E46 325i Sport
Discussion
Ok, time for that update! Quite a lot has happened.
Firstly, the car sprang a(nother) leak. I noticed a puddle by the car which turned out to be coolant. A quick poke about and it looked like nothing major, just a leaky hose
I changed this hose at a cost of £60 for the correct one from BMW:
While I was messing around I checked the fuel filter as this had been missed while doing all the high priority servicing stuff last month. Is that 2002, as in the year before the car was made?! Actually, that turned out to be a misnomer - the fuel filter was an aftermarket Mann one when I changed it.
Lastly while poking around I measured the anti-roll bar as there are many options for E46's and mine needs new bushes. Looks like the standard sport spec is 23.5mm I'll get some new bushes on order soon:
Hold on a sec, didn't I fix that coolant leak? Nope...
I had to abandon the car outside my house for a week as I was off to the very North of Scotland seeing family. Annoyingly I couldn't use my car for the airport trip so had to use the Audi A4 Avant in my other thread, which LadyGPM is now the main driver of. I thought I'd post proof that the North coast is actually quite nice sometimes:
Once back from Scotland I got straight on with more jobs on the car, still preparing for the Euro road trip coming up soon. The coolant leak was in fact a cracked expansion tank, right next to where the hose I replaced clips on to the tank. No wonder I assumed it was the hose, but annoying nonetheless. The only reason I didn't just replace the expansion tank by default was because I had records of it already having been replaced a few years ago with a decent branded one. I've bought the same again as I believe it's OEM (Mahle). We'll see how long this one lasts...
I wanted to change the oil filter housing gasket as I was certain it was leaking. It's not a hard job to do so I got on with that next:
Next up was to check out why my door speaker was intermittent. I suspected a break in the wiring but you need to take the whole door apart to check. It's actually not bad to do either. Everything I've had to touch on this car so far has been quite straightforward, which is nice!
Taking the door apart:
Checking the wiring loom:
Nothing wrong with the wiring at all, so I think it was just the contacts between the door loom and the car loom being dirty. I tested it by just hooking the speaker up and plugging the loom back into the car and it worked perfectly.
While I was in there, this door needed a new check strap as the first stop was worn out and the door tried to close on you, so you could hold it at the fully open position only. It was annoying me so it made sense to replace now. I ordered the check strap and a new membrane to make a proper job of it. Hopefully I won't need to go in to the door innards again for a long time now:
Now to build the door back up:
Back to chasing leaks I noticed that the power steering pump was making a mess. It was more obvious now the oil filter housing gasket had been changed, as I couldn't be sure it was definitely ATF all over the pump before!
Old pump out, and sitting on my work bench:
I took the back cover off and discovered it might just need a new o-ring. There is a large one that seals cover up and it was probably past its best, but I'd already ordered a new pump from Ebay purely to speed up downtime. I may get a new O-ring and refit the original pump.
Here's the new unbranded pump in place. It came with a '10 year warranty' but I'm not very hopeful!
Lastly for this update, I had a spare hour one afternoon and decided to do something cosmetic for a change. The headlights really let the front end of the car down so I decided to restore them as I had everything I needed in stock and it was effectively 'free' to do.
Headlights removed from car. As you can see, they were past their best:
I rubbed them down with 600, then 1200 wet and dry paper, ending up with a smooth and even finish all the way across the face of the lense:
The workbench was turned in to a makeshift spray booth:
Clear coat from a rattle can that came recommended as having all the correct nasty chemicals to make it a half decent job:
I sprayed several light coats and left them to dry for an hour so they were just about dry enough to fit back on to the car. It's by no means a perfect job but I think a light wet sand and polish with compound would see them looking quite good. The idea of clear coating with something half decent rather than just compound the plastic to a clear finish is to protect from UV damage. This solution worked well on my old Mk5 Golf GTi and I think I've done a better job this time around. Hopefully the lenses will stay looking good for a while now. If I decide my results aren't good enough I can just buy some brand new lenses from the OEM quite cheaply via AutoDoc.
Lastly, a friend came over for the weekend and he happens to be a BMW-ist as well. We had a mini E46 meet in the garden. One for the 'a bit council' thread, I know, but the garden is bottom of the very long list of house renovations currently!
Euro trip pics will be uploaded when I have time. Watch this space!
Firstly, the car sprang a(nother) leak. I noticed a puddle by the car which turned out to be coolant. A quick poke about and it looked like nothing major, just a leaky hose
I changed this hose at a cost of £60 for the correct one from BMW:
While I was messing around I checked the fuel filter as this had been missed while doing all the high priority servicing stuff last month. Is that 2002, as in the year before the car was made?! Actually, that turned out to be a misnomer - the fuel filter was an aftermarket Mann one when I changed it.
Lastly while poking around I measured the anti-roll bar as there are many options for E46's and mine needs new bushes. Looks like the standard sport spec is 23.5mm I'll get some new bushes on order soon:
Hold on a sec, didn't I fix that coolant leak? Nope...
I had to abandon the car outside my house for a week as I was off to the very North of Scotland seeing family. Annoyingly I couldn't use my car for the airport trip so had to use the Audi A4 Avant in my other thread, which LadyGPM is now the main driver of. I thought I'd post proof that the North coast is actually quite nice sometimes:
Once back from Scotland I got straight on with more jobs on the car, still preparing for the Euro road trip coming up soon. The coolant leak was in fact a cracked expansion tank, right next to where the hose I replaced clips on to the tank. No wonder I assumed it was the hose, but annoying nonetheless. The only reason I didn't just replace the expansion tank by default was because I had records of it already having been replaced a few years ago with a decent branded one. I've bought the same again as I believe it's OEM (Mahle). We'll see how long this one lasts...
I wanted to change the oil filter housing gasket as I was certain it was leaking. It's not a hard job to do so I got on with that next:
Next up was to check out why my door speaker was intermittent. I suspected a break in the wiring but you need to take the whole door apart to check. It's actually not bad to do either. Everything I've had to touch on this car so far has been quite straightforward, which is nice!
Taking the door apart:
Checking the wiring loom:
Nothing wrong with the wiring at all, so I think it was just the contacts between the door loom and the car loom being dirty. I tested it by just hooking the speaker up and plugging the loom back into the car and it worked perfectly.
While I was in there, this door needed a new check strap as the first stop was worn out and the door tried to close on you, so you could hold it at the fully open position only. It was annoying me so it made sense to replace now. I ordered the check strap and a new membrane to make a proper job of it. Hopefully I won't need to go in to the door innards again for a long time now:
Now to build the door back up:
Back to chasing leaks I noticed that the power steering pump was making a mess. It was more obvious now the oil filter housing gasket had been changed, as I couldn't be sure it was definitely ATF all over the pump before!
Old pump out, and sitting on my work bench:
I took the back cover off and discovered it might just need a new o-ring. There is a large one that seals cover up and it was probably past its best, but I'd already ordered a new pump from Ebay purely to speed up downtime. I may get a new O-ring and refit the original pump.
Here's the new unbranded pump in place. It came with a '10 year warranty' but I'm not very hopeful!
Lastly for this update, I had a spare hour one afternoon and decided to do something cosmetic for a change. The headlights really let the front end of the car down so I decided to restore them as I had everything I needed in stock and it was effectively 'free' to do.
Headlights removed from car. As you can see, they were past their best:
I rubbed them down with 600, then 1200 wet and dry paper, ending up with a smooth and even finish all the way across the face of the lense:
The workbench was turned in to a makeshift spray booth:
Clear coat from a rattle can that came recommended as having all the correct nasty chemicals to make it a half decent job:
I sprayed several light coats and left them to dry for an hour so they were just about dry enough to fit back on to the car. It's by no means a perfect job but I think a light wet sand and polish with compound would see them looking quite good. The idea of clear coating with something half decent rather than just compound the plastic to a clear finish is to protect from UV damage. This solution worked well on my old Mk5 Golf GTi and I think I've done a better job this time around. Hopefully the lenses will stay looking good for a while now. If I decide my results aren't good enough I can just buy some brand new lenses from the OEM quite cheaply via AutoDoc.
Lastly, a friend came over for the weekend and he happens to be a BMW-ist as well. We had a mini E46 meet in the garden. One for the 'a bit council' thread, I know, but the garden is bottom of the very long list of house renovations currently!
Euro trip pics will be uploaded when I have time. Watch this space!
Interesting chat! I really didn't think there would be much of a difference between the 2.5 and 3.0 engines in real life. Perhaps I should have a go in a 3.0. I'm basing things not feeling much quicker on having just sold my E90 M3 though, so everything's going to feel slow compared, unless I do an S54 conversion...
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