My trim has a crack around one of the buttons too. You should grab it anyways and try to repair it. Those are valuable and if you plan to install the impla trim the silver comsole will look out of place. Did you take the shifter knob and or trim?

Now that... is a score. :thumbup:

I did take the shifter knob. I was surprised the cup holder roller cover on the console wasn't broken. Hopefully the stuff I left isn't worked over this week and will still be there Saturday. I had the rear flares on my strip list but ran out of time. I already have style 87s on my 4.4. Might as well add the flares. Looks like I'll need to find the 4.6/4.8 spare if I install the bigger calipers

I was disappointed it didn't have running boards or a factory tow hitch. That really would have been a jackpot. It did have the rear load floor. Someone had already messed with it, and I didn't think it'd give me that much utility.

Score of the freakin' year.

That's for sure!

Drove it... and I cannot believe how much better it is after replacing the power steering pressure hose.

And I don't mean the steering.... :rolleyes:

While I had the engine acoustic cover off to replace the PS pressure hose, I noticed the EGR had significant oily blow-by on the outside of it. I removed the charge hose that runs up from the intercooler and cleaned the seals, the charge pipe and the EGR body etc.

(Not my image - you can see the blow-by on the EGR body at the bottom right... mine was worse.)

https://www.pieseauto.ro/poze/motor-...-0-0-0-0-0.jpg

After reconnecting the charge pipe to the EGR, I realsied that it was sitting better and appeared to be fitting correctly. It seems that it wasn't sitting quite right when I removed it.

And.... I've got my low-end boost back. :thumbup:

TBH, I hadn't really noticed it was gone, except the car seemed a bit flat under 1,500rpm and I was starting to think the turbo boost control pressure converter was on the way out or the VGT vanes in the turbo were getting clogged/jammed. It wasn't bad enough to make me go looking but I guess it was noticable.

Anywho... it's so much nicer to drive around town with all the low-end boost as it should be.

I installed a Bosch rebuilt alternator on my 4.6 motor. 10 minute job with new bolts, bit of dielectric grease around the pre-installed water jacket seal and a drop of blue threadlocker on the M6 bolts. I couldn't find a torque value anywhere for those bolts, which seemed odd, so I turned them to about 15 or 20nm with my crappy torque wrench.

Backorder parts and long shipping times are really slowing me down on my engine build. I have some time off in early December that I'm planning on doing the engine swap during, assuming the rest of my parts come in.

I did get a huge box of hoses in, but I'm waiting on a dipstick tube, one hydraulic belt tensioner (the AC came fully assembled, including the bracket, but no tensioner or bracket on my "refresh" kit on the water pump side), a second CCV valve (first was broken from ECS/Turner) and a bunch of bolts and a ton of misc fasteners. I'm still trying to decide if I want to spring for a "new" LUK steering pump, or try to find somewhere to rebuild the pump from the 4.4.

Since I'm in a holding pattern for parts I decided to fully build the long runner intake I bought on ebay. I cleaned and painted (flat black) the intake and ordered a used fuel rail complete with injectors from an ebay seller I've been using. It will be drop shipped to Injector RX in Houston who will clean and test the injectors, and fully clean the rail so I can paint or powder coat it flat black too. I expect to have to buy an injector or two, but hopefully the majority of them will be good and I can save $60+/ each.

I bought some black stainless nuts and bolts to mount the rail and intake as my goal is to leave the cover off the motor. The secondary air pump delete and perhaps some re-routing of other vacuum lines should make for a nice clean look with the flat black intake and rail.

Tried to grease the handle cable's because drivers door seemed to freeze when it was -10c few days ago... We will see if it helps or is it the lock itself that freezes.

What did you do to / for your E53 today??
 

Yikes [mention]Henn28 [/mention], spec is probably 8-11 N·m for 6mm bolt into aluminum. It's 14 into steel.

Lucky you didn't strip them out it's a common occurrence. BMW has "baseline" torque values by size of fastener and location you can Google to find that in the future if can't find the exact fastener.

From newtis I found what seems to be M8 screws with spec of 21 N·m which if you were just off on the bolt size you did a fine guess on the torque.