We left France and moved to the US, sold the E70, E53 and E39. We'll miss them, but we drive pickups now. The new Ford pickups have 400hp and almost all of the same electronic whizbang stuff as my 40d had, some even better. Roads are straight here, cornering is mostly 90degrees here and there or a m...

Wow, I didn't even know about Intravee, and I owned an E38 a few years back.  Thanks for the tip!

Thanks for your advice above. I landed a sweet 530i with sport suspension and manual gearbox. She's high mileage but in great condition. Even the sway bar bushes had been replaced by the previous manic owner. I slipped in some EBC Red Stuff pads, fixed an oil leak, and she's ready to roll. Which is ...

We are a double-X5 family but our court is blighted by two VWs including a lowly Polo that hurts me knees to drive. Why not sell the Polo and buy an E39, methinks?  A nice petrol model with something stirring under the hood? I found a buyer guide here (http://forum.bmw5.co.uk/topic/18128-e39-buying-...

  :yikes: :yikes:

This is one of the many reasons why when we shop for a home, I insist on 3 or more garages. Parking outside you never know what detritus accumulates in your car.  Even with garage parking, I find leaf crud in our cars to clean out a couple times a year.  FYI

I have a problem with annoying door seal noise over rough pavement. I tried a mix of silicone grease and silicone spray lube to treat my door seals. First I had cleaned them, of course. After a day or so, it was worse.  Elsewhere in this forum I found a suggestion to try Gummi Pflege Stift. Amazon.f...

The pulley itself was nearly $400. The Indie says he's had bad results trying to use third-party pullies.

I dropped the X off at the indy and he showed me a crank damper. Once it's in hand, you can see how it would fail. Its large rubber inner component breaks down and de-laminates from the inner metal core and outer metal pulley. This produces 1) smoke and 2) little chunks of rubber visible below the a...

The idler/tensioner is new from January.  But on Xoutpost somebody mentioned that the M57 crank pulley can fail and seize.

At slow speed, suddenly the power steering quit. Then I saw that the battery light was on, no alternator output. Then I smelled rubber burning. I shut off the motor right away. It was the serpentine belt smoking a little. I looked it over where it was visible but saw no obvious problem. I tried star...

I have the dreaded juddering on sharp turns.  Can anybody recommend a source on ebay?  Stealer wants about €3k here in France. I see them much lower on ebay but would like to have your recommendations.

I stewed on this for some time and found the cause. The problem did not go away after shunting out the RaceChip. It hit every day, every drive, unpredictably.  I remembered that the problem went away for 4 days after I had removed  the motor cover and blown away the dust with compressed air.  I came...

When I press check control it just says Check Control OK

I have an update on the situation. I ran with the racechip installed and had no problems for about 5 days but then it came back. I went in to pull the codes and surprise,  the codes are different. There's no high pressure fuel rail anymore, there's a message about fuel control synchronization. I cal...