Hello and Thanks from Surbiton

[baz-j]

I’ve been a member for three years and bought my zed in August 2016 so this first post is a little overdue, but I wanted to say thank you to all the members for making this a great source of info and for helping me in my journey from never owning a car with more than 100bhp to being the proud owner of a Midnight Blue 35is which is also my first BMW.

Enjoy the photos!

New Forest: (day of purchase, still with run flats)

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Isle of Skye:

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Isle of Arran:

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This car is amazing and it makes me smile every time I drive it. It took many months of getting accustomed to the power and to the feel of the zed to work up to driving with Sport+ manual mode on the silky DCT box. Likewise trying out Launch mode was a much looked-forward to stage in my zed driving career which showed how skittish the run-flats could be even in a straight line. Now my rule is Sport+ only in the dry and on the bendy bits - not on the Motorway or in heavy/slow traffic. Had one recovered rear-end slide in the damp exiting the roundabout that takes you up the hill on the A31 after leaving the M3, which thankfully was on an empty road. Since then I’ve been more careful to drive within my personal limits and to keep Sport+ as a treat for the best road conditions.

Here’s some of the areas that the forum has been most helpful:

* quality pre-purchase sanity checking of what I wanted from my zed and lots of detail on what I needed to know before taking the leap. Great stuff like the links to the bimmer.work website to check all factory options for a car using just the VIN. What sort of warranty to consider plus lots of other things too numerous to mention that helped me get through the pre-purchase phase - which was 6 months as I held out hoping for a beauty which happily turned up in the end.

* convincing me to invest in a private mechanic inspection which avoided a 20k mistake and gave me confidence of her provenance when I eventually found my keeper.

* explaining the limitations of the Potenza run-flats and how they can be dodgy in the wet and what not to do in order to keep out of the ditch. Then helping me decide to ditch the run-flats in favour of Michelin Pilot Sport 4S down to what pressures to try out. What a transformation, never looked back. Decided to make the change prior to a road-trip to the Isle of Arran which necessitated driving through what my Southerner mindset thought of as being possibly the wettest place in the UK - Glasgow - which that day lived up to expectations and I was VERY glad to be on safe rubber in otherwise aquaplane-inviting conditions.

* finding out about what Carly is - bought myself a Carly box to enable some cool tricks like the digital speedo which I love. I also wanted it to check there were no error codes throughout the warranty period. If she was going to go wrong I wanted to know some facts before taking it back to the garage 120 miles away. Being able to get realtime engine measurements from the Canbus also tickled my techie side for no better reason than I think it’s cool to see what’s happening in the beating heart of the machine

* finding out what on earth launch control is and how to enable it.

Quite a list and there’s been lots of other stuff too!

Cheers all!

[buzyg]

May be a little overdue, but a cracking first post. Welcome to posting.

[ZedConvert]

baz-j, great intro and write up; I think we are all still learning. Keep posting!

[Huzee4]

Great read, and prompting me to wear out my RFTs asap ! I'm intrigued, what is Launch Control ?

[Mr Tidy]

Hi and welcome (at last)!

Still you've more than made up for that with those photos and some interesting observations!

[Haggisman]

Welcome to the forum from NZ. Car is a great colour and a well written overview. Have fun.

[baz-j]

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone

Huzee4 - Launch control is available if your zed has a DCT gearbox whereby the car accelerates from stationery at maximal acceleration, optimising the shifts - all by just flooring the accelerator. Should be able to get close to the 4.8s 0-60 but never timed it. To be honest although it's a bit fun to have a go occasionally with a dry and empty wide road, I find it more exciting to pull an almost equivalent acceleration pulling away from a roundabout using manual shifts on the paddles. I think the feel of being in control of the shifts ups the adrenaline! Certainly it's still astonishing to me how quick she goes up to 60.

First drive at least 6 miles and get the oil temperature to 120 degrees and stop the car. You know you've done the initial steps below right because a cool little chequered flag icon appears on the dashboard. Watch out as there may be a touch of fishtailing if on the run flats, as I found out the first time I tried it. You can't repeat this for a few miles. I think I once repeated it about 10 minutes later. The manual says don't do it too often as 'higher loads on the vehicle lead to premature component wear' - this frankly applies to any spirited driving though there will be more clutch wear on the shift out into first than normal.

From the manual:

1. With the engine running, depress the brake pedal with your left foot.
2. Activate the SPORT+ program of the Dynamic Driving Control.
3. With the vehicle stationary, activate manual mode and select first gear.
4. Press the accelerator all the way down. The engine speed when driving off is controlled. A flag symbol appears in the instrument cluster.
5. The vehicle accelerates when you release the brake pedal. Keep the accelerator pressed all the way down.
6. The transmission shifts up automatically as long as the accelerator is pressed all the way down.