chrislux

The main problem with B5's , more so early ones than late is the supercharger fails !! Make sure it's been sorted . The replacements are a different spec. to the originals . Also , they're not fitted with an LSD but could really do with one . April's BMW Car mag has a back-to-back B10 V8s agst B5s , he shud read that . Good luck

Most X5's have Westfalia as OEM , you could try calling them or one of their dealers in UK .

Try looking at ; www.simplycarmats.co.uk , I've heard they're competitive from other forums .

I don't know if '06 is late E53 o early E70 but for the E53 you cannot retro-fit heated seats,I know coz I want to do it to mine and it's a real pain. The wiring and switches can be done easily,but the problem is that the element for the seats is actually sewn into the seat leather,where as other E models it's a separate pad that can be put in between the bolster and the material. So the only way to get heated seats in an E53 is to buy 2/h ones that have come from a car that was factory fitted with them.

I always said that if I won the lotto I'd buy an M1. But having sat in one a few weeks ago at Munich Legends,I found it quite uncomfortable because the pedals are to one side where the wheel-arch intrudes,so I'm not so sure now. My other favourite,and you'd need to have won the lotto to run it,would be a McLaren F1.

I don't know what you're expecting from the X5 , but mine is better than my friends 3 yr old Disco . I've got a 2005 3.0d re-mapped with 272PS and 525NM and my fuel economy is better now than when it was standard . Before i was getting 26/28 on the school run etc and max 32/4 on a run . Now I get 28/29 round town , and I've had over 40 on a run with cruise on 145kmh . I think I'm getting between 700/1000 kms from a tank . I've not bypassed the EGR but I think I read somewhere that it can be done , and it's especially fruitful if you do a lot of town driving coz it gets clogged up quite quickly .

Read a report in BMW Car magazine about one fitted to E46 a while ago and it got huge thumbs up . This is a thread from the E90 forum ; ''First of all Thank you Birds! - Mr. Kevin Bird - great man! if you want to purchase your Quaife LSD, Birds is the place to get it from. They offer excellent support! That being said, i have finally installed the Quaife LSD on my 4 month old BMW. I did this operation at a small garage in Bucharest. They removed the entire exhaust then the main drive shaft and than the 2 rear ones. They then switched the differentials and mounted all those things back. It took them about 3 hours. After this I took the car for a drive but noticed a terrible sound coming from under the car. We concluded that the main drive shaft was rubbing on a exhaust shield and they reinstalled them again. After that, the operation was finalized and I was ready to test my new 335d In normal driving i didn't notice any difference (no strange sounds, no rattle or squeaking, nothing at all) compared to the OEM differential. I did all this on Friday and since that day it has been raining non-stop here. So, as Chris Harris, I couldn't have more perfect weather condition to try out this new differential From a standing start what you can notice is that you can get much more traction and you actually transfer a larger percentage of the power to the tarmac than before. You can barely see the the DSC light which eventually starts blinking around the end of the rev range (you all can agree with me that with stock differentials the DSC interferes very early and cuts your engine power very abruptly, this will not easily happen with Quaife LSD). When negotiating hard turns the grip level has been seriously improved and when you exist a corner it’s like you have been launched on a missile. That is the most important thing I have noticed after installing this LSD. What normally happens when you accelerate out of a turn is that you rear starts swinging and the DSC interferes abruptly and fixes your trajectory, which is good, but it also cuts your power and you can’t go forward as a 286hp car is supposed to. With the Quaife LSD you can feel that the rear is slipping a little bit but you can also gain speed like never before and even if the rear is slipping the DSC doesn’t interfere until very late. I haven’t had the chance yet to see how the car drifts but I’m sure you can get a much nicer sensation. What I have also noticed (it think that someone else mentioned this in a review) is that you clearly have more traction with an LSD but when you do loose it (!) things are much more serious than with an open differential, if you know that I mean….. I must be honest to end and admit the following think: my car is absolutely fabulous but there is one think I really don’t like about – you can’t use it’s power because of the power traction! Well….an LSD partially solves that problem! Don’t expect to get a AWD car after installing it, just and improved version of RWD car that still has to obey the laws of physics.'' and this from the Alpina forum ; ''Last week the Quaife LSD was fitted to my B10 3.3 by Birds Auto near Uxbridge, London The new diff fits inside the standard housing so measuring up and getting the correct sized Quaife unit was the cause of delay and the fitting took over-night; the final bill including new oil was £1,392.64 including VAT, the actual unit cost is £853.32 + VAT. Now I'm no hooligan and clutches are far too expensive so I've not been driving hard in the dry weather and to be honest there is no appreciable difference in the feel of the car on dry roads. I was expecting a bit more understeer but none has materialised and in fact the cars balance appears just as excellent as before. Additionally, no NVH has appeared since the mod. In the wet though it is a different matter, it's quite possible to give the engine it's head in 1st and 2nd gear out of corners without the ASC light flashing away and when you pull out of wet junctions the power just goes down without fuss or drama while the ASC light flashes just momentarily (I expect this is just the new diff transferring the power away from the spinning wheel to the non-spinning wheel) BUT you get no bog, bog, crawl, panic, fast - which used to be the series of events prior to the LSD fitment. It's still early days and I'm sure there's still lots to learn but it's taken a bit of patience and some cash to achieve but I am very pleased with the results.'' Hope this helps a bit

The most well known seller of blanking kits is ; http://www.pmwltd.co.uk/swirl_flaps.pdf Read this article , their address is on the bottom . But this lot also seem to be ok ; http://www.swirlflaps.co.uk/ Good luck

Alpina B8 4.6 , 0-100 kmh 5.6 secs , top speed 278 kmh , although Alpina figures are normally conservative coz I've had 292 kmh registered on my TomTom In-gear acceleration is MUCH better than E36 M3

So , let's try again !!

700BHP LM V12 engine installed . Yes plsssss :D

Saw this advert for Kenwood Double DIN TouchScreen DVD monitor and thought of you Joe . http://caraudiosecurity.com/shop/product/products_id/16235.html Reduced to £230

I can't tell you how many times I had to have mine repainted !!

Nice looking Compact , well done

Re-maps are well worth the money at £250 . You'll get more power and more torque , which means better fuel economy if driven in the same manner as previously . And obviously it'll go faster :D I've had several done on diesels , makes a big difference . Go for it , you know you want to . One word of warning though , only use a reputable company .