New Year. New Focus.

With the car now being a year old (to me), I've come to realise I'm much lazier than I anticipated. That or I had studies/exams take up too much of my time. I think for my best interests, I'll put it down to studying.

Well with all of that out of the way, I've begun to get the final pieces all sorted before the car is on the road, starting with a new set of wheels. The main reason for this, as probably said previously is both my Alpina Softlines and BMW 108's are too heavy. To add to that, both sets need spacing to clear either the struts or rear of the car.

Enter the new wheels, not as wide as I'd like, but for the price and all other things considered, they're on and they work well.

Following the wheels being on, it was time to get rid of that awfully high ride height. It was purely there to get the Softlines to fit. In the infamous words of Moog and Marty from Mighty Car Mods..."first jack up your car!"




Now we're beginning to get somewhere it seems!



Though probably not all that useful, I ended up getting some of the missing trim for the front bumper. One of the brake ducts was missing on the driver's side as was the arch lining. To save cleaning up the bay on a regular basis, I sourced the necessary parts and bolted them back (in some cases, with the aid of some trusty cable ties!)

Next on the list is to tackle the noisy power steering pump. After having swapped out the fluid last year, I have a feeling that it has an inevitable from a clamp that needs adjusting. Thankfully I've some spare hose clamps, so a bit of scrubbing, new clamps, and new fluid should solve that issue. If not, a new rack, with an electric pump will probably go in. The general consensus is that certain z3/e46 racks do speed up the steering, not that I'm an expert driver or anything, but if it's going to be replaced, might as well upgrade.

With a bit of luck, the car should be insured by the end of the week, and will be booked in for its MOT at some point next week. All providing a new steering wheel comes before then!

Once the car is on the road, I will probably concentrate on sourcing a 328i exhaust. Not that the current setup is bad, but there is some power to be extracted from the additional flow offered by a true dual pipe setup. In my insanity, I'm lusting over a centre exit on top of that. Depending on what bits I'm able to find, it may be a possibility.