E46 325i Sport
Discussion
Pablo16v said:
I remember when I was looking for a 325i or 330i Touring back in 2009/10 and there wasn't a huge amount to choose from within a 100-150 mile area, but plenty of 320d's, loads in fact. Luckily the 2003 325i Touring I ended up buying was spotted in the Pistonheads classifieds by a pal and was just 30 minutes away from where I lived.
I remember having the same problem trying to find a manual 325i or 330i for my nephew in 2016 but got lucky when we found his Imola Red 325i Sport. I was looking for an E91 in 2018 and it was the same problem finding manual 6 cylinder petrols, then a 325i appeared about 30 miles away.
Another quick update. I got the CCV (or whatever it's called) changed the other day. I thought I'd need to take the inlet manifold off but it turns out you don't have to.It's a tight fit but it all goes in ok. I broke the old parts out because they were brittle and about to snap anyway, then carefully put the new parts back in.
Here's the new CCV in place. You can't even see it when the car's fully back together:
A zoomed out version of the pic above. You can make access quite easily to get to it but you have to take a few things off to get there!
New pipework up top:
I forgot to change the oil level sensor when I did the service the other week. The orange light on the dash was annoying me so I cleaned up a drain bucket, dropped the oil, changed the sensor and put the oil back in the top. This has solved my orange oil can light:
While I was tinkering I couldn't help but notice the state of the washer bottle. It was rather dirty inside so I drained what was in there and washed it out. It didn't come up too badly for a quick clean. Before:
And after:
I also put my standard screenwash in that I use across all my cars so I won't get the sludgy buildup in the bottom of the tank and on the filter before the pump.
Last but not least, I've fitted a temporary audio solution. I wanted to be able to stick a load of music on USB so I'd have plenty to listen to on the motorways across Europe when I take this thing to Hungary and back in the near future. I definitely don't want to keep this setup as it's ugly and I'm and OEM geek, but it works and it's made the 3 working speakers sound much better. I need to solder some wires for the driver's front speaker because it usually doesn't work, but if you open the door and poke the wiring it does again. Hard to do while flat out on the Autobahn so I'll have to fix it...
I'll probably research an OEM widescreen/nav retrofit and put that in, and then possibly a BlueBus device and use my phone as the store of music and bluetooth stream it to the car, but we'll see.
While sorting out all the above I noticed a few other bits that need fixing. I thought my sump gasket was leaking (and it may well be still) but while I was under the inlet manifold I realised the oil leak was much higher up than just the sump area. There's definitely a leak from the oil filter housing, so a new £2 gasket is on its way. The engine mounts are also kaput so I've got some Lemforder ones in the post too. Lastly, from the Vanos work I noticed the exhaust cam position sensor was leaking oil seemingly through the sensor, so that's going to be replaced too. It's basically ready for the big Euro drive though, can't wait!
Here's the new CCV in place. You can't even see it when the car's fully back together:
A zoomed out version of the pic above. You can make access quite easily to get to it but you have to take a few things off to get there!
New pipework up top:
I forgot to change the oil level sensor when I did the service the other week. The orange light on the dash was annoying me so I cleaned up a drain bucket, dropped the oil, changed the sensor and put the oil back in the top. This has solved my orange oil can light:
While I was tinkering I couldn't help but notice the state of the washer bottle. It was rather dirty inside so I drained what was in there and washed it out. It didn't come up too badly for a quick clean. Before:
And after:
I also put my standard screenwash in that I use across all my cars so I won't get the sludgy buildup in the bottom of the tank and on the filter before the pump.
Last but not least, I've fitted a temporary audio solution. I wanted to be able to stick a load of music on USB so I'd have plenty to listen to on the motorways across Europe when I take this thing to Hungary and back in the near future. I definitely don't want to keep this setup as it's ugly and I'm and OEM geek, but it works and it's made the 3 working speakers sound much better. I need to solder some wires for the driver's front speaker because it usually doesn't work, but if you open the door and poke the wiring it does again. Hard to do while flat out on the Autobahn so I'll have to fix it...
I'll probably research an OEM widescreen/nav retrofit and put that in, and then possibly a BlueBus device and use my phone as the store of music and bluetooth stream it to the car, but we'll see.
While sorting out all the above I noticed a few other bits that need fixing. I thought my sump gasket was leaking (and it may well be still) but while I was under the inlet manifold I realised the oil leak was much higher up than just the sump area. There's definitely a leak from the oil filter housing, so a new £2 gasket is on its way. The engine mounts are also kaput so I've got some Lemforder ones in the post too. Lastly, from the Vanos work I noticed the exhaust cam position sensor was leaking oil seemingly through the sensor, so that's going to be replaced too. It's basically ready for the big Euro drive though, can't wait!
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!
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