der Mumienwagen; E91 330i Touring

Cheers mate; it’s a bit rough around the edges but it’ll look ok soon enough. Drives well though.

Yesterday was the first of two busy days sorting out the 330.

First up was running a few errands, starting with a quick trip to Sytner to pick up new steering wheel trim and ordering a few more odds and sods. The dark line rear lights won’t be here until mid-June which is annoying. It was then off to get the A/C regassed which appears to have done the trick - it’s gone from being pathetic to bloody cold.

I then went to the breaker who had a spoiler, which luckily turned out to be LMB. It’s a bit more scratched than it looked in the pictures so needs attacking with the DA. It’ll look better than the current one.

Once I was home, it was time to start on the interior. First up was disconnecting the battery so I could remove the airbag and do the steering wheel trim. The trim on the car was pretty manky and looked like this:



And now looks like this:



The seats came out next and I soon discovered why it smelt like an old, dirty car…..











Basically under the seats was fking disgusting; the chewed chewing gum was delightful. It looks like a drink was spilled on the drivers side and not really cleaned up. I am however 70p up in loose change. After a lot of vacuuming, a st load of APC and lots of scrubbing the carpets looked much better.





Then I moved onto the seats. These were pretty grubby once I started cleaning them, with black grime running down them.



I used what little seat stain / paint I had left over from the 130i to go over the worst of the drivers seat wear. I’ll get sone more ordered and do it and the other areas of wear properly. It was looking much better though.



The rear bench was pretty grim in the nooks and crannies. The isofix covers were popped out….yummy.





After many hours of cleaning, scrubbing, wiping and vacuuming, the seats when back in.









The boot was up next. At first glance, it didn’t look bad but it was covered in a thick layer of grey dust which probably wasn’t helping it to smell nice.







After even more APC, scrubbing and vacuuming it was starting to look loads better.







It’ll take a few more cleans to get the boot carpet really clean because the carpets are really thick, deep pile compared to my E92 so any dirt is a sod to remove. A boot liner is definitely on the cards.

The door shuts were next,especially the boot which was grim. Unfortunately I found some corrosion around the glass on an inner edge on one side. Looks like an LCI conversion is on the cards at some point!

Dirty dirty shut.





And clean



I gave the car its first wash. I thought I’d bought Garage Therapy’s deep clean shampoo / foam but I’d bought fall out remover. Whoops. Had to use my usual snowfoam instead.





Up close it’s pretty scratched and swirled up but it’s 17 years old and has done 159k. Drying an up waxed car is horrible. Today, once I’ve cleaned the 125i ready for the new owner I’ll tackle the paint; chemical decontamination, wash and dry, clay bar, two stage polish then wax.

I also managed to do a bit of coding:

• digital speedo activated
• shift indicator activated
• headlight washers turned off
• comfort key eject on
• autolock at 8mph

The interior is looking loads better but I did have a bit of a wobble part way through and started to wonder what the hell I’d done. This was easily the worst of my recent BMW’s to rescue.

My hat is off to you there Sam and it is great to see how stuck in you've got with it already. It looks so much better and I bet that you're much happier with it now. Great work.

The car is looking great after your TLC. So satisfying to do this kind of work on slightly neglected car.

You obviously know your way around these so I'll be watching this thread for top tips. On your list above, can you expand on what the shift indicator does? Why turn headlight washers off and what is comfort key eject?

I saw that you were replacing the ash tray with a tray. I thought about doing this too but I spotted that Induktiv sell an wirelss charger tray. It's quite pricy after shipping and import tax at about £150 but I'm still tempted. Is that something you considered? I just want to check I'm not going to spend £150 on some garabage!

My centre console phone holder needs to go as well!

Think you mentioned Philips LED bulbs on this thread or another thread somewhere. Can I ask which model you use and whether there are any install intricacies? Does cover etc still fit?

I have this on mine. Its not amazing, especially if you have a smaller phone as it tends to slide around. It is handy to have when I need my work phone charging and my personal phone is plugged into the andream, but I'm not sure I would spend the money again.

I was looking at those pictures and thinking it looked better than 99.9% of used vehicles, virtually no cleans under the front seats or down the back of the rear seats.

Looks like it's coming up nicely though.

Good effort on the cleaning so far. Makes we wonder how grotty the inside of mine is currently, after its been sitting for nearly a year!

Same! Seems like a relatively clean car! Do like a BMW wagon.. Especially of the quicker variety! Nice colour too.

It was always going to happen wasn’t it! I think I was also conscious that my wife was going from a very tidy 125i to this. I didn’t want it to feel like a step done but luckily she really likes it.

No worries.

The shift indicator is just there to remind you to change gear; my other half seems allergic to sixth!

The comfort eject means that when you turn the engine off, you push the start / stop button for a few seconds longer and it’ll spit the key out in one. Rather than turning the car off and then pushing the key to eject.

I’m a detailing nerd to I hate the streaks from dried washer fluid that I ends up all of the bonnet when the lights are cleaned.

I’ve seen the wireless charging pads; I’m just too tight. The cubby is more useful so I’m happy with that. I think they’re £13 from BMW (at least my last one once).

These are the bulbs that I fitted:

https://www.powerbulbs.com/product/philips-ultinon...

You need an canbus adapter too. They’re not the easiest to fit because of the heat sink; it’s easier to take the bumper off and removed the headlights for better access to the clips that hold the bulbs in.