SiC

I can provide a few more pixels of that area from my original. 

 
Is this a car that is known on here?

Same process on the Merc and TT

 

In the paperwork folder there is a UK price booklet. 
It's high spec but not quite all the options. Like the passenger seat isn't memory, no electric tailgate, no distronic and stuff like that. Tbh it's probably about the right level of spec without far too much extra electrical liability!

Brake caliper and airbag module for the Z4 only arrived today despite supposed to being here yesterday. Today is a gym day so I haven't had much spare time to do much on it. However I stuffed the left airbag module into the car to see if the car could talk to it. 
Yes is the answer. This is good as it means the wiring is good. There are a whole lot of errors in it as not paired to the car and it thinks it's a E65 (6 series convertible). I need to sort an old laptop out and install some BMW specific software to properly code it in.

According to the MOT manual:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspection-manual-for-private-passenger-and-light-commercial-vehicles/8-nuisance#section-8-2-1-2
 
*****************************
You need to inspect MIL fitted to:
 - petrol vehicles including hybrids with 4 or more wheels, not more than 8 passenger seats in addition to the driver’s seat and first used on or after 1 July 2003
 - petrol vehicles including hybrids with 4 or more wheels, more than 8 passenger seats in addition to the driver’s seat and first used on or after 1 July 2008
 - gas and bi-fuel vehicles including hybrids with 4 or more wheels, not more than 8 passenger seats in addition to the driver’s seat and first used on or after 1 July 2008
*****************************
 
So given the age, it shouldn't fail an MOT on that engine management light. The tester should know this but might need reminding of the section if they're not used to older cars. 

@rantingYoof dad broke it after not realising that you have to remove the back seat completely before trying it.
I fixed it when I got the car.
Broke it again when I forgot about removing the back seat 🤦‍♂️
Fixed it again.
Broke it good and proper when I forgot again about removing the back seat. 😫
 
So I'll put a health warning that you may end up doing the same with a new handle. 🤣

Brake caliper and airbag module for the Z4 only arrived today despite supposed to being here yesterday. Today is a gym day so I haven't had much spare time to do much on it. However I stuffed the left airbag module into the car to see if the car could talk to it. 
Yes is the answer. This is good as it means the wiring is good. There are a whole lot of errors in it as not paired to the car and it thinks it's a E65 (6 series convertible). I need to sort an old laptop out and install some BMW specific software to properly code it in.

Lovely to meet you Ken. Hope the Lupo serves you well.
 

@rantingYoof dad broke it after not realising that you have to remove the back seat completely before trying it.
I fixed it when I got the car.
Broke it again when I forgot about removing the back seat 🤦‍♂️
Fixed it again.
Broke it good and proper when I forgot again about removing the back seat. 😫
 
So I'll put a health warning that you may end up doing the same with a new handle. 🤣

Another car pressie has arrived
Put the new rubber boot mat in, to give some protection from the dogs (on the rare occasions they will be allowed in it).
Before

After

Needs a bit of a trim in places, but happy. Note the back of the gun rack - saying that will never get old. Gun rack
While in the boot, I had a root around and tried to access the spare wheel.
The handle that you use to release the floor and pull it upwards, is no longer attached to the floor !! so need to find another.

The instruction manual has arrived. I can now work out what all the buttons are for.

Although not the stereo / navigation / dvd player.
A separate manual is winging its way to me for that.

I normally make a mess when polishing dark coloured cars so I just went for Wax only this time around. I used Fuso 99 Soft. It came up very nicely.




The B and C pillar finishers were also flat so I did polish those. They came up well.

This evening I had a few hours to put these new rear pads in. 
Apart from the E320, pretty much every car I've bought in the last year has its rear or front end in the air soon after I've bought it. 🤣

 
This is the offending side.


There certainly isn't much meat left on this pad! (More in a moment)

 
Slider pins are covered in white grease. Now I'm never sure if you should grease these pins? I thought you did but I have read that BMW say not to.

Pulled it all off and inspected it all.
Disc looked reasonable. It's had some heat through it but no massive scoring that I could see.

Slider pins were covered in grease. The bottom one I'd already started cleaning up (then remembered to take a photo) hence why it has less on it in this picture.

Piston doesn't look too bad under the boot from what I can see?

Carrier was crusty and filthy. I cleaned this up and greased the pad touch points. 

Piston went in but did take a fair bit of force with the spreader.

Now those pads...
Bottom is the inner and top is the outer.

I don't know what the pros think but my view is that I bloody luckily got away with not damaging the disc! There is a wafer thin amount of pad material left and the top just started kissing the raised lip of the disc.


I reckon the disc will be perfectly okay to reuse and isn't damaged? Incredibly close to doing so though.
I'd rather not change it if I don't have to, as they're not that old. Doesn't feel to have any high or low spots either.
Bloody lucky though!
The other side has loads of meat on the pads still. I didn't take pictures as I wanted to get it finished. The caliper piston and carrier were actually in far worse a state than the passenger side. Yet it span more freely. 🤷‍♂️

I put it all back together with new pads, cleaned up sliders and carrier. After pressing the brake pedal, the drivers side rear rubs ever so slightly but you get a tiny bit of spin after letting go. The passenger side however is really stiff and you need the wheel on for enough leverage to turn it. 
To me I definitely need a new passenger rear caliper. But tbh I think I might need both and be done with it. My thought is also that the drivers side might either be or become soon seized if the other side already has. 
I should also say while I think about it, I did try some hard braking on the way back. It didn't brake straight and true. More squirrelly and needed a fair bit of correction to keep it braking straight. Hopefully two new rear calipers will sort it all out properly.
Also noticed the passenger side has an older (rusty) Bilsten damper while the drivers side had a shinier newer looking Sachs damper. Tempting to lob a new one on that passenger side to have a matching new(ish) pair. Depends how much they are though.

Went to a local cars and coffee this morning. Some extremely nice tin on show - I'll put some photos up later. 
Anyway I glanced at that rear left.

Err yeah I've smoked that. Other side has a reasonable chunk of pads left on it. Absolutely baking hot that side but cool the other.
I can't get a caliper today from GSF, Euros or my local parts place. So I bought some cheap pads and I'll give the caliper piston/sliders a clean up and hope I can get away with it.
Cheapest pads I could buy too. Discs will stay on for now as even though they have obviously got very hot, there is a lot of meat left on them. I'll have a check for warpage but I don't think they're bad going on that it's not an intermittent scrape. Hopefully I haven't quite fully had metal to metal yet. 

 
If a clean up and new pads doesn't work then I'll have to get in a new caliper. I don't think they're expensive for an eBay special. GSF didn't have any even listed unfortunately. 
 
Hopefully I can get it sorted today so I can at least use it in this nice weather. Steering is 100% okay too. So must be when the rack gets hot on a long drive. Not checked the tyre pressures yet - just driven the thing. 

Just had a letter from the current owner of my P4 after finding my name in the history. Has given me a load of questions to answer 😂
I'm most glad it's gone to an owner who is going to restore it!

So firstly the car is great. I'm mega happy with it. Like any old car they give shenanigans. Especially old German Premium cars. Not least I do tend to go hunting for issues and finding stuff.
What is there to do?
 - Airbag light is on. I took a gamble buying this thinking it was just a loose seat connector. Having read the codes I don't think it is. There is errors relating to the "Satellite B Pillar" module and no communications. Googling says there is a module that lives in the footwell for the airbag system. We can all guess what happens to modules that live in convertible footwells. Go go BMW. Second hand modules can be coded in but you need BMW INPA. I don't have that, so I'll probably have to read and tool up. 
Need to fix the airbag system as the light is on and it'll fail it's MOT unless sorted.
 - Sticking steering. TADIS. Made worse by having the heater on full. Apparently you can replace the grease or something to help sort it. Need to do further reading. Doesn't stop it being used as a car though.
 - Heater fan temperamental. Anything above 50% on the climate control puts the fans on full. Then after a minute or two it cuts out. Wait a bit and it cuts back in. Not very useful for roof down motoring. Hoping it's the Hedgehog fan resistor module. Need to buy one and find out how to replace it in the car. Hopefully not a massive dash out job or something stupid. 
 - After a spirited drive off the motorway, I managed to now make the rear right brakes squeal. There is a light squeal when driving, more sometimes turning and louder when braking. Sometimes goes away. Presumably either sticky caliper or sliders. A strip down and clean up job. Had to do the same thing on the Golf too.
 - Wipers don't park at the bottom. Work absolutely fine but it looks like it's had a new windscreen in its past. Whoever did it I don't think put the wiper arms back in the right place. It's an easy enough job to just reposition them.
That's it really. A few cosmetic things I could do like replace the scratched near side wing but tbh I can't be bothered just yet. Just want to drop the roof and go for drives! 
Main thing is to fix the heater fan/fan resistor and the airbag system so the light goes out to pass another MOT in June. Caliper is just a Sunday afternoon/evening job. Steering is annoying but I'm going to leave for now as it's still usable as is. 

Making good progress and half way.
Heater fan stopped working below half at Stratford area. Now at Birmingham Frankley services to get my glasses out of the boot. Heater fan coming in and out randomly when set to full now. Iirc these are based on E46 and I remember they have a hedgehog something that causes issues? Just some old car fun.
Anyway roof is staying down for now as 18C. Pushing on. 
 

Washed and now time to go!
 

Hiflys are back in stock if you want a reasonably priced set of tyres for the P6. 
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204153372379
 

Gone. Sold to a AS forum frequenter. I'll let themselves know if they want to. 
Will be one of the cars that I miss.

Took her out today as I needed to get my hair cut and give this a wash. She's been a good ol' bus and I'm going to miss it. Didn't think I'd like this car so much. 
 

Now at Stafford. Got off at platform 5 and planned ahead to go onto platform 3. Stood at platform 3 ... "Liverpool Lime Street is now on platform 5".
Got to love platform planning. I imagine it's an absolute nightmare if you're not a native English speaker. 
No more first class so got to slum it from now on. 

 
Checkout this old BT payphone. Haven't seen this branding for years!



 
If any pictures are stereotypical British transport infrastructure!

It's weird. If you search eBay for a Z4 caliper or 316i you get the first link I put above with the cheaper calipers. However if you check the listed part number it doesn't match up with realoem. 
I've ordered the more expensive NK caliper which hopefully should be correct. 🤞 
Hopefully the flexi pipe isn't a problem as that might be a bigger job. Ferrules are rusted to hell and no doubt round off while possibly breaking the hard lines. 

Could you see if you can find a rear caliper for an E46 316/318i? There should still be plenty being broken, so a cheap caliper should see it right. That’s what I ended up doing after having so many ones go sticky over the years of owning E46s.

It's my wife's joke that she asks everytime I buy a car, when am I replacing the thermostat?
Pretty much every car I've bought has needed one. From the E320 not getting up to temperature, to the GTI splitting it's housing and even my parents A4 that I bought off them didn't get to temperature either. 
I think it's one of those things people don't even realise is a problem. If the car isn't beeping at them or loosing power, they assume it's all okay. The fact that a gauge is not in the right place won't be something they realise. Especially as it's likely to drop gradually over time rather than a sudden change.