Featured Website: RealOEM.com

For the second in the Featured Website series of posts, I've picked a real heavy hitter, RealOEM.com.

If you haven't heard of RealOEM, you in for a treat. As an owner of a BMW group product, this has to occupy your number one slot in your browser's favourites tab. It is the most useful resource for BMWs by a long shot, I can only dream of a site like it for my Audi S5.

RealOEM describes itself as a site that "...can be used to look up BMW part numbers and approximate part prices."

After clicking here to enter, you're greeted with a few options on how you'd like to search.

You can use the last 7 digits of your VIN, a specific part number or all parts associated with your model from a specific build date.

For no other reason than I'm too lazy to remember my VIN, I tend to use the latter option, which is what I've used in the example below.

Once you've picked your model, you're greeted with a bunch of subcategories.

Clicking on any of them will bring up all the schematics associated with that subcategory. Below, I've chosen the turbo charger, a page I became very familiar with after needing to replace my turbo's...

Along with a labelled schematic, you get a table of parts, with added information such as; part number, fitted quantity, rough indication of cost in $ and if applicable, when the parts were in service. If you click on the numbers on the schematic, it highlights the row in the table that corresponds, in the screen grab above I've selected part 1, which turns the table row red.

Most of my time on RealOEM has been looking for the parts and part numbers relating to a certain fix I was carrying out at the time, such as when I replaced the valve cover gasket, but I also used it to find optional extras that I didn't have, i.e. features I could retrofit, the perfect example of this is when I fitted the cup holders to my E46 330d.

The icing on the cake for RealOEM is that some parts have a photo too, which is incredibly useful in helping to confirm you're ordering the correct part and identifying the part in the depths of your engine bay.

I've (unfortunately) spent hours on RealOEM over the years, but it could have been a whole lot more time researching if it didn't exist and for that I'm very grateful.

Let me know in the comments below if RealOEM has ever saved your bacon, are there any other websites you think can top it?

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New Goodyear Tyres and Four Wheel Alignment

I knew my rear tyres were getting towards the limit, so I fired up camskill's website to check what the damage on two new ones was going to be.

To start with I searched for Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2's, after having such a good experience when fitting them to my E46 330d. Their grip was supreme in the dry and wet, and the longevity was superb, easily hitting 14k miles on the rear.

However, they'd now been superseded by the Asymmetric 3's.

Comparing the Asymmetric 2 with the 3's showed that Goodyear had made some notable improvements: fuel efficiency, moving up two categories from E to C, and road noise dropping one dB from 70 to 69, whilst maintaining an A rated wet grip. Although only 1dB improvement, don't assume that's a small amount as the decibel scale is logarithmic.

At the time, 2x 255/30 R19's were coming in around the £320 mark posted. To save the hassle of waiting in for them to be delivered, I went down to SelectaTyre and asked them if they could match camskill's price. When they first quoted £400+ I wasn't hopeful, but all credit to them, they got the price down to near enough £350 including fitting. 

Just to make sure he wasn't ordering the wrong size etc. he went out and checked my current tyres, clearly more thoroughly than I did as he came back in and said "did you know you're through to the wire on the inside edges?"

Ah, better book me in for four wheel alignment as well then.

To be honest, alignment was something I'd wanted to get done anyway, again after having such positive results on my E46 330d.

SelectaTyre's system is great too, it gives a full readout of before and after showing the tolerance zones of each adjustment; toe, thrust, camber and castor. As you can see in the print out below, the car was way off at the back.

All in, the tyres, fitting and four wheel alignment came to £447.48. Rather more expensive than I'd hoped, but what a difference it has made to the car. I wasn't completely satisfied with the way the car had been turning into corners but now it was pin point accurate. The level of grip that was now available transformed the way the car moved round corners, feeling planted throughout.

I cannot recommend getting four wheel alignment carried out enough, even if you don't think there is a problem, get it checked. It's free to have it checked at SelectaTyre too, so no excuses!

Let me know what you think below, have you experienced a massive improvement after having alignment corrected? Got any horror stories of poor alignment eating your tyres?

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