Sir Anthony Regents-Park

I just look at these prices and laugh.

They do go well but the turbo masks how hard it works to pull it along. As well as the chain, these eat turbos as well and they're becoming known for crank trouble.

In this weather the bottom of the rad and hose should be cold. Old style wax thermostats are a lottery. I refused to pay 50 quid+ from BMW (they only buy them in) so went for a Febi one. That, when tested in a pan of water didn't open at all. The Circoli one I replaced it with did, and the car (E36) warms up in 2 miles. Tbh, you may as well fit a 92 degree stat. That's what I used.

An F10 is not a car I'd want to own when they're old and cheap. They're bad enough now, especially the 520d. The F01 is a good old land yacht no more or less reliable than an F10. It's effectively the same car, just bigger.

The sills rot on the X Type for fun. The 2.0d Ford diesel was okay, injector and pump issues. The 2.2 is a boat anchor with major oil pump dramas. 500 quid to weld up an E39 sounds a better plan.

Indeed.

Autodoc are fine if you are prepared to wait a few days. I've used them a few times but often I've had better deals from ECP with a discount code.

They were the original TRX pattern. The GT arrived in the early 2000's.

Very early LHD M5's had the 415 metrics but were dumped very quickly. Similarly the M635CSi on those lovely but useless metric BBS split rims. The official reason for customer cars being recalled was for air tightness but BMW had been in trouble before for cars that were a bit tail happy. The Swedes in particular suspended E 21 323i sales when the numbers of cars involved in accidents mounted up.

TRX GT's were better but still old hat. The originals were shite on the BMW with semi trailing arm suspension - the sidewalls were too stiff to deal with the camber changes. TRX's were used on various Ferraris (Mondial, Testarossa etc), Renault 25's and 30's, Granadas (also semi trailing arm IRS) and Alfa Romeo 1.5 Sprints. E30's had a 14.5 inch TRX option as well and sold about 3. The E34 had a TRX option but they tended to be a lot better as they had stiffer anti roll bars and were wider and less roly poly. On the E28 they were near enough to dangerous in the wet. They were a good deal for manufacturers as Michelin supplied the tyres free of charge, and then raped owners for replacements. In Germany, the TRX became an option from around 1988.

Fitting non folding rear seats is not impossible, but an enormous amount of work. I think you can use the base but the backrest, no. Get your existing ones retrimmed. The last E34 I had was a 1994 520i Auto and was most surprised to find the folding seats.

The M535i wheels make very good plant pots.

From a 1982 528i SE. £25 plus postage. Unable to load any pics as usual.

I'm about to list a headlight w/w stalk on the for sale section.

Good plan. These cars just aren't worth having now. So much to go wrong, none of it cheap to fix. When they're down to 800 quid, maybe! Then they're viable as a breaker to get your $$$ back rather than having to fix it.