Hi - First Z4 - Some issues

W

whiterabbit

Member
Hi ,

Joined the forum last week as i was looking to purchase a car and wanted to know more about them...ended up buying one from here lol

Its 2004 3.0SE that i bought from Aberdeen on Saturday (17th August 2013) and drove down back to warwickshire.

My car history today is :

Rover 216sli
BMW e46 323se
Rover 416sli
Alfa 147 Selespeed
Lotus Elise S2 - Modifed
530d Sport
Passat CC (motability) / Daewoo Kalos - Dont ask!
BMW Z4 3.0SE

This is the only pic i have for now... will take more once i get it washed and polished. i have given the interior a good cleaning, just need to hoover and then do the exterior.


9559738453_d1886aa7b5_z.jpg
IMG_1116 by WR76, on Flickr

Its so nice to be behind the wheel of a BMW again, esp the Z. iv never driven one before but had a ride in one when they came out and knew I had to have one.This was back when I sold my 323 to pay off debts. Its an awesome car to drive. Reminds me of my lotus but ore refined. I cant believe it cost me almost half what the lotus did too.

Iv got a few issues to sort out with the car so have been busy using the search function and am grateful for all the contributors on here.

Faults so far:

*Drivers cup holders broken - not sure if ill fix this is it worth the £35 odd to replace?

*Central locking not working - sent gm5 away to be repaired

*Knocking noise coming from front suspension at low speed - strut brace needs tightening? or something more sinister?

*Another noise like a knock coming from cabin / engine bay whilst driving - not sure what this is....

*Vibration in wheel at motor way speed comes and goes at different speeds - bushes?

* Car sometimes skips a bit ( left to right or Vice Versa) on the motorway - normal tramlining due to Runflats? or bushes?

*DSC and Brake light warning - comes and goes. sensor clean? or something else?

*Light bulb warning light - comes and goes ? checked all lights are working so bit confused by this one

*Oil light some times stays on after turning the car off and i get a bleep? no idea on this one.

*Brakes feel different to all other BMW iv had / driven. I expected to have to feather the brakes as they are normally quite sharp on past BMWs. is the Z4 different? they are strong when I hit them hard... rebleed / change fluid? this was done by pervious owner using an indy....maybe they didn't bleed it properly?

* Some bits seems to be missing from the roof/parcel shelf area / boot but as this is my first car im not 100% sure on it. It has storage nest on the front passenger - but no nets in the boot. On the inside centre console it has the storage thingy...but when you drop it down there is nothing in there...so not sure if its supposed to have a torch or something. above this storage box is another push in lever type thing...but it doesnt do anything...im wondering if it was to open a latch to access the parcel shlef...in shich case something is def missing.

I normally buy a car and spend thousands fixing and modding it and then selling it on, but i need to reign that in a bit due to funds and uncertainty of how long i will keep the car.

Thanks for reading, and if you can advise / help on any of the above then do let me know.
 
Welcome & congrats on your purchase.

Pity wasn't the other weekend otherwise you could have joined the meet held last weekend near Edinburgh & benefited from some very knowledgable people on the Forum

- oil light when turning off - put in 1 litre of oil immediately - castrol edge 5W30. Eurocarparts parts have 30% off if you're quick

- wheel vibration. Do normal things with tracking first, then go onto suspension. Given you've mention knocking, check drop links & ARB bushes

- intermittent bulb. I had this & turned out to be one of the rear bulbs. I cleaned them up, swapped them round & never had the problem return again... Though needed diagnostics to tell me which bulb it was

- dsc & brake light - yup, sounds familiar

- car skipping, hummmm, shouldn't do that as doesn't have a rope. S

See if u can get to drive someone else's who's local... and then u can compare other bits
 
Thanks Jembo,

I was hoping to join the meet but couldn't get somewhere reasonable to stay, and had a long drive ahead of me.

Ordered the oil - thanks for the heads and got your Pm about the cup holder. Not sure if they are worth doing at the moment. i might do it bit later especially if iv got more pressing things to sort out on the suspension side.

might try and tackle the roof drain while the car is off the road getting gm5 repaired. and maybe invest in a roof cover. I already sense a spiralling of costs here lol
 
Welcome :thumbsdown:

I had a rear bulb problem too, only spotted by Jembo actually - turned out the filament had come away from the internals right at the end, so sometimes was touching and worked, then fell away breaking the connection.

The skipping will be runflats - these cars don't need a rope to skip, they're very clever.

Both knocking notices could be the strut braces. Tighten the bolts at either end and see if that fixes it, did mine (though may move come back this weekend :( ). Don't over tighten though as you can shear them - the correct torque is 32nm.

Brakes - could need the fluid changed. Needs done every two years, but I think many 'normal' owners forget to do this, or just don't know. The brakes are also (genuinely) quite clever - you will find if you accelerate hard and then lift of quickly to brake that the car has 'primed' them and they bite a lot faster and harder with very little pedal travel. They are not that 'sharp' on mine, but are powerful and bite well - have you checked the pads ? OEM that have been on there a long time will crumble at the edges - my rears were awful when I changed them recently.
 
Welcome mate :thumbsup:
Don,t know about your other issues but the skipping/knocking /wheel vibration could well be the front control arms . Exactly the same faults as i had & 2 new ones cured the problems ,
Ditch the runflats to lose the tramlining :thumbsup:
 
Correct torque is 41nm if you have the older style strut brace points on the strut towers. Ths is where you tighten the nut on top.

http://www.z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=55604&p=814523#p814523
 
Gargybloke said:
Correct torque is 41nm if you have the older style strut brace points on the strut towers. Ths is where you tighten the nut on top.

http://www.z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=55604&p=814523#p814523
Click to expand...

Never seen that - cheers :thumbsup:
 
thanks for that,had a look under the bonnet, the brace looks very good nick....i was told by the previous that the front springs were changed after they failed, so could be that this wasnt torqued properly.

looking forward to tinker over the weekend.

Really hoping my gm5 unit comes back by saturday so i can take it for a spin.
 
Hello and welcome! Hope you get your problems sorted soon.

I'd rather be sending from an iPhone on Tapatalk than this piece of crap Android device...
 
Hi and welcome to the forum, nice first pic.
:thumbsup:

Looks like you have quite a list of things to get through. Im afraid im hopeless with stuff like that and wouldnt know where to start, let alone advise.

Good luck :)
 
Unbalanced front wheels can cause the steering wheel wobble at certain speeds, cheap fix at a tyre place.
 
Thanks Atom1 / tomotomotomo,

thats a good point about balancing.

Love your alpine white car mate, that looks the business!

iv not driven my car since tuesday, iv got withdrawal symptoms already, hopefully the gm5 module will come tomorrow so i can go out for a cruise.
 
Sorry its taken me so long post back.

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice.

I tightned the above mention bolts and the creaking has gone away.

I still have the other knocking / rattling noises which ill get round to eventually.

Still loving the drive.

:D
 
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