It has been pretty quiet in my garage for a while. In a way that's good - nothing is breaking! But it's so weird and boring not doing much of anything with cars. I replaced some suspension parts on my Mom's Camry a couple weeks ago and detailed it, and that has been it.
The E90 has been amazing in a lot of ways. I think I got a really good one. When I've been working hard and my low back starts to get tired/sore, just sitting in the BMW for a little while is such relief. The seats are glorious, really. Like I've mentioned before there are so many cool features of this car that makes me not want to be without them in future daily drivers. In that way BMW has me hooked. It's extremely competent and smart. (Not marketing-speak "smart.") I really like the color combo.
Overall, though, it seems to be too boring. For the first time in my life I'm driving an anonymous car that isn't really an enthusiast choice. My instinct is to wave or thumbs up another sports car or interesting car on the road, but now I hold back, feeling like an imposter since nobody can tell I'm in the manual sport package RWD version. It's like it's too subtle. It's not a vanity thing, it's more like that experience of being an enthusiast every day is missing for me now. This leads me to thoughts of a different BMW (I know, already ). The E9x M3 is the obvious choice and although they're getting cheaper (mid to high 20s for a ZCP) they're not a wise financial reality for me. The 135i might fill that gap, and some of them are not terribly expensive, but an N55-powered one would be my choice and those are a bit more ($14k perhaps). I'm not ready to buy anything, just thinking about the future. The 135i is still missing LSD, crucially, but at least would be more fun on the street. My 328i feels a little bit too heavy, and the 1-series isn't that much lighter but every bit should help. On the downside I'd give up a little bit of luxury inside with the 1-series.
Looks like I never posted about the new struts here. The fronts were stubborn (the springs were wound so strangely that I had to take them to a shop to compress them and put them on the new struts) but worth it in the end. The ride is *much* more controlled and I no longer feel that much lateral movement over bumps. It's firmer without being harsh, a great thing. The old dead struts were so soft the car just wallowed around like a 70s Cadillac. I went ahead and pulled out the alignment pins at the same time to get that extra 0.3* (or whatever it is) of negative camber. Because of that and the higher front ride height from the new not-collapsed front strut mounts, the car needs an alignment. I hadn't planned on going very far for a while this spring so I put that off to wait for the new strut mounts to settle a little bit. Now of course I don't want to take it to a shop for obvious reasons. Good times.