Only a week ago I mentioned that the 106 Rallye was for sale – tonight Diane and I waved it goodbye. It’s off to bonnie Scotland, a long trip for the new owner (I hope it’s okay!).

Some very rough cost analysis:

We had the car for almost 5 years, and just over 40,000 miles. We paid £2,900 for it and sold it for £1,400. That’s only £25 a month in depreciation!

We had it serviced annually. Initially we had a garage do the work, but in later years I did it. Say £400 in servicing. I think we bought six new tyres, at about £40 each. There was a major head gasket and timing belt job – £800. We replaced the brakes – this was remarkably cheap at about £100. There must have been other stuff – say around £2,000 total including MOTs, or £35 a month in maintenance.

RFL averaged £175 a year, insurance averaged £400 a year (latest renewal was under £300). It averaged 30mpg (over 40,000 miles @ 90p/l) = £5,300 in fuel. Don’t forget this car was pretty rapid! Mainly used for short journeys too.

So, all costs including fuel and depreciation, total spend over five years and 40,000 miles was about £13,250. Which is £220 a month or 33 pence per mile.

Is my maths right?!

Over the last few months my perception of online presence, both professionally and socially, has changed quite a bit. Everything is becoming more interactive, and from the point of view of someone who publishes content, it’s really great to know that people are reading your ramblings, and constructive feedback is vital to enhancing that experience. This can of course be taken too far – for instance my hatred of radio show phone-ins (I don’t care what Gary from Hounslow had for breakfast!), but in the case of the comment functionality on this site I think it’s marvellous.

So what’s next? I’m sure most of us are familiar with Facebook, but how many of us use it to its fullest potential? As Robin is getting married in California in just a couple of months, the UK visiting party is using a Facebook events page to organise the logistics of the trip. Diane has a Facebook page to promote herself as a Graphic Designer (go on, surprise her and become a fan!); the firm I work for has recently done the same. It’s viral marketing, and due to the friendly, permission based growth, it really works. Wouldn’t you rather work with an honest, open, independent professional rather than sending your work out to an unknown designer at Reproprint who you’re not allowed to communicate with directly? Or to put it another way, if you want to know more about an M5 clutch replacement, BMW Vanos or swapping engines, wouldn’t you rather talk to someone who has no agenda rather than a garage owner who ultimately is just looking to fill their wallet?

Presenting all this content on the world wide web in an easy to digest format requires effort though. It’s a bit of a chore having to take a camera everywhere you go, and the write-ups take time. It’s also embarrassing, as mistakes happen and in hindsight they’re so easy to avoid. It can be very postive though, but not only do I hope to learn from my mistakes (all the more painful when pointed out by a more experienced reader!), but I hope others will benefit too.

How do I do all this then? Diane is a keen photographer and I work for an internet based company. This means we tend to have most of the required tools to hand. Diane has two cameras – a Nikon Coolpix S210 (responsible for the pictures in this post) and a Nikon D40X (did all the M3 engine swap and M5 clutch/LSD photos).  When I get back in from a day out on the cars, I retire to my laptop which is normally docked in a corner of our kitchen.

Note how I sit in easy reach of all the booze! I guess that picture exposes my extreme desire for desktop space. The laptop has a magnificent 1920×1200 display, but I like to make good use of my spare 1280×1024 display too – so much easier to have all the pictures I’m processing on one screen, and my blog admin window on another. Also, when cooking or cleaning in the kitchen it’s great to use the extra monitor to watch TV on BBC’s brilliant iPlayer.

So that’s computer 1 of 3. Yes, that’s right, two more. We take a lot of photos and each picture, especially those from the D40X, can be rather large – a few Megabytes each. Also, in Diane’s line of work she generates huge image files – we need to store all of these somewhere. Just before Christmas Robin gave me an old PC, and I decided to turn it into a home server. Upgraded to 4GB RAM and 4x1TB SATA HDDs, I assembled a Linux (Fedora Core 10) server with 2.7TB of RAID5 storage. Sadly, this hasn’t gone smoothly. One of the four 1TB drives failed, so I had to have it replaced. Since then, the replacement failed, as has another of the originals. So the server tends to look like this:

Open for maintenance. In fact right now, it looks like this because I’m restoring a load of files from my old server.

I bet you’re all pretty glad you don’t have this level of trash in your living room! So with this headache and a certain amount of laptop woes (not entirely unrelated to the BMW diagnostic kit I recently purchased – more on that when I know more!), I’m not having a good time of this high-tech life. Fortunately, as Diane is out I’m currently able to use her machine in her office upstairs – boasting two 1920×1200 displays. These things are GREAT!

I’m going to spend the rest of the evening getting all this sorted. I hope! My final topic in this meandering waffle is Twitter. I’ve mentioned in the past that my antipodean colleague Brenden convinced me that blogging isn’t such a sad thing to do any more. I follow Stephen Fry’s blog, and he is the man who has convinced me that Twittering is now socially acceptable too. To Twitter is to release a short (< 140 chars) statement that updates those who ‘follow’ you on your thoughts or actions.

Twitter was mentioned when Stephen was interviewed on Jonathan Ross’ comeback show. Twittering certainly gets plenty of negative comments, but I can’t see how it can cause offence given that one has to choose to ‘follow’ someone on Twitter; if someone you are following is Twittering in such a manner that it disinterests or offends you, simply stop following them!

The advantage it seems of Twittering in my context is that it takes me a day or so to put together a blog post with an update of car or adventure related activity. On the other hand, I can Twitter quick updates from my phone as the day progresses without the need for cameras, high speed internet connections and other paraphernalia. In the context of a football match, a blog post is the Match Of The Day review, where Twittering is live audio commentary. Sort of!

In any case, feel free to follow me: http://twitter.com/neilmukerji

I’m pleased to announce that the M3 Evo is no longer an ornament on my mother’s driveway – Ben fixed it yesterday! For those who don’t know, it had cut out on us one night and refused to start thereafter. We could tell that the ECU was alive and well, and as the starter would dutifully turn the engine we know the immobiliser wasn’t to blame. Yet it didn’t fuel or spark. We guessed therefore that the ECU wasn’t getting a signal from the crank sensor, as without that it wouldn’t know where to begin.

Ben whipped the fan off, and removed the crankshaft sensor and wiring – the problem was fairly evident straight away!

We’ve peeled the boot back off the connector, and the wires under there were badly frayed and one was broken. We fitted the same part from the old engine and the car came to life immediately!

On other matters, I’m pleased to report that the 330d passed its MOT without issues as I’d hoped. We’ve had a viewing for the 106R already – time will tell on that.

The Peugeot 106 Rallye passed its MOT without advisories today which is a real bonus. Now that Diane is working from home we don’t need a commuter car, so we’ve decided it makes sense to sell it and rely on the tractor and super saloon. Here’s the advert I put together at the weekend:

http://mukerji.co.uk/cars/1998-peugeot-106-rallye-for-sale/

We’ll be sad to see it go, but five years is long enough with any car!

The first thing I did yesterday morning was to give the M5 what I imagine is a fairly typical weekly service: some fuel, a litre of TWS oil, and a pair of rear tyres. I failed to take the camera out with me for that trip, but it’s hardly photogenic stuff. I did consider getting Michelin Pilot Sports, but I couldn’t find them for less than £500 for the pair fitted, and I couldn’t find anywhere who could get them in stock in my size until February at the earliest. I therefore chose something rather more pikey: some Falkens.

I’ve had Falkens on M3s in the past, and I found them to be quite reasonable. Certainly in the wet, these new Falkens offer rather more grip than the outgoing (very worn!) Michelins. Time will tell, but at £256 fitted there’s quite a difference in wallet ache. Once I got back I did remember to take some photographs of the M5′s interior as Paul Stewart requested some after the diff seal work.

I really like the colour scheme – when searching for M5s I didn’t consider any other interiors!

That complete I turned my attention to the 330d, which of course didn’t need fuel, oil or tyres. It did need a new rear wiper, an item I’d grabbed from BMW when I got the M5′s diff seals. So, after a minute of maintenance I was finished with both of my BMWs. My day however was far from complete!

The other car in the family is a little Peugeot 106 Rallye. Diane’s had it for five years now, and a niggling problem has been some occasional hesitation in the mid-band when warm. I’ve made sure everything is clean and serviced, and have replaced the coolant temperature sensor, so yesterday I thought I’d try and replace the air temperature sensor too.

The result? The car drives a little more smoothly, but the hesitation still randomly occurs when the engine is hot. In any case, the car is due an MOT examination, so I replaced some failed bulbs and split wipers, and gave it the minor interval service that was due. While I did this, Ben changed Chavbo1′s front brake pads.

Finally we turned our attention to the M3 Evo that cut out on us on Thursday evening. I stuffed another 10 litres of BP’s Ultimate in there to ensure that fuel level wasn’t a problem. Prior to it letting us down, Ben has purchased some new spark plugs, so we fitted those and swapped the coil packs over from the old engine. Still the car wouldn’t start. A quick phone call to Ian Haynes gave us some further pointers to test the ‘spark’ side of the equation, and we deduced that the coil packs were alive and online.

We are therefore in a situation where we know the immobiliser isn’t the problem, and there is fuel in the car, and the main fuel pump primes. It seems likely therefore that the ECU isn’t running the pump or sending spark signals while cranking, and this suggests it’s not getting a reading from the crank shaft sensor. If this is the case, it seems rather more likely that the wiring is knackered rather than sudden and permanently sensor failure. In either case, we’ve decided that the way forward is to remove the crank shaft sensor from the other block, and dismantle the car to check the wiring and swap the sensor. I’ve also purchased a diagnostic reading kit from eBay – more on what it is when and if it arrives and I can test it!

A quick mid-week update. Yesterday I fitted new wiper blades to the M5. Changing wiper blades is nearly always a fiddly job, but the E39 has got a really nifty sliding-locky arrangement which made the job a doddle.

Tonight while travelling from football to the pub the M3 Evo just cut out and wouldn’t restart. We towed it to my garage (with the M5!) and had a fiddle but it doesn’t look like it’s sparking – quite possibly a bust wire to the crankshaft sensor – we’ll look properly at the weekend. While Ben and Robin were fannying around with that car I fitted the wiring for the 330d’s illuminated knob that C3 had kindly supplied after a quick prod. I’m really pleased with the result, it’s so smart. Sadly however, I’m incapable of taking a photograph of the effect due to the low light levels. Here’s my best effort:

Or maybe this one:

It really does glow brightly in reality, I just can’t capture the effect on the camera. Without it looking like this:

So that’s all for now. I’m going to retire to something I which I can successfully photograph; my nutritious and delicious dinner.

During last week’s clutch change operation it became apparent that the propshaft centre bearing required replacement, and the differential was leaking from all three seals. So yesterday, it started all over again.

Getting the exhaust off was much, much quicker than last time, but it still takes about 40 minutes to get the car up in the air and have the exhaust completely clear. Robin and Ben got going on removing the propshaft.

While I set up the TIS reference system:

Note our trusty lever/chisel bar bottom left there – vital for so many recent operations! The propshaft was soon off:

As you can see, the outgoing bush had seen better days!

It certainly required replacing by the time we had removed it!

The actual bearing was removed using a three legged puller. I had to nip back to Woking in Ben’s M3 to fetch this – see my comparison of the M5 and M3.

While all that man fun was taking place I decided to clean the exhaust so that future leaks will be apparent. The leaking differential oil had certainly left its mark on the exhaust.

Soon came up a treat!

We realised we could replace the differential’s front seal with the diff in the car.

Next we went to work on the side seals. We removed the half shaft bolts, but soon realised we couldn’t get each half shaft out of the way enough to get at the flange. Here’s where we took the wrong decision that cost us hours: we chose to whip the suspension apart to permit the half shaft to be pulled further from the diff.

This took ages, and didn’t help. So we took the diff out of the car, which didn’t take very long, and made progress a whole lot easier!

We gave it a good clean, replaced both side seals, and replaced the oil. A fully serviced diff – excellent!

We got the diff back in the car just fine, but could we put the suspension back together? Hell no! It was late, we all had other things to do in the evening, and we really needed some spring clamps. Incidentally, the M5 is the first car I’ve owned with coilovers on the back. Anyway, we wimped out and went home. This left me in charge of the Subaru for the night – my thoughts here!

This morning we returned bright and early with spring clamps and after much swearing got the suspension back together. Can’t say I fancy trying to replace a suspension bush any more than I’d fancy doing the clutch again! In any case, once all was put back together the underside of the car looked far more appealing.

Overall I’m really pleased with this and last weekend’s progress. All vibrations have gone, the clutch is excellent and the improved standard of all drivetrain components is excellent peace of mind. The parts bill for this escapade came to about £110 which really isn’t bad at all. I must also mention that Dave Reynolds, parts advisor at Vines BMW of Guildford, has once again given excellent service. He provided a couple of extra parts I hadn’t realised I needed (butyl tape to cover the centre mount which damps vibration, and the diff front locking plate), sourced the correct differential oil and provided up to date fitting instructions. So, thanks must go to him, and to Robin and Ben for their help!

My friend Ben, owner of the M3 Evo that required a quick engine swap over Christmas, has got by without it for a few months because he’s got another car. It’s a 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX wagon, pictured on the Nurburgring above. We call it Chavbo 1.

The car is ugly. The car makes a racket. It has a huge exhaust that constantly burbles. It wooshes and ptooshes and spits and hisses. You know what though? It makes me grin from ear to ear!

Over the last few years I’ve often thought about getting an Impreza. I was most inspired to make that move in late 2006 when I saw a guy called Alex Taylor wrestle one around a rally up north. Ben’s M3 Evo engine failed less than a month before we had another ‘ring trip scheduled, and rather than rush fixing it he chose to buy Chavbo 1. At that point it became apparent we both had the same guilty secret: we both fancied an Impreza.

Tonight, due to the M5 being up on ramps until we can return to the workshop in the morning with some spring clamps (I’ll report more tomorrow!), I’ve got custody of Chavbo.  What a hoot! Vrrrroooom, ptsoosh. Vrrrrrroom, ptoosh!

The lag is frustrating, but also the detachment between throttle push and response seems to make the performance all the more exhilarating. Let there be no doubt that this car feels incredibly quick, yet Ben wasn’t notably faster than my old E30 M3 around the ‘ring. The performance arrives in great lumps. When it’s there it’s all consuming, and so long as the blower is kept on the boil the car’s a belter.

Off the throttle the brakes are amazing. It’s got multi-pot calipers and grooved discs – unlike every BMW I’ve ever owned. These give the middle pedal a most reassuring feel, and I know it can do ‘ring lap after ‘ring lap without fade or judder.

It’s not all good news though – far from it. While the car is fast, entertaining and indeed nimble, push on and that’s exactly what it does: push on. You’re going around a corner and want more throttle on exit. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Boost and understeer into hedge. Thanks.

It doesn’t stop there – the interior is just as uncertain. Build quality is rather dubious – lots of rattles and cheap plastics – yet the seats are wonderful and heated too! Overall it’s an interesting package. Great in small doses, but I couldn’t live with it as a long term prospect.

We were doing a spot more work on the M5 today (unfinished – hopefully more on that tomorrow!). I needed to nip out and grab some more tools, so I took the M3 we repaired over Christmas. A section of road between Robin’s tool shed and Ben’s workshop is one of my all time favourites. It’s not that I’ve never driven an M3 Evo before – I’ve owned two  – but today was an opportunity to pilot one along  that favourite road just hours after I’d whisked the M5 that way; excellent comparison material. That’s all I’ll focus on here – the driving. Running costs and cupholders aren’t going to factor!

Today was cold – minus 4 degrees at midday. Come to think of it, I can’t recall temperatures that low during the day, nor such a prolonged wintry spell. As a result the roads were extremely slippery, tyres not up to temperature, and it’s also worth mentioning that the M3′s tyres are significantly newer and in better shape than the M5′s. The road opens up and the hammer drops. The M3 Evo is fast, but it’s not M5 fast. The gearbox is a little notchy, just like the big 5.  Here comes the first corner.

The brakes are strong, but aren’t BMW brakes always strong until they overheat? I know this corner well, I know that at this speed the M5 won’t turn in so well, and it’ll wash a little wide. The M3 is pin sharp, and tracks my intended line perfectly. Squeeze the throttle on exit. The M5 would, in these conditions, require judicious use of the controls. The M3 just grips and goes, but again, its tyres are better. It’d get around the corner quicker, but the M5 would catch it once things straighten up again. Ahead though, the road gets fierce: it ducks left and right over hills, camber is cruel, the surface is slippery.

The M5 can’t attack in these conditions. It’ll thump along making a gorgeous noise, and if I’m brave it’ll be a lot of fun, but it can’t really address the situation. The M3 is lithe by comparison; its more direct steering and lack of weight more than makes up for its 80 horsepower deficit. Here, the M3 is better. Which makes me wonder, is there a time when point to point performance is the goal, where the M3 isn’t the favourable vehicle? Maybe on an autobahn, otherwise though, the M3 is the tool of choice.

So it’s just as well that I’m considerably less interested than I used to be in getting from point to point quickly. As I age I’m more interested in lounging around in my V8 ambience listening to Radio 3. The M3′s engine has an entirely reasonable amount of grunt at low revs, but the M5′s V8 has muscle power right from idle. It’s simply the best engine I’ve ever owned.  But it’s no track car; it can leave that to the M3.

What a title! Ben Smith turned up tonight with a new toy for me:

Ben’s got one of these – you may well have seen it in action during our M5 clutch and M3 Evo engine swap antics alongside my red jack. My red jack’s a really hefty old-fashioned item. It’s been a trusty friend, but it’s awkward, slow, and hard to lower slowly.

This jack is really light, really quick (5 full pumps to full extension), and has thoughtful extras such as the side handles and foam padding on the main handle. What better way to celebrate than with some self-lifting in the lounge!

Onto other matters – I received a replacement gear knob for the 330d today – something that’s been a long time coming.

I don’t mind a splash of wood trim in a car, but I feel a wooden gear shifter is going just a bit too far. Add to this the fact that the one pictured above is a little loose, and that I like my knob to be illuminated(!), it was time for replacement.

This isn’t a perfect story though. I ordered the item from C3BMW – a site that provided my alloy front control arms for the 1990 E30 M3. It wasn’t the cheapest place, but should have come with a retorfit wiring kit which I thought made it worthwhile. Sadly, this wiring kit wasn’t present; just the knob.

“This gear knob is trimmed in knappa leather and has a shifter which is illuminated. Supplied with retrofit wiring this can be fitted using a simple plug in to the light for the cigarette lighter.”

I’ve written to C3 to see if it’s just a simple omission and they can send me the extra bit of kit. If so, it’ll be a thumbs up; otherwise I may get grumpy. Still, no wiring adaptor doesn’t stop me from physically fitting the shifter, and I’m really pleased with the result.

I think it looks really smart, and that slight reduction in woody-ness is just what the doctor ordered. Diane suggested losing the wood surround, but at that point all the wood in the car would really need to go, and I don’t mind it that much!