[uucdigest] Tuesday, March 28 2000 Volume 03 : Number 525 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | For all available Digest commands including unsubscribe/subscribe, | visit the BMW UUC Digest page: http://www.uucdigest.com | Send SUBMISSIONS to [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Complaints? Send 'em to [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you must. | Visit http://www.bubbaclub.com | www.bimmers.com - "serving enthusiasts on the 'net" | Visit http://www.bimmer.org - ultimate BMW bulletin boards! | Subscribe to the Zionsville Autosport Parts Digest: | http://www.zionsvilleautosport.com/majordomo.htm ����������������������������������������� In this BMW UUC Digest: [uuc] RE: E28 M5 shop visit....opinions? [uuc] Re: testing wheel trueness [uuc] RE: Speeding, Valentine & Arrogance [uuc] More on the 2 series [uuc] Re:The new ML55 AMG [uuc] Slotted Rotors [uuc] Re: More on the 2 series [uuc] Re:E28 M5 shop visit....opinions? [uuc] 328ic/M3 [uuc] <E28>Hard starting when cold ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 13:43:53 -0800 From: "Jerry Chyo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [uuc] RE: E28 M5 shop visit....opinions? Prices and labor aren't bad. The only thing a little high is the cost of the Bilsteins and maybe the rear pads. If these are original BMW parts, I say your friend should for it as long as it is understood that the mechanic actually knows what they are doing. Rear subframe mounts are a bitch to do and require some special tools and know-how to keep the sucker aligned properly. FWIW Jerry Chyo '88 M5 '72 tii Alex wrote: > OK, my friend has an 88M5 with 175 grand on it. It is beaten up pretty > nicely. The other day, a coolant hose broke, the engine overheated a bit, > and it went in to the shop. Apparently the engine is ok, but while in the > shop the mechanic found the following list of items that need <snip > This is the email from my friend: > > > Part Part Price Labor Price > Idler Arm $47.85 $42 > Front Shocks: > Bilsteins $160 ea. $168 pair > Support Arms (2) $119.90 ea. > Bushings $41.8 $218.30 > Right Rear Subframe Mount (2) $38.78 ea. $224 pair > Rear Brake Pads $60.23 $42 > > Total $787.24 $694.30 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 16:45:27 EST From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [uuc] Re: testing wheel trueness In a message dated 3/28/00 4:28:38 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << Does a tire shop need a special machine to test the trueness of a wheel, or can they just use a balancing machine. I have a set of '95 M3 wheels that I want to check before I spend the money on tires. By the way, is a 235/40/17tire a good size for these rims or should I stick with the 225/45/17 size that was stock? Not for racing, mind you, but I though the larger size might protect the rims better from any inadvertent curb taps. TIA for you input. >> I don't know how "scientific" you want to be, but I merely had a local tire shop spin my wheels on their balancing machine to "visibly" check for trueness...if it is out of round it will stick out like a sore thumb. I recently bought a set of wheels from a guy and one was "bad" upon spinning the wheel at speed. That one was professionally repaired and all is well. Good luck, John Weese BMW CCA #76646 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 16:15:37 -0600 From: "Fadeev, Alex" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [uuc] RE: Speeding, Valentine & Arrogance Dragos Avadanei <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > and finally i get this guy (the cop) on the phone and he > tells me what i did : apparently i was recklessly driving > when i passed an innocent vehicle in a no-visibility area, > with another car on collision course and i outrageously > played chicken with the angel driver of an endangered (by > me, mind you) vehicle on a public road. Misdemeanor etc > and all that crap. he described me, he described my wife, > the local time and the tire tread left on my wheels. > > and he advises me to be careful next time, because people > started carrying cell phones these days.. the cop was a good > guy (not that he could do much about it) but he said there > will be no warning/written stuff on my record for this. So the moral of the story is: even if some #@%$ calls you in over the phone/CB, the cops can not issue a ticket unless they personally witnessed the event? True or false? inquiring minds want to know... alex f ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 17:24:31 EST From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [uuc] More on the 2 series Due to AOL, the following. This is what you can find with a quality provider <G> =========================================================== MUNICH, March 28 (Reuters) - German car maker BMW AG <BMWG.DE> said on Tuesday it should complete its pullout from loss-making British subsidiary Rover within eight weeks after ploughing nearly $4.5 billion into it over the last six years. BMW said this month's preliminary agreement to transfer Rover Cars to UK venture capital group Alchemy Partners remained the only deal on the table despite hopes in Britain of a rescue by an established car company. "We expect the transfer of Rover Cars to Alchemy in six to eight weeks," Chief Financial Officer Helmut Panke told a news conference. BMW abruptly decided to pull the plug on Rover, threatening thousands of British jobs, as mounting losses at the subsidiary made the fiercely independent BMW the subject of takeover speculation. BMW's sales will shrink by around 417,000 vehicles from 1.18 million in 1999 as a result of getting rid of Rover and selling its four-wheel-drive Land Rover unit to Ford Motor Co <<A HREF="aol://4785:F">F.N</A>>. The Bavarian group said it planned to fill the gap left by Rover with a new range of BMW brand cars ranked below its popular 3-Series, but remained tight-lipped about where and when it will manufacture its new generation of mass-market cars. Hungary's Economics Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy said on Monday that BMW had talked with his government about potential investment in Hungary. Matolcsy said he and Prime Minister Viktor Orban would visit BMW's offices in early April, but a BMW spokesman on Tuesday said talks on investment in Hungary were not on the agenda. END OF A COSTLY EXPERIMENT Germany's third largest car maker, which bought Rover in 1994 from British Aerospace <BA.L> for 800 million pounds ($1.27 billion) in an attempt to join the global league, said its new motto was "small is beautiful." After pumping altogether nine billion marks ($4.46 billion) into Rover, dubbed "the English Patient" by the German media, BMW was eager to signal to investors that it was strong enough to thrive despite the loss of output. "I don't believe that counting cars like counting beans is a criterion for independence," BMW Chairman Joachim Milberg said. He said BMW was determined to remain independent, and that its slimmed-down operations were sizeable enough with a turnover of 28 billion euros last year, excluding Rover, and 34.4 billion for the group with Rover sales. Ford, General Motors <<A HREF="aol://4785:GM">GM.N</A>> and Volkswagen <VOWG.F> are all eager to snap up BMW, according to industry experts. But the Quandt family, a controlling BMW shareholder with a 48 percent stake, has insisted it has no plans to sell out or end the company's eight-and-a-half decades of independence. Illustrating its strong position, BMW said sales of own-brand cars jumped by eight percent to 197,000 units in the first quarter. In stark contrast, Rover's output slipped seven percent to 55,000 units. Land Rover, BMW's most valuable British possession, posted a four percent increase in sales to 45,000 vehicles. The Munich-based car industry icon said its result would improve this year, after a one-off provision of 3.15 billion euros for Rover took the group 2.5 billion euros ($2.42 billion) into the red in 1999. BMW has blamed the strong pound, hurting Rover's exports, and Britain's indecision about joining the single European currency for tipping the balance in favour of pulling out. BMW reiterated Ford was the only bidder for Land Rover and said the $3 billion sale should be sealed by mid-year. Ford's arch rival General Motors <GM.N> has not ruled out a counter bid but Milberg said no sign of interest had yet been received. BMW also hinted it was not giving up on the fast-growing segment of the market, saying it might develop an entire range of sports utility vehicles around its X5 vehicle. "I would not like to preclude the possibility, to put it in somewhat reserved terms, that the X5 might well become the father of an entire model series," Milberg said. Shares in BMW vere volatile throughout the day as enthusiasm about the company's determination to map out a new future was undermined by profit-taking. The stock traded flat at 32.55 eurs at 1445 GMT. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:29:18 -0800 From: John Edward Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [uuc] Re:The new ML55 AMG > I got an invitation in the mail to go check out the new Mercedes SUV - > ML55 AMG. > They are going to be running it at Soldier Field, where you get to drive > it, professional drivers take you on a "hot lap", drag race it against a > Porsche Boxster. The competition will include the Toyota Land Cruiser, > Lexus RX300, and the BMW X5 (OBMWC). The mailing said these other > models will be there for "demonstrations and friendly > competition...we're not worried though." > They say they are going to have "two high-speed tracks, a rigorous > off-road course and three Mercedes-Benz SUV models to choose from." They had one of those events out here (Alameda NAS) a couple weeks back. First, you sit through a tedious 15-minute presentation about how there are no salespeople around, etc. but the pitch still comes off like a pitch. Then, if you didn't meander out into the ML55-drive line during the non-sales pitch, you find that the line is already so long that you'll never get a chance to drive the truck in the hour or so allotted to your group. So...listen to the pitch while standing in the you-drive ML55 line. Then after you've done your lap, go get in the they-drive line. They have the trucks fitted out with a bunch of video equipment and will give you a 30-second or so videotape of your lap at the end. At Alameda the they-drive course was long enough to see 110-115mph before braking for a 90-deg left. The whole event was more structured than the Lexus and GM ride-and-drives I've done (haven't done a UDE yet, that's next month) - too much so, they signed up far too many people for the number of vehicles they had on hand. As for the truck itself - while they had an X5, as well as a couple RX300s etc. on hand for static displays, they had nothing other than the M-class trucks available for driving. How does the ML55 feel? The interior's light-years better than the earlier M-class vehicles (some ways I like it better than the somewhat lumpy X5 dash), the engine is a work of art, the transmission works very well, it's got a whole lot of grip, but the steering is still truck-slow and the brakes (while huge) have a surprisingly long pedal travel. Haven't yet driven an X5, can't provide comparative info (yet) - signed up for the X5 UDE on 4/16. John. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 14:16:45 -0800 From: "Michael Lesser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [uuc] Slotted Rotors I have a set of these (ATE Pwer Discs) on my 88 M5 and they work very well. They replaced the stock M5 discs up front, and so far they have solved the warpage problem. They were stock from a 7 series. Good luck, Michael Lesser 88 M5 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 17:47:20 -0500 From: Phil Marx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [uuc] Re: More on the 2 series At 5:24 PM -0500 3/28/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Due to AOL, the following. This is what you can find with a quality provider=20 ><<G> Thanks. =20 All Apples come with the preloaded Excite home page which is modifiable for any topic including personally configured daily news searches.=20 Here's one my search page sent to me. (Hope AOL can read html within an email? Or do I need to change this stuff over when I send it to you?) - -Phil <bold><fontfamily><param>Arial</param><bigger><bigger>FOCUS-VW says not eyeing BMW</bigger></bigger></fontfamily></bold><bigger><italic><fontfamily><param>= Times</param>Updated 10:27 AM ET March 23, 2000</fontfamily></italic><fontfamily><param>Times</param><bold>Current quotes </bold></fontfamily></bigger><fontfamily><param>Times</param>(delayed 20 mins.)=20 <color><param>0000,0000,CCCC</param><bigger>GM </bigger></color><bigger><bold>83 </bold></bigger><bold>15<bigger>/</bigger>16=20 </bold><color><param>FFFF,0000,0000</param><bigger>-1 </bigger>1<bigger>/</bigger>16 </color><bigger>(-1.25%)=20 <color><param>0000,0000,CCCC</param>F </color><bold>44 </bold></bigger><bold>1<bigger>/</bigger>2=20 </bold><color><param>0000,9999,0000</param>5<bigger>/</bigger>16 </color><bigger>(0.71%) By Paul Gallagher <bigger>WOLFSBURG, Germany, March 23 (Reuters) - Europe's biggest car maker Volkswagen AG on Thursday put an end to speculation it would launch a takeover bid for rival BMW AG and said it would strive to raise 2000 profits by at least 10 percent. The German group said it expected substantial earnings growth this year with the help of billions of marks from unspecified cost savings. Chief Financial Officer Bruno Adelt said 10 percent profit growth would be a minimum, 20 percent even more probable and 30 percent desirable. The group's 1999 net profit tumbled 26 percent to 1.65 billion marks ($814.4 million) after a record 2.24 billion marks in 1998. VW, widely tipped as a front-runner to launch a takeover bid for BMW by trying to buy out the 48 percent BMW stake held by the billionaire Quandt dynasty, said it had nothing to gain from a takeover of the Bavarian luxury car maker. "We are certainly better off alone," VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech said at the company's annual earnings news conference at its headquarters in Wolfsburg. But Piech hinted that VW remained interested in acquiring Swedish truck maker Scania to flesh out its commercial vehicles division. VW -- which has nine key brands including VW, Seat, Skoda an Audi -- said it expected to break even in Latin America this year. Volkswagen took a big hit in its 1999 earnings due to weak sales in the region. Analysts said VW would benefit from a turnaround in its key Brazilian market. "There has to be a turnaround in Brazil. They should see an improvement in earnings of at least 10 percent," HypoVereinsbank AG auto analyst Georg Stuerzer said. At 1512 GMT, VW shares were up 1.34 percent at 44.59 euros compared to a 0.93 percent drop in the DAX bluechip index. Last month they dropped to a three-year low after the company's weaker-than-expected 1999 results. VW attributed the decline to Latin America and a heavy tax burden. VW HINTS IT IS EYEING SCANIA, NOT BMW BMW, which last week jettisoned its loss-making UK Rover cars subsidiary and sold off its four-wheel drive Land Rover division, has said repeatedly it is not for sale. But industry experts believe it is vulnerable to a takeover as the industry consolidates. Across the Atlantic the world's top two car makers <color><param>0000,0000,CCCC</param>General Motors Corp</color> and <color><param>0000,0000,CCCC</param>Ford Motor Co</color> are also believed to be eyeing BMW. VW hinted on Thursday that it remained interested in acquiring Swedish truckmaker Scania after the EU scuppered the Scandinavian group's merger with arch-rival Volvo. The German company has been pursuing an alliance with a major truck maker for almost two years. "After the European Commission refused to allow the merger of Volvo and Scania to go ahead, Volkswagen is being considered as a potential purchaser of Scania," Piech said. "Volkswagen intends to expand its commercial vehicle division in the future, either through its own efforts or by taking over of a suitable company, but only if the economics are right," he added. VW makes cars, transporters and vans but not heavy or medium-sized trucks. Piech said Volkswagen was not in talks with BMW or British aero-engines maker Rolls-Royce Plc about acquiring permanent rights to the Rolls-Royce luxury car brand. VW passes on brand ownership to BMW in 2003. "We don't need any further luxury brands even if there are some available," Piech said. ($1-2.026 German Mark)=20 </bigger></bigger></fontfamily> ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 16:17:43 -0600 From: "Ned Coonen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [uuc] Re:E28 M5 shop visit....opinions? Sounds like it's almost a parts car to me. If the interior and body are as beat as you say and beyond restoration, it might be time to harvest the drivetrain. The S38 motor - even after 175 large - is worth saving. Consider getting a compression and blowdown test done and putting it up for sale. There's my $0.02...ned. '98 M3 '88 M5 - ----- Original Message ----- > Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 12:59:03 -0500 > From: "Cagann, Alexander" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [uuc] E28 M5 shop visit....opinions? > > OK, my friend has an 88M5 with 175 grand on it. It is beaten up pretty > nicely. The other day, a coolant hose broke, the engine overheated a bit, > and it went in to the shop. Apparently the engine is ok, but while in the > shop the mechanic found the following list of items that need work <<snippage>> ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 18:26:39 -0500 (EST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Hart) Subject: [uuc] 328ic/M3 Does anyone know whether I can put 17 inch wheels on my convertible with the existing sport package..the BMW wheels catalog states recommendation of M suspension components being used. I wouldnt mind adding a stress bar, but what are the possible negative effects of using the larger tires on my car? I noticed that 17 inch wheels are included on tire inflation sticker on drivers door. Also, isn't there some way to get more low end grunt out of my car? I need better immediate power and torque than what is stock, and I would rather steer clear of aftermarket chips and that lot of rubbish in the 5000+rev range. I've been told a different final drive might do it, but will this really decrease my 0-60 times? I wonder about the effect of a 2.74 ratio-as far as higher revs at 60mph, does a limited slip screw up traction control?...I don't want a GTI effect, just looking for immediate push back in my seat, rather than that gradually creeping power band. Thanks, John ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 15:28:28 -0800 From: Chris Chong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [uuc] <E28>Hard starting when cold Hello all, I guess you can tell by the subject, what kind of trouble I'm having. I have to crank the engine for about 7 to 10 secs every morning before she turn over. However, when warm, she starts quickly. I note a slight smell of fuel inside the car after the hard start. I figure it can be one of two things. Either the Cold Start Valve or the Thermo-time switch. Trouble is I don't have a voltage meter so I can't check the electricals. I know it's pretty easy to replace either, but what do you guys figure?.... anybody with experience?.... which part is it most likely to be? Thanks, Chris C p/s I replaced all four brake rotors recently with Brembo OEM ones. Sure feels good to be able to stop properly now. - -- '83 528e Bavarian Auto Club of Vancouver Island member #2137 http://members.home.net/iphoto/index.html ------------------------------ End of [uucdigest] V3 #525 ************************** _________________________________________ | Please visit these UUC-approved BMW parts vendors/service providers: | (listed alphabetically) | Bonneville Motorwerks . http://www.bonnevillemotorwerks.com | Circle Tire Co. 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