Exploding plastic is what usually kills the e46's cooling system. I’ve not had it happen yet, but I’ve been told it can be quite dramatic. I have an all-metal expansion tank to install the next time I do an overhaul and I’m really considering going with an all-metal radiator as well.

You shouldn’t have ended up at $1500 in parts. Last time I did mine it was $300-400 for OE/OEM parts, $500-600 if you replace all the hoses as well. $1500 is what you spend if you do everything with BMW branded parts.

I think that falls under #1 “how dangerous will a breakdown be?”

at first it was water pump, but they revised the part(twice. rev 1 had a plastic impeller that fell apart, rev 2 had a metal impeller that weighed too much and ate the bearing, rev 3 has a composite impeller that does not get eaten or weigh too much) and the newest one is pretty bullet proof. The current method of…

there are 3 functions. You forgot “how much damage can this cause if it breaks?”

It’s not just that it’s the largest BMW plant in the world. They actually make so many cars that it makes BMW the #1 vehicle exporter in the US by value. That one plant makes up roughly 15% of the US vehicle export market.

I never said I’ve not made mistakes, I certainly have. What I haven’t done is make any obvious mistakes that cost me my life. These people aren’t being killed because they walked away from a running car sitting in a garage. Had they done that they simply would have come back to a stinky garage with a non-running car…

I never really bonded with my e36 328is. I loved the e30 I owned before that and it was love at first drive on the ZHP I got after the e36, but I was never really enamored with the e36. I think a large part of it was the PO was a hack mechanic in every sense of the word, so working on the car was always a pandora’s…

Aside from remote start, the cars with proximity keys that I’ve used shut off after ~5 minutes or so of the keys not being in the car. If the car keeps running indefinitely in the absence of the keys, thats a programming failure on the part of the manufacturer, not an intrinsic fault of the keys.

Let me rework that for a civic with proximity keys:

Came here to say this. Glad someone beat me to it. This is the definition of Darwin at work. Someone that forgot to turn their car off because it’s keyless would also have forgotten to turn it off if there was a key. Having or not having a physical key is not an obvious reminder that the car is turned on. The fact…

then those tires weren’t balanced. A tire can be out of balance but seem OK at certain speeds. If it is truly balanced it will be smooth at all speeds. What you are experiencing is a tire that is only a little out and you hit the resonant frequency of something in your suspension at the speeds where it was shaking…

That’s the base Fly Fishing box that lacks the waterproofed rayskin liner with an inlaid Black Rhino handle monogrammed with the letter of your choice.

you missed the

E46’s are pretty nice to work on. Things are laid out in a logical manner, bolts are typically accessible and there’s isn’t a huge variation in bolt sizes. Admittedly you will need a male and female torx set plus a set of Allen key sockets. Beyond that it’s a pretty easy car to work on. I’ve only gotten frustrated…

the bodywork they put back was weighed down in order to make the car heavy enough to hit the minimum weight when it got back to the pits.

The thing is that the M60B30 has the bore spacing to be up to at least 4.9L(it shares it’s basic block layout with the M62 and S62). Building one out would essentially end up with a 4.9L V8.

The torque reserve is done at the engine level, it closes the bypass valves on the supercharger then uses fuel and spark cuts to keep the revs down so it has a pressurized intake tract at zero load.

you basically can’t have a full cage without needing to wear a helmet. I’ve seen a few cases where they managed to hide the cage inside the A pillar, but I don’t think that’s possible for a Bug. Assuming you aren’t planning on racing it, you might be able to get away with a partial cage that doesn’t run up past the…

Most states actually require that you use the 3-point as installed by the manufacturer. It may be possible for you to get ticketed for no seatbelt because you were only wearing a 4/5-point harness, you may have to wear both. It’s kinda goofy, but understandable, as the state has no idea if you’ve properly mounted your…