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rr_ww View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Birds, Uxbridge
    Posted: 27-November-2005 at 11:52
Still going or have they actually closed down?

Same goes for Phil Crouch of "CPC" that used to work from the same site. Their website still runs but hasnt been updated since Feb 05.

Any ideas?
Rich.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-November-2005 at 12:27
The Dec 2006 Issue of BMW Car has an advert for them.

The name has changed to Kevin Bird Garages. Same website www.birdsauto.com & phone number is 01895 810850
Kevin
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'08 E61 535d Touring (TorqueMeister Towbarge)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-November-2005 at 12:30
Cheers Kevin. I tried phoning them a while back and got no answer.

Will try again tomorrow morning
Rich.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-November-2005 at 12:36
Thorney - This guy is in the same premises, he would know!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-November-2005 at 12:49
Thorney used to be somewhere else. Amersham I think.

Is Uxbridge due to become an E30 mecca
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-November-2005 at 14:18
Originally posted by rr_ww rr_ww wrote:

Thorney used to be somewhere else. Amersham I think.

Is Uxbridge due to become an E30 mecca


That'll be good if it is, just down the road from me

Thorney is and was out that way, but needed premises to assist with installing his motorsport stuff and testing Milltek exhausts for new models and probably work on his VX220 thingy!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-November-2005 at 14:30
Reading the performance mods for the E30 they claim to be able to be able to reprogram the ECU using the OBD port. I didn't know we had one of those? Probably a typo.
Kevin
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-November-2005 at 13:47

Birds are very much around and active, the Phil from CPC is no longer there, although he used to do some great trimming work.

Birds 01895 810850

Always a few interesting cars lurking in their workshop!

Owned original Sport Evo when new...couldn't resist buying another one 15 years later!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-December-2005 at 09:55
Phils still working out of the Birds garage but is an independant. Shortly moving to Milton Keynes I believe.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-December-2005 at 18:09

FWIW I have only used Birds once and found them to be quite dissapointing.

When i first got my e36 evo it had a tendency to feel flat when the oil was at operating temperature. Given the various vanos horror stories I was expecting to fork out £2k to get everything done.

Based on reputation I dropped the car off at Birds to ask for a diagnosis. Feedback included a recommendation to tighten the steering adjustment (thanks but unlikely to solve it and not cheap at £80!) and a recommendation for a ~£500 spend to  investigate the problem by stripping the vanos down and checking it had been installed correctly by the dealer that had replaced it only a few years ago. Note that the initial inspection was around £60 (which I paid) from memory.

Normally I'm not scared to throw money at my cars to keep them running perfectly but this time I hesitated and decided to ponder the decision to go ahead. I was entertaining the idea of cams and tuning btw.

Lifting the bonnet a couple of days later and checking the oil level I discovered that it was MASSIVELY overfilled. Imagine the previous owner had filled it up before sale. Hmmm. Vanos, oil, oil pressure? I drained some of the oil from the sump and got it back to a reasonable level.

Problem solved! 1 Year later vanos is fine, car pulls perfectly and not a drop of oil is consumed between services.

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't check the oil myself (serviced all my own cars in the past and rebuilt engines ffs!) but I would have thought that a BMW specialist would have...

Just realised that this post has not asked for feedback and I've just made a totally random rant.

Rant over, I'll get my coat...

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-December-2005 at 10:14
Originally posted by M3Booboo M3Booboo wrote:

Birds are very much around and active, the Phil from CPC is no longer there, although he used to do some great trimming work.

Birds 01895 810850

Always a few interesting cars lurking in their workshop!

Hi people, thought I ought to post, to let members know what I am doing. I , Phil crouch, do operate from  Bird's workshop, but I am completely independant from them. I operate a BMW  specialist service, working on all BMW's, predominantly M and Alpina. 

My company is called CPC auto services. I am also the technical director of Thorney Motorsport, working closely with John on all things VX V*****ll, as well as BMW.

If anyone wishes to contact me for advice or a chat, PM me or call 01895 252288/ 07960 280953

This is not meant as a huge plug, but to hopefully clear up any confusion between myself & Bird's. 

 

Cheers for now

 

 

Phil Crouch

'01 M5
'02 MB C220 Turbosmoker
'99 323i (sold )
'89 M3 220hp with shrick 284's
'73 2002 cab   

it's an Illness ......
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-December-2005 at 10:41
Originally posted by breeze breeze wrote:

Just realised that this post has not asked for feedback and I've just made a totally random rant.


Rant over, I'll get my coat...




Feedback is always useful. Especially for the newer users of this site.


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-December-2005 at 13:14
Originally posted by kevin kevin wrote:

Reading the performance mods for the E30 they claim to be able to be able to reprogram the ECU using the OBD port. I didn't know we had one of those? Probably a typo.


Sod it...I knew I missed something. Ta, it will be changed.

Yep, Birds went under and Kevin has re-started it as Kevin Bird Garages, same place and broadly same people. We (Thorney Motorsport) share the same premises where we tune Vauxhalls and more importantly hatch plans for BWM tuning in the UK. BMW is a sector we've been working on for almost 3 years now and to bolster this process we asked Phil of CPC to join us as Technical Director - Phil heads up the development on all our new BMW tuning. Why Phil? Simple we couldn't find anyone else who knew more about BMW's - just what we needed.

Some people may have noticed the TMS banner on the home page here - well we're now supporting the BMW CC as technical support for all the Better Driving Days - ie full mechanical support for all members all for FREE.

Of course we want you to come to us for tuning and servicing but by supporting you you get to see what we're like and how we do things which we obviously think is the best. We run our own M5 and M3 CSL as development cars and run 4 cars in the Milltek SPort BMW Challenge E30 BMW race series.

I've been keeping quiet for the last few weeks whilst we finalise plans for the BMW tuning (some of which has been 3 years in development) and some offers for members. For example we will soon be announcing a discounted rate for all BMW CC members.

Anyhoo, enough of this, this thread was about Birds and yes they still exist but are entirely separate from Phil and TMS.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-December-2005 at 14:00
Well the cars going in next week to have some work carried out via Birds.

If its good, I shall say. If it's not. You'll hear about it too.
Rich.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-December-2005 at 08:49

 

ah mr crouch I see

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-December-2005 at 14:42

 

          Ah nirvana ! a BMW and Vauxhall tuner under the one roof

   I tried ringing Phil to explore what tuning options  CPC/ TMS offer for my '94 cavalier 1.7 td (isuzu naughty lump) but alas no answer on either of his numbers !

Profit is more reasonable than justice.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-December-2005 at 02:33

At least my Jap engined Luton chariot runs on all 4 unlike your White Stuttgart Battleship which only runs on 4 1/2  eh ?????

I have to drive something to keep the miles down on the M5

 

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-December-2005 at 14:37
Well they carried out the work. So here's my review.

Gearbox Selector Seal.

Happy enough with the seal for now, they said the casing is damaged, (and of course unavailiable) so they've tried to smooth it off a little and fit a new seal. A kind of "hope for the best fix" They kept me updated on this, so thats OK. Basically, a while back the seal started to pass out fluid and Munichs "apparently" replaced it and refilled the gearbox. Around the time it was leaking it became hard to get into 1st gear (see new thread above) ans after they'd fixed it. It was fine again, going into 1st perfectly. It then started to baulk into 1st and examination showed the seal to be leaking again. Despite Birds renewing this seal and it now NOT leaking, its still baulikng into 1st. Not Birds fault really, but it doesn mean I will have to re-visit Munichs in the near future.

Regarding the linkage they replaced the parts numbers:
7,10,13,14,15,18



There's still some side to side movement in the shifter, its much better than it used to be, but once again got the "they all do that" We checked another E30 that was sitting around (red car) and that had the slightly more play, but I was told that still had the original shifter and not the 1.9 Z3 item like mine does. They didnt actually tell me, how old that linkage was. So my guess is NOT brand new, so its hardly a fair comparison!

I wish they had changed 1,4 and 12. I didn't find out till afterwards that they didn't. (Though I guess that partly my fault for just saying "elimate all the free play in the gear selector linkage" and not specifying which parts I think should of been changed! I would of happily paid for them, but they said "we don't normally bother" Which is fine if there was NO play at all left, but there is, and Im irritated.

I would of done it myself, but it's a propshaft down job and I didn't fancy spending 6 hours on my back in the cold under my car on axle stands.

Hindsight eh?

Edited by rr_ww
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-December-2005 at 07:17
Originally posted by 286bhp 286bhp wrote:

I have to drive something to keep
the miles down on the M5


 



Yes Car Credit don't like high milers when they get
Repo'd.

Technical Director? Does that mean you know which
end of the broom to use?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-December-2005 at 19:13

 

Quote

Technical Director? Does that mean you know which
end of the broom to use?


Yes....but he's now allowed to use it without supervision


Edited by Thorney
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