2008 BMW 335d E91

[Jakg]

Slow puncture became less slow, but the inside edge of the tyre was damaged as well so new rubber time.



And a non-oily update - I even polished it. A detailer I am not...

[Court_S]

Looks well. I think the touring is my favourite E9x car.

I think Sparkling Graphite is a great colour.

[Jakg]

Copied the idea from my X5 and replaced the power steering fluid. Flushed about 800ml through - left is original, right is the last flush. It's hard to see but it's cleaned up a lot, but clearly not completely!



Replaced the climate control panel because the retaining clips on mine were busted and it wasn't sitting flush





My wife took the car out and reported a myriad of warning lights - ABS, tyre pressure, transmission fault etc.

I suspected something electrical, but nothing obvious when scanned and alternator was charging fine.

Next day I thought I'd check the voltage again just before I left...



Looks like the alternator was dead.

I found TIS / YouTube quite unhelpful for this job - there's loads of videos about doing it on M57-engined cars, but there's so many configurations that it's not quite the same for each model. My favourite was watching a video of a 320d where there's loads of room up front... because 2 cylinders are missing!

I removed:
Engine cover,
Airbox,
Undertray,
Rad fan (remove the power steering radiator - that one wasn't mentioned anywhere),
Aux belt (not fully, just off the bits on that side of the engine to avoid removing the stretch AC belt),
Disconnect intercooler -> inlet manifold hose,
Disconnect battery,
Move radiator top hose to the side to get to the connections on the back of the alternator.



With all that I could dismount the alternator. I carefully got it rotated out of it's home, but it was stuck in front of the engine - it's too large to fit between the rad fan and crossmember to come out the bottom, and out the top is fouled by the EGR cooler / coolant hoses. The videos I watched showed it coming out the bottom - but that was an E60.

I was only going to swap the regulator anyway so it being stuck in the car was only a little annoying.



The brittle plastic cover on the back did not want to come off in a single piece.

With the old regulator removed it was clear that the brushes were the problem - one was noticeably shorter than the other and presumably not making contact with the slip ring any more.



Back together, fingers crossed and...



Ideally I'd of replaced the belts at the same time, but this was a bit of a rush job. The aux belt is is in perfect condition, and the AC belt doesn't look that worn so I'm not too worried.

One of the few times I've been let down by being unable to use the car due to an actual fault (vs me breaking something being hamfisted). Luckily only about £30 and several hours to get it fixed.

Edited by Jakg on Tuesday 8th November 00:25

[d_a_n1979]

Jakg said:

Copied the idea from my X5 and replaced the power steering fluid. Flushed about 800ml through - left is original, right is the last flush. It's hard to see but it's cleaned up a lot, but clearly not completely!



Replaced the climate control panel because the retaining clips on mine were busted and it wasn't sitting flush





My wife took the car out and reported a myriad of warning lights - ABS, tyre pressure, transmission fault etc.

I suspected something electrical, but nothing obvious when scanned and alternator was charging fine.

Next day I thought I'd check the voltage again just before I left...



Looks like the alternator was dead.

I found TIS / YouTube quite unhelpful for this job - there's loads of videos about doing it on M57-engined cars, but there's so many configurations that it's not quite the same for each model. My favourite was watching a video of a 320d where there's loads of room up front... because 2 cylinders are missing!

I removed:
Engine cover,
Airbox,
Undertray,
Rad fan (remove the power steering radiator - that one wasn't mentioned anywhere),
Aux belt (not fully, just off the bits on that side of the engine to avoid removing the stretch AC belt),
Disconnect intercooler -> inlet manifold hose,
Disconnect battery,
Move radiator top hose to the side to get to the connections on the back of the alternator.



With all that I could dismount the alternator. I carefully got it rotated out of it's home, but it was stuck in front of the engine - it's too large to fit between the rad fan and crossmember to come out the bottom, and out the top is fouled by the EGR cooler / coolant hoses. The videos I watched showed it coming out the bottom - but that was an E60.

I was only going to swap the regulator anyway so it being stuck in the car was only a little annoying.



The brittle plastic cover on the back did not want to come off in a single piece.

With the old regulator removed it was clear that the brushes were the problem - one was noticeably shorter than the other and presumably not making contact with the slip ring any more.



Back together, fingers crossed and...



Ideally I'd of replaced the belts at the same time, but this was a bit of a rush job. The aux belt is is in perfect condition, and the AC belt doesn't look that worn so I'm not too worried.

One of the few times I've been let down by being unable to use the car due to an actual fault (vs me breaking something being hamfisted). Luckily only about £30 and several hours to get it fixed.

Edited by Jakg on Tuesday 8th November 00:25

Good job well done there pal

More patience (and probably smaller hands) than me! I'd have absolutely broken something

[Jakg]

Had a couple of close-calls parking in the garage - if you get it close to the wall it's long enough you can open the boot with the garage door closed.

I already had a mirror on the side but put an old baby car mirror in front angled down so you can see the gap from the drivers seat. I'm aware of the tennis ball & string method, but this works for any car.



Swapped the ashtray & cigarette lighter for the sunglasses oddments tray - more space, but now my coins rattle around so not totally sold.





Got fed up of getting filthy every time I went in the boot so a quick wash in the rain

[helix402]

Looking good. I did the same sunglasses holder swop on mine.

[Jakg]

Booked in for new tyres tomorrow so luckily/unlucky had a blowout today.

No spare and non-runflats meant a trip home on the RAC multifit wheel of shame.

Luckily the garage could fit me in a day earlier so all fixed now - Goodyear Eagle F1 6's all round.

[Jakg]

Jakg said:

Although the car doesn't have stop start, it has "Brake Energy Regeneration" (i.e. selective charging), which means it needs an AGM battery.
Normally I'd get a Bosch S5 / Varta one, but it was £180.
I found a Yuasa for £140, but it turns out that the Halfords battery has identical specs, is also made by Yuasa, has a longer warranty and was £148 so I went for that.

Been getting a million warnings on the dashboard, thought it was a bit suspicious. Battery was charging fine, but was only 12.1v, even after charging it up fully. Swapped to the old battery and all good.

Luckily I got a Halfords one, as the next day I walked out with a new one under warranty.



Also updated the maps - this was mid battery issue so in the absence of a proper 12v power supply, used a trickle charger and the spare battery in parallel.

[Jakg]

Jakg said:

Jakg said:

Although the car doesn't have stop start, it has "Brake Energy Regeneration" (i.e. selective charging), which means it needs an AGM battery.
Normally I'd get a Bosch S5 / Varta one, but it was £180.
I found a Yuasa for £140, but it turns out that the Halfords battery has identical specs, is also made by Yuasa, has a longer warranty and was £148 so I went for that.

Been getting a million warnings on the dashboard, thought it was a bit suspicious. Battery was charging fine, but was only 12.1v, even after charging it up fully. Swapped to the old battery and all good.

Luckily I got a Halfords one, as the next day I walked out with a new one under warranty.

Unfortunately this came back.



I was suggested to disconnect the battery, touch the battery leads together for a bit and then retry.

I thought this sounded nonsense, but it's not come back since...





The 572hp, 12 cylinder, 6WD fleet

[Jakg]

Assumed front sidelights were faulty, so spent (wasted) a long time checking them all before taking a look at the back.

One of the passenger right tail lights had stopped working (yeah, the message said left...)



Pulled the bulbs out



Two of the bulbs had smashed - but how?

E91 pre-LCI lights melt a bit with the heat from the bulbs, but mine had melted so far the mount had come loose and smashed all the bulbs



Luckily a replacement was less than £15.

[Jakg]

My car has the sport steering wheel, with paddles.



I wanted to upgrade to the m-sport wheel, but because of the paddles they are quite rare/expensive (>£100).

Luckily I found a bare wheel on eBay, with paddle cut outs but no paddles / trim etc for £45.



The paddles and airbag are a straight swap with my wheel, but the trim is £100 and second hand they aren't much cheaper but all quite worn.

It was cheaper to buy another m-sport non-paddle wheel for £25, just for the trim



As you can see, the coating is peeling off and quite worn, so I had to refurb it.

Acetone got most of the rubberised coating off.



Primed and then painted matt black

I painted the switch surrounds as well so they'd match



Old wheel off



Then swapped over the paddles and rebuilt the steering wheel controls with my old buttons but the new painted surrounds

My wheel has a diamond/star button, which are programmable using the CCC iDrive.

Unfortunately with the CIC system that's been retrofitted, you can't reprogram them - so I used the swapped to the buttons from the other wheel that had change audio source / air recirculate buttons instead as thats what they actually do.



The trim came out ok, but there was some damage I hadn't realised to the trim itself



Built up



new v old



All back together



In the picture it looks a poor colour match, but I think it's the lighting - under natural light its not noticable.

Edited by Jakg on Monday 5th February 07:59

[pmorg4]

That last picture looks spot on. Those rubberised trims used in various places around the car are a nuisance, they just don't last. I had to refinish my steering wheel trim too, especially after I had the leather retrimmed by Royal Steering Wheels which really showed up how bad the trim was. I'm not totally happy with the finish on mine either, but it's far better than it looked before. Ideally I want it to look OE but just without the horrid rubberised coating.

Welcome to the world of CIC with the two useless buttons. I'm not really sure why I need a recirculation button on my steering wheel when I have a dedicated recirculation button a few centimetres away, especially given that the one on the steering wheel doesn't seem able to switch back to the automatic recirculation mode which I use most of the time. I guess BMW realised they had two spare button slots and had to fill them with something. The old CCC system was better, although still somewhat limited in the actions you could assign to it.

[Jakg]

Jakg said:

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.

Had no luck trying to get a new wind deflector - I finally found someone with a broken sunroof who'd sell it separately, but then it fell through.

A quick search on Facebook later and I ended up being offered a complete sunroof for £50... go on then.

Last time it was tricky fitting it in the car because of the sheer size:

Jakg said:

So I took the X5 instead - fitted easily with room to spare



Deflector removed and offered up



The deflector is spring loaded to pop up, and the plastic tabs go under angled clips that move backwards/forwards to allow it to raise and force it back down. The springs are quite strong to work against airflow while driving.

Unfortunately, I got the spring the wrong way round and as I was fitting it the tab snapped off the side!

I took some time to come back with a more positive attitude - I now have two broken wind deflectors.



Some cutting later to create a repair panel



Some glue (Q bond) later - not pretty, but as good as a repair as can be done with the space available.



Fitment round two and... it broke again.

The hinge section - which i hadn't touched - broke a bit, but was still usable.

But the repair didn't hold once the tension in the spring built up.

I think with age the deflectors get brittle and break easily (i.e. with a little mishandling).

I'm frustrated but at least I didn't break a brand new one at £170...

Jakg said:

Really not lucky with sunroofs!

You can say that again!

[Court_S]

What a ball ache.

What’s the plan now to fix it?

[Jakg]

Court_S said:

What’s the plan now to fix it?

The plan is to leave it well alone! It works fine, just a bit more buffety without the deflector.

[pmorg4]

I think if I had a pan roof I'd be tempted to just leave it permanently closed and enjoy the extra light it brings. It's about the only meaningful option that my 335i doesn't have, and I sway between wishing I had one and being glad that I don't have one

[helix402]

The sunroof is a tad annoying. How do you find the Brembos compared to the original brakes? Have you tried 17s over them?

[Jakg]

helix402 said:

How do you find the Brembos compared to the original brakes?

They are brakes, and work. I'm totally happy with their performance, but I wasn't unhappy with the original brakes either.

helix402 said:

Have you tried 17s over them?

No, but I think it's very unlikely they'd fit. The 348mm standard brakes are tight with 17"s, and these 340mm ones have much bigger calipers, so unlikely.

[helix402]

Jakg said:

No, but I think it's very unlikely they'd fit. The 348mm standard brakes are tight with 17"s, and these 340mm ones have much bigger calipers, so unlikely.

Thanks for the quick answer. I’m happy with my 348 brakes and run 17s in winter so will probably stick standard.

[Jhonno]

Just to go back to that exploded bulb.. I had the same happen to my E89.. I had to try and fish bits of glass out of the tail light housing through the bulb hole.