Imhotep's ever changing fleet - MG ZS180, Toyota GT86, BMW 525d E39 - Playing with bushes

[Agila]

Excellent thread. Really well written  with good pictures, decent variety of cars and work.

Good luck with the BMW, was tempted myself but seemed to be a few too many annoying niggles for me, would prefer one or two big jobs to sort.

Hope it progresses well.

[RoverFolkUs]

On 19/06/2026 at 19:06, Imhotep said:

ZS clutch went this morning

They’re NLA

It was my only working car for work

So that’s fun. 
 

Now my shit haiku is done, I now need an emergency set of wheels. So fairly sure once I’ve extended the begging bowl there’ll soon be collection thread. 
 

A reminder, I hate that I like cars. 
 

Edit: Keeping the ZS, don’t worry about that, but I need to get to work, and the only way to get a clutch kit atm is to have the pressure plate refurbed, and there’s no release window for the DMGRS kit. So with that in mind the car would need to sit in my car park with no gearbox for a few weeks, and I need to get to work.

What's actually gone wrong with the clutch? 

I did see someone on Facebook advertising 2x NOS kits the other day. She's the owner of that MGR specialist in Derby and wants £350

[Imhotep]

2 hours ago, Agila said:

Excellent thread. Really well written  with good pictures, decent variety of cars and work.

Good luck with the BMW, was tempted myself but seemed to be a few too many annoying niggles for me, would prefer one or two big jobs to sort.

Hope it progresses well.

Thank you! Fingers crossed the BMW does progress okay, we’ll see how it goes. As that’s the daily driver it’ll mostly be boring service stuff for that, the MG and GT86 is where the fun stuff will happen…

4 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

What's actually gone wrong with the clutch? 

I did see someone on Facebook advertising 2x NOS kits the other day. She's the owner of that MGR specialist in Derby and wants £350

I -think- it’s the pressure plate that’s failing. Essentially it got gradually harder and harder to get into gear as the car got warmer but it’s now to the extent you can’t actually get the car into gear when the engine is hot. Only way to do it is to turn off the engine, put it into first and then rev match up and down the gearbox… Thanks for the link mind, I’ll be honest, now the BMW is here I’m happy to wait for the DMGRS kit to release as they’ve said that’ll be £170. I also know if I pay £350 for that, DMGRS will release theirs the next day…

[RoverFolkUs]

1 hour ago, Imhotep said:

Thank you! Fingers crossed the BMW does progress okay, we’ll see how it goes. As that’s the daily driver it’ll mostly be boring service stuff for that, the MG and GT86 is where the fun stuff will happen…

I -think- it’s the pressure plate that’s failing. Essentially it got gradually harder and harder to get into gear as the car got warmer but it’s now to the extent you can’t actually get the car into gear when the engine is hot. Only way to do it is to turn off the engine, put it into first and then rev match up and down the gearbox… Thanks for the link mind, I’ll be honest, now the BMW is here I’m happy to wait for the DMGRS kit to release as they’ve said that’ll be £170. I also know if I pay £350 for that, DMGRS will release theirs the next day…

Ah right yeah I see. I did think £350 was salty,  I reckon she's trying to offload them for £££ before DMGRS release theirs

[Lord Sterling]

On 26/06/2026 at 19:24, Imhotep said:

And back. Very nice to meet you @AxleHorsepower! A true gent. Also this thing is bloody massive! 

Welcome (back) to the world of BMW ownership!

[AxleHorsepower]

On 27/06/2026 at 18:07, Imhotep said:

So it’s usually best to do the boring jobs while you’re in the new car honeymoon period. So first I thought I’d tackle the ‘check brake lights’ and ‘check brake linings’ warnings

Figured I’d just get new bulbs. The old ones worked but I assumed it would be a good starting point, and the bulbs weren’t overly expensive. Removed the old ones, and… Ah. That’ll be why. That’s a bulb from a house. That’ll be why the CANBUS is a bit cross. 

Replaced that and to my genuine delight, it has fixed both issues seemingly permanently. Not sure how a bulb affects the brake linings, but I won’t complain, less work than trying to bridge a sensor. 
 

Result! I suspected maybe some corrosion on a connector as the Check Brake Lights message was only fairly recent and the linings one was more intermittent.  

[Heidel_Kakao]

I saw the Beemer in person today and it certainly seems like a lot of car for the money and you wouldn't guess it has done moon milage judging by the interior or overall condition.

[Imhotep]

Now this BMW does mark its spot a bit (obviously, it’s a BMW), so I decided to get some degreaser out and give the engine bay a clean to see if I could see where it was leaking from:

 

Sadly, it’s a bit past degreaser and a wipe this, it really does need a pressure wash instead, this was about as good as I could do before the rain came down, and I can hardly tell the difference myself:

Yeah. Pressure wash next I think. Obviously lightly. 
 

Next, decided to tackle to non-functional RCL. It worked right up until the day after it was here, works fine using the key and everything locks like it should. Checked fuse 55 in the boot and it’s not blown, relearn procedure for the keys didn’t work either, so I will try to fit batteries to the keys and see if that remedies it. I need to repair one of the keys anyway as it doesn’t always knock the immobiliser off. 
 

While under the bonnet I decided to figure out why my washers weren’t working. That wasn’t too hard, the pipe had gone brittle and snapped:

 

Luckily -just- enough room to push the pipe onto what’s left of the connector and we’re in business again:

 

I will eventually replace all that pipe work likely with soft lines all the way up since they’re easier to replace if they snap than hard lines are, but I’ll do that when I look into the rear wash/wipe, which doesn’t work at all. I can’t hear any pump engage when I move the stalk, and I know this has been confirmed as not being the wiring, so my next test is to wire the pump direct to the battery and see if it does anything, it not I’ll replace the pump and go from there. 

[Imhotep]

As an addendum I forgot:

We’ve figured out the MG’s FTP. It’s vapour locking. Likely induced by the hot weather and the leaky fuel tank. Crank sensor is testing okay, and I am running the MGs tank quite low due to the leak, so it may have evaporated and just dragged some air through. 

[Imhotep]

Tackling the RCL on the BMW part 2:

Took key apart and checked battery voltage: 

 

Looks good to me. I borrowed my friend’s Flipper Zero to probe for a signal from the key, can confirm key is working absolutely as it should be. Right. Car end then. The RCL worked fine until I messed with the glass tailgate so logically I’ll start there. Took all that apart and found this with some very unhappy looking earths:

 

Looks very RF like, so took it apart and cleaned all the earth points:

 

No dice. After this I googled the part number. That’s the antenna booster for the radio, whoops! Well, at least the radio reception will be better, every cloud and that, eh? So, I moved on to the mirror. The connector is just… there:

 

Ah okay no worries I thought, I’ll get the interior light out, get the rest of the wiring and plug it in:

 

Oh. Never mind. Looked up the P/N on the rear view mirror as it has 8 wires, not the 6 that are here and all 8 are different colours, and BMW wiring is colour coded. P/N comes back to an E90/E60 mirror. Unfortunately, this means it won’t work, so I’ll buy an E39 auto dimming mirror and get my soldering iron out, that’ll fix that!

I’m also looking out for an E83 X3 3.0D auto breaking because I want the auto box ECU from it as it has updated software for the GM gearbox in this car. 
 

Next is rear brakes for MOT, then I’ll attempt to tackle the RCL again with varying degrees of success I’m sure. I’m sure it’s wiring so I’ll strip it back and see if anything has broken.

[Imhotep]

Free fixes… Satnav and CD changer didn’t work, decided to try to remedy that…

First, needed to pull them out:

 

Turns out they’re a bugger to remove with the mount in situ…

 

Sorted. Mounts can come with me then. First, satnav. This doesn’t recognise any disc in the drive, now the disks are extremely scratched but nevertheless… I took it apart and sadly no simple access to the laser:

 

Loads of brittle plastic also fell out with it that was in bits. I’m going to assume that was the shock protection, which would explain all the scratched up discs. Managed to get some rubbing alcohol on the end of an earbud and cleaned it up. Couldn’t work out how to get to the laser pot adjusters so let’s hope that worked… Next was the changer, this was substantially easier to access:

 

Laser accessible via the changer cartridge door, I just wanted to check if any ribbon cables were undone or broken, thankfully not. Cleaned laser, refitted:

 

I’ll try the satnav first…

 

Ah. That’s actually a different error mind, so that IS progress. I’ll burn a new navigation disc and see if that works when I can find some blank DVDs. As for the CD player:

 

Result! No more radio adverts for me. 
 

Also, doing all of that has inexplicably mended the soft close bootlid. Not sure why or how but I’m not moaning!

[Heidel_Kakao]

@Imhotep Do you actually have many CD's then?

[Imhotep]

9 minutes ago, Heidel_Kakao said:

@Imhotep Do you actually have many CD's then?

Enough to warrant doing this in fairness, I think I’ll eventually upgrade the entire system to an XTrons but for now…

[Imhotep]

Now I’m not too inclined to spend too much on cars with short tests that I haven’t had for long, so some very cheap rear brakes which I know it needs for MOT. These will be replaced again if it passes, I don’t like cheap brakes or cheap tyres really, but at the same time I don’t want to spend £150 on rear brakes for it then to fail a test. I can’t see a reason it would fail other than the brakes mind:

I do need to do the prop doughnut too, but again, I don’t want to spend too much yet, and it won’t fail on the prop doughnut as it’s covered and they can’t see it. If it gets a pass or a minor fail more fixes are incoming. I need to sort out the gearbox mount too as I’m sure that’s the reason the gearbox is noisy. It drives too well for it to be a gearbox issue, if it was the gearbox I’d imagine I’d have errors or it would be stuck in third or have really harsh gearchanges, but it just… doesn’t. The auto box functions perfectly. 
 

Once the BMW is sorted I’m dragging this thing back to the land of the living, kicking and screaming:

Look at the poor thing.  I need to get it repaired and cleaned up. 

[Pat Earrings]

13 hours ago, Imhotep said:

Now I’m not too inclined to spend too much on cars with short tests that I haven’t had for long, so some very cheap rear brakes which I know it needs for MOT. These will be replaced again if it passes, I don’t like cheap brakes or cheap tyres really, but at the same time I don’t want to spend £150 on rear brakes for it then to fail a test. I can’t see a reason it would fail other than the brakes mind:

I do need to do the prop doughnut too, but again, I don’t want to spend too much yet, and it won’t fail on the prop doughnut as it’s covered and they can’t see it. If it gets a pass or a minor fail more fixes are incoming. I need to sort out the gearbox mount too as I’m sure that’s the reason the gearbox is noisy. It drives too well for it to be a gearbox issue, if it was the gearbox I’d imagine I’d have errors or it would be stuck in third or have really harsh gearchanges, but it just… doesn’t. The auto box functions perfectly. 
 

Once the BMW is sorted I’m dragging this thing back to the land of the living, kicking and screaming:

Look at the poor thing.  I need to get it repaired and cleaned up. 

Those brake pads/discs will be absolutely fine for that car. Literally wasting money swapping them out again for more “premium” given it isn’t particularly powerful. Doing all that you’d be better off buying premium in the first place! I’ve fitted APEC and similar to loads and never had any issues re fade/squeal/premature wear

[Imhotep]

6 hours ago, Pat Earrings said:

Those brake pads/discs will be absolutely fine for that car. Literally wasting money swapping them out again for more “premium” given it isn’t particularly powerful. Doing all that you’d be better off buying premium in the first place! I’ve fitted APEC and similar to loads and never had any issues re fade/squeal/premature wear

In truth it’s more the pads which are the well known brand called ‘brake pads’. Then again, as they’re rears they’re likely not doing a lot anyway, if this is anything like most cars the rear brakes will only be doing about 15% at most. 

[Imhotep]

Also, BMW RCL part 3. 
 

Found this image:

Decided to look for the General Module. So apart comes the D pillar:

Quickly dismissed this as it goes to the navigation system and radio. Both of which function. It can only be either the FM1 transmitter or the wiring to the transmitter. I think for now I’ll deal with having no RCL until I replace that rusty glass bootlid, while I’ve got it apart I’ll replace the wiring and the FM1 transmitter. Shame it wasn’t a more simple one but I’m not taking the thing apart to take it apart again in a few weeks when I get a new bootlid. 

[Imhotep]

Today was new brakes day. As I alluded to in the grumpy thread, I’ve fractured a rib so there’s precious little I can do. So I went around the corner to see @Heidel_Kakao as always. He was doing the gearbox fluid on his XJR so I decided to park next to him and distract him from this by asking him to jack up my car and remove the wheels, and crack off all the bolts for me:

 

The rear brakes really weren’t looking well, and were desperate for replacement. The pads were fine, but figured while I was there…

We really had to fight this one. The disc took quite a beating from the hammer before it would come off, and the sliders were a bugger too. Not helped by the placement of the sliders meaning you couldn’t use a ratchet to get them out, and we had to use an Allen key. However finally we were down to the handbrake shoes. Thin, but looked okay:

 

Gave everything a very liberal cleaning and reassembled. Other side was far far easier, and took about 25 minutes start to finish.
 

Much nicer than when I did the MG brakes and everything was fighting me.

I also did the pad wear sensor on the back, at first I was a tad worried as it was still showing on the dash:

 

Turns out there’s a reset procedure I was unaware of, and after doing that, thankfully the warning has gone away:

[Imhotep]

Minor FTP today, pulled out of a road and the car cut out and coasted to a stop showing ‘fuel injection system’ on the display. Fired straight back up once I’d got the car in park at least. 
 

Now, I’d ran the tank quite low, so I assumed it was just that but I decided to check the dash anyway so I went into the hidden menu to check the status of the fuel tanks:

 

Huh. One tank apparently has 4 gallons in and the other apparently has no fuel in it whatsoever. 
 

That might explain why the fuel gauge can’t work out what’s in the tank. Likely a sender or a failed fuel pump. Will look into this after MOT next week. 

[Imhotep]

MOT booked for Monday so I’m now doing the little jobs. First was to turn off the brake pad warning light again as it’s back on. I think at this rate I might just unplug the sensors and see if that turns them off, and if not work out is there’s any resistance value and stuff a resistor in there. If it comes on again before MOT (it will), I’ll reset it just before the test so it should hopefully stay off. As they are cheap I’ll likely also buy front discs and pads and another sensor for the front and see if that one is the issue, provided it passes MOT. Doesn’t really need new front discs or pads but while I’m there…

I also need to adjust the handbrake but because I’ve still got poorly ribs jacking up a car and taking the wheel off is a big no no at the moment (E39 handbrakes are adjusted by taking the wheel off and adjusting a small cog on the drum with a screwdriver via a wheel bolt hole). If I absolutely can’t do it I’ll ask the garage to do it as part of the post fail work (it will fail on that if I can’t do it).

Next, I decided to mend the auxiliary fan. This hasn’t worked since I got the car, which is a worry as while the car has a viscous fan it’s not enough to cool the car down, and it needs that fan. Also means the AC doesn’t blow cold in traffic.

First I checked the temperature sensor, took apart and cleaned and refitted. No dice. 
 

As a last ditch effort I decided to check the fuses. I was fairly sure there’s no issue as the heater blower worked. However; checking the diagram the blower is controlled by fuse 76 and the aux fan by fuse 75. Whoops, could be a fuse. So. Despite broken ribs, I ended up upside down in the passenger footwell to get a fuse 75 and 76 because BMW in their infinite wisdom put them in a completely different place to EVERY OTHER FUSE:

 

Fuse 75 is the red 50A fuse there, so I pulled it:

I mean, it’s clearly not blown but look how burnt and grubby those pins are, so I gave it a bit of a clean up and popped it back into the holder. Fired up the engine at set the car to max AC and heard the glorious noise of a fan that clearly hasn’t run for years and isn’t very well, but nevertheless it was running, and the AC is now ice cold. Result! I do think the fan has a lifespan measurable in minutes and I do think the motor will need replacing, but for now it works and that’s what matters. If it passes MOT I’ll treat it to that along with a gearbox flush. 
 

Now that was done I’ve had to refit the washer lines yet again. I think at this stage I really do need to replace that hard line. It’s very clearly knackered.

So… What else is new? 
 

Well, the ZS has now very sadly been sold. I wanted to keep it but I have a family car in the form of the BMW and a sports car in the form of the GT86. I don’t really need a sports family car. And in fairness, I do need to move house really, so running the extra car is not viable at the moment. In light of this, I needed to bring the GT86 back to life. So I charged the battery and it’s alive but it’s very unhappy about that, as we can see by the  Christmas tree dashboard:

 

So once the BMW is through a test I’ve got a list for this:

Full service

Front and rear brakes including rear drums

New backplate for rear disc so I have something to mount the handbrake shoes to (like the BMW it has shoes to adjust that press to the inside of the disc)

New passenger side driveshaft (old one is stuck in the splines and I have a replacement, so @Heidel_Kakao and I plan on removing the entire assembly and just pressing the ruined driveshaft out of the hub. 

New hub for passenger side

MOT

[Heidel_Kakao]

@Imhotep If Google is correct as I suspected the warning light being on shouldn't be a fail anyway;

"MOT Rules on Brake Pads: If the warning light is on due to a faulty sensor or broken wire, but your pads are safely above the legal limit, it will not cause a failure."

[Wibble]

I had a brake pad warning light on the Senator. I broke the new sensor when replacing the pads. I professionally repaired it by cutting the wires, stripping the ends and twisting them together. Taped up of course, cos I’m a pro. Warning light extinguished. I don’t enough miles in it to need a warning.

[Imhotep]

22 minutes ago, Heidel_Kakao said:

@Imhotep If Google is correct as I suspected the warning light being on shouldn't be a fail anyway;

"MOT Rules on Brake Pads: If the warning light is on due to a faulty sensor or broken wire, but your pads are safely above the legal limit, it will not cause a failure."

 

8 minutes ago, Wibble said:

I had a brake pad warning light on the Senator. I broke the new sensor when replacing the pads. I professionally repaired it by cutting the wires, stripping the ends and twisting them together. Taped up of course, cos I’m a pro. Warning light extinguished. I don’t enough miles in it to need a warning.

Trouble is the brake pad warning light on the 525d puts the low fluid warning light on, not a pad warning light. Though I have checked and it’s a minor apparently so should just advise hopefully!

[straightSix]

17 hours ago, Imhotep said:

I also need to adjust the handbrake but because I’ve still got poorly ribs jacking up a car and taking the wheel off is a big no no at the moment (E39 handbrakes are adjusted by taking the wheel off and adjusting a small cog on the drum with a screwdriver via a wheel bolt hole). If I absolutely can’t do it I’ll ask the garage to do it as part of the post fail work (it will fail on that if I can’t do it).

I seem to remember on my old E39 being able to adjust it by jacking up the car and taking off one wheel nut and then you can spin the wheel to align it up with the little cog to adjust it

[Imhotep]

BMW failed test today. Happily, on very minor things I’d try to sort out here but because of my broken rib I’ve left it with the garage. They’ve said it’ll cost about £250 all in to sort and we’re good for another year:

[Imhotep]

And £300 later we have a nice clean MOT:

 

Lovely. Now I can get back to doing estate things with it. I’ve got a lot of stuff I need to sell/give away/take to landfill, so I’m really pleased it did pass and hopefully the next year will be mostly trouble free.

[Imhotep]

So this is the second time this week I’ve had to do this:

 

Parked up with 25 miles of range and come back to it this morning and it has 0 miles of range and won’t start because it’s out of diesel. 

Now, the gauge never shows 0 when I park it up, it’s only the next morning it’ll show 0 so something is going on here. One thing I have noticed is I can’t hear the buzz of an electric fuel pump when I put the ignition on. Now this car does have 2 mechanical fuel pumps as well as the electric one (I think), so it’s possible the electric one isn’t working. I haven’t done too much investigation yet but I will be seeing what happens if I just give 12v to that fuel pump. As I understand it, the electric pump also tells the gauge how much fuel is in it, so that tallies that if it was inop/not working properly. Will be investigating…

[Imhotep]

Removed rear seat and hit sender with a rubber mallet. Lo and behold:

 

I’ve also noticed inside the hidden menu the fuel correction factor has been changed from default to about 8% more optimistic than it should be, so I’ve reset that down to default, and the above is apparently what £30 of diesel looks like in this car. 
 

Will get a new sender on order. For now I’ll just keep the jerry can full of diesel and handy. I want to see what it now thinks empty is since before it was pretty much ‘when the light came on’

[Imhotep]

I am in the GT86 today. 

Poor thing looks very abandoned so I’ve decided to start working on it. It’s out of test now and unused (where it’s parked is private land so as it’s SORN no huge issue). All it needs to drive technically is a driveshaft nut, everything else can be sorted later. But I did need to make it look less abandoned. In lieu of a sponge and some water (no communal tap and no sponge), I cleaned the windows a tad. It’s not much but it has made the car look a bit more loved. I also removed the tow eye from the bumper…

 

I’ve also put the stereo back in it so there’s not just a load of wires hanging out of the dash…

In personal news I’ve got an interview for a new job on Tuesday, if I get it progress might ramp up a bit more because I’ll be able to afford to do a bit more work, fingers crossed!

[crad]

good luck tuesday!