Montego Blue E86 is Long Gone - Z4MC Diff Rebuild

[Allan280]

Hi
What was the foam cleaner you used on the black plastic trim,the finish looks great.

Thanks

Allan

[Allan280]

What was the foam cleaner you use on the seat bases ?

They have come up like new also.

[lucasxdiniz]

What was the foam cleaner you use on the seat bases ?

They have come up like new also.

Upholstery cleaner spray - cheapest one from the car section in Tesco's.

[MrPT]

So many questions about upholstery cleaning, mate, you should consider a career switch to Molly Maid.

[lucasxdiniz]

Very minor update.

Replaced front anti-roll bar bushes as the originals were looking tired. While I was there I gave the brackets a good polish and cleaned the anti-roll bar until it was shiny again.



Also replaced the headlight covers as the headlights started showing some mist near the the indicator strip. £29 for the pair from Sopers of Lincoln, so don't buy them for £22 each on eBay. You can clearly see how tired the old seal was, and that is the good side after I flipped them around. You can definitely feel how much better the seal is when you lock the cover in place with the spring.




And I finally pulled the trigger on new OEM individual mats. Because these have the champagne leatherette border they're much pricier than the standard anthracite ones, which in my opinion are 100% worth the £60 or so; fitted luxury mats from aftermarket companies for the same price aren't as nice or match the interior as well. Really happy with how much newer/cleaner the interior feels.




Next update will probably be from Ross at RBM. Unfortunately I don't have the time to carry out the sump gasket replacement anymore, so hopefully he will take a few pics of the work so I can share them here.

[dougie1142]

Nice work as usual and interesting updates!

I desperately need some new mats, the previous owner had fitted some that caught under the accelerator pedal when you were pinning the throttle! Not ideal. £60 for OEM anthracite is good though.

[Allan280]

Hi
Are those eom items for £60.00 with the champagne border that sounds like a great deal.

I have a chamgagne interior an was looking for some myself,they look great do you have the code from the receipt and I will try my local BM garage in Bolton.

Thanks

Allan

[Allan280]

Ps

Thanks for the reply on the seat base cleaner.

Regards

Allan

[lucasxdiniz]

Hi
Are those eom items for £60.00 with the champagne border that sounds like a great deal.

I have a chamgagne interior an was looking for some myself,they look great do you have the code from the receipt and I will try my local BM garage in Bolton.

Thanks

Allan

Sorry, only just seen this. No, those mats costed me about £90, and I don't regret buying them. I'll update this reply with the part no later when I go through my receipts, but I'm pretty sure the driver's mat has a tag with the part number.

[lucasxdiniz]

Finally half-interesting updates with mods:

I've always wanted a loud intake for my Z4 as in my previous car, an MX5, I preferred the induction sound over the exhaust note. I didn't expect this to be the case with the straight-6, but always thought it needed more induction sound and the sound generator felt too fake. I always planned on designing one myself, but I never seem to find time, and after seeing that GruppeM had a 40% off Christmas sale I decided to just buy one. I actually don't like the look of the GruppeM and ended up not going for the 'cool points' of having one and bought an aFe Intake instead with the benefits of paying considerably less than a GruppeM intake.

I bought the intake from this seller and pre-paid the custom fees, so once the seller posted the intake, I had it within 5 days. Unfortunately I sent it to my work, and the day before it arrived, I was asked to WFH and couldn't pick up the intake for over 2 weeks. I finally got it last Friday and installed it straight away.





The install isn't too bad, but finding the right orientation for the silicone hose was very annoying. Once you find it though, everything fits as they should. Impressed with the quality for the price!



I also fixed my modded backbox which had destroyed internals for the second time in less than two years. It was done by a forum member and to minimise fabrication time, they used stainless steel hose. I'm not so sure stainless was used when modding my backbox; the root cause of failure was rust and I've never seen stainless steel get anything but surface rust.

This was the type of mod done to my backbox by a forum member (BUT THIS IS NOT MY OWN - pic taken from the forum).



This is what remained of the 'stainless steel' hose.



And this is what the internals look like after it was modded by an exhaust shop - which charged me less than what I had paid for the backbox to be modded by a forum member.



There's a lot less leakage inside the backbox now it uses pipes inside, so it is louder than it ever was. Still has minimal drone, but since it's louder it can be boomier. So I lined the boot with sound deadening mat, which did help. The car sounds the best it has ever sounded, pops on every shift, and it sounds so smooth.





Here's a video of the sound:

[inkey$]

Good update and good to see and hear the results of the AFE and remodded backbox (previous stainless hose internals looked )
Love this build thread

[lucasxdiniz]

Good update and good to see and hear the results of the AFE and remodded backbox (previous stainless hose internals looked )
Love this build thread

Yeah, I almost felt embarrassed for that as the exhaust guys had a few things to say about it haha And thanks!

[lucasxdiniz]

Just another video featuring the sound of the aFe Intake. When I was trying to decide whether to buy one or not I thought there weren't enough videos. This is a crappy video admittedly, that's only going to serve as a placeholder for a video that jhpgram will put together eventually.

[dougie1142]

Just another video featuring the sound of the aFe Intake. When I was trying to decide whether to buy one or not I thought there weren't enough videos. This is a crappy video admittedly, that's only going to serve as a placeholder for a video that jhpgram will put together eventually.

That is mega! Sounds amazing now.

[lucasxdiniz]

Just a maintenance update:

After 15k or so running EBC GreenStuff pads they didn't have much pad material left and my front discs were warped, so new front discs and new pads all around. I liked my GreenStuff pads, they held up to a lot abuse, but still faded in hard hoons - although considerably better than my friends' stock pads. I decided to go for YellowStuff pads this time.
The brake feel is so much better (much firmer and progressive pedal) and brake bite is insane compered to my worn pads, even when they're cold, when they're warm, my ABS/tyres can barely keep up and the wheels do lock up more easily than before.




I ended up biting the bullet and getting my 108s refurbed again. After 20k miles or so the rears were full of stone chips and plenty of small scars on the lips from removing the tyres (3 sets of rears, 2 fronts). I love the silver wheel look on blue cars, so wanted to go for the same, but to make it more special, I asked for Hyper Silver to make the curves of the 108s more obvious. The photos don't give the look justice!







Lately I've come across a few rough running issues. The first one being a hesitation between 2-3k revs when the engine was cold, but once up to temps, if I turned the engine on and off again, issue completely went away. I tracked that down to one of the coils - so I replaced all 6 for good measure. I must say, if didn't have another Z4 a home to swap bits back and forth, this would have been a hard one to track - no errors, not really a misfire, values on INPA were completely within parameters. Just weird.



Then a couple of weeks ago, I started feeling like the power wasn't very linear - some weird spikes in power. Especially around 3-4k revs. And throttle response either a bit too hesitant or too keen and car was a bit jumpy, and sometimes the idle would be all over the place, cold start would shoot up to 2.5krpm randomly. Again, no errors, INPA values all fine, tried adaptations many times, no luck... Started by removing VANOS solenoids, cleaned and tested them, installed them again and problem still persisted. So bought a borescope and went down the intake to check the small DISA. Both DISAs proved to be working perfectly - I even recorded DISA #2 operating.



At this point I was disappointed, as the only other thing left to test was the eccentric shaft sensor. Not easy to get to, and no shortcuts to check it, so would be a matter of just replacing it (+ all the gaskets and bolts). Put DISA #1 and the intake back together, and surprise, surprise the issue is gone. As I took the intake pipes apart, I made sure they were in place and tight, and all seemed to be, but now I can only imagine they weren't and a a small vacuum leak was causing the issues I experienced. Or it's a coincidence and the problem will come back again. But 200 miles later and all seems fine, so we shall see.

Bonus: checked all of my intake valves. Advantages of port injection and good fuel, no carbon build up!