strong and we've never had to sevice one so if the previous signs have been all good the odds are on that it's a good one.
As far as working out the actual diff ratios goes, you'll need to do a count, take some tipex to the breakers with you and do the following.
Mark the input (prop shaft) flange and a put a coresponding mark in line with it on the diff housing main case, then mark an output flange (again with a coresponding mark on the case).
Now simply count the number of revolutions turning the input shaft flange to get one complete revolution of the output flange you've marked, that's the ratio, ie; if you've had to turn the input flange 3.6 revolutions to get one complete revolution of an output flange the ratio is 36:1.
You'll be suprised just how acurate this method can be and if you really want to get it spot on make up a couple of card discs to attach to the flanges or use wire pointers.
The most acurate way is to physicaly count the gear teeth on the pinion (input) shaft and the crown wheel and dived one by the other but that's far from easy when the diff is still assembled and the marking and rotating way will tell you what ratio it is if you know what ratios you're looking for, believe me, you'll not confuse a 3.6 with a 3.9, it's that obvious.

With regard to the Quaife ATB differentials, we sell plenty of these and they're a good product, they need no servicing and are totaly bomb proof, hence the life time waranty.
The POA on the Quaife web site has nothing to do with the price, where you see a POA on the Quaife web site is where they make that particular product for an idividual retailer on an exclusive basis.
The reason there's a POA is because Quaife themselves can not sell you that part but will simply direct you to the retailer that they supply that part to.
If you want to check this out give them a call and ask to buy a Cosworth/TVR T5 gear kit, Quaife will give the a phone number and your next call will most likely have me on the end of the phone
Just out of interest I'll give them a call on Monday and find out who has these ATB from them and then get a price and availabilty, just in case anyones interested. If the rest of the ATB price range is anything to go by I recon' you'll be looking at somewhere around seven hundred pounds (plus the VAT) for this one, but I'll check and find out.

With the OEM BMW LSD units there may be a problem, a couple of weeks back I gave BMW a call to price up a rebuild kit for an LSD from an E30 M3.
These kits nomally have a set of plates and bellville washers in them and as long as the housing and gears are in good servicable conditon are all you'll need to freshen up an LSD that's lost some of it's action.
BMW no longer sevice these LSD units and the kits are no longer available.
On the plus side, they offered us a complete new LSD unit at soemthing like three hundred pounds (plus the VAT) and for a new ZF LSD that's bargin money!

Again, I'll check with BMW on Monday and see how they stand on service kits for the LSDs from the E31 type diffs and get some prices.

Just as a matter of interest, I was after a L/H glass for my 850 (with the early style mirrors) and noticed it was exactly the same piece of glass as the ones fitted into the mirrors in my E36.
The mirrors themselves are completely different but it turns out that it's the same glass, and, that it's also the same glass fitted into the E46 standard mirrors as well, so you can have plain, tinted, heated etc, and they cost next to nothing second hand

Good to hear it
How much for the pipe?

Somehow I doubt the copper that pulls you over will quite see your defence of "the MOT tester told me too do it" as mitigating circumstances, still, it's what the weekends are for, go forth and spank

While I'm sure it's no consilation for getting a fail you can rest assured that the dumb / smart balance has been restored, unfortunate for you that you got the dumb tester, lucky for me I got the smart one.
Despite a host of unfinished jobs I managed to get an MOT on my 850 today, so for the first in all the months I've owned it I got to give it a good spanking, on the home from the MOT test centre officer
Still not fully legal, as I've still got the VIC to sort out, but that was fun.
The only other drive I'd had up to this point was from Scotland (where I bought it from the breakers yard an hour south of Glasgow) back to Luton, Bedfordshire.
You'd think this distance would give you plenty of time to get used to a car, but no. It was all Motorway, 5 hours of it, in a very crashed looking car, that you've no confidence in it even making the journey, and may as well have a big sign painted on the side saying `This car is about as legal as it looks.`
So while trying to line myself up alongside trucks ready to hide behind in time for the pass of every police car that appeared on my left (learned from watching Smokey and the Bandit as a kid, and it works!) I soon got lulled into getting pretty relaxed and did have seriously big grin on my face by the time I got home (I remember counting and must have passed at least 7 or 8 police cars during the whole trip and as long as you spot them soon enough and have a real good idea of what's around you at all times and are ready to react it'll work every time)
So the loud pedal didn't really get any use, up untill today,

We use the SnapOn stuff and it's generaly good, though a little expensive when you need to keep adding to it and updating it on a regular basis to cover new models.
On the other hand we're getting real good feed back from friends and customers in the trade that invested in the `Launch` scanners as they have proven to be pretty good and were sold on a `free updates` basis.
Either way a quality scanner that'll get you into both will cost far more than a private owner could ever really justify so to be honest you'd be better off just paying as and when you need something scanned.

Take the car to someone you can talk to, any garage that does your MOTs or servicing that know (and value you) as a customer and explain the problem. They should be able to set each light to the MOT chart and shouldn't charge you more than an hours labour to do so.

Cheers Steve, I'll see what I can do mate, it is nearly the weekend after all Hick!
Frix, I bought the ex' wife a MK2 MR2 some years back and while I can see the attraction of some extra engine noise (I used to love the induction roar from my old ZX9R) it can really be a pain on long journeys so swings and rounderbouts, each of us have a different take on what's just about right for us so fair play to you mate, if it works and does what you set out to achieve you scored a result.

(Steves bit, are you sitting comfy?).
With virtually the all the traditonal designs of early mid engine sports cars (not using the underside efficiently) the engine bay often becomes highly pressurised at speed, as Ford found with the original GT40 developement cars that built up enough pressure that they blew the rear bodywork (clam) clean off at high speed, not what you want at 200mph on the Mulsane straight
If you take a look at the fully developed GT40 that eventualy went racing it still has the two original catches on the top of the rear clam, and they added big catches at the bottom on either side as well, this was for the sole purpose of holding the bodywork on.
(Can you see where I'm going with this?) if the car doesn't have an efficient undertray to suck the air out of the back (and is heavily pressurising the engine bay at speed) it's just as likely to completely stall the intake charge you'd expect to see coming throught those side vents (that engine bay air pressure has got to go somewhere), if this means you end up with no possitive pressure zone around where you've sited the filter (just inside the air vents) you may just as well have put in the glovebox for all the good it's doing.
I'm a strong believer in that if your going to change something, before you get started, you need to work out why the original designer did it the way it is (study any componant enough and you'll see there's nothing random, every aspect is the way it is for a good reason), if you do this before you start you'll either A/ have a much better changed final design because you came at the modification with all the information you need to better it or B/ you'll leave it well alone because you now know why it's the way it is and know the designer got it right and was a lot smarter than you gave him credit for and you'll not be able to improve on it.
If anyone reading this hasn't used this method I recommend you give it a try, you'll be suprised at just how much of a better understanding you get of even the simplest of things and it works to give you far better modifications (or not, because you learn to leave well alone).
But getting back to the "restrictive with resonator boxes etc etc" on the MR2, these were probably the best compromise between the engine the Toyota engine designers wanted and the one world market restrictions would let the company mass produce, more than just a simple design solution, but in addition remember the lessons learned in that the use of intake pipes feeding a filter box makes sure the engine is always getting possitive (cool) air pressure, this is simply a result of learned good intake design, especialy relevent for a mid' engine sports car where you've a potential pressure build up to deal with (let alone the extra heat problems you get with this layout).
In the case of the MR2 they knew that the design they settled on meant that the engine wasn't going to get starved of air at speed, the car was quiet enough to sell to the restricted markets, plus all the other compromises, some mentioned (more forgotten), there's aways reasons, and compromises, you just need to know what they are in order to do it better (or leave it alone).

As a point of interest (and while I'm on the subject) just because it looks like an open filter is in a good place, like inside a side vent, and even when you're sure there's no low pressure zone inside that air vent area to muck it all up, it can sometimes still be in the worse place, as Hondas racing dept (HRC) found with the old NSR500 MotoGP bikes.
For a couple of years these had large side intake vents protruding from the leading edge of the fairing sides but Honda found they actually lost power when run against a very strong side wind as it was trying to reverse the airflow across these vents and all but stalled the induction charge.
For another year or so they modified these vents and they stuck right out (as far as was practical) and this helped but didn't cure the problem.
This is why virtually all the modern MotoGP bikes have that big central air hole in the forward most area of the front of the fairing, if you make it large enough to negate the natural buffer zone that any frontal area sets up at speed it's generaly the best compromise, and it's all about compromise.

How's that Steve, do I get a prize (other than a smack 'round the back of the head for trying to be a smartarse) ?

Hi Frix, as a rule of thumb any airbox designed after the early to mid' eighties will be better than a K&N.
The early/mid' eighties saw a huge jump in intake airflow understanding (and subsequent designs) and is as much about controling the reflected pulses from a given tuned intake length and controling how the mixture enters the combustion chamber (as in swirl or tumble) and how the various combinations all effect the `feel` and efficiency of the engine, as it is about pure volume of airflow.
Unless you can prove to yourself that the airbox is physicaly restricting airflow (or your smart enough to be able to rework the intake design to match a new state of tune) leave it alone because it'll work better than any open filter ever could.
Look at it this way, that airbox, filter and tubework, fittings etc all cost a lot of money to develope and if a K&N would've given the same (or better) results the factory would have fitted them themselves and saved themselves a lot of money to make more profit or sell the cars cheaper.
By all means there are execeptions and the law of averages (better known as sods law) says there will always be cases that go completely against conventional thinking (and that's part of the fun) but to be blunt, if it were my money I'd be spending it elsewhere mate.

And there endeth Stuarts drunken sermon for the evening, I bid you all goodnight sirs (hoping I've not just written a load of complete jibberish but to be honest I can't be arsed to reread it to check) Hick! 'night all

You'd need a bloody long pipe

Pop the glass out, if there's a couple of wires conected the're heated.

If the police suspected the car had been used for transporting drugs or used in any other serious crime be prepared for some damage.
Customs and Exises are the worse and can, and do, drill and cut and chop away to the're hearts content and have been known to totaly wreck a car, and find nothing, and there's nothing you can do about it.
On the positive side, if it was just a matter of ownership it will most likely have sat in the Met's very own multistory car park (at a secret location in central London) gathering dust along with all the other impounded vehicles, the worse you'll have to condend with will be a good service and valet.
Best of luck

Having had the front off my car I'm suprised at the huge amount of space available once you remove all the standard ducting so my favorite would be a larger fuel cooler up front, with suitable impact protection.
My gut feeling says that worrying about trying to cool the contents of the fuel tank is possibly fighting a loosing battle.
The second you start to moving that fuel forward it's going to heat up so you may end up, after a lot of work, still having to fit a secondary, additional forward cooler.......
With this in mind I can't help feeling you'd be better off concentrating on what's actually going directly into the engine with an under bonnet system, possibly take the drive for the system from the now redundant water pump?
I'm a great beliver in looking for the easiset, simplest system, 9 times out of 10 it turns out to be the best, it's just hard to find the forest when you keep bumping into all those bloody trees
While I'm with you all the way on the electric water pump (purely because the mechanical systems are working best when you need it the least and visa versa) I just can't see the logic in using electric motors sited next to the best drive device you can get, that V12 engine.

It's quality kit, I know a couple of guys running these on GT40 rep's and for a universal fitment EWP they're as good as it gets.

Davies Craig 110L with digital controller by any chance?

You need the key itself in the ignition and switched to position 2, then you hold the sender unit to the reciever thingy on the shifter panel, press and hold the button down on the sender untill the led starts flashing and Bobs your mothers brother.
Or something like that.

Hi Rob,
If it's on level ground, with the engine running in park with everything nice and warmed up it shouldn't be over the top blob on the stick.
If it is drain it to the point that it's between the blob marks and see how you go.
It should be alright once the level's set correctly but oil leaks kind of get a memory and once you've deleveloped a leak you may need to replace the rear seal to sort it.

Re: New BMW Website

Zitat von sandwich

Not sure if youve heard but BMW have introduced a new site...Worth looking at if youre having trouble sleeping but once again seems as though the E31 didnt exist!

http://www.bmw-web.tv

Reminds me of the copy of "BMWCAR" "the ultimate BMW magazine" that I picked up a couple of weeks back.
In the car data lists in the back there's no mention that the E31 ever existed, they even included the M1 but no 8 series cars at all
Not impressed, safe to say there's one reader here that'll not be buying that magazine again, any recomendations on a half decent BMW mag' most welcome?

Zitat von faisal_in_laurel

I believe Rami has an LHD car.

That's the odd thing, the unit I have is out of the passenger side door of a UK car so it's the correct fitment as far as what side / doors goes but the writting is upside down, I'm guessing they just glued it the other way around to allow the conection plug to line up correctly, but being TM2 and '414 I don't think it'll work.

Lloyd,
If it's only the outer bit you want to change you'll be pleased to know that it just pulls out, you want to pull from the bottom first (you can see the larger lugs at the top that slot in and up as you press the bottom in last on reassembly).
Stuart.