What did you do to/for your 1er today?

[YearOneOne]

I changed my oil

[swagon]

Originally Posted by chris_flies

Anyone want to release upon me a stock 135i muffler?

Willing to buy the whole car? I know of one

[chris_flies]

Originally Posted by swagon

Willing to buy the whole car? I know of one

I don't wanna buy problems...

[YearOneOne]

Also hardwired a wireless charger and the dcan cord for my mhd device.
Rain finally stopped let us all hit the streets!

[chris_flies]

Originally Posted by YearOneOne

Also hardwired a wireless charger and the dcan cord for my mhd device.
Rain finally stopped let us all hit the streets!

I've been on the streets, it's more fun when the tires can't cope...

[tock172]

Anyone interested in one of these? Original BMW dealership showroom / auto show plastic identifier plate. I have a handful for the 128i, along with several other models. Sorry, no 135i versions.

Wanted to give the 1Addicts community first dibs before they go up on eBay. $25 a piece shipped. Shoot me a PM

[bmw1racer]

Tried out the Nanoskin Wash Mitt today.

Works really well... Now I can maintain that glass smooth finish every time I wash the car.

[iminhell1]

More drag racing, it's kinda my thing.

I absolutely need more (dedicated) tires. My plan was upgrade intercooler, I need the colder air, but i can't hook the power I have now. So ... looks like DR's is my next purchase.

[low135]

Teaser

[Zombie_Head]

Today i made it back home after a 600+km drive from Nürburg.

Put a total of 3,200 kms on my little daily 125i in 7 days, including 7 laps of Nürburg GP track and 3 laps of Nordschleife and made it back.

Car is good, need to think about brakes, maybe order parts tomorrow.

[1and1]

bit of a wash this weekend

Weather isn't cooperating much, and paint is in really bad shape so turned out to be more of a strip/scrape/recover operation that the graceful job I was planning on. That said, it's way better than it was, and now I have a better plan for round 2 and getting a good sealant on her!

This time involved stripping it with a dish soap wash, smoothing it out with the nanoskin fine sponge, a quick pass with some M205 and a black LC pad, and finished up with meguiars #6 polish & carnauba wax.

The original plan was 205 to remove the light hazing from drive thru car washes, then seal with Mckee's 37 to protect, then wax for depth & sexy, but that didn't happen this weekend... The 205 was flashing really stupid fast and then extremely hard to remove- not really creating the sealant ready surface I wanted. So I grabbed the always excellent Meg#6 to clean up the 205 leftovers and put a nice shine on it before the rains came in. I'm also betting that getting some of those good oils back into the paint will help the 205 work better next time, instead of the "dry" mistreated paint sucking the oils out of the 205 making it flash so quickly? We'll see...

No before & afters- I've posted a bunch of pics recently, so just a quick phone pic of the side and the hood- you can see there's a way to go yet, but soooooo much better than before

[hunginator]

Originally Posted by 1and1

bit of a wash this weekend

Weather isn't cooperating much, and paint is in really bad shape so turned out to be more of a strip/scrape/recover operation that the graceful job I was planning on. That said, it's way better than it was, and now I have a better plan for round 2 and getting a good sealant on her!

This time involved stripping it with a dish soap wash, smoothing it out with the nanoskin fine sponge, a quick pass with some M205 and a black LC pad, and finished up with meguiars #6 polish & carnauba wax.

The original plan was 205 to remove the light hazing from drive thru car washes, then seal with Mckee's 37 to protect, then wax for depth & sexy, but that didn't happen this weekend... The 205 was flashing really stupid fast and then extremely hard to remove- not really creating the sealant ready surface I wanted. So I grabbed the always excellent Meg#6 to clean up the 205 leftovers and put a nice shine on it before the rains came in. I'm also betting that getting some of those good oils back into the paint will help the 205 work better next time, instead of the "dry" mistreated paint sucking the oils out of the 205 making it flash so quickly? We'll see...

No before & afters- I've posted a bunch of pics recently, so just a quick phone pic of the side and the hood- you can see there's a way to go yet, but soooooo much better than before

I have a feeling that the reason M205 was hard to remove was because you may not have 'worked in' the polish enough so it wasn't really broken down while you were wiping away. Once M205 is broken down, I don't think it can really 'cure' or 'flash' on the paint.

I could be wrong... but if I'm not that means that your M205 didn't really do much. For next time, you can try using a white pad while taking time with each pass. There isn't really a cut corners method when polishing!

[1and1]

Could be...
I'm used to 205 being pretty darn polite and easy to work with. If it shows the same behavior next time I'll get some video to share.

[rowsdower]

Originally Posted by 1and1

Could be...
I'm used to 205 being pretty darn polite and easy to work with. If it shows the same behavior next time I'll get some video to share.

Could it just be an old bottle that's dried out on the shelf? I've got some that I bought 2 years ago that I used on another vehicle 2 weeks ago and it worked as I expected. I've always kept it in a sealed ziplock inside an opaque plastic bin. I've also never had M205 dry on a car and be difficult to remove before.

I use an orange Hydro-Tech pad on a DA polisher set to 2 (mine has settings 1-6, 1 being slowest) and I do no more than 2 sq ft at a time. 1 small pea-sized drop on the pad for each section. After 2 horizontal and 2 vertical passes, I wipe off what's left and have never had hazing of any kind.

[Yeineken]

Changed the oil today, and made a mess.

[1and1]

Originally Posted by rowsdower

Could it just be an old bottle that's dried out on the shelf? I've got some that I bought 2 years ago that I used on another vehicle 2 weeks ago and it worked as I expected. I've always kept it in a sealed ziplock inside an opaque plastic bin. I've also never had M205 dry on a car and be difficult to remove before.

I use an orange Hydro-Tech pad on a DA polisher set to 2 (mine has settings 1-6, 1 being slowest) and I do no more than 2 sq ft at a time. 1 small pea-sized drop on the pad for each section. After 2 horizontal and 2 vertical passes, I wipe off what's left and have never had hazing of any kind.

The 205 is new, picked it up Friday. Shaken well before use.


Working the trunk lid for example- broke that into three section, so about 1.5 sq ft-ish. DA with speed set of 4. All I could get was 2 vert and then 2 horiz passes, was getting clear stripes that I understand means it's starting to flash. Grab the microfiber (gold plush 16x16) to wipe it off..., well, try to... instead of easy passes lifting it right off, it's like old school wax that was left on too long.

[hunginator]

Originally Posted by 1and1

The 205 is new, picked it up Friday. Shaken well before use.


Working the trunk lid for example- broke that into three section, so about 1.5 sq ft-ish. DA with speed set of 4. All I could get was 2 vert and then 2 horiz passes, was getting clear stripes that I understand means it's starting to flash. Grab the microfiber (gold plush 16x16) to wipe it off..., well, try to... instead of easy passes lifting it right off, it's like old school wax that was left on too long.

Hmm, interesting. I have a Porter Cable 7424XP and I prep my orange pad with M205 before use and with each section, I apply 3-4 pea size drops around the pad. I work in small areas; starting off by spreading the polish around on speed 2 then the actual polishing starts and I would use speed 5. For reference, my Porter Cable has speeds 1-6 with 1 being the slowest.

[Esteban]

Originally Posted by Yeineken

Changed the oil today, and made a mess.

Looks like car blood splatter...

SHE'S WOUNDED! lol

[YearOneOne]

Originally Posted by Yeineken

Changed the oil today, and made a mess.

For some reason I make a mess everytime I change my oil. I underestimate where the stream is gonna fall.

[low135]

Wrap isn't going well too much contamination in this garage. Considering just pulling it

[Esteban]

Originally Posted by low135

Wrap isn't going well too much contamination in this garage. Considering just pulling it

We. need. pics. right. NOW!

[xQx]

When I got my car 2 years ago, it had the shittest of shit tires on it. Not runflats, but obliviously some cheap Indonesian rubber which claimed to be sporty but wasn't.

Since I didn't want to spend another $1,000 on tires straight away, I've been persisting with them, and last year got a spare set of rims with slightly better tires that've been doing me well for the past 12 months. ... but, my 'good' rims are gloss black. The 'spare' rims were OEM silver. Here's a word of advice: GET BLACK WHEELS. The brake dust on OEM silver is awful. They go from shiny to "wash your car you derro" in 20km.

When I haven't cleaned my gloss black rims for a week, they look matt black. The car still looks clean and tidy - better with no brake dust, but not dirty with brake dust.

Anyway, I got sick of the brake dust and put my good rims with shitty tires back on the car - just to see if they're more manageable with the aggressive M-Factory racing diff I now have. They were. I've been having enormous fun sliding around the streets. Honestly, when it's wet, it's like driving on snow. I can loose traction at 20km/h on a roundabout. ... It was a great learning experience, like being on a skid-pan but on public roads. (yeah, I know, I'm not a responsible adult).

When I put on the LSD it completely changed the handling of my car. I could never quite put my finger on how, but now after my 'public skid pan' practice I know - coast into a corner = understeer; trail-break into a corner = a true art-form between oversteer, neutral or understeer; power just before apex = drift (oversteer). ... it's been a great learning experience.

(I know it's stupid, but I've been modding the car up the kazoo without taking care of basics like upgraded tires and brakes, because when the money runs low it's much easier to justify cash for brakes and tires than it is for diffs and coilovers.)

I had a regular service with a new BMW indi specialist and was talking about coilovers/bilsteins/rsfb's etc. and he took one look at my tires and said "go straight from here to a tire shop, get some good tires and push them to the limit before you even think about doing _anything_ to the chassis."

So I did...

Anyway, I just had Michelin Pilot Sport 4's put on the car. Wow. For the first time in two years I have the same confidence throwing this car into a corner the way I did my WRX. I can easily take the outside lane of roundabouts at 60kph and power out with the tail of the car slightly stepping out.

I had always thought good tires would just mask the underlying issues of the chassis - so having shit tires meant I could balance the handling with testing at 20kph rather than at 100kph... but I think I was wrong... Good tires don't just let you go faster, they widen/soften the input tolerance between understeer/neutral/oversteer - so it's much easier to manage your inputs and predict a specific output.

tl;dr: Finally put some good tires on the car. Even though I'm the first to sprout "don't under-estimate the difference good tires make, they're _everything_ that holds you on the road" ... I'm totally surprised at the difference good tires make.