Hard to believe its been 18 months since the last update on the showroom threads and some of the updates will be duplicated between threads, so please bear with me.. Time really has flown by and it has been a massive period of change for me personally, from a new job, to a new home in another province and the biggest blessing of all, a new addition to the family.. Not another car, as many may think but rather a baby boy that is already taking up all my time and attention (rightly so!).
Shortly after my return from Jhb to do the induction and collect my peripherals for the new job, I picked up that the ballast on the driver’s side was working intermittently and that meant the car was pretty much unusable at night. I called around and the ballast was prohibitively expensive, second hand wasn’t an option as there is no guarantee it will last. Got in touch with Jabsport and had this sorted by changing both ballasts to his own brand. Whilst I was there, my arm was twisted for a set of LED fogs – bright as hell (or is it heaven in this case).
Having met the mileage milestone on the way down, a service was due and I got around to doing it with my brother at my parent’s place. Completed a full service including a coolant flush as this was last changed when I overhauled the cooling system way back when. At the same time I also fitted a new ignition switch as the car had a tendency to not switch off after short distances, I could remove the key and it would throw all sorts of warning lights on the dash but not switch off. Having done some research, it could have been one of a few issues and the cheapest place to start was the switch. Thankfully this solved the issue and my only gripe is I didn’t go OEM (as this was part of troubleshooting), the feel of the ignition is different now and I prefer the old feel.
As I said in my previous update, I thought I was done with the car but the one thing I always wanted was a set of M wheels to compliment the rest of the Mtech 1.5 conversion. Knowing full well that the wide and narrow set I wanted would not work, I had left this by the whey side and that was the reason I refurbished the old wheels in shadow chrome and called it a day. Fast forward to December 2021 and @Riaad’s old set had come up for sale by the new owner, called him and managed to strike a deal. Wheels were packed up in a trailer and delivered to me by the owner as he was coming down to the coast for a family holiday. Wasted no time and had them fitted immediately at my parent’s place. This was my gift to the car for reaching (almost) 20 years of existence, that’s my rationale for buying them anyway.
A glaring issue that popped up when I changed the wheels was the fact that my red calipers were peeling where stones had made their mark and it looked pretty unsightly.. Decided a refresh was in order after nearly 5 years and proceeded to TWR to have this sorted in February, went with the same red as I liked the contrast. Also managed to do a whole 2k in the 12 months that followed, garage queen much (more on this).
I had a new OEM battery fitted some time back in 2020 and this gave out in March 2022, I still had a some of the warranty left and made a claim with BMW a few months later. They had to keep the car to run some tests and were happy that the battery was the issue, this was promptly replaced with a new one at the dealer at their cost. One of the reasons I prefer to go OEM, if I can help it.
I had planned to move with the family to my new place in June of this year and that meant I needed to get 2 cars up to Jhb before then. I treated the car to a valet and machine polish at Blak as the interior had developed some mildew having been parked off for a while due to the battery issue and I wasn’t keen to drive 5 hours breathing in mildew. Some pics after the valet:
I once again enlisted the help of my brother to pick a car to drive up and guess which one he chose.. No matter though, I thoroughly enjoyed the 30i and we had some fun on the way up with a few good cars, which made for an interesting trip.
Back to the garage queen moniker, I finally have my own garage for the cars and I couldn’t be happier. During the renovation stage of the property, I had additional plug points installed to accommodate the trickle chargers I so desperately needed. Part of the reason the batteries in both cars kept running down, as I only drove them once or twice a month when time permitted.
Also received a hell of a lot of love for the E46 in Jhb, even had 2 security guys at a centre flag me down so they could ogle the car and make an offer.
That brings the 30i showroom thread up to date and another service will be due in a few months at 275k.. Thanks for following.
