Ay oop. I'm Jack. I'm 27, keen musician, budding mechanic and pathological tinkerer. 

Just bought my first BMW, and despite the usual bugs that come with most used cars I'm very much enjoying the experience. First priority is a service which will be undertaken at the weekend. Buying it was a bit of a snap decision. I previously had a Ford Mondeo ST TDCI estate and the clutch took a sudden turn for the worse, necessitating its replacement just three days before Christmas. Got into a bit of a panic and took to Auto trader with a pathetic budget (Christmas almost cleaned my wife and I out), whereupon I found my 3 series being sold from a dealership I was familiar with. Picked it up the following day, traded in my Mondeo and that was that. The transition from diesel to petrol has been a bit of a lurch, but the car has proven itself a worthy successor and I'm very pleased with it. 

It has a number of minor faults which I will soon endeavour to fix, I hope, with the help of all of you guys. 

Morning Jack

Welcome to the Forum

I hope you and your family have had a peaceful Christmas and the New Year will bring stress free.motoring.

Nice looking 3 series if you are a DIY man with your cars here are some sites that will help www.realoem.com  this is a BMW parts site but there are small drawings which will give clues as to where things are, more important it will make sure if you are buying spares you buy the right one for your model. Just put the last 7 digits of your vin into the search box it will bring up your car. Next is www.newtis.info a BMW technical information site with "how too's" the same information used by Dealers. I don't know if or what if any diagnostic gear you have but to sort many issues with a BMW diagnostic's will take away a lot of guess work and pain. I use BMW 1.4.0 loaded on an old laptop that I keep just for diagnostics cost about a tenner from that well known auction site but there are others out there Carly for BMW as an example can be downloaded as an App for your phone though I don't know how it works with older models like ours.

Enjoy your new to you BMW

Dave

Thanks Dave. 

Christmas was certainly a lot easier and less stressful with a reliable car! It's been very dependable so far. To date, I've done a service, added an aftermarket stereo and replaced most of the bulbs with LEDs. Still got a few issues to address, but I'll post them in another more appropriate thread. 

Likewise, I hope you and yours, and everyone else here had a pleasant holiday period! To sign off, here's a snap of my sidelights that I recently colour-coded.