For those who don’t know, I’m buying my parents’ garage and driveway. Apparently there’s a house in the deal too, but that’s less interesting. I decided that in order to make it (the garage) into a good home for my toys I should clear it out, so I emptied the contents into the garden:

Over a decade of car and disco gear there! It was really strange to see the garage empty for the first time I first moved in as a child. I’d forgotten there was a window at the end!

We’ve even painted the floor a delightful shade of blue:

There was a lot of crap to take to the dump – two 330d fulls and one M5 full to be precise. I was amused by using the M5 for such a purpose, so took a couple of photos:

While waiting for the floor to dry I noticed the extension roof was a tad mossy.

So I decided to do something about it.

Quite a difference!

However, I soon realised that in order to reach the top I was going to have to do something rather more extreme than just standing on the bay window.

And for those hard to reach parts, I enlisted the help of my favourite jack handle:

Last weekend I went to Rock äm Ring – a German rock festival held at the Nűrburging. It proved to be a great boys weekend, with a squad of Bens, Brenden, Jonny, Pete, Richie, Steve and me. We took the Shaguar and the 330d:

I was pleased to make it from the ferry to Germany without stopping, let alone getting out of the car. After an entertaining meal out and night stop over in Aachen, we were up bright and early to make tracks for the ‘ring. Geddit?

The Lidl in Breidscheid is normally full of stickered cars, but not quite like this:

We moved to the circuit, where we’d paid a premium for track side camping. Initially it looked as though we were going to struggle to find a place, but eventually lady luck (in the form of some Swiss, eager to avoid the Germans) found us, and we had a place. Ringers: we were by the 3km mark (Hocheichen).

It soon became apparent that as the festival didn’t start until Friday, we should spend Thursday drinking. So Huge and I nipped out to top up the 330d’s tanks.

However, none of us were prepared for the Germans and their crazy drinking games. Good videos of the festivities on Brenden’s site.

We decided to play them at their own game. We even won a few times:

But ultimately, we were all wrecked by 4pm.

To the soundtrack of the German’s rock sound system, all kind of crazy capers commenced. Those lucky enough passed out by 6pm. The rest of us continued:

Eventually we’d had enough of the German’s rather gruff taste in music, so we unleashed the 330d’s system, complete with roof top ghetto blaster. We weren’t as loud, but the Germans soon bowed to our superior taste in music and switched their system off.

It was a great night. And an even greater hangover. In the morning we were all ruined. The Germans, of course, had barely noticed the previous night’s drinking.

We went for a walk along the circuit to get some currywurst, and stumbled across many unusual sights. This is perhaps the highlight:

We nipped up to the festival. During Papa Roach’s performance, a Jager balloon flew over.

The main stage area was HUGE. A capacity of about 70,000, and easily a 100K+ sound system. It rocked!

That night saw Placebo and The Killers as the headline acts on the main stage. Placebo (below), were many, many, many times better than I had expected. A great show, and immense talent. I was really impressed.

The Killers were frankly awful. No interaction, no show, just a dull, dreary performance of their collection of frankly bland ‘hits’. So I went to see Basement Jaxx on another stage, who were amazing!

On Saturday I felt slightly better, but the German’s insistance on playing their sound system until 6am in the morning had got the better of me, and my tent was leaking in the rain. I checked into my favourite Bavarian haunt:

Saturday night at the festival was amazing. We saw Machine Head (or Machine-F*cking-Head) as every moronic German shouted repeatedly for the rest of the weekend).

Then the Prodigy were on. No photos for this – it was full mosh-pit action. Hilarious stuff!

The headline acts for Saturday night were Slipknot. Heavy metal! The arena was at capacity, with everyone from front to back leaping around like loonies to powerful rock. Crazy Germans!

I was pleased to get back to the cafe that night. I ventured down from our room about midnight to sneak a quick beer (I’d been driving), and was delighted to find an on-road-cafe and more importantly on-form Lex behind the bar. “How is Neil?!” he asked. “Cold, tired and in need of a beer”. “Here’s a beer, and now you have thisch yellow shit on the housche!”. It was fantastic. We didn’t get to bed until 3, but apparently the Germans left their PA on until 7:18am that morning so we fared better than those who opted to stay at the camp site.

Needless to say, on Sunday all 8 of us were checked into the Cafe. The camp site was a mess – just look at the state of our neighbour’s site!

We spent a lazy afternoon in the cafe:

We popped out for a quick steak on a stone, at an alternative to the Pistonklause we found in Adenau.

And then came back to the cafe. We watched Billy Talent and Limp Bizkit on MTV, and were glad we didn’t bother returning to the festival to see them.

Great weekend!

The M5 passed its MOT first time without advisories today. Woohoo! Etc.

The M5’s native navigation system is incredibly slow and ugly. All the graphics for the computer and radio functions look rather 90s.

I had acquired a widescreen unit for the front of the car, but this didn’t really improve the on-screen graphics, and the navigation was still so very slow.

The navigation computer is a MkII CD based device in the boot.

I acquired a MkIV DVD based system on eBay, so pulled the fuse for the nav system, hauled out the out unit. They are both the same physical size, but the new MkIV unit has an additional connection (see below in red).

It turns out that this is for the GPS aerial. In standard form the car has a “Trimble” GPS module to which the GPS aerial connects. This information then passes to the nav computer along the main wiring. The MkIV computer has its own on-board GPS module, so I needed to locate the Trimble unit, and move the GPS aerial connection. This connection can be seen in the centre of the photo below. I tried to highlight this in red, but perhaps a different colour would have made matters clearer!

This done, it was time to get the new computer in place.

I popped the nav system fuse back in, switched on the ignition and waited. Immediately I got the nice ~BMW~ logo on screen that I am familiar with in the 330d. Next the interface came to life looking significantly improved. The only issue seemed to be that the car thought it was somewhere up north.

The GPS service menu (accessed by going to ‘SET’, moving the cursor down, then holding down ‘MENU’ for about 6 seconds) told me that there was satelite inteference. I wasn’t sure what to do at this point – I knew I had connected the GPS cable correctly, and there’s not much else that can go wrong! I nipped back to the laptop to do some research, returned a couple of minutes later none the wiser, but did find that the car had found a couple of satelites. It still thought it was up north though! Still, about five minutes later I was greeted with this display:

Bonus! Lo and behold, the map system is now nice and spangly, with the added bonus of it even knowing where I am!

Nice and smart in the boot too. Overall – *so* much better than before. It is really quick too – maybe I need to do the same in the tractor!

Diane kindly collected the widescreen surround from BMW today for me, so the M5 widescreen installation is now complete. Here’s how it used to look:

And now!

Much better! So this just leaves the small matter of flogging off my old monitor and trying to recover some money from the needless purchase of another TV tuner – see my auctions here and here!

Once I’ve hopefully recovered some funds from that, it’ll be time to look into getting a more modern nav computer. I wonder if anyone can tell me whether this is the way to go about improving the shocking 80s appearance of the OBC menu graphics, or whether that is achieved with a more modern TV tuner, or some other way?

As mentioned, the rather ancient looking radio/monitor in the M5 was bugging me, so I’ve sourced a widescreen. It is from an X5, which means that the contrast isn’t quite right when viewed from an E39 angle, but it is completely usable and when I get time, I plan on following these crazy instructions to sort it out.

So, this is what it used to look like:

And this is what it looks like now:

I’m pleased to note that my TV tuner was able to recognise it and jump straight to a 16:9 ratio. I’m less pleased that I’ve already paid £200 for another tuner because I thought the car’s original wouldn’t be able to do this – I look forward to making a loss on that on eBay soon.

Still, I need to source a surround from BMW to tidy things up, but otherwise this job is done. The next job in this area will be to sort out MkIV DVD navigation.

Since my last post I decided that the M5’s “GALA” system left quite a bit to be desired. The Graduated Audio Level Adjustment is supposed to maintain a consistent audio experience within the car, irrespective of road noise. Sadly, while it is a good idea in theory, it makes quite obvious ham-fisted adjustments to not only overall volume but also tone balance, and as such, I decided I was better off without it. After a bit of internet research, and some valuable input from a forum user, and I managed to turn the GALA sensitivity down so much I no longer notice that it is there. Here’s how:

BMW E39 GALA Adjustment

Turn the radio on – this may work while playing a CD but I did it while listening to an FM station. Hold down the ‘TP’ button for about 8 seconds. The screen should display service mode. Use the < and > buttons to scroll to the ‘GAL’ setting. Then, using the numerical preset buttons, set the GALA sensitivity to the desired level. Once finished, switch the radio off. Done!

I’m also looking in to replacing this 4:3 unit with a 16:9 widescreen like I’ve got in the 330d. I thought I would see just how hard it is to remove the unit, and I was pleased to find it was easy. The trim panels either side can just be pulled off.

Two small screws, one at the top of either side hold the silver face plate on. Once these are out, there’s a lever on both sides that need to be raised, and the facia pops straight off.

Finally, four more screws, and another tweak of the two levers and the whole lot is out.

See – nice and easy! Ideally I’ll be able to collect a second hand unit and test it before paying, so I thought it important to be able to strip the car down quickly. I’m aware that I’ll need to upgrade the TV tuner to have a true 16:9 image, but I’m happy to crawl before I can walk.

I’ve had a good day. Got loads of chores done this morning (like arranging for an estate agent to come and look at the house), and then set about trying to improve the audio in the M5. It has a fairly standard audio setup, with components in the front doors and some additional speakers on the rear shelf, but ultimately while the system is clear, it is gutless. I’ve got some audio equipment lying around that I’ve used in a variety of cars in the past, so I thought I’d attempt to improve the sound quality at zero cost.

First step was to find some audio signal wires. I removed the CD changer and had a good rummage. Speaker wire pairs were easy enough to discover, so I spliced into those and extended my way into the boot. While I was there I also found a wire that hit 12v with the ignition in auxiliary or higher, and 0V when the ignition was off, so that would provide the amplifier’s remote power signal.

The next challenge was to get this signal into my old Goodmans amplifier. It is designed to take both speaker level and line level inputs, but sadly a custom connector is required for the speaker level input. A custom connector I don’t have.

I had a good rummage in my parts bin and found three BMW connector cables that were spares from my DVD player installation in the 330d. Remarkably these fitted the amplifier’s terminals perfectly, but of course I needed four, and could only find three. So I used a crimp connector on the fourth. No cost!

This done I could begin to put everything back together.

I then ran power from the battery, but forgot to photograph matters there. My bad! Finally, I screwed the sub enclosure to the floor and did a bit of cable tidying. It does of course require quite a bit more cable tidying, but those who know me know that’s not especially likely any time soon.

That photo makes it look as though the sub takes up loads of space in the boot – that really isn’t the case at all. It’s not meant to be pretty by the way. The sound though, is extremely good news.

Sure, the E39’s boot does contain the sound well so plenty of beans is required to get much penetration in the cabin, but this does have the benefit that the sound isn’t shared too much with pedestrians, and I’m pleased that the car doesn’t rattle with the kick drum.

By turning down the bass on the head unit and adding some boost on the amplifier in the boot I’ve been able to shape the sound nicely. Without any low frequencies heading their way the components in the front cope nicely at high volume, and the sub neatly rounds off the experience. Nothing stupid, just a well balanced sound.

I’m really, really pleased to be able to sample my favourite tracks while in the M5. I’ve just spent the last 90 minutes pottering around scanning through the CD changer testing the overall balance, and it’s great! I only stopped because I’ve got a meal to go to – Good Friday indeed!

This is the 6th BMW this sub and amp have been in – here are the predecessors:

That’s a pretty fast sub and amp!

The remainder of the holiday was somewhat of a blur. Around lunchtime we arrived back in California, but didn’t reach our hotel in Pasadena until gone 3pm.

Once checked in there was no time to rest. We had to collect our suits, wash, rehearse the wedding a few times and then have a meal with other keys members of the wedding party and families. Phew!

The day of the wedding was, er, rather stressful. All turned out lovely in the end though!

Rather more pomp and ceremony than I’m used to over here – walking in and around on cue, all lined up in a rather questionable pyramid shape but hey, each to their own. In any case, Robin looked rather chuffed and that’s what we all came  to see.

At the reception venue the drink had started to flow. It was time for us Brits to show these cowboys how it’s done. Hmm.

The next day we had a lovely brunch and Jamie’s parents and wished Robin and Jamie farewell.

Once that was done, I just crashed. I hadn’t realised how tired I was! I just had to sleep, but the others went out to explore Hollywood, and Di took these photos:

On Sunday, our final full day in America, we went to Universal Studios.

It proved to be a great day out – an amazing mix of a theme park and a behind the scenes look at some movie work.

I got a couple of very bad shots of one of the Lions and one of the Deloreans from Back to the Future.

I got a really good photo of the crashed 747 that is used in the ‘War of the Worlds’ film featuring Tom Cruise.

So, the end of a great experience was finally with us. My only regret is that I never got to sample an American curry with Robin while I was there – we missed a great opportunity!

A new bridge is being built just downstream of the Hoover dam – pretty impressive stuff!

Yet not as impressive as the Hoover dam itself. Over 70 years old – quite something!

We took a tour of the power plant – about 2,000 Megawatts in total!

Then we had a good walk along the dam walls.

Next stop was Williams – a town not too far from the Grand Canyon. About 4 hours from the dam though, so we had plenty of driving to do along historic route 66. We stopped half way at a tiny little store for refreshments.

Night had fallen by the time we got to Williams. Having driven there pretty much at the speed limit, I failed to slow down enough on the way into town and got busted by a policeman hiding in the trees – 40 in a 25. Apparently – I reckon he was in the 25 but I wasn’t when he gunned me. A nice $138 fine I’ve no idea how to pay, or indeed what the penalties are if I don’t pay it. Really terse too – followed me around with his hand on his gun and torch in my face while I got my paperwork out of the boot. Welcome to America.

Anyhow, we met up with Dave & Jen who had arrived the previous night and had a meal to celebrate my busting.

The next day we rose early and headed to the station to catch a train to the Canyon.

Sadly ours was a diesel train, but still I was pleased not to be driving on the roads for fear of more police brutality. Williams is 6,800 ft above sea level. IT WAS COLD THERE!

We had three and a bit hours to explore the canyon. I’d love to have days there to hike around it, but the first view is amazing, and something that no camera can really capture quite as the eye really sees it. The far side in the photo below is nearly 10 miles away!

Adding a fat human still doesn’t give it any sense of scale:

So we tried a more normal human:

In the Grand Canyon store, I found a hilarious type of deep-heat:

We had lunch, took a few more photos, and waved goodbye to the Canyon. It certainly matches up to my trip to the Taj Mahal.

The next morning we were up at a painful 6:30am. The road to LA was long, but we had to get Robin married.