So I kept the car as it was for some time, and just enjoyed most of the summer with the panoramic roof (coming from a convertible, this was great and really brightens up the interior and makes it feel spacious) and the sound of the straight 6 with induction and exhaust accents.
The first change that came about was a minor one, with the dice valve dust caps being pinched by some little scrotes, but it was no loss, as I was going to replace them anyway and I ended up getting an anodised aluminium set. A word of warning to anyone using metal valve caps, be sure to lubricate them liberally with grease or vaseline or such like to stop them fusing the valves!
The next mod that came about was a wheel change. I originally was not 100% on the black rims, though they did grow on me over time and definitely looked much better in person that the pictures suggest. I have always been a fan of OEM+ modding, and as such was a big fan of the M359 style rims that the 1M and M3 Competition ran. Alas, as fate would have it, I ended up with a cracked rear rim due to pothole damage or such like over the winter, and a replacement rim was no longer available as this design was out of production. I ended up contacting Chris at CM Wheels, and ordered a set of M359 Style wheels, in hyper silver. Service from Chris was excellent, and has always been that way even after the sale in terms of product support and customer service. Big thanks to him.
I got the new rims fitted, and got the car back on the road.
All was well, and I enjoyed the car some more until the next strike of the dreaded BMW gong sounded:
I had the yellow warning intermittently for some time, but it was not possible to replicate the issue in a surefire way. Eventually though, I got the red error and the car would not start. I ended up getting it recovered and brought back to my house. I looked into the issue online, and was worried as I read tales of full steering column replacements etc. Lucky for me, I had recently discovered a very good local specialist, BR Cartronics in Merry Lees, Leicester. I got the car on a recovery truck and took it over to them. Within two minutes of arriving, and whilst still on the back of the truck, the mechanics had the lock disengaged via the plug in diagnostics tool. The owner of the garage said it would take them a few days to look into it, and would let me know. He said not to worry about the steering column just yet, there are many avenues to explore. Turns out he was right, and the fault was traced to a defective Intelligent Battery Sensor (IBS) that was causing the battery to run down and no charge sufficiently, eventually causing system faults as there was not enough power to run all the checks. Boosting the batter did not solve it either. Anyway, hats off to him, as for a fraction of the cost I was dreading the problem was solved. Back to happy motoring.