I’m pleased to announce that the custom exhaust fitters have got back to me and said they’ll gladly swap in a larger middle box in an attempt to quieten things down. They’ve got a really good ‘can do’ attitude, so I’m quite a bit more optimistic about that now, plus they’ll hopefully sort the leak at the front join.

They asked me to take some more photos of the middle box on the car, so they can get an idea of how much room they’ve got to manoeuvre. So here they are for the diary:

Nice and shiny! I’ve also fitted those plates. I was going to use the sticky pads that came supplied – that is a good part of the point of pressed metal plates anyway – but in the end I drilled them and mounted them with screws. I did this partially because removing the screw receptors for the rear plate proved impossible(!), but also because I figure it’d be good to be able to easily swap the old plates back on for MOTs or to keep any over-keen dibble happy.

While I had the front plate off, my crap phone camera managed to produce this awesome arty shot – don’t cars look good without the front number plate!

Plate on:

And the rear:

I’m really pleased with them – I think they suit the car nicely. I’ll need to tend to covering up the screw heads at some point though. So that’s it for now, I leave you with a photo of the car doing a General Lee impression:

A delivery has just arrived!

These should smarten things up a bit. I should really try and sort the body work around the number plate lights before I stick them on though. Hmm.

I’ve just spent an hour sheltering from a thunderstorm in the workshop with the M3. While there I thought I’d check all the bulbs, and it turns out that the FNS fog lamp wasn’t working, and the OS headlamp had a crazy beam pattern.

Sadly I didn’t have the camera so no photos, but the fog lamp turned out to be a duff connection which I guess we aggravated when the bumper came off for bodywork repairs, and the headlamp pattern was due to the bulb being incorrectly seated.

It’s really satisfying to be able to sort problems such as these quickly and easily; true merit to a well designed old car. I only wish I could sort the exhaust as easily!

Thunderstorm over I thought I’d go out for a play on the now wet roads. The amount of grip afforded by these 16s in the wet is almost disappointingly good, and combined with my fear of waking the dead with exhaust noise means that traction is nearly always constant.

As mentioned, I had an appointment last Saturday to have a custom exhaust system fitted to the car. Sadly all has not gone smoothly, hence no report. I’m still waiting to see what the fitters suggest, so for now they’ll remain nameless, but here’s the update:

Firstly, the old Scorpion system was removed. The source of the vibrating noise was clear to see: the middle box was cracked along its width.

Two silencers had been ordered. The middle one was offered up on a stand, measurements were taken, and pipes bent and cut to fit.

The back box was made up with 3″ flared tailpipes (the same size as the outgoing Scorpion pipes).

The process took six hours. The company involved put in unquestionable effort, and looked after me and the car really well, with this final result:

I can best relay my concerns with the email I sent on Monday:

“Firstly, I cannot express enough my gratitude to ***** and ***** for their time and effort to look after me on Saturday. I appreciate that it took their entire day, and I can’t award any less than 10 out of 10 for customer service: you looked after both me and my car excellently. I’m extremely impressed by the quality of the materials used, and I’m simply in awe of *****’s pipe bending and welding skills; I didn’t get bored watching him weave his magic all day.

“There is however, I’m afraid to say, one problem. I’ve considered this for some time, and I’m keen to impress that I really am grateful for your efforts, but it would be dishonest of me to say and write to others that the system is perfect, because sadly I can’t say I’m 100% happy with it, for it’s simply too loud. While it sounds nice and meaty and impressive, it attracts far too much attention around town (especially police), and after an hour on the motorway it’d given me quite a headache. Having consulted others, it’s also likely that it’ll fail noise tests at some tracks and certainly at the Nurburgring, which ultimately means that I can’t leave it as it is.

“I was therefore wondering if there’s anything you can do to substantially reduce the amount of noise the system makes, maybe by replacing one or both silencers? I really don’t want to make any more work for you, but equally I’m a bit stuck with this current system!

“Any help or advice you can offer would be much appreciated. ”

Futhermore, I drove the car to London and back today. The exhaust is most embarrassing, but perhaps more annoying there’s a slight leak where the new system joins the old. I await news…

Having seen my last entry about the M-Tec 1 steering wheel, James Byrom has very kindly sent me his old M-Tec 2 steering wheel for comparison.

I’m now quite a master at E30 steering wheel swaps, so here’s the lowdown. The wheel the car came with:

The M-Tec 1 wheel:

And the M-Tec 2 wheel:

I’m happiest with this wheel, although to be fair I think the wheel that the car came with is actually the smallest of them all!

On other matters, the car is booked in to have a new exhaust fitted this coming Saturday, so hopefully I’ll have some positive progress to report in a week or so.

After last month’s epic suspension and brake change I’m pleased to report that I’ve been enjoying the 330d this month, stopping only to give it a clean inside and out. It’s been down to the New Forest, and rallying with me up near Bridlington, and on both those events has of course been an impeccably behaved and worthy companion.

This does mean I’ve got time to reflect upon the changes I’ve made over the last few months. When the car is clean, despite being four years old, and despite the new 3 series now becoming commonplace on our roads, the 330d looks smart and modern. Indeed, upon entry to a quiet car park in the New Forest the attendant commented on how well kept it was, saying that it looked new. Had I not been expecting a bollocking for oversteering into the car park I might have had the presence of mind to tell the gentleman that the car was nearly 100,000 miles old!

It has struck me that I’ve not commented much on the Fulda Excelero tyres that I fitted some months ago, and given that I’m a perpetual whinger, this can only mean that they’re not bad at all. Grip is fine in both wet and dry. Wear is okay – the rears have plenty of life left after some 4,000 miles which is more than could be said for a set of tyres I once put on an E36 M3! Road noise is noticeable, but it was with both the Dunlops and the Bridgestones I’ve had in the past – presumably the touring shell allows more road noise from the rear wheels into the cabin space.

The Rossini brake discs are okay. On the way up to Bridlington I gave the car full beans on some back roads outside Bridlington, and after a little while the brakes became noisy and the pedal showed some vibration. I backed off and they soon quietened down, but I’m not sure what to make of that. It does seem that I’m doomed to never have complete confidence in my stoppers.

The new front suspension bushes have worked a treat. A poor downtrodden friend who is forced from company Vectra to Vectra has just received yet another one, and commented as to how nice it was to have “new suspension”. He’s right, but believe me, I’d rather spend a Saturday under the car on the driveway fitting new rubberiness than suffer the spectacular hill of junk that is an 07 plate Vectra SRi. For god’s sake, they’ve even removed the bonnet gas struts that I had on my 1997 Vectra!

So then, my 97,000 mile old 330d feels like a new car, looks as smart as a new car, manages well over 40mpg on a run and is no longer depreciating too horrendously. All it needs to do now is carry on working without costing me anything other than fuel, insurance and RFL, and I’ll be a happy boy. Now that the M3 is online and being used as the main car, the 330d stands a good chance of maintaining this hallowed trouble free status. Fingers crossed.

Mileage since last report:785
Total Mileage: 97,581
MPG this month: 42
Cost this month: £0