Beiträge von Paul_M

Zitat von hedgehog;58489

I have been using the 'Battery Tender' for the last 2 years and it really is foolproof. I made a permanent connection under the hood to the B+ and ground terminals with one of the supplied leads that has a connector on the other end and just plug the charger in over the winter with absolutely no problems at all. It is an 'intelligent' piece of equipment and keeps the batteries in peak condition.

Have a look here for details -

www.batterytender.net

I use a similar thing on my bike over winter, as it gets parked up in the garage for 4 or 5 months. Works a treat.

Zitat von GARC;58519

Hi Alex,

I'm scottish - just bought an 8 at Xmas.

I'd highly recommend BM Motors in Law

http://www.bmwccscotland.co.uk/bmmotors/

I have an E30 M3 Convertible Garage Queen which I only use in the summer. I take it to Dave every April ( even though I sat an hour away ! ) for a check over and Oil change ( with an Insp II last Year ).

I've also used him for an Insp II for my wife's 318 Touring. Really nice guy - someone to trust which is rare. Rates are significantly cheaper that dealers but what I like about him is he is very knowledgable about older BM's.

I haven't phoned him yet about my 8 but I know there was an 8 Owner at one of the Scottish BMW Car Club meets that used him so I assume he'll not be phased.

Hope this helps

GARC

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I can second this recommendation. Used Davy many times for servicing and various other work like replacing my water pump, springs, brakes, etc.

He is one of the rare breed of old-school mechanics that is very meticulous in his work. As an example, when I had my brakes changed, he removed the mechanisms for the hand brake and cleaned every part before greasing them up and correctly adjusting them both at the brakes and inside the car (under the handbrake lever). How many main dealers do you think would go to that effort when they can rush through the job in 30 minutes and bill you for 2 hours' work? That was well over a year ago and my handbrake still works perfectly -- I reckon it could hold the car on a near vertical!

The only thing he doesn't really do is electronics, as he doesn't have all the gear for it, although he will reset the lights after a service. There is a place he can recommend if you need the car plugged up, or I could do it for you as I have the gear myself (BMW MODIC, none of that Carsoft rubbish ). It suits me fine as he's a great mechanic and I'm a bit of an electronics guru so my car seldom goes near a main dealer except to buy parts!

PS GARC not sure if it was my car you saw at one of the meets? I'm not in the BMWCC but I did go to Davy's last year for the meet up. If it was Calypso Red and in need of a good wash (well I did blast along the B roads from Edinburgh!) it was probably mine I do know there was someone else there who has (had?) a grey 8.

Good job! It will be well worth it. I've driven an auto 840, and I have to say it made me even more glad that I have the manual, the character of the car is so different. On fast, twisty roads there is no comparison!

Do you have a rough idea of the costs and time involved? I have seen some very nicely priced late model 840 individuals in immaculate condition, the only blemish being that they were auto. It's very tempting to pick one up to convert to manual, and as you say I have the factory 6sp to compare with. However I'm worried I'll be biting off more than I can chew! I do have a mate who is a mechanic with his own lift, and he has done manual conversions on other RWD cars before so he'd be a great source of tools and knowledge.

Incidentally, just today I was reading on another forum that the E46 330d shifter is a good short-throw upgrade for the E36 and E46 M3. Since both these cars use a Getrag 6-speed box the same as ours, I wonder if the 330d shifter would work on ours as well?

Check out this video of a guy fitting the 330d shifter to an E46 M3. The difference is pretty clear, and our shift throw is at least as long as that of the M3.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zhapSgqcBN0

Rear springs are separate from the shocks, so changing them isn't too bad. It can be a bit of a challenge to get them out though without removing the bolt that holds the suspension arm in place -- removing the bolt makes the job easy, but means you need to get everything realigned afterwards.

The mirror working in reverse sounds like a known control module issue. Do a search, I'm sure it's been covered.

Not sure if you guys have what you're looking for, but I have one of the elusive factory 6sp 840Ci. I'm hoping to get it onto my mechanic mate's lift soon so I could have a look to see what interesting gubbins await me

Zitat von Paul_M;58432

The reason the bulbs are dual filament is because some countries (Canada being one) use the 21W filament as daytime running lights. On UK cars the 21W filament is never used, only the 5W filament. However the dual filament bulbs are the only ones that will fit due to the two separate pins on the bottom, and offset pins on the side.

Just noticed Argonaut has already answered this, oh well

Zitat von wpo750;58126

I'm glad you agree Paul, I didn't want to be the one that said it but I too think they look a bit 'chavvy' having had them on my car for about 6 months. It wouldn't be so bad if they omitted a whiter light but the blue tint through the smoked lenses looks a bit too Ripspeed for my liking. It would look more cohesive if I had opted for 6000k HIDs but my OEM approach with the 4300Ks renders the LEDs a bit of a no go imo.

So I need to get some replacement 21/5W bulbs with the offset pins? Surely there must be alternative!

Also, why do we need dual filament for the sidelights and would they be on the 'low' or 'high' setting when in use up front?

I have 4300K HIDs in mine too, so the same dilemma as you. I have also just noticed during the last few days that I'm getting the flickering effect on the left side bulb, not good!

The reason the bulbs are dual filament is because some countries (Canada being one) use the 21W filament as daytime running lights. On UK cars the 21W filament is never used, only the 5W filament. However the dual filament bulbs are the only ones that will fit due to the two separate pins on the bottom, and offset pins on the side.

I am going to try these bulbs. They have a blue exterior, but in my experience this actually just removes the yellow hue from standard bulbs, and the fact they're supposedly road legal implies they don't emit blue light. As you can't see the actual bulb when it's installed, I'm happy as long as the light emitted is white.

Worth a try anyway at that price, if I don't like them I'll bin them

I'm thinking the same thing. I have LEDs in mine, and although I've done the resistor mod, they look blue compared to my HIDs which are almost perfectly white.

Unless I can find LEDs that are a close match for the HIDs, I'm going back to bulbs. Personally I think the blue look is rather chavvy. I'd prefer a slight yellow tinge to the sidelights than blue, if I can't get a good match.

Most normal sidelights are available in "Ice Blue" from Ring, which are actually pretty close to white when illuminated and are road legal. Unfortunately, our cars with the 21/5W bulb in the front is rather unusual, it's normally a brake/rear fog bulb, so no "Ice Blue" types that I can find.

Zitat von Noggie;58059

You Brits have several of these funny/weird things in your language.
these "nicknames" are one of them.
William is Bill, Robert is Rob or Bob and so on....

Then there is the whole time thing. half 5 is 5.30. in my country that is 4.30

This one really screwed me over when my American friend, who is starting to learn Norwegian, told me to come to his thanks giving dinner at half 6-6..... (he ment 5.30-6)
I used the Brit way and heard 6.30-6.
thought it was funny he had them switched as I'd expect him to say 6-half 6.
Anyway... I showed up at 6.35.... 1 hour and 35 minutes late.... so I got leftovers

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LOL there are those strange differences depending on which version of English you're using. In the parts of the US I've been to, they never say "half five" or "quarter to six", it would be "five thirty" or "five forty-five", i.e. always numeric hours and minutes.

Incidentally, saying "half five" is incorrect English, it should be "half past five" which is clearly unambiguous. But inevitably it gets abbreviated in common usage, and the "past" part is dropped. On the other hand, it's always "quarter past five" and never "quarter five". But that's probably because you can also have "quarter to five" (meaning 4.45) but in UK English you'd never have "half to five" (for 4.30), it'd always be "half past four" or "half four" in common usage.

That's English 101 class finished for today

Zitat von koenig dave;58043

i'm guesing. but with modern technolegy can't your network provider pinpoint your phone to within 10mtrs no mater where you are on the planet? there's only one person interested in finding a stolen item .thats the owner. I hav'nt fitted it yet but any deterant is a plus to me.
my car is unique if it gets stolen it won't be stripped for bits, some joy rider might have ago and dump it when its out of fuel. thats a good excuse to drive it till empty. and with any luck gprs will find it.

Not unless it's a phone with GPS, and even then it'll have to be mounted somewhere it can pick up a signal from the satellites. It would also have to be configured to communicate its GPS coordinates somewhere, as it won't do so by default.

You can triangulate the phone signal to get a rough location, but it's nowhere near as accurate as GPS. It also depends on how dense the transmitters are located; in rural areas it will be next to useless.

Zitat von robmarrs;58069

Paul
My first LPG was a proper Factory fit buy from ford as an LPG van model, the second is after market. I thought all alloy heads have hardened valve seats these days to cope with unleaded, old cast irons have a problem! Pinto, Essex, etc.

The vast majority of engines (since the introduction of unleaded petrol) have valve seals that are hard enough to comfortably cope with extended running on propane. If you look for used 7-series, you'll see lots of LPG converted models (both 8 cylinder and 12 cylinder engines) with intergalactic mileage and no hint of any head or other engine problems.

Ford are a well known exception to the norm, I think there are one or two Japanese manufacturers that suffer the problem too. Basically the heads are barely good enough for running on unleaded, and the extra heat of propane causes them problems over time. Even though they made factory dual-fuel models with revised heads that supposedly fixed the problem, it seems that your experience indicates that even the "propane compatible" head from Ford still falls short of the standard petrol head fitted to 95% of other manufacturers' engines .

Zitat von robmarrs;58069

Your MPG probably has something to do with being a manual i suspect and heavy right foot, my TVR has exactly the same problem

I doubt it helps! Even though the manual should be more efficient due to no torque converter (and BMW's pie in the sky figures agree with this), you inevitably drive the car harder with a manual box.

I have a stainless exhaust system with the centre resonator removed, so it's difficult to resist blipping the throttle and downshifting a few gears before entering a corner, before nailing it on the way out . It basically means braking more before the next corner and therefore wasting all my petrol energy on hot brake discs, but it sure is fun!

I checked the computer today, it's reading 16 MPG, which is actually an improvement from last week when it was at 13 MPG

Zitat von robmarrs;58069

Jaap
If you have ever put petrol in a diesel engine you will know why you can't put LPG in a diesel engine.

Partly true -- it's a completely different ignition system so can't be used as a replacement for diesel, but it can compliment it. See my previous reply.

Cheers

Zitat von Wildatheart;58055

re. the Transits...the same LPG guru that did my conversion said that LPG was best avoided on Diesel engines. Out of interest, do you know what his reasoning for this would have been Paul?

It's a much more complex conversion, as propane burns similarly to petrol (hence why it's pretty seamless in a petrol engine) but nothing like diesel. It can be done though, by injecting propane at the same time as diesel (the diesel is needed to provide the ignition, as there is no spark so the propane wouldn't ignite due to higher autoignition temperature).

The idea with the diesel engine is that the addition of propane allows the engine to produce significantly more power at lower revs, which means you use far less diesel. It can provide significant savings, but is totally different to the approach with petrol engines, making it more complex and therefore expensive. I think some high mileage fleet diesels have been converted, but I don't know much about it.

"Correct" way is to disconnect both earth leads first, to eliminate any danger of causing a short once you disconnect the positive leads. Then re-install in the reverse order; that is, swap out the batteries, connect and secure the positive leads first, then connect both earth leads.

Personally I swapped one at a time, so as to not have to reset everything such as radio etc. However this is a very risky approach, as if the positive lead touches any part of the chassis you will cause a huge current short across the other battery which may melt wires and cause a fire! Unless you're very confident and 100% sure of yourself, I'd recommend disconnecting both earth leads before touching the positive leads, as described in the first paragraph.

Zitat von robmarrs;57986

Have a look here this is the one i use:-
http://www.power-store.com/view-item.asp?itemid=193&id=35&

The problem with that is that the manufacturer states it can be used for batteries up to 50 Ah. The 8 has two batteries of 70 Ah each: 140 Ah! With the amount of electrical items that lay dormant but not completely asleep in the 8, I'm not sure it'd be sufficient over a number of months.

I guess if access to mains power is an issue, you could buy two of them and connect them in parallel. Maybe one on each battery, how convenient although obviously it makes no difference if you connect both to one battery as they're in parallel anyway.

I built one of these years ago when I had my WRX, before they were available as off the shelf products. Basically butchered an old Nokia phone, and wired it to my Clifford alarm (which could be configured to send a signal on being triggered) so it would call my phone. No SMS facility, but as I'd stored the number in my phone with the name "Alarm activated" it was pretty easy to work out what had happened!

Unfortunately I soon realised it wasn't really that helpful when you're out of earshot of the alarm anyway, cos chances are anyone fiddling with the car will be long gone by the time you get back to it. Was a nice little feature though.

Zitat von robmarrs;58014

Ford claim 30.8mpg for urban on the diesel motor transit, I know i have averaged on LPG 16.1mpg over 195k in one transit and 16.9mpg over 25k in the other. The maths do mean i have saved money over a diesel Transit - i did not have ton pay Ken Livingstone £1500 per year per van for starters

Which means in reality it probably does 25 MPG driven gently, and closer to 20 MPG when being thrashed around town with 1.5 tonnes in the back. I've driven a few transits over the years, both petrol and diesel versions, and the fuel consumption has always been pretty horrendous in my experience. Probably partly due to me constantly thrashing it to get it to go anywhere, but who doesn't?

Incidentally, I average about 18 MPG in my 8 on a good tankful, and more like 15 MPG at the moment (haven't been near a motorway or any steady speed roads in a while). But with super unleaded down to 85p / litre, it's not actually that expensive for my 3-4k per year mileage, as I've again succumbed to the temptation to buy a second car for the daily thrash and trackdays etc

Saying that, I'm fully with Jaap on the benefits of dual-fuel cars if you do the mileage for it and it's done properly. Chances are your engine will actually last longer with it, as it doesn't contaminate the oil as much as petrol, nor does it leave carbon deposits everywhere. That whole issue of eating valves etc will never be an issue with BMW engines (or indeed 90% of the engines out there), as they don't make their engines out of chocolate unlike Ford. It's a well known issue that many Ford engines have valve seats that are very marginal for running on unleaded petrol, let alone propane (LPG) which burns slightly hotter. Ford themselves recognise this problem, they even make a replacement head that has been uprated for running on alternative fuels.

Zitat von 8Tech;58028

The radio cassette player is a pre-amp head unit only, effectively a "deck" in home Hi-Fi terms, the multichannel amp is in the boot so changing the head unit does indeed mean rewiring all the speakers via seperate cross-overs from the head unit or using new multi-channel amps.

Not strictly true. Unlike most good aftermarket amps, the factory amp runs on speaker-level inputs from the head unit. So replacing the factory head unit with an aftermarket one will work fine, just using an adaptor cable like that posted above.

I have a Becker unit in my car and it works perfectly through the factory amp.

Just don't be tempted to turn it up too high; I'm not sure if the factory amp has protection circuitry to prevent damage if it receives too much power into its speaker level inputs, but bear in mind that aftermarket head units will be putting out more power than the BMW units when cranked up.

Hello and welcome.

Personally, if I had the money I'd definitely go for the CSi. As mentioned, all CSi are manual gearboxes, and they have quite a few upgrades over the other models. Not least of which is the 5.6-litre S70 engine producing 380 BHP as standard.

I suspect from your post that you'd be looking for a manual gearbox in the 840 if you decide to go for one of these instead. Believe it or not, these are actually harder to find than the 850CSi -- there were only 57 RHD 840Ci produced with the 6-speed manual, compared to 250-odd 850CSi. It's a similar story for the standard 850i/Ci, only around 80-odd manual versions in RHD, and these are all the earlier M70 engined versions which offer no performance advantage over the 840, as they are only slightly up on power but carry a weight penalty.

I have an 840Ci manual with full CSi kit and sport suspension, and much as I love driving it and the attention it gets, I'd still go for the CSi given the option. I may even replace it with a CSi one day, but at the moment it's hard to justify as I'm using the car so little. So although the 840Ci with manual 'box is a fine second-best to the 850CSi, it's going to be no easier to find a good one, and it'll always be second best

Good luck in your search!

Nice, 6-speeder too. Still prefer the look of the coupe though, it's the same story with most convertibles that aren't designed as one from the outset (e.g 3-series).

What are all the buttons for in the centre console? One is obviously for the hood, and the RDC is tyre pressure monitor. The others have me puzzled.

Zitat von Argonaut;56391

Not sure how this works on ASC / ASC +T cars, my 8 has DSC and the switch story short press is on or off but not really off. Press and hold for around 10 seconds then it's really off (warning triangle will extinguish) To re-set, engine off and restart and it's back on.
I'm too chicken to drive with it off most of the time

That's kind of it, but the opposite way around. Default is on, no light on dash. Press the button and it's completely off, light stays lit on dash. Instead of pressing the button briefly, hold it in. Light comes on when you start pressing, and after 10-15 seconds the light goes off. You can now let go of the button, pressing it no longer works anyway. The difference now is that the ASC/DSC will still brake the individual wheels to distribute power, but won't reduce engine power so you remain in full control to perfect those drifts

I usually have stability control completely switched off for normal driving, as it's a PITA in my opinion. But using the "secret" mode can certainly help in the snow in the absence of an LSD.