It's all fun fun fun...

[bernd]

The story so far:
As predicted by @the Nefyn cat I went on a bit of a spending spree.
£149.14 at Eurocarparts for water pump, thermostat, drive belt, air filter, oil filter, oil and spark plugs
£17.99 at Amazon for a replacement fake m-sport gear knob (the old one was falling apart and not properly attached anymore)
£27.50 at Halfords for a headlight restoration kit
£52.78 at BMW Reading for an air intake rubber boot. As usual excellent service from their parts department, sourcing a part for a car that's not been in production for 20 years in less than 2 hours and for less money than I would have payed on eBay.

The air leak from the further deteriorating rubber boot made the car pretty much undriveable yesterday, so while I was waiting for the part to arrive, I cleaned the MAF sensor and throttle body, re-attached the throttle cable properly and fitted the new boot. All is well now. It's still not fast obviously, but it revs nice and smooth now.

I've also attacked the car with a pressure washer and I'm pleased to report that it's completely watertight. Phew! (I did read on the forum how to adjust the adjust the roof catches and did that before I got everything wet) It also seems to be remarkably solid, apart from a little surface corrosion on the underside and on the metal bar in front of the radiator, there doesn't seem to be any rust at all. However, as it turns out, there's a different make of tyre on each wheel rather than 2 pairs as I initially thought, so it's not really surprising that it doesn't handle quite as sharply as one would expect from a BMW sports car. (Adding a set of tyres to my shopping list)

I'm almost certain that the exhaust is blowing somewhere, surely it is not meant to be this noisy. I will have to do some investigating. On that note I wonder if there is someone within a reasonable distance of Reading who has got a lift or ramps or an inspection pit I could use for half an hour or so to have a look underneath without messing about with trolley jacks and axle stands. That would be absolutely brilliant...

Another surprise was finding out, by applying a microfibre cloth and soapy water, that the steering wheel stitching is in M colours and not black as I initially thought. (That's actually disgusting!). I will need to do something about the brushed aluminium centre console and the tatty Pioneer radio. I'd quite like an OEM radio, but I guess they're not easy to come by. Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

And finally, if anybody is still reading all the way down here, I will take some more pictures, but I was too busy today to get it running again and not it's gone too cloudy to take pictures. Watch this space...

 

[the Nefyn cat]

Well, you can't say I didn't warn you. By the time you've got the big bag of bushes, discs, pads, dampers.................

 

[bernd]

I thought so too. I did have a good look at the front suspension at least and that all looks good. Bushes look solid, no play anywhere. This means of course that I'm highly suspicious, waiting for some horror to reveal itself, although it seems increasingly unlikely that there's anything seriously wrong with the car.
Today I got rid of the horrid aftermarket radio

and replaced it with this Blaupunkt head unit

It's got Bluetooth for streaming music from my phone and it almost looks like it's OEM. Sounds good too...

The plan for tomorrow is to put it up on stands and find out where the exhaust leak is. Hopefully that will sort out the intermittent P0170 Fuel trim Bank one fault code. It threw a check engine light twice after I've been driving on the motorway for a while and then stop at a set of lights. It may be a dodgy MAF sensor of course. According to the date stamp that is still the original one. Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated. At the moment I have only got a generic OBD2 reader because my other half has changed the password on his spare laptop but can't remember what it is, so no INPA until he figured out how to unlock it. Hurrah!

 

[DomiMik]

Well done mate, I have exactly the same Blaupunkt radio installed in my Z3. As you say, for a reasonable price it looks very OEM and sounds nice.
The only thing I did additionally was to change the display colour into orange using a vinyl wrap.

 

[bernd]

Nice one mate! That looks great. Was your display VW blue? (It looks like it in the picture) Because mine is black and white, so it’s not too bad as the buttons are all red anyway…

I see you’re listening to SWR3. Excellent!
Wirsing!

 

[bernd]

We found not one but two exhaust leaks today. The double clamp that holds the back and front parts of the exhaust together was in the wrong place, so we pulled that apart, cleaned and reassembled it with some gun gum, so that should be fine. Secondly, right in front of the lambda sensor where the two pipes are joined, the weld had a whole in it. Again we put some gun gum and a flexible metal bandage on that. Fingers crossed! I'll see how long that lasts. But that should also sort out the fuel trim issues I suppose.
Of course, while the car was up on stands, I was too busy actually doing things to remember to take pictures, but here is one of the car in the garage when we were finished.

 

[t-tony]

You will probably find the best fix for a pin hole in a weld is "Weld".

Tony.

 

[DomiMik]

Nice one mate! That looks great. Was your display VW blue? (It looks like it in the picture) Because mine is black and white, so it’s not too bad as the buttons are all red anyway…

I see you’re listening to SWR3. Excellent!
Wirsing!

I didn't know that SWR3 was that popular in the UK

My display was black and white too, my smartphone made it appear blue on the picture.

 

[bernd]

The last couple of weeks have been absolute mayhem at work with lots of people catching Covid at the same time (Hurrah!) so nothing has happened to the Z3 until today. And then lots of things have happened today. This morning I had 4 new tyres fitted and the wheel alignment done which has had quite a dramatic effect. I mean I know that having a different tyre on each wheel would mess up handling, but I didn't expect it to make such a massive difference. It drives so much better already and I haven't even touched any suspension components yet. (I probably will though in the not too distant future). The exhaust bodge job seems to holding up so far, but I reckon a replacement is on the cards sooner rather than later as well...
This afternoon, because a 20 year old car inevitably comes with 20 years worth of other people's accumulated dirt, I did a thorough "spring-clean". At the exact moment I thought that the roof had dried out nicely after washing it and picked up the roof protector spray-bottle, this happened:

AAAAARRGGHHH £$&*&^$ BIRD!!!
Anyway, I did finish eventually, and look how shiny it is:

 

[t-tony]

Looking good! My car got straffed on Wednesday too but I have to admit a hard top cleans more easily than fabric. Could've been worse though, the roof could've been down.

Tony.

 

[bernd]

Urgh! Don't even go there mate. I've binned one or two hats because of that... I suppose in some way it wasn't too bad, because the bucket and cleaning mitt etc were already out and ready to go, but still...
Also, I've just come back from a little night time blast around Berkshire, and I'm still grinning. Firstly because driving around with the roof down during a clear night with a nearly full moon is really good fun, but mostly because the little car is just absolutely bloody brilliant, it was just comprehensively ruined by those stupid tyres...
I also don't really understand why everybody seems to hate the M43 engine so much. Yes, it's not very fast, but I'm a 44 year old fat guy, so that's fair enough really. Also means, that I'm not gonna scare myself half to death accidentally. And I'm 100% with James May on this one, It's definitely more fun to drive a slow car fast than to drive a fast car slowly.

 

[t-tony]

Late night runs home from our daughters about 15 miles away in the summer (late June) usually ends with me getting home with my hair alive with midges etc. And it makes no difference whether it was a 2.0 Z3, a 3.0 Z4 either, the bugs don't care.. But, I'm still smiling! Especially if I beat the Mrs. home.

Tony.

 

[bernd]

I think I can safely say that I won't have that particular problem. Lol

 

[Z Victor 1]

Totally agree @bernd, when I had a Z3 like yours I enjoyed it just as much as the more powerful ones I had. Around the lanes it was perfect and it performed just as well on the motorway. It was only really on hills that I wanted the extra bhp.

 

[bernd]

@Z Victor 1 Absolutely. Yes, sometimes, e.g doing 40 in 3rd gear and putting my foot down I have been thinking I’d like a bit more power, but 95% of the time it’s perfectly fine.
And then there’s the question of affordability. Sure, money no object, I’d like a topaz blue Z3M coupe please. Thank you very much. But that’s no reason to say AVOID the 1.9 engine…

 

[Synclare]

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[bernd]

Yes. That’s definitely another point in favour of the 1.9 engine. There’s lots of space around it in the engine bay, so it’s easy to work on. It is also possible, by being deliberately stupid coming out of a roundabout, to cause the asc light to flicker, in the dry, on a brand new set of tyres. (I know, I tried it…)
In other news, a bit of a motorway blast, not surprisingly, did it for my exhaust bodge-repair. So I’ve ordered a replacement, used off eBay. See how that goes.
And: Shutting the door earlier today, the door handle came off the door card. Hurrah!

it looks like at some point someone tried to take the door card off and instead of unscrewing it broke the plastic bit instead and just glued it back together.
So I’ve taken the door card off, glued the handle with Mitre Bond onto the door card and then screwed it onto the door card from the back with self tapping screws from the back.

That should hold it in place, hopefully…
During all this, I somehow lost the plastic trim piece around the door handle. So if anybody has got one going spare, I’d be eternally grateful…

 

[spurs fan in a coupe]

During all this, I somehow lost the plastic trim piece around the door handle. So if anybody has got one going spare, I’d be eternally grateful

Ping me your address, I’ll pop one in the post

 

[bernd]

More progress to report:

The replacement exhaust arrived in the post last week Thursday.

So on Saturday, I had a go at replacing it. Unfortunately I couldn't use the neighbour's garage so had to do it on the drive. Of course I didn't remember to take pictures. Well, I took one:

It was absolutely infuriating. At some point, inevitably, the exhaust bracket that attaches to the back of the gearbox had rusted through and instead of getting a new one, someone had just welded what's left of it on the exhaust. By the time I found that out, the BMW parts department was about to close, so as a temporary fix, I used a generic clamp from Halfords and the remains of the BMW clamp to hold the exhaust in place. I'm planning to swap it for a proper one when I do the front wishbones and tie rod links (that's next on the list).
I also really hurt my back lying on the concrete under the car, wrestling with the exhaust. So it was Heat Rub, Ibuprofen and lots of whingeing for me for the last few days.
As I was tidying up, already guy with a van stopped and asked if I was dumping the exhaust. I had half heartedly tried to remove the lambda sensors from the old exhaust, but they were seized solid and I had the car running already and all appeared to be well with the sensors that came with the exhaust. Therefore matey-boy took the old exhaust with the sensors still attached. I shouldn't have been surprised when next time I started the car, the check engine light came on and:

Dodgy Lambda sensor. Hurrah! There goes another £75 to Eurocarparts for a Bosch replacement. I've swapped that today and all is well now. I did a few pre road trip checks today, e.g. figured out how to remove the spare wheel and put some air in the tyre. It's so very rusty though that I will put a can of tyre-weld in the boot too, just in case. I was quite surprised that it appears to have used no oil whatsoever in the 1000 miles or so I have driven during the last month. (Another point scored for the 1.9 engine) And I've ordered a First Aid kit and breathalyser off Amazon. So I'm all set for driving to Germany on Saturday.

In other news, I appear to have accidentally gate-crashed a classic car event on Sunday afternoon and I had my picture taken while driving round a bend and smirking...

 

[Synclare]

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