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Just curious.. for those who competed in August, how did your times compare this weekend to that event?
I know it’s not apples to apples since it was pretty cool on Saturday and I’m sure it was fairly warm in August, but I’m curious since I missed the event back then.
The price on MSR for the candlestick event on 2/23 is $65 (instead of $50). Is that correct, and is it just for that one event, or is there a price increase for the rest of the 2014 season too?
Andy- Thanks for the reference to bmwfans.. I’m shocked I had never heard of it before. I like the quick cross-referencing nav. I wish they had chosen a smaller/nicer default font instead of Arial 17px bold. Other than that though, it’s nice to have an alternative site to use in case one or the other is offline.
(FWIW, You can get the same graphical category listings on realoem by clicking the “switch to images drilldown” button at the top. Much easier than blindly clicking through all the categories to figure out which drawing has your part.)
Ricardo- good to hear that your casting plugs aren’t leaking. Good luck on the gasket swap!
Hi Ricardo,
First off, the oil filter housing is the same for all of the 3-series S50/52 and M50/52 motors.If you’re ever in doubt, you can double check this kind of thing at realoem.com. Look up your car, find the part number as it applies to your model, then backtrack to the first page and paste that number into the part # application search. Pretty handy way to find cross-reference parts!
If you’re not seeing any oil leaking along the casting plug area of your housing, I wouldn’t mess with it. You should be able to see pretty easily if you have a leak back there once you have your housing off.
I found this write-up of someone who hacked a solution on a 528i with an M52:
http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=414315
Slightly different part because of the attachment point of the P/S reservoir, but basically the same idea.The gasket replacement itself is pretty straightforward, but you do need to remove a bunch of parts to get to it. If you’re not draining your oil first, be sure to at least open up the oil filter lid so any oil drains back to the block before you take off the housing.. it will be quite messy otherwise.
Looks like a good challenge! I see at least 3 places that will totally burn you on the following turn if you don’t get the first one right.
Cue the bitching and moaning about “too many turns” (but not from me!) in 3..2..1
Jeff – I see that T&S and the finish are both pretty far from the pre-grid area. Is there any way to set up a speaker closer to the grid and/or make sure the timing board is pointing so it can be seen by those in pre-grid? It’s hard to keep tabs on how other people are doing when you can’t hear the announcements or see the times.
Thanks Brian!
Looks like first place in Gonzo, AA, A, and C are all wrapped up for the season.
With only 1 event left, there are still lots of close battles for some of the other spots though: 3rd in Gonzo, 1st and 3rd in AAA, 2nd in AA, 3rd in A, 1st-3rd in B, and 3rd in C. Something in each class to keep things interesting to the very end.
Good choice to get away from using the emergency jack.. that thing is not the most stable jack and really only suited for situations when you have no other option.
I have the OTC model 1532 2 ton aluminum race jack (the harbor freight knockoff is this one: http://www.harborfreight.com/aluminum-racing-floor-jack-with-rapid-pump-2-tons-68051.html , which is basically just the 2 ton version of the one Jeff posted). I like it, except for one thing: if you’re trying to get the car high, it really doesn’t have a high lift. If you’re just changing wheels at autocross, any of these “racing jacks” will do the trick. Lifting from the side is easy for wheel changes.
For the garage work I was doing, I decided I wanted a higher lift jack so I could really get the car lifted higher up onto jack stands for easier access to the transmission and whatnot. I found that jacking at the crossmember using the racing jack really didn’t get the car high enough for my liking. I ended up buying this:
http://www.harborfreight.com/2-ton-low-profile-heavy-duty-floor-jack-rapid-pump-68050-8048.html
It lifts almost 24″ and it is pretty low profile. The down side is that it’s big and heavy and not portable (> 100 lb, and like 2 feet long at the base). It’s nice and solid though.If you’re lifting the car onto 4 jack stands, you should be able to get any of these jacks under the front of the car to jack it at the front crossmember *if* you drive up on a 2×10 board first with one or both of your front wheels (depending on your particular suspension setup). Jacking at the rear subframe crossmember on the e36 is easy even with the front of the car on stands.
Speaking of… if you intend to ever go under the car, be sure to get some strong jack stands.. the jack is for raising the car, not holding it, and you don’t want to experience a failure when you are under things. 3 ton are a good size and provide plenty of strength. I decided personally *not* to go with HF for my jack stands because I just don’t have that much trust in their quality with my body underneath a 3000 pound car. I decided to spend the extra $$$ and bought the (kick-ass) Esco ones a few years ago. Others obviously use the HF ones every day, but that was a personal decision.
A “0” means you participated but did not finish in the top 10.
Only the top 10 finishers get results points:
20-15-11-8-6-5-4-3-2-1
If you notice, there is an attendance column on the right.. You get 1 point for every event you attend, regardless of your results. That is calculated by the presence of a value under each month’s event (0 or otherwise), so a blank indicates that you were not competing in that event, and a 0 means you were out of the top 10.
It sounds like you’re pushing full-car respray at that price point.. I haven’t seen the damage on your car, so it’s hard to say what you should expect for cost.
For comparison sake, my wife’s E90 (non M) got a pinch in the corner of the front bumper that could not be popped out without destroying the plastic, so we took it to a body shop in Redwood City that replaced the bumper cover completely and painted it to match the exact shade of the car for about $950 out the door (sparkling graphite metallic). The did a nice job and it looks perfect. That said, I’m hesitant to recommend this particular place, since their more recent yelp reviews have been consistently terrible. I had the work done back in 2007, so it’s entirely possible that they have changed for the worse since then.
As for body panels things can get expensive very quickly if they need to start replacing metal work. And the area that you need to paint grows since they need to go to the next panel for blending purposes so you don’t see the work. My wife’s E90 (again) got rear-ended a couple years ago which necessitated replacing the rear bumper and energy absorbers, the trunk lid, the lights, and all the associated bits (emblems, weatherstrip, etc). Plus it had to be be checked to make sure the frame was still square. Since the other guy’s insurance was paying, we had BMWSF/German Motors Collision do the work, and it came to $4900 (full-on dealer pricing, there). The end result is gorgeous though-it looked brand new when all was said and done. It was a pretty large repair compared to just replacing the front bumper cover though, so that might give you another data point to consider.
I’m kind of surprised they’d recommend replacing panels for a deep scratch.. is your metal actually folded in at the scratch?
Another thing to look into might be paintless dent repair if you have dents that don’t involve scratched paint. Some of the people who do that can work magic massaging the dent out from behind it, and you can’t even tell that there was a dent afterwards (and it tends to be extremely cheap compared to any repair work that requires busting out the paint gun)