What have you done to your car today?

Shiny. Ignore the scrape on the bumper caused by the garage door :mad:
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Couple of days ago I noticed only one of the tail lights on the wife's X3 was working but there were no dash errors. Took a look at it and realised it had LED rear lights so I couldn't do anything as there is no bulb to change. I expected to have to pay about £100 for a used light cluster, but upon further inspection I saw that the LED driver board on each light was removable and given that it's uncommon for an LED itself to die I thought I'd try swapping left and right driver boards around. The light then worked which proved it was the board at fault and a replacement pair was only about £12 so I ordered those.



I then discovered that there's actually 4 tail lights - 1 on each side of the car and 2 in the boot lid - and 3 of the 4 weren't working which is crazy. I did some further research and found a forum post with someone saying to just reflow the solder on the R750 resistor:



I dug the soldering iron out, took the old solder off and replaced it with some fresh solder and amazingly the light worked again. Repeated it for the other 2 boards and did the same on the working board for good measure and now I have all 4 lights working again. Was quite chuffed for the £100 fix to go down to £12 but fixing all lights for free was even better.
 
Fitted his and hers harnesses today in readiness for our first Ring trip of the year next week.

Got to look like a hero on the school run!

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Also fitted some aero parts for a 4RS. I'm sure that will see the BTG times tumbling :D

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Fitted a bigger meth tank and low level warning light on the dash. 3rd tank i've fitted, should have just gone for the big one in the 1st place
 
I (reluctantly) dropped the missus off at East Midlands at 4am Sunday morning.....it's only a 5 minute drive so ffs can't she just get a taxi and let me sleep......anyway.

Anyway I just realised I didn't pay the £5 charge, so it's going to have cost £100.

Obviously the system is designed to generate penalty charges. Thieving ****ing scum.
 
Redline is 8200rpm, I tend to shift at up to 6500 though as that keeps in-line with the expanded torque band from the remap (19Nm more torque from 5500rpm and 20HP more from 6500-8200) and the resonance where the ITBs and induction noise are at the best sounding burble zone. After 6500rpm it's mostly exhaust you hear and a higher resonance induction which sounds good but not as intoxicating as in the lower range.

E: Basically 6000-6500 is the sweet spot for sound, speed and gearing on such a road.
 
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The way carbon airboxes make M cars sound makes me wonder how they would make regular cooking BMW's sound. :p
 
If they have ITBs then there'll be a noticeable difference tbh, otherwise if single throttle body and a turbo? The soul has already been sucked out :D
 
mrk said:
If they have ITBs then there'll be a noticeable difference tbh, otherwise if single throttle body and a turbo? The soul has already been sucked out :D
Click to expand...

I was thinking single throttle body and no turbo, I'm not familiar with those weird modern ones. :p
 
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