2008 BMW 335d E91

[peetee7]

Great thread. That’s some E91 35d passion. I really like the dual exit exhaust on the E series 335d. Shame the F series 335d’s don’t have them.

[Court_S]

That interior was a bargain. I like the brushed metal trim but as you say it marks really, really easily. The trim from my 130 LE was pretty battered.

I liked the dual exits too (liked them on my M140i too).

The new garage looks good; I’d love a double garage. I can get my car in the garage but there’s not much room around the car.

[helix402]

Good work. Your dealer was mistaken about the brake pipe. It comes pre bent as I’ve changed it on mine.

[Jakg]

My car came with the extended storage option which meant (amongst several other things) it has nets on the seatbacks.

The seatbacks themselves swap over, much easier off the car but I didn't have any spare clips to do it at the time.



And another estate car thing - 3.6m skirting boards. I'm aware it desperately needs a clean...

[d_a_n1979]

It's a great car this and some serious work gone into it lately

[Jakg]

Realised I've had it two years today - crazy to think when I bought it covid wasn't a thing.

I've also realised it's going to be 14 this year!

Averaged 35.8 MPG so far, but lockdowns etc have meant shorter journeys and less mileage. Running costs are at 37.3p per mile.

Ticked over 150k...



Seeing as I fitted LCI seats and an LCI starter button, I thought I'd swap to the LCI light switch knob as well.



I picked up a new intercooler, much bigger than standard and stepped design



It was a bit awkward to fit because of the size and I had to trim the undertray a bit to get it in.

Unfortunately one of the boost hoses just wouldn't seal and kept popping off (I'm aware the clips not on properly here)



I swapped between them a couple of times (each time jacking the car, removing the undertray, removing the intercooler, quite a lot of hassle), swapped the o-rings etc but no joy.
Some people get new couplers welded on, but even then they can still leak and I didn't really want the hassle. My next step was to be to modify the retaining clip, but a new one is £25(!) so I was hesitant.
I contacted the seller to ask if they'd had this before or had any ideas and they weren't terribly helpful and it was coming up to the end of the return period so back it went...
Bit frustrating really.

Sold the old seats and some of the interior parts and so the new interior has effectively cost me £40 - hoping to get that down to £0!

[helix402]

That’s a pain re the intercooler. Who did you buy it from?

[Jakg]

helix402 said:

That’s a pain re the intercooler. Who did you buy it from?

eBay (I know, I know).

You can get them on AliExpress and several other places are selling identical looking units on eBay / MaxSpeedingRods etc, so the suggestion is that the same factory is banging out all of them. A lot of the better branded units look identical as well so I thought I'd take the chance...

Edited by Jakg on Monday 2nd May 22:27

[Jakg]

Jakg said:

Brakes are surprisingly decent too - I expected it to be a bit weak with single piston calipers but the discs are 348mm and only just fit under the 17" wheels.

Would it last?



Of course not...



I've got a set of the 340mm F30 Brembo / M-Performance 4-pot calipers fitted to my Z4 - https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... - and wanted to do the same here as well.

The standard brakes were fine, and I'm not planning on tracking it, so I can't really justify it beyond I don't like sliding calipers and having the same brake setup on both cars is handy.

I'd forgotten I'd bid on these so was a bit surprised to get an alert over dinner telling me I'd won them.

After plenty of wire wheel and brake cleaner:



Agonised over colour choices.

After various so-so results painting calipers in the past I always said the next set would be powdercoated, but I can't stretch to that right now.

I like the BMW blue caliper finish, but I was confident my attempt at recreating that finish would be a poor imitation.
Plus being a grey car, the colour needs to be bright but not too much.

I thought a gold like the Nissan 350z's would look good, but of course that paint isn't available either.

I went for E-Tech copper caliper paint - it's a brush on paint, not as expensive as the BCS Kit I used on my Z4 but the finish is pretty decent.

Quick test on some old cookware:


Added bonus of brush on paint is that I can paint them indoors.



The caliper looks weird empty so as before, some stickers. Just after applying them I found out last time I bought a 4 pack so already had 2 spare...



Then lacquered:


Unfortunately my garage is quite windy so as soon as I opened the door the sheeting blew on top of it and messed up the lacquer.
Not noticeable when fitted, but it meant I had to hang them to spray and dry which is probably what I should've done in the first place:


Standard calipers:


I love swivel fittings on the end of braided hoses, makes changing calipers much easier.
Unfortunately, mine don't have them (!), so I had to disconnect the other end and put the hose on the caliper, then connect to the hard line.



They say your only ever one broken bolt away from a nightmare, and here's mine:



Thats a mangled thread on the drivers side brake hard line.
I don't remember doing it, but clearly I've cross-threaded it.

I needed the car ASAP and thought I'd try the dealer - albeit a different one to last time.
They (Jardine BMW) were not only helpful on the phone, but they got one in same-day for £16, which was way cheaper than I expected.



The ABS unit sits above the drivers side wheel so quite simple to replace, I had to remove the scuttle, screenwash tube and some battery cables to get it out in one piece.



And fitted



I may still need to adjust the cars coding to tell it larger brakes are fitted (specifically adding SPBR to the VO), but I need to do some more research on this.

[helix402]

New brakes look good. I guess they won’t fit under 17s. I run 17s in winter.

[Jakg]

When I got the car, the OBD socket cover was missing.

It was one of the first things I bought, but the one that turned up was grey and not black and had been gathering dust in a box ever since.

Finally found some time to try painting it - two coats of matt and one of gloss black and the match is pretty much perfect.



I'd noticed when doing the brakes the coolant was low, so filled it up. I also had suspicions about stains on the EGR cooler but wanted to focus on one job at a time.
Got in the car the other day to be greeted by "low coolant", had a look under the bonnet and found...



A leak from the EGR thermostat.

The sealing O-Ring was destroyed



From looking online, they seem to be a single use only and I'm pretty sure this was a second hand one from the second hand EGR cooler I bought.

I called the dealer and said I wanted an EGR cooler o-ring and they knew the part number instantly without me even saying what car is was for so clearly not the only one to have this happen to!

New o-ring, lubricated when installed and looks to be fixed for less than £1.50.

[Jakg]

Jakg said:

Lotusgone said:

I don't half envy your pan roof.

If it's any consolation, it broke a couple of months ago and wouldn't close!
I had to leave it open and keep an eye on it at work until I could get home to work out how to manually close it.
I've tried recalibrating it but without much success - the glass isn't sitting right.
My next job is take the glass out, see whats going on and cover it in the special BMW lube (which is like £10 a sachet).

For the time being it tilts (which, until I tried recalibrating, I had no idea it did), but doesn't slide.
I would warn any future owner that the sunroof lets in a lot of noise - even when closed. With the shade back the difference is noticeable.

So the sunroof has been a bit of a saga.



It broke not long after I got the car - it wouldn't close, every time it was nearly there it'd reverse again. When I closed it manually instead of opening square, it was twisting the glass and popping back - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=646bWqxIbfo

I tried resetting it, lubricating it etc but no joy.

I found a video online of someone repairing one, but it looked very complicated with the drive cables etc, and the video was entirely in German.

The sunroof motors (there's two) can be manually turned using a 4mm hex key. After doing this a couple of times, my hex key snapped.



I managed to drill the remainder out, but realised I was out of my depth - I bought a new motor and found a semi-local sunroof specialist online.
More importantly, I didn't want to mess around doing it myself and just wanted it fixing and didn't mind paying (a reasonable amount) to avoid a £xxxx bill.

They come out, check it all over, realign the glass and declare my new motor duff, advise I get a new motor and it'll work fine and charge me £80, but advise I get a new motor.

I get another new motor (this is motor x3...), fit it and it literally opens once before going back to exactly how it was before. And this time the glass itself had dropped on one side.



I call them again and they sound a bit surprised, and come back again.

They align it again, declare it fixed, but (literally) point at the switch and tell me that it's the problem.
I'm not convinced, but although the switch is part of the interior light, the interior light is actually an ECU for the car so maybe it does more stuff.

They ask for another £80, I'm a little frustrated by this but they turned up and did some work so we agree i'll pay, I'll get a new switch, and if it doesn't fix it they'll come back for free.

I get a new switch, fit it and it's exactly the same - still broken.

So as discussed, I call them and explain the situation.
They claim that they never told me that I needed a new switch, they always said "module", which left me a bit confused.
Some research later finds that there is a module on the sunroof, but it's at the other end of the sunroof and isn't visible (or accessible) without the headlining removed. And it's not available on it's own.
I'm also thinking that it looks more like a mechanical problem with the sunroof (i.e. cables or something) because the motor or electrical system can't cause the glass to twist like I'm seeing, and it's very stiff to open manually (i.e. enough to shear a bit and start to round the internal hex drive).
I call them again and mention that they literally pointed at the switch, and I'm told "don't you tell me how to do my job, I've been doing this job 30 years, I know exactly what's wrong with your sunroof {...} I know exactly what I said, always said module".
I try to calm him down and he suggests I swap the module and then get back to him.

At this point... I've absolutely had it. I've wasted £160 on them, plus £60 on parts I clearly didn't even need - and the cars not fixed.
Oh and because they couldn't be bothered to work out how to remove the interior light, the clips are broken too so it doesn't sit right.

I think, if I was being charitable, they specialise in changing motors, aligning the glass etc which would fix the majority of problems far cheaper than a dealer getting a new sunroof. But "sunroof specialists" is a perhaps a step too far.

So I did a little more destructive testing, including disabling (i.e. breaking) the mechanical clip between front and rear windows and fully loosening the glass, and I was 90% certain the mechanism is broken.
This was compounded by finding someone locally selling various E91 sunroof bits because theirs had similar behaviour which they'd tracked down to a damaged mechanism causing a bent hinge.

And if I'm down over £200 already and the next step is dropping the headlining, why swap just the module?

I found a new (second hand obvs) sunroof very local for £150.

The guy had already removed it when I got there (on his own!) but I hadn't anticipated just how big it is - it's wider than the flat load bay and basically the length of the car, I had to move the front seats forward to get it in.

It's also awkward to manoeuvre as the frame itself isn't very strong and quite bendy, I presume the strength comes from being bolted to the roof with a million screws.



It broke in 2020, I picked this up in 2021 but I delayed fitting it until moving to a house with a garage because this was not a driveway job!

So here we are in 2022...

Sunroof replacement looks like:
Remove A/B/C/D pillar trims + associated trims (i.e. boot trims, lower B pillar and seatbelt)
Remove door seals
Remove all grab handles / interior lights / cargo net restraints
Remove headliner
Remove grab handle etc bracketry
Partially remove curtain airbag
Remove drain tubes / wiring etc
Unbolt sunroof.

Quite a lot of interior parts so I tried to keep to a system to not get all the bits confused



Headliner out





This took about two hours.

Removing the sunroof itself was a bit more difficult - it's quite heavy with no obvious lifting points.

I also got a spare pair of hands, who suggested using some pallet wood to hang the sunroof off the roof rails while supporting it and removing the screws.





With the sunroof out, the hole in the roof looks absolutely massive.



Getting the new one in was a bit harder just being cautious not to break anything.

Getting the old one out and the new one in was about two hours.
There's a special BMW tool to align the sunroof with the body but the shank of an 11mm drill bit does the same job.

Aligned the glass following the BMW specs.
"Initialised" / reset the system and it worked fine.
Gave all the interior parts a quick clean as it was going together.
I bought all new clips for the headliner as I was worried it might be tricky but it was fine.
About 3 hours later all back together, and only had a couple of broken trim clips (of which I had spares) along the way.



Not a job I wanted to do at all, and one I've been putting off for a long time, but it went much better than I thought.

I took it for a drive and enjoyed having the sunroof open. And without glass protecting me, I got sunburnt...

Still some little bits to do:
Replace the interior light that the sunroof guy broke (I can't get the retaining clips to hold it in properly),
The car has a grey headlining, but the sunroof was from a beige headlining car so the sunroofs headlining is beige - I'll never have it closed so not essential but I'd like to swap them,
Put some more lubricant on the new sunroof for some preventative maintenance.

Edited by Jakg on Wednesday 11th May 11:18

[helix402]

Awesome job! Shame I recently binned a spare interior light you can could have cannibalised.

[d_a_n1979]

Bloody hell Jakg; patience of a saint!

I'd have laughed (then cried) and then set fire to it

It's sorted though now, must be a good feeling as it's clearly not been a straight forward fix!

[Court_S]

Good work on the sunroof; sounds like an absolute ball ache to get that sorted. I imagine many would have just thrown the towel in.

[Jakg]

Jakg said:

Oh and because they couldn't be bothered to work out how to remove the interior light, the clips are broken too so it doesn't sit right.

The clips are all bent out of shape, they look like this:



Not like this:



They aren't available separately, and finding an interior light from an E91, in grey, with the sunroof switch, was difficult.

I realised it'd be easiest to buy a base interior light just for the clips and swap them over



Fitted:

[Jakg]

Family holiday to Bath, nearly 1,000 miles over the week - sunroof proving very handy!



Calipers need a clean, though...



When doing the front calipers I noticed the rear pads were low, so a new set goes on



The air filter is a Pipercross cleanable one - I cleaned it (done this several times on other cars before) before I went away, but a couple of weeks later got an emissions warning on the dash.

INPA said it was the DPF, which was suspicious as the holiday had been perfect for the DPF to regen.

There was also a fault for the MAF sensor - from some advice online I swapped the air filter back to an old standard one and the MAF reading at idle literally halved.
Some poking of the Pipercross filter and it looks like it's not filtering very well anymore.



The foam has come away from the metal frame - so swapped back to a standard one.

Unfortunately, the MAF fault was still present, and I was worried if I didn't fix it soon I might have bigger problems from the DPF, so fitted a new Bosch MAF



The MAF + filter seems to have fixed everything, but I'm a bit frustrated - the air filter is like £40 new but sold as cleanable but after a single clean disintegrated, and the MAF was £90...

I *suspect* the oil (i.e. dirt retention additive) killed the MAF, and the filter disintegrated during the cleaning process.
I don't think I did anything wrong and have done it before without issues, but maybe I did, who knows.

Certainly made me rethink fancy filters though.

Also due some other service items, so an oil service and a new pollen filter:



This idea is totally original and not at all stolen from another E91 335d on here... an E92 rear brace.
The E91 has a brace that runs from just in front of the rear wheels to the diff carrier.
The E92 has a brace that runs from the centre of the body, to brackets attached to the front of the rear subframe.



You can have both fitted together, and it wasn't very expensive so I picked one up.

I'm not going to pretend it makes a difference, but I had some rear suspension work to do (more later) and planned on doing a couple of jobs while it was in the air, but then things got in the way and I'm taking it piecemeal.

Jakg said:

The car has a grey headlining, but the sunroof was from a beige headlining car so the sunroofs headlining is beige - I'll never have it closed so not essential but I'd like to swap them

The headlining can be swapped while fitted to the car which is why I didn't do this while fitting it.

I practiced on the old sunroof but it's a two person job when done on the car.

The glass comes out (the panels are only held in with a couple of screws)



The headlining panels are held in with screws accessed from above, and you can contort the headlining out.



Bye bye beige



Putting it all back together was a little tricky though, as the glass needed re-aligning, but was obviously much further out of alignment having been removed from the car completely.

Finally, estatey things:

Somehow it's possible to *just* fit a 2.5m long, 600mm wide bit of wood in the car and still close all the doors... but not if you have any passengers.
I don't recommend it.

Edited by Jakg on Tuesday 7th June 22:55

Edited by Jakg on Sunday 19th June 21:42

[helix402]

Happy to see another 335d getting some tlc. Nice brace!

[Jakg]

Replaced the rear arms (specifically the "tension struts" or "guide rods" which is the not very descriptive BMW name) with M3 versions.

Replaces one of the bushes for a ball joint - more info here - https://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1...



I bought one TRW and one Lemforder as the price difference was crazy, but both "manufacturers" (both are owned by ZF) castings' are identical and even have the BMW part number ground off...

When I replaced the suspension, the first drive I took I was listening out for funny noises and heard some funny noises from the rear end, kind of like a ticking.
I thought it was maybe a backplate catching under cornering but a quick prod didn't seem to do much.
That was a while ago, but with the windows down a lot on holiday the noise really started to get on my nerves.
It could also be described as a squeaking at low speeds, and Googling that brought up a lot more results.

It looks to be a common fault attributed to one of the lower ball joints on the rear wheel hub.
The most common "fix" is to pierce the rubber boot on the ball joint and spray lubricant in which makes the noise go away - this seems absolutely mental to me as water will quickly replace all the oil which will leak out, and then it'll just corrode and get worse.

New ball joints were only about £13 each so I thought I'd try swapping them at the same time.



Unfortunately, I just didn't have the tools to take it out - or at least I had plenty of tools (hydraulic puller, drifts etc) but none seemed to work for this application, despite doing basically the same job on my Z4 & MG ZT.

I ended up shelling out £85 on big threaded bush removal kit with 20-odd incrementally sized cups.
I'd tried making one before and found it useless so had expectations, and thought I'd just have to use the cups with my puller and chuck the threaded rod, but it actually went really well.
I'm not sure if the rods were thicker (several supplied, I used the largest that'd fit - M14), or the ball joints weren't rusted in as much as before, but I got them out using no more force than a spanner to counterhold and a 1/2" ratchet (although it certainly gave my arm a workout).







With the ball joints exposed, both had a little play, which I'm sure was what was causing the noise.



Both the arms and ball joints took me quite a while on one side, and then about 20 mins on the other side once I knew what I was doing.

All back together and I felt the difference basically straight away - the car feels more solid, tighter, even at low speeds.
I think the worn ball joints probably had more of an impact than just noise.

Edited by Jakg on Thursday 1st September 22:46

[Jakg]

So, the sunroof stopped working again.

It was doing the "almost-closing-but-bouncing-back" thing. Some investigation showed the wind deflector wasn't properly retracting.

A closer look



And the wind deflector arm has snapped just before the hinge.

Luckily the deflector comes out without any disassembly



Then I found something wierd



Three spare screws, one wedged under the hinge - perfect position that the force of the glass closing snapped the arm around it.

They are the screws that attach the headliner to the sunroof at the front... and i'm not missing any!

I think that when it was removed from the donor car, they put the screws on the frame and forgot about it.
I stored the sunroof on it's side for a year or so and the screws must've got into the sunroof drain.

Fitted to the car, driven a couple of thousand miles over rough roads and they've come back out again and got wedged.

Really not lucky with sunroofs!

Luckily the sunroof works fine with the deflector removed. A new one is £100, so maybe I can glue it back together, or maybe I'll get a new one.

Also got it a friend



E70 3.0sd - same engine as my 335d. And it has a panoramic sunroof too. Which works. For now...