Z4-forum.com

It seems these cars are famous (or infamous?) for window rattles. Mine started soon after I got it and got progressively worse. A fellow forum member had the same issue and theirs failed completely and broke the window mechanism.

If caught early this is simply a case of tightening up a screw.

I took my car over to Purplemattfish's place the other week and we had the doors off in order to take a look at it. I did a bit of research first and it seems the bushes are blamed a loft of the time. However, when we got the whole lot stripped down the bushes looked fine.

The cause of all the rattling was actually a single screw. Tightened this up and now it's back, good as new.

The screw is located in the lower part of the door, away from the hinge. It is behind some foam , so to get to it you would either have to remove the foam "blanket" or slice it. Personally I would just slice it and then re-seal with silocone and gaffer tape later.

There is a convenient hole to put your screwdriver through, and beyond that is the screw. Picture below:



The silver you can see in the pic is the dead-mat material we put in the door. Makes one hell of a difference and I cannot recommend it enough. Finally my car sounds like a proper sports car rather than a sardine tin!!!

Hope this helps someone.

P.S. If you find you DO need bushes, I have 2 sets, unopened

Just to pad this article out a bit,

if your window seems loose at the end furthest away from the door hinge, ie. you can lift it up and down by a small amount, then the loose bolt we tightened up is probably the culprit.

You have to first remove the door trim, there is a comprehensive guide here : http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showth ... ?p=2450085

**When you take the trim off watch what you do with the door locking rod as its a bit loose and can drop on the floor or get jammed when you shut the door**

Once you have the trim off (you don’t need to do anything with the airbag) you will find a moulded bit of foam covering the internals of the door. If you are only here to do the window rattle then you don’t need to take this foam sheet off.

Just below the airbag near the edge of the door you will be able to feel the hole.

slit opening with a sharp knife about 2 or 3 inches long directly over the hole.

In a minute we are going to switch the ignition on, before you do this make sure the car is on neutral, or park if you are a wuss with an auto box its cheaper to do this before than realise it’s in gear as you crank the key one click too far!! As I store my bike at the back of the garage it would be even more expensive mistake.

The reason we have not touched the airbag is because we now need to switch the ignition back on to lower the window (if the airbag was unplugged and you switched on the ignition the airbag circuit does a self test, sees there is no response from the door bag and you would get an airbag light on the dashboard that then needs a dealer reset to cancel).

If you are doing the passenger side then you can use the driver’s door controls if not then you will have to plug the door card back in to use the control on it. Plug the switch in before you turn the ignition key, this way you are less likely to damage anything.

With the ignition switched on you can now lower the window. you need to shine a torch through the slit and peer through the hole, lower window until the head of the torx bolt lines up with the hole in the door, you will have wind the window down about half way'ish.

I lifted the window slightly and then tightened up the bolt, I was using a screwgriver and you can go fairly tight but if you are using a wrench don't strip it. I did think about unscrewing the bolt and putting a dab of thread lock on it... it's up to you, but if you do I don’t know what might fall into the bottom of the door when you remove the bolt... so be careful.

before you do anything else wind the window back up and (having made sure the other door on the other side of the car is open) shut the door. The window should now nudge up to seal the door against the soft top, it might do the same for the hard top but I am not sure. If in doubt check the other door and make sure it looks the same. Open the door again and give the window a good wiggle it should be a lot more secure now, if its not much better then you nigh have worn bushes too. Replacing the bushes is a bit more involved and you need to remove the bottom half of the foam in the same way we did in the photo above, and it's a bit beyond the scope of this quick fix.

But is the window is now working then let’s move on.

The way I would seal the hole is with some silicone sealant, the same type you seal baths with. I have been doing that for years with no problems. But to be honest you can leave the slit open and it really won’t cause any problems. In the drivers door on Sp3ctre's car the foam was ripped to shreds and full of holes (probably done by a main dealer!) so I siliconed the hell out of it. I generally then cover silicone with a bit of gaffa/duct tape this just stops the silicone sticking to the door card when you replace it.

And that’s it job done, as we had cut off the moulded foam took this opportunity to fit acoustic sheet in the doors, it can make quite a difference.

thank you for this post(dated and all )my 03 driver side had symptoms,and it was just the screw.....afraid to completely remove screw(if it falls off,its off to bottom of the door gallows..lol) i tightened,then applied a healthy supply of silicone sealer to the head of the screw...so far so good

OK, if I've read all those instruction correctly (unlikely) -

Remove Airbag emblem
Remove door handle
Remove door opener
Slide out door trim



A couple of questions:

Special Tool 009317...would a flat piece of plastic be a suitable alternative?
How easily does the Airbag emblem come off?
Do you lever the door handle off fromt he bottom or the top?
How easily does the "cap" come out from the door opener...have you used something instead of butyl to suck it out?


Is there anything esle I need to remove to gain access to the window mechanism?
Does anyone have a diagram of the window mechanism?


Cheers for any help

After a couple of beers, my friend and i ripped the door trim out again as there was a lil gap next to the tweeters. We found the problem to be the rubber lining in the front behind folded in. When pushed back on the outside of the window, the gap disappeared.

Well thANKS SO MUCH

IT WAS AS U STATED

I was quite a nervous to start , not sure if i would encounter air bag crossed paths or not

but all ok , a few prys and a few torx then a quick look at your pixs to see what hole to use

tighten the offending screw and walla all better

ONLY 1 note for others i could not find the screw with the window all the way up or down

It needs to be 1/3 of the way up from the bottom for the screw in question to line up properly

and its a larger than the rest torx head loosened in this process other wise


Thanks for saving me a trip to the dealer and letting me work om my own z


clamcop cruisin in RI

Fixed mine 3.0l today.

I used http://www.stanleytools.com/default.asp ... olding+Bar instead of the special tool. Glad it's fixed!

going to do this tomorrow afternoon... its a must for me now

hahaha... that'll teach me not to search!

this is exactly what caused my window to disappear into the abyss called the inner door!

used this today. Worked like a charm :thumbs up:

excellent piece of info used it todat exactly as in the pics and my rattle stopped immediatley The screw was well loose.

cheers

Its a great fix! I used some very sticky trim tape (the spongey stuff) to get the door handle screw cover off. Otherwise it was quick and easy, window and door now sound like they belong to a BMW.

Unfortunately, In my euphoric state afterwards I noticed I'd got a water leak!

Thanks so much for posting this! I used detailing clay to remove the door handle screw cover. At first, I didn't think it would be sticky enough, but it worked perfectly!

Execelent post !!!!!!

Tank you to all on this discussion, like some said it before at first i wasent sure what i was going to find. But know that i know could do it in 5 minutes.

Philosophico wrote: Remove door opener

Bit of reviving on this old thread. I have been trying to find the following on this lovely forum: how do I remopve the door opener after removing the plug and the torx behind in the door opener?

It reads "lever out the door opener" in various threads, but by means of what?

I see that I can lift the door opener slightly at the front (which according to various other threads is where it needs to be levered out first) by means of a flat screwdriver, but what do I do next and in what direction?

Many thanks for your help and sorry if I did miss something in previous posts on this topic ...