My money pit BMW E85 Z4

[Graeme_Bangor]

Hi all, as a relative newbie I thought I'd share my German money pit, the BMW E85 Z4. It's a 2003 2.5se wthat I bought as a weekend toy about 6 years ago. It's remained fairly standard bar an M3 hydraulic steering conversion as the EPS has gotten so glitchy it felt like the car was trying to kill me, massive improvement and highly recommended for anyone who has one of these. I also fitted a set of OMP seats as the standard ones offer no lateral support at all.

Bucket seats in


NI BMW Summer Meet


Club run through the Mourne Mountains

[roadie]

Love it, what else has contributed to it being a money pit?

[Graeme_Bangor]

roadie said:

Love it, what else has contributed to it being a money pit?

Mostly the Electronic PS, I spent a fair few quid trying to sort it before I ditched it and did the hydraulic conversion had some sooling system issues as well. Other than that mostly electrical gremlins causing faults that I dont think really existed.

I do love it though, can't beat an open top roadster on a good road

[mr2turbogts]

Did you do the M3 hydraulic steering yourself?

Would like to do this also, but probs beyond my level of spannering

[Graeme_Bangor]

mr2turbogts said:

Did you do the M3 hydraulic steering yourself?

Would like to do this also, but probs beyond my level of spannering

I did, quite handy to do really. The rack is a bolt in fit as is the pump, the only thing you need to fiddle with is the steering shaft, you have to split the lower UJ and fit the lower part from an M3. Sounds more complicated than it is
Original shaft


Modified shaft

You lose some of the assistance but it feels a lot better with none of the twitching from the old system

[Court_S]

That looks grand.

Are there mounting point in these for the fluid reservoir like there is in case such as the 1 series? Does it require any coding to tell the car?

Those seats look like a big improvement on the standard SE seats.

[mr2turbogts]

Thanks for this, looks like somthing i might look into. As when hot the twitchyness really takes some pleasure away from the car

[Graeme_Bangor]

Court_S said:

That looks grand.

Are there mounting point in these for the fluid reservoir like there is in case such as the 1 series? Does it require any coding to tell the car?

Those seats look like a big improvement on the standard SE seats.

Yes, fluid reservoir bolts onto the oil filter housing, you do need to code out the EPS but there are a few good how to guides for that. I used the BMW Tools download which comes with the coding program.

Seats are much better, nice middle ground between the SE seats and full buckets

[hxc_]

Those seats and the hydraulic PS would probably remove most of what I dislike about my Z4. Looks good!

[Mr Tidy]

I'm guessing your HPAS conversion swallowed a fair bit of the budget, but the end result was probably worth it!

I wasn't a fan of the EPAS on my first two Z4s but thankfully my current one has HPAS which is so much better.

The standard "Sport" seats are hopeless in a 2 seater, but M-Sport seats tend to sell for £600/700 or more and yours look even more purposeful!