New to me Deep Sea Blue Z4 35i DCT

[Bombardino]

I notice you have a strut bar fitted, what’s your thoughts on it?

Lovely car by the way.

[Beeacon]

Hey Bombardino,

To be honest I've only known the car with the strut fitted, the car doesn't feel like it flexes when I take a corner hard, but then I can't comment on what it felt like before so I assume it must do its job.

[Beeacon]

Well, I got some Autosol, a wool polishing drill bit, a microfibre cloth, some latex gloves and went at it! Here are the results on the exhaust, they look a bit better but I was fearful of rubbing the rest of the paint off.

Beeacon.

After:







Before:

[Beeacon]

Finally got around to fixing the condensation in the rear passenger taillight. Lots of pictures below to show the process but mainly I followed Flybobbie's writeup and video shown below:

viewtopic.php?p=1229403#p1229403
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJa6z6e-a0

Glue used was the Evostick Spray Mount:
https://www.diy.com/departments/evo-sti ... 125_BQ.prd

Looks as though the seal wasn't seated correctly:


You can see where the water runs over the light on the top left hand side where all the muck is:




Light out with condensation:


The figure 8 seal that causes the issue:


Water in the seal being the culprit, cleaned and glued this back in, then glued to the light unit:




Water pooled in one corner causing the condensation:


Re-fitted and no more condensation!:

[Beeacon]

After much arguing with BMW, they will not replace the wheels

Wheels had corrosion to the face of one of the rear wheels, heavy corrosion behind the hubcap on both wheels, and both rears have very minor cracks (radial ovality measurement showed 1.02mm).

They denied the claim as the wheel with no corrosion to the face they could see some repair work to the face, and thus void the warranty despite the cracks (fair enough). The wheel with corrosion to the face they said that the crack was caused by hitting a pothole and was not due to a manufacturing defect even though the corrosion is a manufacturing defect, and void the warranty on that wheel too.

I queried the manufacturing defect element as the ovality of the wheel used to have a maximum out of ovality of 2mm up until ~2016 when they reduced it to 1mm. My wheels were manufactured in 2011 and sold to the previous owner of the car in 2017. Thus the wheels were probably out of the new ovality limit upon purchase making the warranty void. When they told me it was 1.02mm (20 microns, a human hair is 65microns thick) I nearly blew my lid

They wouldn't budge on the issue and I'm feeling a bit defeated on it really. Anyone got any advise on what to do? Or am I to buy a nice set of replicas and sell the two good fronts (Style 313M)?

[Phoenixboy]

After much arguing with BMW, they will not replace the wheels

Wheels had corrosion to the face of one of the rear wheels, heavy corrosion behind the hubcap on both wheels, and both rears have very minor cracks (radial ovality measurement showed 1.02mm).

They denied the claim as the wheel with no corrosion to the face they could see some repair work to the face, and thus void the warranty despite the cracks (fair enough). The wheel with corrosion to the face they said that the crack was caused by hitting a pothole and was not due to a manufacturing defect even though the corrosion is a manufacturing defect, and void the warranty on that wheel too.

I queried the manufacturing defect element as the ovality of the wheel used to have a maximum out of ovality of 2mm up until ~2016 when they reduced it to 1mm. My wheels were manufactured in 2011 and sold to the previous owner of the car in 2017. Thus the wheels were probably out of the new ovality limit upon purchase making the warranty void. When they told me it was 1.02mm (20 microns, a human hair is 65microns thick) I nearly blew my lid

They wouldn't budge on the issue and I'm feeling a bit defeated on it really. Anyone got any advise on what to do? Or am I to buy a nice set of replicas and sell the two good fronts (Style 313M)?

sounds about as would be expected.
unfortunately, we as a country tend to have a moan, then let it go.
america, if i have this correct, kicked off with bmw and they were forced to replace a lot of alloys as deemed not fit for purpose, due to cracking with runflats.
as most of us know, replacing with normal tyres and correct pressures certainly seems to reduce the risk considerably, but does not get over the fact a lot of the alloys just were not robust enough for our potholed roads.
you either pick up a good set of used oem, or a set of reputable after market wheels for similar money to a single oem wheel new from bmw.

[Phoenixboy]

bearing in mind the cost of those wheels in 2017 would have been in the region of 2000 pounds, it seems crazy that they can walk away from this

[Beeacon]

bearing in mind the cost of those wheels in 2017 would have been in the region of 2000 pounds, it seems crazy that they can walk away from this

I think Dave1971 managed to get very lucky with his purchase of them as he put a cheeky bid in for £1000 and they accepted the offer. But its still not good if they're having issues after only 2 years (18 months really as they've been in the garage over winter). I'm gobsmacked as its very clearly a manufacturing issue on at least one of the wheels.

[Phoenixboy]

bearing in mind the cost of those wheels in 2017 would have been in the region of 2000 pounds, it seems crazy that they can walk away from this

I think Dave1971 managed to get very lucky with his purchase of them as he put a cheeky bid in for £1000 and they accepted the offer. But its still not good if they're having issues after only 2 years (18 months really as they've been in the garage over winter). I'm gobsmacked as its very clearly a manufacturing issue on at least one of the wheels.

no definately poor show.
they seem good at wiggling out of these issues.
still even at 1000 pounds, its pretty poor to say the least.
what is the warranty on oem wheels then?
although it would appear they seem to wiggle out of it in most cases.

[Beeacon]

no definately poor show.
they seem good at wiggling out of these issues.
still even at 1000 pounds, its pretty poor to say the least.
what is the warranty on oem wheels then?
although it would appear they seem to wiggle out of it in most cases.

The warranty is for 2 years from purchase of the part minus the following exceptions:
- Corrosion must be to the face of the wheel
- The wheel must not have been refurbed
- The wheel must not be cracked (unless the ovality is out by less than 1mm. Used to be 2mm)
- The wheels must be put on the car by BMW and have a VIN model number on the parts receipt (unless they're a performance set)
- Your car must be blue
- It must be a Tuesday
- You must be able to argue for a sustained period of at least 5 minutes without blinking
- Your name must have at least 5 vowels in it (middle names do not count)
- It must be a Thursday
- You must present, if asked, a 2 minute demonstration on how to yo-yo
- You must have at least 72% of your own teeth
- You must be minimum shoe size 9
- You must be maximum shoe size 9.5
- Finally, It must be a Wednesday

[Phoenixboy]

seriously, wheel must not be cracked!
the corrosion side of it i can sort of understand as if you dont take care they are liable to corrode if chipped etc, but a crack should at least be considered providing it is not obvious you have driven into a crater.

[Dave1971]

no definately poor show.
they seem good at wiggling out of these issues.
still even at 1000 pounds, its pretty poor to say the least.
what is the warranty on oem wheels then?
although it would appear they seem to wiggle out of it in most cases.

The warranty is for 2 years from purchase of the part minus the following exceptions:
- Corrosion must be to the face of the wheel
- The wheel must not have been refurbed
- The wheel must not be cracked (unless the ovality is out by less than 1mm. Used to be 2mm)
- The wheels must be put on the car by BMW and have a VIN part reference for the model number (unless they're a performance set)
- Your car must be blue
- It must be a Tuesday
- You must be able to argue for a sustained period of at least 5 minutes without blinking
- Your name must have at least 5 vowels in it (middle names do not count)
- It must be a Thursday
- You must present, if asked, a 2 minute demonstration on how to yo-yo
- You must have at least 72% of your own teeth
- You must be minimum shoe size 9
- You must be maximum shoe size 9.5
- Finally, It must be a Wednesday

All joking aside you’re not far wrong. The whole reason I ended up buying those wheels was because 3 of the original 296’s had cracked. As soon as I spoke to the dealers and they said that the wheels had to be maximum of 1mm out of round I knew I was on a hiding to nothing, oh and they wanted £50 per wheel to get them checked.

I believe Smartbear had one of his wheels looked at, it was less than 1mm and they still refused him a new one.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I managed to get a new set of BMW wheels and tyres for £1000 but was still pissed off that BMW basically didn’t give a monkeys about the 296’s.

[Beeacon]

For the cracks its something to do with ovality. If the wheel has hit something particularly hard (like a big pothole) then the wheel will squash. They used to leave this at 2mm out of a perfect circle to account for manufacturing tolerances. This was lowered in 2015-16 to 1mm (I'm guessing they can now make wheels to a much tighter tolerance or they just want to void all claims).

As my wheels were at 1.02mm they have denied the claim because 'it is out of tolerance' even though they were manufactured in 2011; and even then, its only out of the new tolerance by 20 microns! If they stood the wheel up when it was lacquered they'd get more ovality than that!

As Dave1971 says they're going to try and wriggle out of it as best they can.

P.S. Laine, I'm just organising some accommodation with the Crooklands hotel and will be bringing the car to the National meet, hope to see you there

[Dave1971]

P.S. Laine, I'm just organising some accommodation with the Crooklands hotel and will be bringing the car to the National meet, hope to see you there

We’re coming over but we are camping this year. As we’re not so restricted on load capacity it means we can pack all the comforts of home. We won’t be going on the drives but we will bag a few Wainwright’s while we’re in the area. It’ll be good to meet up again.

[Beeacon]

Captain's log 5th of June 2019; today, my tyre exploded...



Michelin Pilot Alpin 4 225/40/18 (winter tyre) just coming off the M60 motorway and onto the sliproad and the tyre lets out a massive bang, and the sound of all the air escaping. Luckily I was able to coast to a stop as there was very little in front of me. Miraculously didn't damage the alloy either. Temperature was 12C so I can't see temperature being an issue and the tyre has done a maximum of 4000 miles.

I've contacted Michelin and will try and get it claimed back on warranty as this most certainly shouldn't happen and must be a manufacturing defect. I just don't seem to be able to catch a break with wheels at the moment!

After claiming 'shock from the very scary incident and near miss' to my fiancee I feel like I justified buying myself some new summer wheels... Don't tell her I said that...

Front: Replica Style 313M 19" 8J ET40 with 10mm H&R spacers (5x120 bolt pattern 72.6mm bore) on Vredestein Ultrac Vorti 235/35 R19 96Y
Rear: Replica Style 313M 19" 9J ET40 on Vredestein Ultrac Vorti 255/35 R19 96Y

Should arrive within the next few weeks in the run up to the National Meet. Onwards and upwards!