The new news 24 thread

[Bren]

Managed to do the mondeo oil. With the pela.

Even with the engine hot it took three hours to pull just over six litres out. I had forgotten how awkward the filter is to access.

Although the pela is slow it saves getting under the car and if you use the spout you can decant the old stuff into empty containers without spills.

[Erebus]

1 hour ago, NigeT said:

E87 subframe now fully rustproofed & very solid. New pads on the rear, wasting an hour being an idiot trying to fit a new pad wear sensor into the ABS socket having not spotted two of them behind the arch liner. Annoying P115 code seems to have gone for good after fitting new breather pipe (old oily one disintegrated instantly) and the cabin no longer stinks of fumes (thereby curing MOT exhaust-leak-into-cabin advisory). Delighted aircon still working & found a wodge of service history in glovebox - full stamped BMW history until my (serial car neglector) mate bought it a year or two ago & loads of paperwork which goes a long way to explaining its longevity. 

Your rustproofing work looks good.  What product did you use?  I need to do the subframe on my van and I'm wondering what to use

[NigeT]

Just now, Erebus said:

Your rustproofing work looks good.  What product did you use?  I need to do the subframe on my van and I'm wondering what to use

Thanks fella, not perfect but for a £500 shed I’m happy enough! Started with kurust. Followed by Hammerite grey primer-in-a-tin liberally applied with brush. Then Simoniz gloss black aerosols from ECP which are also remarkably cheap. 

[artdjones]

I saw this at an event on Sunday, complete with Spanish plate. Identical to the one my brother ran for 18 years while living in Spain even down to the totally sun destroyed paint.

The G-Wagen behind belongs to a friend and is an AMG model with 550hp twin turbo petrol V8.

[Split_Pin]

More bashing with the Monster Beetle tonight and I broke it again, kind of. I'm quite hard on it but aren't you meant to be? 😂

Anyway I've identified a known weakness in the gearbox where the bevel final drive gears slip under load. I thought it was making grinding noises when pushing through the leaves. As these things are as old as time itself though, someone's developed a £5 shim that fixes it so I've ordered one from ebay. It will necessitate a gearbox strip down but as I built it, that's no problem.

 

[SiC]

All buttoned up now but ran out of time for the refill - hopefully I get time to do that tonight. I'm also praying the box turns out better and not bollocked.

 

[Split_Pin]

What was the state of the oil that came out? 

[SiC]

21 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

What was the state of the oil that came out? 

Dark but I couldn't see glitter. I was told it was changed about 6-12months before it bought it. The filter definitely wasn't changed then as that's factory date coded. Likewise the seals are factory date coded too. 

[Split_Pin]

30 minutes ago, SiC said:

Dark but I couldn't see glitter. I was told it was changed about 6-12months before it bought it. The filter definitely wasn't changed then as that's factory date coded. Likewise the seals are factory date coded too. 

Probably drained cold and the TC wasn't included in the change.

Best of luck with it man, I'm super-terrified of any auto that's got no fluid change history now.

[chaseracer]

9 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

More bashing with the Monster Beetle tonight and I broke it again, kind of. I'm quite hard on it but aren't you meant to be? 😂

Anyway I've identified a known weakness in the gearbox where the bevel final drive gears slip under load. I thought it was making grinding noises when pushing through the leaves. As these things are as old as time itself though, someone's developed a £5 shim that fixes it so I've ordered one from ebay. It will necessitate a gearbox strip down but as I built it, that's no problem.

 

Nice.

Still got my 1981-build Sand Scorcher in the attic somewhere.

[chaseracer]

Fastest Dyane indicators this side of some blue/yellow/Welsh flag shitheap an Alpine A110... 😎

[Royale80]

MOT passed yesterday. Did get a bit worried when I dropped off the car as the boss wasn't thete and the other tester is very picky. Few advisories for spots of corrosion- I'll have a look and one indicator not so orange. So not too bad.

 

[SiC]

1 hour ago, Split_Pin said:

Probably drained cold and the TC wasn't included in the change.

Best of luck with it man, I'm super-terrified of any auto that's got no fluid change history now.

I don't know if the torque converter can easily be drained on the 6HP. At least I didn't do it. Not sure of the fill capacity but a lot of fluid was dripping down after the mechatronics was taken off. 

When lining up the mechatronics, I'm not 100% I didn't knock the big double seal out of alignment. I wish I took it down to double check now. Trying to decide whether to take the pan off again to check or just send it. Taking it off will give piece of mind. But also risks warping and not sealing again after. At £75 for a pan/filter, I don't want to throw it away when brand new either!

[wuvvum]

2 hours ago, SiC said:

Dark but I couldn't see glitter.

If he was there you'd probably see him even if it was dark to be honest - he's pretty distinctive.

[Split_Pin]

2 minutes ago, SiC said:

I don't know if the torque converter can easily be drained on the 6HP. At least I didn't do it. Not sure of the fill capacity but a lot of fluid was dripping down after the mechatronics was taken off. 

When lining up the mechatronics, I'm not 100% I didn't knock the big double seal out of alignment. I wish I took it down to double check now. Trying to decide whether to take the pan off again to check or just send it. Taking it off will give piece of mind. But also risks warping and not sealing again after. At £75 for a pan/filter, I don't want to throw it away when brand new either!

Just send it. A gearbox swap would be no bother to a man of your tinkerability, should the worst happen.

[SiC]

32 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

Just send it. A gearbox swap would be no bother to a man of your tinkerability, should the worst happen.

Chest pressing 75kg gearbox should be doable for me but doing it on my drive under a car .... 🫣

I think it would be scrapyard time considering 6 cylinder E90 regularly go for under £2k now. Just would mean I've made a working car broken/dead by trying to fix it!

I should be more positive 😅

Plan is to stick enough fluid in when cold to the fill mark, start and check drive/reverse. If all good then top up when running (as per manual) to get the fluid level correct. It's also a bit too low at the front, so I might have to correct the jack stands to get it as level as possible. 

[Split_Pin]

Nah I worry about stuff like that too! Hope it goes OK.

[Bren]

A selection of mondeo filters. I have only had chance to do the air filter cos easiest.

I've seen worse.

Probably do the diesel filter tomrrow. The cabin filter is giving me the fear because of it's location.

[bunglebus]

Shouldn't laugh, but

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14622205/fisker-ocean-ev-stuck-company-bust.html

[Sigmund Fraud]

12 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

Shouldn't laugh, but

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14622205/fisker-ocean-ev-stuck-company-bust.html

[JakeT]

I’ve just rescued a friends 130i from certain death.

I should preface this by saying that in petrol BMWs without a turbo they had something called a DISA valve. It alters the inlet length for better torque or top end power. As you may be able to guess, they can fall apart and then there are bits rattling around the inlet manifold.

 

 He called me on Saturday morning to say it had suddenly had a misfire, and that he’d limped it home. It had a code showing for cyl6 misfire, and a shadow code for cyl5 misfire. I told him to swap the coil pack with cyl 1. No change. He’d also nipped out and purchased two new coil packs, and tried them. No change either. With that in mind, I told him to leave it there and I’d nip round on Sunday to sort it. My Mrs is travelling with work and I’m being made redundant, so it’s not like I’m busy.

Airport run done, I nipped round for some more troubleshooting. We swapped spark plugs, still no change. Ran with the eccentric shaft sensor disconnected, no change. The valve train also had the ‘sticky tappet’ noise that these do, but on speed. With that in mind, I was convinced of mechanical damage now. What can kill these engines? The sodding DISA valve. Removing the DISA valve, no flap. We fished the flap out of the inlet manifold, but no pin…

On Monday morning I nipped out and bought a borescope. A stick down the plug hole didn’t look too promising, but nothing conclusive. I think I see some witness marks at the top of it.

Not wanting to remove the inlet for no reason we snaked the borescope in and with some wiggling…

Yes. That’s the big DISA valve holding an inlet valve open on cyl6. Cyl5 was missing because the fuel and air mix is being forced out through the open valve, and upsetting the mixture on it.

So, inlet off. 

Confirmed.

It took maybe 2 hours with some modified bent pliers to get the pin out. Once out, we put it all back together and ran it. No more misfire! But the tapping was still there. Concerned the valve follower or rocker had been damaged I did what any sensible person would do. Drove it! Fortunately the tapping cleared up after 5 mins. The tappet had been squeezed of all of its oil. We ran it up to temperature and no more misfire codes! But I forgot to plug the tank vent valve in. With that connected it’s code free.

This is the pin that came out, and I think fortunately as he was at a lot throttle opening the valve didn’t get bummed by the piston. Else it would have broken a rocker and we’d actually need some parts to repair it.

He’s been driving it since Monday and it’s been free of issues. All In, a very satisfying repair and hopefully it’s kept the car on the road longer.

 

 

[EyesWeldedShut]

After this morning's 👎 by Mr AirCon man on the CLK we had a better end to the day with La Sproglette's Freelander 1.

The gaffer tape repair on the intercooler pipe held up until Mr Postie brought us the Tracked24* (Saturday > Wednesday = 24 hours?) replacement. Bloody thing goes much better now. I guess it's just getting run in at 165,065 miles?

[edit] forgot to add that I have (after about 6 years of ownership) got off my fat arse and fixed the parasitic drain on the Boxer. Previously been using a battery isolator but, after forgetting and nixing a battery, pulled all the wiring out and found a 0.125 Amp pull on a permanently live wire (fitted by the coachbuilders).
This is the main feed to the split charge relay on the 13 pin towbar wiring.  Lazy bastards never fitted an ignition switched relay. £10 on something that was retailing at around £35K in 2013. That's penny pinching down to a fine art.

[SiC]

11 hours ago, SiC said:

When lining up the mechatronics, I'm not 100% I didn't knock the big double seal out of alignment. I wish I took it down to double check now. Trying to decide whether to take the pan off again to check or just send it. Taking it off will give piece of mind. But also risks warping and not sealing again after. At £75 for a pan/filter, I don't want to throw it away when brand new either!

Took the pan off as I couldn't stand not knowing. Looked okay.

 

[Split_Pin]

6 minutes ago, SiC said:

Took the pan off as I couldn't stand not knowing. Looked okay.

 

I'd have ended up doing that too, good move IMO. Glad all is well.

[SiC]

Soooo transmission fluid and mechatronic seal change on my E90 330i ZF 6HP gearbox. I've been putting this off for a while as it's a pia job being on your back. To be honest, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be in the end.

Car jacked up. Probably the bit that always takes me the longest. Faff in getting the stands in the right place when lowering and making sure it's stable. Double PIA getting both ends up and level. It's not actually level in this photo - my drive has a slope. Later on I level off for the fluid top off.

Panels off over the filter & pan. Yes it's a plastic pan.

The exhaust mount has a bolt in the middle to clamp together. This sheered off. Stupid aluminium (or something non ferrous) mount and bolt. Ended up drilling this out later and sticking a bolt through the top and a nut+split washer on the other side. Mostly as dissimilar metals may seize together and having a nut on a replacement bolt has some chance of it being removable in the future if needed.

Undid the fill port first. This is a 8mm hex and needed an awful lot of force to crack it off. I couldn't get a ratchet in there at all. Later on when I tightened it up, I couldn't get a torque wrench in so did it as tight as I could...

Drained from the drain port first (10mm hex) and then dropped one end of the pan to remove the last lot.

Filter was date coded 2005. So almost certainly factory. Fluid didn't look too bad. Apparently changed 6 to 12 months before I bought it. I think that would make it around 8k miles. Dirty but nothing tragically awful from what I can tell.

Mechatronics (valve body) off. This needed the electrical connector disconnecting on the outside, white plastic tab pulling down on the mechatronics and removing the connector seal. Some say this is a nightmare to do. However I could get my hands in with a bit of a squish? Maybe those doing videos on this have massive hands? (I'm used to putting hands in awkward places as I often drop bolts and such, needing retrieval!)

The seals are on top. The big double D seal is the main line pressure port. These can split. Mine hasn't (I forgot to take a picture of it) however the o-ring was all deformed. Obviously leaks from here is sub optimal as the gearbox ECU needs to compensate the lost pressure by bumping up the force & time with the solenoids to the clutches+brakes.

The four other seals compress over time and leak. These were removed with a pick. A tad fiddly and for a bit I was concerned they weren't coming out. Did eventually and I just needed to be careful I didn't go through and scratch the bore.

You can see here the seal length difference. New left, old right. Not massive but enough that they can leak fluid when pressure is being driven through those ports. These ports go up to the clutches and brake bands. So not somewhere you want pressurised fluid to escape from. 

With the new ones all in, you can see them sticking out slightly. This is what they should be like and get compressed when the valve body is out back on. I pushed hard to make sure they were fully seated. All I soaked in some old ATF to lube them up. 

Valve body reattached - 10 bolts and all the ones for removal are Torx #40 to make it easy to know which. These need to be reattached in a specific order to ensure even clamping. Also a piddly 8nm. I bought a specific low range torque wrench to do this as you absolutely don't want to cock this up, let alone risk stripping a thread. Box will likely be scrap if you do that. 

Also the shifter sensor needs lining up with the shifter metal post. Mine was actually out of alignment at first. Easy to move around and correct but definitely don't want to find out/remember you haven't done it when it's all buttoned up!

External electrical connector pushed in just fine - again easier that I could get my hand in. 

New filter looks very similar to the old. The filter is moulded into the pan and replaced as one. 24 bolts to reattach this pan and again they need to be done in a specific order. Being plastic, they're very prone to warping and risk leakage. Something you definitely don't want as low fluid the transmission ECU won't know but will bugger the box from pumping air. Torque is a tiny 10nm per bolt. Again my new torque wrench is essential here to do the job properly.

I called it quits for the night at that point and started again today in daylight.

Not many photos today but tbh the refill isn't very exciting.

First thing I did was remove the pan again. I really didn't want to do this and risk warping the pan, but I wasn't fully happy that I didn't knock the big double-d seal when mounting the mechatronics. I didn't align the mechatronics unit properly at first and took a few attempts while trying to get one bolt in and started. However looking through my photos of the night before, I realised the double-d seal is right next to the filter port. So I could easily see the seal even with the mechatronics in place. 

This is what you're looking at here. The black thing in the middle is that double-d seal. Looks bang on in place to me.

I did level the car off. Turned out dropping the back stands by one position got the level absolutely nailed on.

For refilling I bought this thing. Uses compressed air from my little Lidl compressor to charge it. You can get hand pump ones but as I have a compressor, this made more sense. Absolute god send and filled 4 litres of fluid in less than a minute at 30psi.

Refill is not as complicated as many make it out to be. First fill is with engine off - took about 4 litres. You start the cold engine and then top up till it leaks out the fill port. This was around 3 litres. 

You run the gearbox up to temperature and cycle through PRND a few times. I kept topping up during this and putting the drain plug back in. At 40c (read using a scantool) you check the level by removing the plug and it should be a slow stream apparently. Once that's done, you put the fill plug in properly and shut down the engine. If the transmission fluid gets to 50c, you need to shutdown and wait for it to cool off. Tbh that pressure filler was by far quick enough that I had to wait a fair bit to get to 40c anyway - even at ~25c ambient temperatures.

In total I think I put in around 8 litres. I bought 10 litres but that seems to be overkill. Maybe I'll do another fluid change in 10k miles or so. Just fluid, not filter.

I was supposed to be going to the gym tonight and I really didn't want to miss a session. So I quickly packed up, put the panels back on underneath and dropped the car down. Got changed and went out to the gym as a combined test drive!

Knocked a great session out, despite being tired from rolling around on my back. Then came back and checked for leaks. 

I couldn't see any where the gearbox was. The oil stain I think was from my Spitfire when I took that over last week 🤣🙈

So how does it shift gears now?

Erm well not too much different! 🙃

Actually that's not entirely true, it doesn't flare between changes when in manual mode (albeit I almost never use manual normally). Changes do feel a bit smoother but not completely imperceivable. The bump you get when stopped as it goes into neutral has gone away. Pulling off there still is a slight pause but I haven't tried that too much yet.

However it's still early days. The gearbox adapts to internal wear and now the pressure lines are different, it needs time for it to adapt to its new world. You can reset adaptations - often recommend on forums. However it's NOT recommended by ZF, BMW and xHP (a gearbox remapping company) if you haven't rebuilt the box. Basically the adaptations are purely for internal wear as it ages. By resetting them you're putting back to factory. So it needs to then readapt for the wear. However this can cause additional wear in the box as it does this. Even worse, if the box internals are worn enough, it may never be able to shift properly enough to regain the adaptations. 

So it's basically safer to just keep driving as is and let it adapt itself over time. I've taken notes of the old adaptions and will be interesting to see what they're at in a few hundred miles. 

The good news is basically that it's still working just fine! Hopefully this job will prolong the life of the car for much longer period. These seals and BMWs filled for life ATF (ZF say change every 60k) are the major Achilles Heel of the box. The rest actually seems pretty robust and easily can do big miles if these bits are taken care of. 🤞

I'm also seriously considering remapping the gearbox with xHP. 3 stages and I'll probably keep with stage 1. This is slightly quicker shifts but the shift points are lower to aid fuel economy. Stage 3 is nearly DSG speed shifts and great for tuned engines but also increases wear - all stuff that doesn't bother me. Stage 2 is in-between with reduced 0-60 time but not as aggressive as stage 3 and again I'm not bothered too much about out and out performance. Also I might disable the neutral shift when stationary - reduces wear in the box and speeds up pulling off, just with a higher fuel consumption when idling (as the box is in gear). Interestingly BMW/ZF have two main gearbox maps - standard and Alpina. The Alpina map is faster shifting and basically what xHP have based their stuff on. 

[Popsicle]

Nice write up @SiC, looks a job well done. Amongst many mechanical things, auto boxes fright the life out of me. I've done oil changes/flushes on old slush boxes, but never in to the nitty gritty of valve bodies and filters. Interesting to see that although technically involved, it does seem DIYable. Mrs P is eyeing up DSG Beetle cabs, I presume the 'box service would be similar?

[Split_Pin]

Great methodical work @SiC, nice one. 

I think the throttle delay is normal? I'm sure someone on here told me that, maybe @JakeT? Mine does that too, the difference being with the old, fucked box, pulling away was uncomfortable and often quite violent whereas now it's smooth and progressive.

7 or so months ago I thought BMWs were a bit rubbish but I've come to learn that all the so- called chillies heels (autoboxes as you mention, N47 chains and so on) are down to BMW specifying excessively protracted service intervals. I remember talking to one guy at work a year or so ago who said his 'German car' service was expensive, but only needed doing every 2 years.

I think the same might be partially true for other brands like the JLR Ingenium engines perhaps? (Or are they genuinely crap 😂)

[JakeT]

The M54 in E46 et al does have quite a crap throttle response, but the N52 is better in that regards. But taking up the slack in the torque converter won’t help massively. Either way that fluid and seal change will have done the box good in my eyes. The e clutch is the real weakness on these gearboxes.

Agreed for the most part though, @Split_Pin. I say BMWs don’t take neglect well at all. Some of the designs are a bit poor, and throw in massive service intervals and it all goes wrong. Just don’t mention the N43. That’s an unloved turd of an engine that shouldn’t have been allowed off of paper.

[andy18s]

Looks like Spring has arrived here in BG.. 

[EyesWeldedShut]

1 hour ago, Split_Pin said:

I remember talking to one guy at work a year or so ago who said his 'German car' service was expensive, but only needed doing every 2 years.

Our first Bini came with a BMW 'filled for life' sticker on the bottom of the gearbox.
Despite the fact that a refill with BMW LL Unicorn Jizz cost a fair % of the purchase price it remedied the rather shite (Spanish waiter) gear change.
Much improved

 

41 minutes ago, JakeT said:

Just don’t mention the N43.

Early N47 instead?