There's a new road rally series that has been put together this winter in the eastern U.S. and Canada, called the Winter INTernational Rally (WINTR) Series. It's composed of existing winter rallies in Ontario, Québec, Vermont, New York, Ohio, and Michigan, and is designed so that each rally is run under the rules of whatever club is putting it on, which means that each rally is just a l
Forum: Car Talk

QuoteFerdinand Let's hear the stories! OK, tonight, I promise!
Forum: Community Forum

QuoterkjThis sounds like so much fun. I know some of those roads you where on (thanks for the maps). Does this happen often? It is fun! There are three SCCA regions in the northeast US that have an active schedule of road rallies: Finger Lakes Region New England Region South Jersey Region I just did my first Canadian rally. It seems that there are a lot more rallies going on in eastern C
Forum: Car Talk

I live about a 90 minute drive from the US/Canada border, and cross the border into Canada several times a year. Most of the time the border-crossing process is a brief, routine exchange with the border guard in the booth: where do you live, blah blah, what is the purpose of your visit, blah blah, how long will you be staying, blah blah, do you have anything to declare, blah blah, etc. etc. Ye
Forum: Community Forum

QuoteFerdinand I had no idea that it was even possible for that collar nut to work itself loose. On my previous rusty black 86 325 car those collar nuts were so firmly rusted into place there's no way they would ever come off again. That's amazing. The one time I tried to remove those collar nuts on mine, it was one of the hardest things I've ever tried to loosen. It took several
Forum: Technical Forum

We just got back from the Long Way Home Rally in western New York, and what a great time it was. It was easily worth the 5.5 hour drive out there. The roads were perfect, with recent heavy snow covering everything with a fresh coat of beautiful snow. Conditions varied from snowpacked to a few inches of fresh snow, and everywhere was a challenge to keep the car between the ditches while still main
Forum: Car Talk

2004 Mazda6 wagon. Mostly my wife's car. It's the kid hauler we got after we finally ditched the minivan, and the only car I've ever bought new. It has been a great car. It's appalling how difficult it is to buy a station wagon with a manual transmission in the U.S., but that's what this is. It's nice to have a grocery getter that is comfortable and quiet for Mom, bu
Forum: Car Talk

Test I love this pic and this car. I wish it were mine.
Forum: Test Forum

Good stuff! I hadn't seen that before. I've stickied this.
Forum: Technical Forum

I just upgraded the Phorum software, which allowed me to do something I've been wanting to try for a long time. You may notice that the reply editor is now gone from the bottom of threads. To reply, you should click the "reply" or "quote" link found at the bottom of every post. (Actually, that's the way I've done it all along anyway -- I dunno about others.) Th
Forum: Announcements

My first thought with something like this would be a bad ground somewhere. Is there much rust on the car? Sometimes a rusty ground connection can wreak havoc with the electrical system.
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteFlyboy there is a sensor on the head with two wires, it has a blue connector, could that be for the ECU. I've never actually seen an M40 in the wild, but based on the M20, I'm going to guess that that's the one. Blue connector, two wires sounds just like the ECU coolant temp sensor on the M20.
Forum: Technical Forum

Thanks, Peter. I'll give that a look sometime. (Not real soon since I'm not real excited about taking apart the dash in an unheated garage. ) Is the heater valve you're talking about the one that looks like this? i.e part #7 in this diagram?
Forum: Technical Forum

Ever since I've had my iX, the heater has acted a bit oddly. When the temperature control is turned all the way up, it blows nice and hot. In fact, even in the middle of winter in the frozen north, it's often too hot, and I want to turn it down. The problem is that if I back off the temperature know just a few degrees below full, it gets way too cold. The progression is very non-linear
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteEarendil The crank position sensor is used on start up only. The ECU will not provide a spark until it gets a reading. However, once it has, and the engine fires off once, the CPS is no longer used. If the car has spark at all, it probably isn't the CPS. If the car dies after starting it Really isn't the CPS. Are you sure about this? I'm no expert on the whole Motronic wizardr
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteFlyboy When I turn the key all the way to "Run", nothing, as soon as I start cranking the engine fuel gets pumped out of that pipe, and as soon as I release the key back to "run", the flow stops, is this normal?????? I'm pretty sure this is normal. IIRC the fuel pump does not get power until the engine is cranking. The Bentley manual has procedures for testing the f
Forum: Technical Forum

I see Rick has discovered the new smileys.
Forum: Community Forum

Great news indeed!
Forum: Community Forum

Hi folks. I've just created a new discussion forum called Car Talk, for anything car-related that doesn't fit in the E30 technical section. Mostly I'm thinking this will be for the car-related stuff that previously got put in the Community forum. This is something I've been thinking of doing for a while. Let's see how it works out!
Forum: Announcements

Quotealanrw hmmm, I don't think I have ever seen a laptop with 2 physical drives, most likely one drive partitioned into 2 drives (like one drawer with a divider panel in it). Me neither. That's why I wrote the part about a single physical drive partitioned into two logical drives being more likely. And yes, I agree -- ALWAYS have your important stuff in more than one place. There&
Forum: Community Forum

Like Flyboy says, you can move any documents and non-program files over to D: without breaking anything. But don't go moving anything from C:\Program files or C:\windows or you'll make all kinds of bad stuff happen. There are a couple reasons for having two separate drives. The first is if you have two physical drives in your computer, they're pretty much forced to show up as tw
Forum: Community Forum

QuoteEarendil Dave, when you say that you leave the bearings to others, is it due to the prohibitive cost of the tool, or the difficulty/time? It could be that the parents are willing to buy the tool and parts and have me do the work, as long as it comes in less than a mechanic. I'd get to keep the tool when done, and I do love tools I can't imagine that I'd find a mechanic that&
Forum: Community Forum

Sorry, late to the discussion again! Those 14" bottlecaps probably have an offset of 28mm. The OEM 15" iX basketweaves have an offset of 41mm, so the bottlecaps will stick out about 13mm (1/2") too far. Not such a big deal, and lots of people use those bottlecaps as winter beater wheels on iXes. Having said that, if you went much lower on the offset, you'd notice it in t
Forum: Technical Forum

Sounds like fun! Sorry I missed this thread when you started it. The best source for iX-specific info on the web is the small but fairly active BMW 325iX Club. There's a lot of good info there. Most of the car is the same as a regular E30, except of course for anything related to the front suspension, which is similar but with all different parts. Wheel bearings is one of the jobs I alway
Forum: Community Forum

Quotealanrw Driveshaft/guibo? That'd be my first guess. I haven't experienced this myself, but it has been widely reported in E30 Internetland that something as simple as putting a guibo back in with a different orientation can cause weird, hard-to-diagnose vibrations. The previous "frankenstein drivetrain mods" referred to strengthens my suspicion that something may be up wit
Forum: Technical Forum

Cut it out, you guys, you're making me blush.
Forum: Community Forum

Thanks for the concern, guys! I'm still here! (Though I sheepishly admit to falling asleep at the switch yesterday when I caused the forum to go down -- sorry!) I've been having a good holiday break hanging out with the family, skiing a lot, and not doing much with the computer. Now I've got a whole bunch of catching up to do.
Forum: Community Forum

For the past couple years since I restarted this forum, I've hit the membership up for contributions about this time of year to help offset the annual fee to our hosting company. This year you will be happy to know that things are different, and I hope in a good way. I also maintain a personal web site, mainly for my photography gallery (http://www.daveguertin.net/), that until recently w
Forum: Announcements

Hope I didn't scare anyone. I could blame it on the little-known Y2.011K problem, but unfortunately the problem was actually all operator error. Once again it was a password issue, where I updated the forum admin password and forgot to update the MYSQL scripts that the forum uses. One of these days I might actually remember that little gotcha so it won't happen again.
Forum: Announcements

QuoterkjI forgot to add; I think the fact your warmer temp air is natural on recirc if the ac isn't on, it's just taking the same cabin air and rerouting it through the system, warming it as it goes through, and sending it back out to you..... I think. Lets see what the other guys have to say. I agree. With fresh air, the heater is warming up (usually) cooler outside air. On recirc, the
Forum: Technical Forum