2009 E89 Z4 35i Black to white build

[Osiris]

Update time again. I know its engine related again but I am on a role here to get this thing to look mint! Besides I just think the N54 engine is such a beautiful piece of machinery to look at!

So the plastics in the engine bay were driving me completely nuts, the airbox cover in particular was a bad one for me. and when I got a quote for a new one I almost fell over! +-R5700 then the ram air intake cover was around 2k or something. So obviously another plan needed to be made.

So here are the before and after shots.

So this is the state it was in.

some sanding with 1200grit sand paper. (got a helper to sand for me :fencelook

after the sanding, didn't want to sand it to a point of where I loose the texture of the plastic, just to the point of where you can no longer feel the scratches.

Before

used pratly putty steel as a filler for the very deep scratches and then sanded it down.

After all of this I sprayed with medical alcohol and wiped it down and then sprayed it with Dupli-color Vinyl (American spelling)

once sprayed I was left with a bit of a rough surface due to bad spray painting skills probably. :dunnoanymore:
I then used a dishwashing sponge rough side to get rid of that rough finish and then wiped down with a microfiber towel which left me with a very smooth surface that looked OEM!

After the Z run I got back home and took a trip to builders warehouse and bought some meguiars plastic and rubber trim restorer and wiped the parts down and that really brought them to life.

And this is the finished product.

Engine bay is almost there now. Few more little things I want to take care of.

 

[Osiris]

Next update. This is an interesting one lol

Anyways so Wednesday night I decided to try tackle a problem that has been bugging me for a while, my steering wheel makes a weird buzzing/squealing sound when I turn it when the car is stationary or I'm turning into a parking etc.
I tried spraying WD40 in behind the steering wheel before to no avail so last night I unplugged the battery and decided to see how this steering wheel comes off and see if I can find the problem.

So after struggling for around half an hour to 45 mins I finally figured out the trick to releasing the air bag!

And its off!

So I was fiddling around and then this happened :dunnoanymore::thumbdo::blueCry:

So I had no idea WTF this was or how the hell to put this alien puzzle back together and after hours and hours and hours of fiddling I ended up doing some damage. I think I actually shed a tear or two! as I had no idea what this was or how to fix it and more importantly how expensive it is going to be to fix and how the hell I'm even going to get my car to someone who can fix this! I really started to panic!

So I left the garage and went into my house and tried to relax and calm down and think! I finally came to the conclusion that this is just a carrier signal wire for the controls on the steering wheel and the air bag. This helped me relax. I initially thought it was the mechanism that controls the tension of the steering wheel when you flip the car into sports mode.
:skit:

Upon figuring this out I ripped out the clear ribbon that I just couldn't get back inside which left me with just two actual ribbon wires that I tried for another couple of hours to wrap around this wheel mechanism to no avail, I started to panic again but kept calming myself down to try and do it slowly and carefully till I finally got it right and put it all back inside.

Now keep in mind that I had no idea that this thing had a special certain amount of rotations in each direction, plus it was very late the sun was coming out and I needed a car for work so I put it all back together and switched the car on being very wary of the air bag popping on me from doing something incorrectly!

Everything seemed fine! I then turned the steering wheel all the way to the left and that was fine! And then I turned it to the right.....FML is all I have to say :dunnoanymore:.....There were actually no words to describe the pain and suffering I was feeling at that point in time, honestly I really just wanted a magical time machine to manifest itself into my garage and port me back to yesterday lol! FFS

So yea I broke the plastic locking pin that keeps this unit in place and manage to twist the one ribbon infront of the other and flip it. Needless to say it was a catastrophic failure.

Anyways I tried to fix it and when I pulled the thing apart it didn't look good. Anyways long story short I managed to twist the cables back the right way round and I managed to break the front plastic retaining bracket and and and.
I did put it all back together and started the car and the air bag didn't explode in my face and crack my face in half. so that was the silver lining. Have to always be positive haha :lol:

Anyways nothing on the steering wheel worked after that, no paddle shift, no multi-function controls, no nothing! :blueCry: how I didn't get an air bag light is still a mystery to me I wont lie.

So I woke up and phoned BMW and that was just funny so I left that idea to rest and phoned a scrap yard that I know had a z4 they were stripping and sent the guy some photos and to my surprise he had this part for me! so I went to fetch it.

By the way the part is called a Coil spring Cartridge.

So here is my Repair procedure after collecting the part I needed.

Before I continue I need to state why this thing came apart and was making a noise.
It was apparent that it had been taken apart before and all the ribbon was just stuffed inside incorrectly, the wire ones were correct but the clear ribbon that holds everything in place correctly was stuffed in and crinkled to the max and full of some dirty grease and you could see repair work was done to it which I will show you guys shortly.

Here is the new Unit that I bought this morning!

steering wheel removed and you can clearly see the cracked front retainer bracket that I managed to break!

The locking mechanism that I broke...FML

Make sure you pull the steering column all the way forward using the adjusting lever so that you can get to the back to unclip the plastic steering column surround.

Start unclipping the steering column surround.

place screwdriver in the back now and gently twist, it doesn't take much force at all, be careful not to damage the plastic.

---

And the top part is off!

Place a screwdriver under the metal plate in the diagram to pry the bottom cover loose.

View from the bottom.

And bam its off, easy as that!

Start removing all 4 Torx screws as per the pics.

Get something to support the top cover to make accessing these torx screws and clips easier

Start prying all the clips loose after removal of the torx screws.

Here is an exaggerated example of where the clips are, I didn't care to brake this clip as im removing this piece of junk anyways.

A view of the mechanism without the covers.

Removal complete, there was a wire plug that needed to be removed I forgot to photograph that, its very east to see and you will know which one it is upon removal.

And the new part is on.

Right assembly is the reverse of the assembly but here is the unit fitted and covers all back on

And......

Here is the offending part that made me question life!! :dunnoanymore::skit::thumbdo:

The locking pin rocker that I broke...FML again.

And here you can see the previous repair work that was done to this thing.

Anyways its all back together and working great. However the sound is still there when I turn so I need to ask BMW what that is when I take it to them next week.


On other news, while at the scrap yard fetching this new part I asked the guys to look in my bonet and listen to where the knocking sound was coming from that I hear and feel when I move my steering wheel left or right. They checked and upon first views they thought it was the universal joint, the next guy came and looked and noticed that the steering rack was loose.

It appeared that when BMW fitted my new turbos they forgot to tighten the steering rack! the one bolt was almost completely out, a few more drives and it would have fallen out completely.
Anyways they tightened everything up and all I can say is WOW. In all the time I have had this car its never felt so incredibly stable to drive and sold. It no longer pulls left and right and I no longer have to fight with it to go straight!

Furthermore it no longer makes knocking sounds when I go over speed bumps or hit small bumps in the road or driveways etc. its just PERFECT!

 

[Osiris]

Update!

So I finally found the EFFING source of my squeaky/squealing steering wheel!

I always thought it was coming from the plastics of the steering wheel where it joins onto the steering hub/column thing, hence why I bust the Coil Spring cartridge trying to find the source.
I could swear the sound sounded like it was coming from just behind the steering wheel and after all the shit I just went through in the above post I still had the damn squeak/squeal!

So I scoured the internet and found one vid of a guy who said if your steering wheel is making a noise then try this. So I tried it.

Need to remove this

and this little plastic piece of shit is the source of all this effing drama I just went through FFS!

I greased this thing up with copper paste and BAM! Steering wheel is as quite as a mouse!

Replacing the Coil Spring cartridge did make the steering wheel feel a bit better and was also noisy as the coiled up ribbons inside were stuffed but the squeal was driving me nuts! It's actually embarrassing when someone gets in your car and you start to pull out of a parking or something and you hear this fonked up steering wheel :skit:


On another note, I always had a bit of a rattle coming from my car when I started the car, it was this initial metallic sound, I always thought that oil was maybe too thick and not getting to the engine parts quick enough when the engine cranked over to start so I have been scouring the internet for months and months researching oils to try find a good brand 0w -30 or 0w -40 to give optimum lubrication on start up.

Well this past week the rattle got worse and while the car was idling or I was driving slowly I could hear it every now and then. I've actually always heard it but it wasn't bad. Well it turned out to be a flipping loose bolt just behind my right exhaust tip just behind the bumper that has something to do with the actuator mount or something. will take pics tomorrow and upload. Tightened it and problem solved!

Two tiny stupid things that caused so much flipping drama!

 

[Osiris]

So these last few weeks have been very interesting and frustrating.

Ever since I got my car back from BMW it had this strange coolant leak, I always thought it was just the radiator as my radiator had a small leak...Well as you all know I changed that recently.

While changing the radiator while I was under the car I saw coolant leaking from a pipe above the downpipes out the turbo. Well BMW recently replaced the turbos so it was something they needed to deal with.
I took the car to BMW two weeks ago and it turned into a horror story as usual. They stuffed up and wont take responsibility and tried to make me replace 5 pipes at 8k and then 10k labour plus 2.5k assesment fee so 20.5k in total.

Anyways not going to go into it all as its a long story but I took the car away from them and refused to pay a cent and took the car to Afzil and he sorted the car out for me. Turned out to be a damn Oring that BMW pinched while fitting the coolant pipe to the back turbo. R60 part!!

BMW Lied about allot of stuff and I have opened a case against them via BMW SA. Tired of these people trying to take me and other people for a ride.
They even lied about changing my oil when they replaced my turbos. It turned out that they only topped it up!

Anyways here is the part they screwed up causing the leak. :dunnoanymore:

Anyways onto more pleasant awesome stuff that makes me happy :smilebounce:

So here is the charge pipe before spray and prepped for spraying. I don't like bling under my bonnet!

Primer applied....Rust-Oleum:

Then sprayed with textured Rust-Oleum paint, looking awesome! :smilebounce:

Afzil fitted my bigger intercooler and this charge pipe for me after fixing the coolant leak! I haven't taken pics of the charge pipe in the car yet but damn this HKS BOV sounds so flipping awsome!

So after finding out that BMW didn't actually change my oil like they told me I decided I definitely need to change out my oil ASAP so I am doing a deep flush.

I first put 1L ATF fluid in the engine and drove to my trusty car wash where I get to use the lift. This lift is getting well used by me. regular chassis cleaning sessions, finding the old mechanic's stuff ups! and now an oil change!

So I drained the oil and this is the mess that came out! No metal filings or anything. Just damn dirty oil.

I bought two bottles of this stuff for now. so I filled up with this stuff which is apparently pretty good oil, at the end of this week I will drain this from my car and fill up with the second bottle and another 1.5L and replace the oil filter and drive with that till the end of the month.

I will then drain that and then put Motul or mobil 1 0w-40 or liqui moly, still researching for now.

So I was working overtime this weekend and while taking a break decided to take some pics of the car after the oil change and wash that followed.

Anyways thanks for looking guys. More updates to follow soon.

 

[Osiris]

Some things have been happening on the car as of late.

Firstly I wanted a more permanent solution to the MHD monitoring app so I bought this little nifty cable.

I then started stripping panels off to start running this from the obd II port up to the vent where I can have the otg cable stick out right where the phone mounts.

Here was the procedure:

Screws to be removed:

screws out for under dash panel:

Next up bonnet lever removal so that I can remove this entire panel:

Panels all removed:

Panels that were taken ou, some funky cotton stuff that bmw puts in there:

OBD II extender cable connected and ready to route up to the vent:

Need to remove this panel:

Very easily removed by hand:

Panel off and light switch plug needs to be unplugged, Just pull the grey lever back and it comes right out.

Like so:

K-DCan Cable connected and coiled ready to pack into some small nifty space:

Air Vent removed and hole made using a dremel:

OTG cable pulled through and sealed nicely with 1 sided foam.

Cable where it needs to be:

Air vent put back and cable installed the way I want it.

All put back together and the outcome is a nice clean install, no more ugly K-DCan cable hanging all over the footwell and almost breaking the OBD II port cover each time you get in and out of the car.

---

Right next challenge:

While my car was at BMW two or three weeks ago dealing with the oring they damaged, they managed to break my coolant reservoir sensor, or at least that's what I thought they did so I went out and bought a new sensor and it still didn't work so last night I decided to find the problem after the OBD II port install.

It turned out that in all there awesomeness they managed to break the wire.

so here was my process of fixing it all.

Firstly due to the expansion tank being relocated to the other side of the car when I originally got the car the cable was extended and here it was:

Due to it being cable tied to the damn oil lines like an idiot the fekking plastic conduit protecting the wires started perishing.

So I removed all of this and found where bmw managed to break the wire:
I removed all the insulation tape and found one of these wires ripped.

Not much space to work here but I managed to cut off the bad ends and resolder them, it didn't look to great here of a soldering job but when I connected the wires I fixed that

New plug! stripping the ends and getting ready for nice neat soldering and heat shrink wrap.

Had to remove the expansion tank to have space to get to where the wires were broken.

Soldered and insulated and then further insulated with a large heat shrink wrap:

The old plug in all its glory :skit:

Everything was put back together and the system bled and new coolant added and low and behold I no longer get a low coolant warning :smilebounce: Aaaaand the engine bay looks that much neater again as I don't have funky conduit wrapped around my main oil lines.

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Alright so back to the deep oil flush:

So I bought another 12L of shell helix ultra, I have decided to stay with this oil due to it having good ratings all round and since I will be changing the oil quite regularly going with an oil that costs a grand a bottle almost is pointless, but lets see how this goes after a few months.

So I am not sure what the story is here but the results of 4 oil changes in the space of 4 weeks has somewhat annoyed me as I kept thinking the next change is going to be clean as how it comes out the bottle only to drain dirty oil each time.

So here goes:

I went and bought a liter of diesel to add to the oil to flush the system as allot of forums and vids I have watched have suggested this to help remove as much gunk from the engine as possible. Here is what the oil looked like. This is one week old oil!

I then filled the car up with 6.5L fresh shell helix ultra 5w-40 and went for a drive for around an hour or so and then drained that:

Looks black still!

But look at the screwdriver, so this is how it would look on a dipstick if our cars had one:
Notice how clean that look on the screwdriver but what the actual oil looks like: :skit:

I changed oil filters all 4 times!
I then filled up the 4th batch of oil and will now stick with this for the next 3000 - 4000km and then change again and I will stick to those intervals. I have an issue with dirty oil...I am OCD with oil. I think the oil is now very much clean as the oil draining out the car on the 3rd drain looked quite transparent as it was pouring unlike the last 3 times.

Car is feeling smoother and smoother after these changes.

---

Here is a nice comparison side by side, notice the sides of the container:

 

[Osiris]

Thanks guys.

So upon doing some further research I found out why the oil gets dirty so quickly.

"The blackness is due to tubocharging. When the engine has high levels of boost there is more blow-by of mixture past the rings which makes the oil dirty (turbocharging is equivalent to raising the compression ratio). Also the Gamma engine has low friction rings which means more blow-by. This is why oil should be changed more often in turbocharged engines because the oil gets contaminated with fuel."

Also found this comment on the N54 forum:

"Oil gets broken down fast in hot climates. And add an engine like the n54 with a tune it really does tear up the oil quickly. Your typical 40wt oil will get to 30wt really quick and so on. More fuel dilution equals smaller TBN number and a less weight oil. Smaller film of oil equals less proection. Next thing you know you have a low TBN and your oil does not protect anymore. 15k miles is just a disaster waiting to happen in any engine especially in the n54. Do a google search how many BMW engines have sludged up under 100k with the 15k bmw synthetic oil which is Castrol 5w-30. So if you are planning to keep your car and actually care about the health of your engine do a minimum of 7500 miles or less. I personally do 3000-3500 oil changes just because oil is cheap and because pushing to 440whp really does tear oil up. Mobil 1 0w-40 is less than $5 a quart at Walmart. Cheap insurance to keep your engine going strong."


Interesting stuff and it makes sense.

I will definitely be changing the oil very regularly. 3000 - 4000KM intervals and if it takes too long to do that mileage then 2000km.

 

[Osiris]

So Progress doesn't seem to stop

I decided to open the oil filter housing to see how the new oil is looking and I am very pleased with the results. The 4 oil changes definitely made a difference.

As I took the oil filter out I noticed golden drops of oil dripping off. This made me smile and here is a bit of oil I pulled out with a syringe to show you guys. I will probably change the oil out one more time at the end of Jan just to make sure its super clean, Its hyper OCD I know, All I know is that turbos will last longer and sludge wont be part of my cars vocabulary while in my care ever.

I then decided that my Alternator was looking crappy so I decided to attack it with my Dremel, I went through 3 wire polishing tips, but it looks much better. I also polished the oil filter housing a bit more as you can see.

On another note I wasn't completely happy with the one panel that I sprayed as I used pratly putty steel as a filler but you could see it through the paint as a smoother texture. So I removed it and sanded the scratches out and resprayed the panel.

Sanding down for paint prep.

And here is the final result. I am much happier with this result. The photo isn't the best. Lighting was a bit crap:

 

[Osiris]

So yesterday I had the unfortunate luck of the charge pipe blowing off from the throttle body inlet.

It appears the clamps were not on very nicely, they were too close to each other so it was clamping the charge pipe nicely but the second clamp was only just biting on the very edge of the throttle inlet.

anyways I managed to get home, car drives surprisingly well with no charge pipe :smilebounce: I feathered the throttle though but it drove fine.

Anyways while trying to put the charge pipe back on at home I found that the blow off valve was completely loose. To the point of almost falling off! I hate the way this HKS BOV uses a circlip and not a proper clamp like every other BOV out there in the world! makes it a mission to take off and put on.

anyways I pulled the entire charge pipe out the car and decided to respray it and also sprayed the BOV while I was at it just because I love the look of this black textured paint so much!

This stuff is brilliant and it holds up very well! It only came off where the charge pipe got scraped against metal parts during fitment. Otherwise it doesn't flake or peel.

Clamps fitted correctly now with good spacing, silicon coupling pushed all the way over the throttle body and clamped.
I am actually going to get some black silicone couplings as I hate this blue s**t in my car! for now it will have to do!

fitted nicely and new vacuum line fitted too.

Now incase I ever run into this problem again and im on a long drive out somewhere I have put this nice little toolkit together for myself with everything I would need to remove and refit every part including the circlips pliers.

got the bag with some liqui Moly my dad bought for his Subaru forrester.
It is lined at the bottom with valcro strips so it sits in my boot nice and snug with my tire repair kit.

Anyways letting the silicone under the BOV seat set before I let any boosting happen.
Hopefully all is good in the hood!

 

[Osiris]

So today I opened her up a little here and there to see if it was boosting properly and if the charge pipe is now holding correctly. I can say for sure that the dump is MUCH louder which means that it must have had a boost leak from the BOV being so loose due to the circlip.

If this happens again I will need to go find some new circlips and see if that helps or as a last resort ill get a piece of pipe welded onto the BOV itself that I can then clamp to the charge pipe.

Anyways on another note.
I always had a bit of a weird rattle coming from my exhaust. I found a loose bolt a few weeks or months back which I tightened which helped with a bad rattle which I spoke about recently but it still never got rid of the annoying sound on cold start up, it would be a metallic sound as I press engine start.
Anyways long story short it turned out to be the exhaust flap!

I did the golf T mod on the exhaust and bam annoying cold start sound gone! not only did it fix that it also took the rattle I would hear while driving in a built up area where the car sounds echoed off walls away. I always thought it was slight waste gate rattle.
The car pretty much purrs like my old E46 330i now. sounds much better with a much deeper low down tone on slow pull off and idle.

 

[Osiris]

I finally did the carbon clean on my car today at The Carbon Doctor.
Great service and The guy was nice enough to take me to work and fetch me to come collect my car.

The car is definitely idling better and quieter no doubt about it. Performance wise I can't comment as I haven't driven much other than from The carbon Doctor back to my work which was just traffic to the max. It does feel smoother and a bit more responsive.

I will let the pics do the talking. Lets just say that my car was very very long overdue to have this done!

These are the pics the carbon doctor sent back to me:

Before:

After:

I am hoping this betters my fuel consumption as well.

 

[Osiris]

Took the car for a drive down to Cape Town a week ago. Seriously an awesome car to do long drives in. Not cheap on fuel though :thumbdo:

Took a couple photos on my way there so thought I would share.

These N54 motors have some serious power down at the coast! that's all I can say but damn do they drink down there!

 

[Osiris]

When I got back to JHB I managed to get a set of Rims I have always loved on these E89's

Thanks to Arbie I did a trade for my rims for a set of his Style 326 rims.

I am very very happy with these rims. Love the look of these. My Calipers need a nice refresher of red paint now though haha

 

[Osiris]

Updates are coming very soon. My M-sport bumper has been fitted however its missing the two side mesh inserts and the oil cooler air duct and radiator air ducts so its not 100% yet. Those parts should arrive this week, unfortunately these things were back orders from Germany.

Pics will come up very soon.

For now here is a bit of a teaser:


Paint on the shock tower that was damaged from the single turbo in the past is now all fixed Looks like new!

This shock tower had a bad thumb sized scratch/rub in the paint from a bracket that was fitted to put the expansion tank on this side of the engine which Afzil rectified for me last year.

Finally here is a teaser of what the bumper is looking like so far.
The gaping is all wrong due to the radiator Air ducts that we didn't know were different on the M-sport bumper. I tried to see if there were differences on RealOem but at the time I wasn't able to find the correct section on realOEM, The bumper section doesn't show any of the ducting.

As you can see they also sprayed the kidney grills gloss black for me and not visible in this image but the mirrors were colour matched to the car and so they are no longer silver, which used to annoy me.

Once everything is fitted properly and all the parts arrived and car washed again I will take some nice pics and do a little video walk around the car.

 

[Osiris]

Some updates with the new bumper.
I also had the windscreen replaced as I had a nasty stone chip on the last one.

 

[Osiris]

So haven't posted any updates in a while here. So here is a big update. I have been very busy with the car lately.

First up I changed spark plugs. I found that one of the spark plugs was completely loose so there has been blow-by for a while it seems and a undetectable boost leak from that cylinder as its un-metered air.


so here you can see number 4 is black from carbon build up from the blow-by.

can see it here on the coil too.

other than that all the plugs were burning the correct colour.

The new plugs.

Added copper paste and torqued them all correctly according to spec.

Next up, I found that I had a dead vacuum solenoid, everytime I opened up I would get an over boost error and engine light would come on. Justin was kind enough to give me his old set to try out and if it worked out he was willing to give them to me. So I installed them and the over boost error went away but I was presented with another issue where car stopped making power and wouldn't meet boost target at all. I didn't know this was going on for a while till the one day I ran a log after checking everything else and found that the one solenoid was completely dead.

Replaced that and car now hits boost target on point and even a little over sometimes Car feels stronger than ever now.


Next up is a big one, I wanted to get this done for a while, my cars exhaust always sounded crap to me, like 2 3 cylinder bikes next to each other reving with a choo choo after the rev haha. So I did some research and checked out the design of a miltek full stainless steel system and took my car to get this replicated, the key to a good exhaust note on these cars is getting your exhaust gases to mix at some point in the system.

I also managed to find a stock pair of downpipes to fit as I wanted my exhaust as close to stock setup as possible which is what the miltek system tries to achieve however in stainless steel with mandrel bends. I also wanted to see if this would sort my high fuel consumption situation out as the o2 sensors have now stopped freaking out.

Here is the resulting sound:

 

[Osiris]

Next update: This is something I have wanted to do since I got the car.

Upgraded angel eyes, I did the whole xenon setup to power the rings before however the two rings were always different colours due to the inner ring not being a proper external perspex ring like the outer ring. So it was time...

Lights removed, I tried to open them myself as I have opened many lights, but BMW decided to give me the middle finger when designing the Z4 and decided to use a glue called Permaseal to seal these headlights so opening them up the conventional way using a heatgun and oven wasn't happening.
I sent the lights off the Violet electronics and they opened the lights for me and returned them to me the dame day.

I ordered this Butyl glue which is the standard glue bmw uses in most other models. "Z4 always has to be different!!!" I used this to reseal the headlights for easy opening next time.

lights opened.

The center ring I spoke about.

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The replacement halos!!! :smilebounce:

Outer ring, if only the smaller inner ring was the same!

And its out!

Mechenisim for lighting inner and outer ring, outer rin is lit by light bouncing off a little mirror inside this and the inner ring is lit from the light shining out like a torch giving a bottom of a beer bottle lighting effect.

Blacking out the chrome bits using high heat spray paint.

inner ring almost ready for spraying, I plasti-dipped this as its very smooth and wont be taking any heat.

Many many hours later and one light is done, allot of dremeling was required!

new setup next to old!

First test.

Indicator test.

Nice neat wiring!

Hazy dirty lens

good as new! This made a monumental difference in light output and aesthetics!

old next to new for comparison once closed.

fitted to the car.

closer to what the colour actually looks like. They are pure white!

some day time pics

Hope you guys like.

 

[Osiris]

 

[Osiris]

Ok Guys time for a ton of updates, maintenance and some cosmetic upgrades that I have been busy with over the last couple of months:

First off some general maintenance.
My car has always been a bit klangy and loose feeling, metalic knocking sounds and stuff when turning slowly into driveways and over speed bumps etc.

Well it turns out my control arms and engine mounts (Engine mounts in my turbo DIY thread) were loooooooong overdue to be replaced. so I decided to change upper and lower control arms, the entire control arms with the bushes.

New

one of the old ones:

and fitted:

So I had some issue with my rear brakes that kept wearing on the left side prematurely and then this happened:

So I organised new rear discs and pads:

Didn't take pics of the discs fitted unfortunately but they in and nice and shiney new and feel great!


Then this happened the one day. got back to my car in the parking lot and saw a nice puddle of oil:

These photos were taken after I moved my car to get the car ready for the flatbed to come collect:

Dropping my baby off at my house. Such a sad sight this was!

Jacked the car up to take a look at wtf was going on here:

Turns out the clowns that fitted my front msport bumper broke the oil cooler bracket and cable tied it back thinking id never notice So basically the broken bracket rubbed a hole into the oil cooler as you can see in the following pic to this:

Needless to say this caused a serious mess in my garage and engine bay.

Anyways: R7200 later for the new oem oil cooler and oil:

and here I installed it with the new bracket nicely:

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Right now for some cosmetic upgrades and fixes:

My rear left rim kept cracking, I had it fixed once and it lasted a few months and then cracks came back, So I paid Shaheen at the wheel shop a visit and he repaired them and I had him change the colour to a colour he calls hyper black.

Rim being cut and a stronger half welded on:

The finished product:

On the car being fitted:

I like the colour mostly, but some days I don't as I think they perhaps make the rims look a little smaller but ill see how I feel after a few more months.

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Love how this pic came out :smilebounce:

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[Osiris]

Time to sort out O2 sensor issues.
So the o2 sensors on this car have been a hassle for ages so I finally decided to tackle this on my own and so I came up with a plan.

First off here are some of the parts I bought first:

Let me just say that if you are in the market to buy o2 sensors DON'T buy this FAE KAK brand shit! it lasted a whole hour and then just started rising into the red making my car run lean and almost die, luckily I monitor my car like a hawk with either JB4 or MHD and saw this and ripped that #scrap out my nice car and replaced with the old black o2 sensor that wasn't giving me too much hassle in the first place.

Right now that that's cleared up onto the more interesting stuff. Apparently those lucky americans are able to change o2 sensors from the top due to not having a steering rack in the way, so I decided that I will show them up and do the south african make a plan way and do it with a steering rack in the way from the top, so I got my dremel out and cut this mofo in half! :smilebounce:

Low and behold I got this sucker out! :tiptoe:

Amazing what you can do when determination sets in and you already got it loose and can't stop now :biglol:

old vs new:

Getting them in, well that was another story, I struggled for hours as I should have put the opposite one in first then the other, oh well we live and we learn, now im pro at this shit and I get these things in and out in around 10 mins :smilebounce:

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Right onto my door, this drivers door always had this terrible rattle when closing it and opening it and I never really looked into why till the one day I was adamant on getting my doors to open and close nicely like I felt on another E89, so I started fiddling and I found out very quickly that the door wasn't really clipped on correctly. So I ordered these from bmw:

and then proceeded to strip my door panel off!

This what I found! far too few and all different colour's so my door panel was very loose!

Anyways now my door opens and closes beautifully, however I also adjusted the latch and greased it up, so my door feels very solid now.

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And now for one of my favorite upgrades to my car ever!

I FINALLY managed to find a msport steering wheel for my car! raise:

it was a little dirty and shiney so I will show how I fixed that and the result

These little miracle sponges

after cleaning but still wet

my old steering wheel state! :thumbdo:

old vs new!

and Fitted, gawd this made a HUGE difference to the feel of the car. for me personally the steering wheel is one of the most important parts as its how you engage with the car!

 

[Osiris]

So Now for the big transformation!..

And Bam she is White!!! the colour I always wanted but was too impatient to find a nice clean one in white in the first place.

More updates incoming! Those rims need to change colour they look horrendous in this crappy dark colour on a white car!