My first roadster, 2003 3.0i

[Z4 COUPSTER]

Welcome. Lovely choice of car.

[P3PPY]

Thank you, Coupster.
In the half-month I've been driving it I've discovered a few fun things about my car: sport mode and complete disabling of traction control.

My door was also delivered to me by a friend the other day. At $350 it was the best price for a silver door in a nearby state and he happened to be passing through and picked it up.

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That's dirt on the front, not rust.

Normally I would just make do with the tools at hand but for this car I got real interior tools to pull the pieces without breaking them. Which brings me to my next question: are these interiors really brittle for anyone else?
In the past two weeks I've had the direction tab for a vent snap off, one hinge for the console/storage (by your elbow) break and the wide pushbutton release for the console break too. When I was working on fixing the horn one of the silver trim pieces broke off too. My wife has introduced me to the lovely invention of a hot glue gun, so at least that's fixed.

As purchased, there is a crack in the main center plastic up above the console near the headrests, the seat backs are both separated from the seats, the little circle trim piece around the lock "antenna" was broken in half and has now disappeared, the passenger cup holder has fallen to pieces, the little plastic cover for the top's motor won't stay on, the volume knob on the stereo looks very weathered and pitted and finally the cowl cover's rubber is cracked and has mostly fallen off. On that last part, the guy at the salvage yard didn't have any cowl covers in decent shape on his lot, including from an '07, the year my door came off of.

[Z4 COUPSTER]

Where you at in the states? It could be heat/sin has got the plastics brittle, I've had a few bits "fall off" but nothing really snapped or cracked. They are not the best inside build wise, but the noise and fun of driving make up for that!!!!

[P3PPY]

Kansas. It's spent most of its days here. It's been 35.5C here with full sun for the past week or so, as is usual for our summers, and winters stay around -1. It's quite inhospitable for most of the year, frankly!
I take it most of this board is from the UK? I understand it's not so sunny as we get here. Is there a more "American" Z4 board I could run it by?

[P3PPY]

Last night I swapped out the door. It turns out that the fastest method is to disassemble the hinge by the 13mm bolts in the pivot point. It was amazing to me to see how ratted out the 2007 door panel was. It is the same color as my interior but NOT salvageable. Speaking of deteriorating materials, the whole upper part of the door's interior was the degraded, disintegrating makeup of the volume knob I wrote about above.

My neighbor came and helped me and we were chatting and carrying on so while I was at it for 3 hours I would say someone could swap doors in 1 if they tried, and didn't try the abortive method for door removal I did at first (taking the hinge off the door side while still on the car). Doing it by the pins was super easy and with the new door mounted like that it lined up and closed perfectly.

[RustyZ4]

Kansas. It's spent most of its days here. It's been 35.5C here with full sun for the past week or so, as is usual for our summers, and winters stay around -1. It's quite inhospitable for most of the year, frankly!
I take it most of this board is from the UK? I understand it's not so sunny as we get here. Is there a more "American" Z4 board I could run it by?

I think most here are from the UK, but a whole load of informative information for any Z owner, cant help with the "more American Z" im afraid

I don't think we have your scorching summers, but being an island our weather can be at best, unpredictable, sunny today tho

[P3PPY]

Fair enough.
I'll post instructions on how to swap a door in a week or so.

[P3PPY]

The door tutorial has taken a backseat to life lately.
A month ago though I took it to the local road course, Heartland Park in Topeka, KS. It was a blast! I'm really terrible so I kicked the rear end out through a lot of the corners, but I started getting better near the end.

In my first heat I began to realize that I needed to ignore the constant squealing of my tires. I was also being kind of haphazard at my approach to following the line.
In the second heat I realized that I needed to drive it like a car I was test driving or a rental car-- ya know just really throw it around and throw it into the corners, just run it HARD.
In the third heat I realized I was braking far too conservatively. I was bleeding off speed by moderate braking far in advance of when I should have.

It was $259 for the experience, so I won't be doing it monthly or anything, but I hope to get a chance here again soon.

Here's a video from another guy on the track at the same time. I'm the silver car near the end. He posted it because he said it was really entertaining to drive behind me as I powerslid through corners
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sVzpvHa3UmA

[Crazy Harry]

Glad to see you're making progress sorting your Zed (and out enjoying it). So now the doors changed what have you decided to do about the tear in the fabric top?

[P3PPY]

Good question. My current plan is to get black on black (or dark gray on black, something just to keep the look subtle) BMW roundel patches, one for each side, and sewing over the hole that way, with a matching one on the other side. I talked to a company who does UV-safe patches for $35 each.

My tear happens to be in a place where it wouldn't be strange to have a patch and it's not right next to a seam. I need to do it soon though because as I drive with the top up it's getting a little bigger

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[Crazy Harry]

Looks like a cheaper fix than a new roof! - is that the rip on the drivers side just rear of the window glass?

[Jembo]

Welcome to the land shark club bro,

[P3PPY]

Yes, it's right over my shoulder.

And thanks, Jembo. I love this car more and more. First of all, rear wheel drive, second, little and light. Third, it's torquey and peppy but not so fast that you can't floor it ...all the time...

[P3PPY]

I contacted a place to see about getting a patch to cover the hole in the BMW’s convertible top. I asked for a large patch but instead of the standard blue and white logo like this,

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I wanted it black on black so it would be a very subtle addition to the top. It’s a classy looking car and I want it to match. Well, it's classy until I put shark teeth on it, but I digress.

They sent me this.

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I replied back that it looked like it’s good quality, but I'd asked for black on black, could they do that?
So they embroidered up another demonstration one and sent this back to me

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Okay well, now it’s missing the whole X part in the middle, which is the bulk of the design. So I thought, “I’m not going to be able to explain this well enough to get them to understand to include the X with black on black so let’s just go with silver and forget it.”
So I mocked up a picture in Microsoft Paint and asked for silver on black, like this:

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Here’s what they sent back

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[oldgitdave]

That's so funny, I nearly spat my coffee out
I suppose you got what you requested