dimiras
Dedicated Member
One year ago I got a 1996 Z3 with the M43 1.8 engine with almost 160k km on the clock, the car was Imported from germany to Portugal (S.Miguel Azores) in 2007. When I test drove it looked fine and cared after, drived fine and I only noticed some cosmetic blemishes so I bought it. The car passed MOT with no issues the day I bought it (July 2018).
Here is a photo of it the week I bought it:
One week later the problems started, the clutch started acting up and I had to replace the slave cylinder.
I also noticed that no matter how hard I pushed the car the temperature was always on Cold, so I ordered a new thermostat and flushed the cooling system because the last owner used tap water
. After discovering that he used tap water I no longer trusted what we told me about the maintenance of the car so ordered new oil, new filters (fuel, engine and K&N air filter), new spark plugs, new water pump, new belt and rollers, new coolant hoses and flanges and replaced them all.
Here are some photos of the old fuel filter (production date 02.02.1996), like the last owner told me he only used genuine bmw parts in this car, the only problem is that these parts are there from factory
.
I also found this:
The new thermostat solved the temperature problem and I kept a look for the coolant level and it was losing some coolant after some days driving (this was my daily at the time), I kept adding coolant thinking it was air in the system and then found a leak on one of the heat exchange hoses and fixed the leak. The car continued losing collant so i kept it topped up and gave up on it for some time (later I found that it was leaking from the back of the head.
After some time driving the car everyday I was driving and a loud noise came from the back of the car (whine), got to a service center and the diff was leaking fluid and there was no more fluid in it, the service center topped it up so I could go home and park it on the garage waiting for the diff repair kit to arrive. Some weeks later I rebuilt the diff at home and the car was running again.At least I found that the car has an LSD. I'm not finding pictures of the process so I will add them later.
To be continued ...
Here is a photo of it the week I bought it:
One week later the problems started, the clutch started acting up and I had to replace the slave cylinder.
I also noticed that no matter how hard I pushed the car the temperature was always on Cold, so I ordered a new thermostat and flushed the cooling system because the last owner used tap water
. After discovering that he used tap water I no longer trusted what we told me about the maintenance of the car so ordered new oil, new filters (fuel, engine and K&N air filter), new spark plugs, new water pump, new belt and rollers, new coolant hoses and flanges and replaced them all.
Here are some photos of the old fuel filter (production date 02.02.1996), like the last owner told me he only used genuine bmw parts in this car, the only problem is that these parts are there from factory
.
I also found this:
The new thermostat solved the temperature problem and I kept a look for the coolant level and it was losing some coolant after some days driving (this was my daily at the time), I kept adding coolant thinking it was air in the system and then found a leak on one of the heat exchange hoses and fixed the leak. The car continued losing collant so i kept it topped up and gave up on it for some time (later I found that it was leaking from the back of the head.
After some time driving the car everyday I was driving and a loud noise came from the back of the car (whine), got to a service center and the diff was leaking fluid and there was no more fluid in it, the service center topped it up so I could go home and park it on the garage waiting for the diff repair kit to arrive. Some weeks later I rebuilt the diff at home and the car was running again.At least I found that the car has an LSD. I'm not finding pictures of the process so I will add them later.
To be continued ...
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