YoungCR said:

Congrats on the purchase, love the color! I got the 4x4 itch too, it opens up a whole new door for driving adventures. This wagon is still one of my favorite modern cars on here though. I'm sure the new owner will enjoy it just as much.

Thanks! It totally does, I'm looking forward to taking some trips and getting out in the woods! It's actually pretty fun (in a silly way) on road and in corners too. And totally agree but I'm definitely biased haha. 

Bassboy3313 said:

Wish the touring was coming home with me, but I'm sure it's still going to a good home. Congrats on the bronco too!

Thanks! I wish there were more to go around too... 

P_Roloff said:

Congrats on the new Ferd Joe! Having seen it in person, the color and overall looks are even better than the photos, which is saying something. Now that you officially posted about it though I think there’s a requirement for photos of it hard parked with one wheel on a big ass snowdrift

Thanks!! I was hoping for some snow drifts to go bombing through this morning but we ended up getting nothing but rain  Enjoy the new ride!!

Finally got around to doing the brakes over the last couple months as they were properly worn out. I built up a sandblasting cabinet over the summer and stripped/painted the 335i calipers and caliper brackets and rebuilt with new seals/boots/guides/hardware. I also painted them gold because I wanted a little color and liked the look of the oem BMW performance brake kit that's painted in phoenix yellow. I installed everything along with new rotors/pads/outer rubber lines and a fluid flush. Because of the larger calipers I coded in the performance brake option to the vehicle order that adjusts the bias/pedal feel/abs/etc. to match the larger brakes. Overall a massive improvement, should've done it way sooner. 

I also bought a new daily about a month ago. I've had a weird itch to get into something manual/4x4 for a while and more recently my wife and I decided we needed something a bit bigger for road trips. Decided it was time to scratch that itch and after a lot of searching I got a bit lucky (given the current car market) and ended up picking up a manual '22 Bronco Badlands out in Seattle. I've been really enjoying it so far.

The sad news is that the Bronco will be replacing the wagon so unfortunately that's where my time in the Longroof club ends.... or so I thought. After nearly 5 years and 50k miles of trouble free driving for me it decided to do this on a test drive with a potential new owner lol. 

Sooo I got it towed back home and did a fairly complete cooling system overhaul last weekend. New radiator, expansion tank, upper and lower radiator hoses, replaced the hose that split with the updated version, water pump, thermostat, both of the large diameter hoses that connect to the water pump, replaced the plastic 'mickey mouse' flange on the head with an aluminum version and new hose to that too, and a fresh fill of the good ol' BMW blue coolant. Also replaced every o-ring on the hose connections I disconnected but didn't replace with new peroxide-cured EPDM o-rings. With that it's running great again and it'll be headed to its new home this week. I'm definitely going to miss this one.

About a month or two ago I got a tpms light for the driver's side rear tire, topped it up to what I thought was right (turns out was not, either the gauge or my brain was off) and the light didnt go away so I assumed I had a sensor issue in that wheel and didn't have much time to look further into it. Continued driving it for a couple weeks until I noticed that the tire now looked visibly low. Welp, checked pressures and it was well under 20psi. I pulled the wheel off to check for nails or a crack in the wheel or something and found the problem rather quickly... 

I had noticed some accelerated inside edge wear on both rear tires so I got an alignment at the beginning of the summer and found the rear toe was way off, but it was definitely driving on a low tire that killed it. The tires I have are now discontinued (Falken Azenis FK453) so I ordered a pair of Yokohama Advan Fleva V701 for the rear with the same treadwear rating in 225/35r19 (one size up in sidewall from factory, looks way better) and am now running them closer to 40psi so we'll see if that combined with the alignment helps with the wear issue. 

On another note, last time I scanned the car with the ProTool app I had a code for a faulty rear ride height sensor. I ordered a new sensor (The "VNE" branded part from FCP is the oem part with logos scratched off for half the price by the way) and replaced it, but did not resolve the error. Next thing will probably be to check the wire harness where it enters the body as I've read there can be some chafing issues there. 

Speaking of wire harness issues... the age old BMW trunk wire harness problems are still alive and well. For a long time the left rear fog light bulb was 'out', and more recently the trunk wouldn't recognize that it was latched or would have an intermittent connection leading to constant dinging every time I accelerated, braked, or hit a bump (which was very annoying). I tried cleaning the trunk latches/switches with no effect, and replacing the fog light bulb did not fix that issue, so I tore apart most of the hatch to get to the wiring and eventually found this lovely mess. I did this job on both my e36's, and now nearly 20 production years later from that first e36 I'm doing it again. 

To fix it I cut/soldered/heat shrinked the damaged wires as crimps are too large to fit in the rubber sleeve. I also wrapped the whole section in a layer of tesa tape to help spread out the bend radius so it isn't folding itself as sharply or flexing solely at the solder joints when closing the hatch. We'll see how long it holds up, and if it splits again I'll get some high quality wire and re-wire the whole section properly. 

Other basic maintenance/etc over the weekend: new spark plugs, air filter, refilled the washer fluid tank, and used ProTool to code out the headlight washers because when they are working properly they make a mess for very little benefit and mine leak. We'll see if just disabling them stops the leaking or if I have to completely cap them off.

SteelBlue said:

Bumping this thread. How do the 19” style 225s ride? I’ve heard mixed opinions on 19’s on an E90. I really like the style 225, and while it was offered in an 18, it is apparently very rare. What are your tire specs?

Compared to my 17" snow tires they're a good bit harsher but I don't mind it. Current fronts are 235/35r19 and rears are 255/30r19. When I first got the car it had 255/35r19 on the rear and they fit no problem with the added sidewall, and if anything I think they looked a little better because they filled out the arches a bit more.

pynacl said:

Looks great! Is that the M Performance kit? I feel like I've seen those side skirts before and they look much different than the M Sport on my E90!

Yup! Performance Aero front/rear bumper and skirts, I love the way it looks!

Winter mode engaged

I forgot to note I replaced the battery with a new one a few months ago. I used the Bimmergeeks pro-tool for the coding and it was extremely easy, worth the cost to not have to figure out INPA/etc. I also coded out the legal disclaimer on startup, so nice having that gone.

YoungCR said:

Interesting that the offset is different since the x1 is e90 based. Can you still get those wheels new?

Yeah I was surprised they went through the effort to have a whole different wheel with a 2mm offset difference. They are available new, but are $600 each. 

P_Roloff said:

Interesting. Any reason (cost?) to not just go with a pair of replacements and run sans spacers/equal spacers? Looks great though, I’ve always though that e90’s and wagons in particular seem to have really sunken wheels from the factory. 

Cost... home renovations are expensive, gotta pinch those pennies for now! It's not ideal, but it works. I also want to see how these X1 wheels hold up, so its sort of a long term experiment.

Summer mode! After about 4 months of searching and not finding any good alternatives, I finally sourced a 225m rear wheel. It is the rear wheel from an X1 m-sport so the size is 19x9 et41 vs. 19x9 et39 for the e9x rear wheel. The new wheel has a date stamp from 2014 whereas the old wheel is 2009, and appears to be a revised casting so we will see if the barrel holds up any better than the very crack-prone e90 variant. Its not necessarily ideal, but I solved the offset issue with a 5mm spacer on the X1 wheel, and a 3mm spacer on the e90 wheel. The concavity of each is exactly the same, so there is no way to tell the difference once they're mounted. I also added a pair of 10mm spacers to the front that I had sitting around. It is a very small change with the spacers but I think it makes a big difference!

m42b32 said:

Lumber prices have gotten absolutely ridiculous! The 2x8's pictured there were the cheapest I could find and it was still over $100 just for those. The pressure treated stuff is even worse. I've gotten good at recycling what I tear out from elsewhere in the house haha

I grabbed 6 2x4x8's yesterday and they were $40. wtf. 

P_Roloff said:

Yeah, my dad is in residential construction and he said the other night prices have gone up around 70% for framing lumber for him compared to pre-pandemic cost. It's obviously factored into bids now, but the price increase when he had houses in progress sure sucked.

That's exactly what happened to us. We signed our contract before the prices went up and we ended up using our total framing/exterior budget on basically the rough framing. We still had to buy all the siding and all the carport material. It was awful and sent us quite a ways over budget very quickly.

m42b32 said:

Lumber prices have gotten absolutely ridiculous! The 2x8's pictured there were the cheapest I could find and it was still over $100 just for those. The pressure treated stuff is even worse. I've gotten good at recycling what I tear out from elsewhere in the house haha

Yeah, my dad is in residential construction and he said the other night prices have gone up around 70% for framing lumber for him compared to pre-pandemic cost. It's obviously factored into bids now, but the price increase when he had houses in progress sure sucked.

gilber33 said:

Okay. That makes way more sense. lol. I can have 8' boards sit right between the front seats and be completely in the car. And I was thinking there's NO way that my car is that much longer than yours. 

On a side note - how much have all of your DIY projects gone up in price with the price of wood being fucked? I started on our basement and have bought somewhere around 50 2x4x10, 20 8'ers, and then a variety of green treated stuff and what I paid now is SO much more than what I priced out 9 months ago. 

Lumber prices have gotten absolutely ridiculous! The 2x8's pictured there were the cheapest I could find and it was still over $100 just for those. The pressure treated stuff is even worse. I've gotten good at recycling what I tear out from elsewhere in the house haha

i have not noticed a price increase in lumber, only because i have only bought in small quantities.

m42b32 said:

It's 8 2x8x8' boards, they stopped right at the back of the front seats. I just noticed it looks like they went to the dash because I had 5 more 1x2x8' that I didn't need to have hanging out the back haha. I DID however bring home a couple 16 foot baseboards a couple months ago but forgot to take a picture. Those went on the dash and then out the hatch window another 8 feet haha. 

Okay. That makes way more sense. lol. I can have 8' boards sit right between the front seats and be completely in the car. And I was thinking there's NO way that my car is that much longer than yours. 

On a side note - how much have all of your DIY projects gone up in price with the price of wood being fucked? I started on our basement and have bought somewhere around 50 2x4x10, 20 8'ers, and then a variety of green treated stuff and what I paid now is SO much more than what I priced out 9 months ago.