Jolly's Build thread.

J

Jollygiant

Member
So I bought my 2053 plate 2.5L E85 the end of July last year.

After adding posts to various threads over the year and now its passed it's MOT with a clean bill of health (no advisories) I'll be keeping it.

So I thought I'd start a proper build thread.
The day after I bought it.
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It had done less than a 100 miles between MOT's when I bought it and I drove it home 110miles. At times the pace may have been quite high.
Whilst looking at it the day after I noticed this.
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So 4 new tyres were bought as the one on there were nearly 10 years old!

A couple of weeks later this happened.
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And this.
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Before and after.
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At some point in it's past the tops of the wing started to craze and the then owner decided to just rattle can them. So for£100 I got pair of wings and days work it was done.
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Then this happened. The one advisory on the MOT (slight play in ball joint) became a proper knocking so I replaced both bottom which bones.
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Then a month later came the parking sensors.
These are the Chineseium £20 jobbies. really easy to fit and still working now.
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The rears were easy to fit as the boxes were marked on the bumper, so I just marked and drilled them.
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The fronts weren't, so they were a bit more tricky.
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Then came the wrapping of the rear lights.
Pretty easy if you take the lights out. This is the darkest legal tint for lights and it passed the MOT a couple of weeks ago like it.
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Next the steering wheel got some carbon loving.
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Then the air box and air scoop.
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Fitted
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A while later the back box mod got done. (I won't go into the full how as its been done here https://z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=88783
But just before putting it back together.
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A few moths later I had problem with it cutting out and discovered this.
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So replaced it and and it still cut out and worked out it was a the MAF sensor, so that was replaced.

Early this year I did the E89 seat swap and went from this. (How to https://z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=140545&hilit=e89+seats+into+e85)
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to
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Seeing as the dash looked odd I decided to wrap it.
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And the centre console, after searching the how too's on the trim removal I decided to wrap it in situ.
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With only one minor artery slicing
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After this came the door cards.
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And with the steering wheel, its starting to look pretty trick.
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Now we're up to the beginning of this month.
The front bumper was starting to show it's 21 years of kerb bashing and stone chips. So I decided to re-paint it from the trim line downwards.
I forgot to take a before picture, so here's a post paint and pre splitter/ splitter added picture.
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And the finished one.
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Seeing as it passed the MOT I added these de-cat pipes.
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It sounded nice with the back box mod, but now its got deeper and lovely burble to it and burbles nicely on over run too.

And today I added a heat shield for the engine bay.
Saved loads of weight!
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Fitted and of course I made the brackets too.
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The silver tape will be changed for gold when it arrives. (it doesn't really need any as I make exhaust gaurds for motorcycles and they sit closer to the pipe and they are fine.)
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I was in tad to much of hurry to take the old metal one off and melted a section of my hand!
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So there we are a year of ownership in 3 posts.

So far I have loved every minute of driving it and as it's my second car and project one at that it doesn't get driven every day as I have a BMW 5Series Touring as my daily.
The two together.
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I'm sure they'll be another update soon!
 
Some impressive mods there. :thumbsup:

You obviously work with carbon, but if you did the exhaust mod yourself if you wanted to I reckon you could make a few quid modifying them for others on here.

Thankfully the only pain I've had with Z4s has been to my credit card!
 
Mr Tidy said:
Some impressive mods there. :thumbsup:

You obviously work with carbon, but if you did the exhaust mod yourself if you wanted to I reckon you could make a few quid modifying them for others on here.

Thankfully the only pain I've had with Z4s has been to my credit card!
Click to expand...

Thank you, I try to make a living from the carbon. But I seem to spend the profits on using the carbon for my silly ideas!

As for doing the back box mods, I think it cost about £50 in parts about 3 hours work and then another £50 for welding so I would have to charge about £150 to make it worth it and then theres postage on top and they arent light. Also you have to take the guard off the grinder to get in there with the cutting disc, then it can grab and break the disc's, have a guess how I know!

I do however have a spare box and it passed the MOT with the modded one on, so I could do another and sell it.

It cost me £50 to get it fitted and it's not really job you can do on your drive as you have to take quite bit off to get at the back box, also the exhaust is one piece, so you either have to cut it or do the whole thing!
 
Quality work there!

I've recently bought my first zed, a 53 plate 2.5L auto, and am enjoying it muchly. I know there are some things that will need to be sorted underneath, so I'm going to enjoy the drive over the summer months and get to that when the weather turns I think. However new tyres are happening this week, as the current ones are 11 years old with signs of cracking on the fronts

Great to see your build journey in such detail :thumbsup:

Cheers

Geoff

Edit: Anyone know why my smilies don't show properly? :o :o :o
 
And another update....

This time Dyno time.
Got there late as traffic was shite. Paid £145 for and hour and ended up with 40 mins, who knew i would take 1hour 20 mins to go 40 miles from Watton to Salhouse road in Norwich, normally it would take about 45mins max going though the city centre.
So didn't bother with the standard run as we all know a new e85 2.5 puts out about 190BHP +/- a couple.
Mine is now 21 years old with 110,000 miles in.

So straight on with my airbox with standard scoop, then my scoop and mine made 1.5bhp more and they operator said the fan blows air in @ roughly 45MPH, so extrapolate that out and it's ok, not huge but a small improvement.

So my airbox, with my scoop and the modded exhaust makes........ Drumroll please :guns:
214.9bhp and 253.1 talks with the bonnet open and 213.2 and 249.9 respectively with it shut. He opened the bonnet to allow the car to get as much air into it as possible. So I need to make nice big carbon bonnet scoop now!
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There is bit of hole in the middle and he said that could be due to emissions/ timing/ fueling and he could get that slightly better with a re-map and maybe get another 5ish hp too but at about 4-£500 I don't think it would be really worth the cost.

To make anymore he suggested you would need to go down the cams and lightened flywhee etcl route and again unless you are into track days it's not really worth it.

Video https://imgur.com/cZUT9M0

Now to try and make a MAF sensor pipe for the N52 engines.

Available to buy here https://www.jollyscarbon.co.uk/product-page/carbon-air-box
 
I'm surprised at those numbers, but it's a shame you didn't do a standard run as a benchmark.

If a map isn't worthwhile for about another 5bhp, is it worth making a carbon bonnet scoop for just another 3.2? :lol:
 
Mr Tidy said:
I'm surprised at those numbers, but it's a shame you didn't do a standard run as a benchmark.

If a map isn't worthwhile for about another 5bhp, is it worth making a carbon bonnet scoop for just another 3.2? :lol:
Click to expand...

Sorry the Air scoop comment was a bit tongue in cheek and didn't really come over that way.

If I were to make the air scoop I could sell them and make the £500 for the mapping from the sales. But who really want a scoop in/on front left edge of their bonnet?
 
TBF I thought the bonnet scoop might have been one of those carbon projects you couldn't resist!

And you might ne surprised what people will do to their bonnets. https://z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=152171
 
Mr Tidy said:
TBF I thought the bonnet scoop might have been one of those carbon projects you couldn't resist!

And you might ne surprised what people will do to their bonnets. https://z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=152171
Click to expand...
Because everyone needs cooler strut tower mounts!!
 
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