nfbr's 2007 Ruby Black Z4 Coupé! Blog/Build-Thread

[nfbr]

Managed to find time the other night to get my technician John to have a look at the geometry alignment
Took a couple of photographs along the way.

Here it is on the 4-post ramp with the Hunter Alignment system...


Alignment system hubs clamped onto the wheels


Up in the air for a few adjustments - Rear camber and toe were out slightly


Rear end readings: Spot on!


I forgot to take a photo of the front readings, but all was spot on!
The toe was at 0˚05' on both sides, Camber at -1˚21' (L) and -1˚25' (R) - This is adjustable however we didn't have the correct tool for it, so this will be done again at a later date - Hopefully when I decide whether to go with new tyres, or new wheels and tyres!
Caster was a healthy 5˚01 (L) and 4˚51' (R) but isn't adjustable.

The car now drives miles better. Steering feels more direct and I have less pulling over lumps in the road.
Mega happy

Next up, a good clean.

 

[Dale_B]

Good results mate makes such a difference having the alignment set up correctly.

 

[nfbr]

At the weekend I finally got around to giving the car a good clean!

First up, A quick rinse with the pressure washer to get rid of any loose debris


Then a pre-wash, a rinse, then another wash using the good old two bucket method and a microfibre wash mitt


Another rinse and it's looking better already!


Next up was to clay the paintwork on the car, For this I used a medium Bilt Hamber clay and a home mix of clay lube.


Just a small area of the paintwork on the roof brought up this with just one pass! Looks like it hasn't been done before...


After 2-hours of claying, the paintwork felt a lot smoother, but needed brightening up a little


So, On the recommendation of a friend, I gave the car two coats of AutoSmart Platinum Polish. Very similar to AutoGlym Super Resin, but with far less powder.


After drying with an Ultra Plush Microfibre Drying towel, it was polishing time.


With the polish applied and removed, We're now onto the finishing coats! I've chosen to go for FinishKare FK1000P after a lot of recommendations on detailing forums.


FK1000P Applied


2-Coats later


Next up, The leather... Due to me having no seat cover and having worked on it quite a bit in the past few months, the drivers seat had got a little dirty.
For this, I opted to go for a leather cleaner and conditioner kit from Gliptone - Basically - Gliptone are a leather producer and one of the worlds finest leather dye/paint companies, so they know exactly what they are doing when they make their leather care products!


Needless to say, It came up absolutely beautifully and I'm now happy that the leather is protected and conditioned!


Another cool by-product of this stuff, is that my car now smells like a leather factory! Such a nice smell

Anyway - Here's a couple of finished pictures:




And a couple of beading pictures for those interested in how the FK1000P works with rain






Overall, I'm happy with the products that I've used, but I'm thinking maybe a little later on in the year, I'll have the paintwork professionally machine polished as there are unfortunately a number of marks that I'd like to get rid of and some areas on the bonnet where it looks like someone has made a poor and thoughtless effort of removing bird poop.

Next up, Hopefully discs and pads once they arrive with me from Italy

 

[Dale_B]

That clay bar was fairly dirty! I can imagine the lower half of the doors and side skirt panels being even worse? Overall it's came out great 8)

Any particular discs & pads you are getting for them to come from Italy?

 

[nfbr]

That clay bar was fairly dirty! I can imagine the lower half of the doors and side skirt panels being even worse? Overall it's came out great 8)

Strangely enough, the only two surfaces that were this bad were the roof and the bonnet. Everything else was pretty good overall! The bumper, the tailgate, the skirts, doors and wings only needed one pass!

Any particular discs & pads you are getting for them to come from Italy?

Tarox 'D95' Discs (Heat Treated, Anti-Corrosion Treated , Countersunk Drilled) and Tarox 'Strada' Pads (moderate fast road use).
They normally only offer their G88 (40-grooved), F2000 (Swirl Grooved) and Sport Japan (Drilled/Slotted) rotors to UK customers so I'm having the ones I wanted imported by Tarox UK

 

[Dale_B]

Tarox 'D95' Discs (Heat Treated, Anti-Corrosion Treated , Countersunk Drilled) and Tarox 'Strada' Pads (moderate fast road use).
They normally only offer their G88 (40-grooved), F2000 (Swirl Grooved) and Sport Japan (Drilled/Slotted) rotors to UK customers so I'm having the ones I wanted imported by Tarox UK

Good choice 8)... You are certainly getting the zed into top shape that's for sure.

 

[nfbr]

I've found some wheels that I really like (And can get Michelin Pilot Supersport Tyres for) too but I'm still umming and arring about taking the car away from the OEM+ looks that I normally go for
And I'm not too sure how it'd look with 19"s on the Eibachs or whether I'd need to change for the H&R's.

Probably not something that I'll be doing any time soon though.

 

[nfbr]

After a quiet period in which I've been mostly chasing tail... I've received my made to measure stainless steel pipes!
My plan is to give the Coupé a little more aural presence by removing the centre silencer!

Here are the pipes:


And here's the offending silencer: (Photo borrowed from someone on Z-Post)


I'm gonna have a word with our Tech genius guy Wayne and get him to do me a little Drive Away video of the standard exhaust, Then keep my fingers crossed that I measured it up right, then re-measure it all again another two or three times before cutting and joining... Then get another video on the same road with the silencer bypass pipes fitted

An update maybe later this week on these.

 

[nfbr]

Saturday morning job: Get rid of the centre silencer!

First up, Here's the silencer...


Cutting the old one off. I used an air speed saw for this. It took quite a while, but wasn't difficult.


With the four pipes chopped, An axle jack saved me from having a sore foot...


Comparing the silencer with the two replacement pipes - Weight wise, around 2kg has been saved - I quite simply couldn't believe how heavy that tiny little silencer was!


Pipes in place sleeved over, sealed with silicone and fastened up with Mikalor SupaClamps


And finally the finished thing:


First impressions: Driving around normally there is absolutely no increase in drone or any horrible resonance whatsoever.
The tone of the exhaust has changed slightly and if anything feels a little 'deeper' than it was before.

Volume wise, there's a little difference, the car sounds a bit more like it should have done from factory, but it in no way sounds like an aftermarket exhaust.
I'm quite happy with it so far.

Here's a quick crappy rev-up video I took with my iPhone.
[youtube]YOQWzrVYN6c[/youtube]

 

[John002]

I need to get a start on mine. Have you chosen the wheels yet?

 

[nfbr]

Kind of... I'm not sure though. Plus other things are 'diverting' my funds at the moment... Which I'm not too sure whether it's a :thumbsdown: or a yet...

 

[John002]

Same here, a refurb is half the money toward decent reps and my wheels def need doing. Then there is the added cost of spacers. I've just bought h&r springs and I'm keen to get it all sorted.

Did you buy the spacers online? Might just bite the bullet on some??

 

[nfbr]

Drop me a message if you're looking for some good quality ones (i.e. H&R or Eibach) and I'll look after you on price as much as I can

 

[John002]

PM'd

 

[Ed Doe]

Have you had a chance to drive the car more since the mid-box removal? Any more info would be much appreciated!

Also, I don't suppose you took any other photos of the exhaust rear-ward of the mid-box, and just before the back-box? I'm thinking of a certain exhaust modification myself, but want to do a bit more research before taking the plunge!!

Finally, can you confirm the diameter of the exhaust pipes? Is each one 2"? Cheers

 

[nfbr]

Done around 80 miles today and yesterday. Still absolutely no additional drone, no harsh resonance. Just sounds like standard only a little louder and with a bit of a burble on over run.

The inner diameter of the pipes needs to be 49.5mm on one end and 50.5mm on the other end. I would advise having it welded rather than using clamps like I did. But then my version was purely for research purposes at this point.

Here's another video with the car on a closed road.
[youtube]8azcGsSX1ZY[/youtube]

This thread on Z-Post helped me out a lot.

 

[nfbr]

Well, It's been a while! I've been busy doing some bits with the house whilst the good weather is out including replacing a bannister rail with a glass block wall and generally enjoying the lovely weather (when we've had some) in the car, as well as doing a lot of the VW Shows working for Awesome GTI / Volkswagen Racing / APR UK Ltd.

The time has come for me to do an oil change of which the bits have already arrived!
- 7 Litres of Millers Oils 'Nanodrive' EE Longlife C3 (5w30) which is both BMW LL04 approved and also gets some fantastic reviews from many people within the tuning industry
- Mann HU816x Oil Filter - Mann filters make the Genuine BMW Filter, infact they even have their Name and Part number stamped on the genuine filter!
- Genuine BMW Sump Plug and Washer


I've also ordered up some 19" Alloy wheels and some 225/35/19 - 255/30/19 Goodyear Eagle F1 Assy2's
I'll get some photos up of the wheels once I've received them, the tyres are looking to take around approximately 7-10 business days to get here, by which point, I should finally have my new Tarox Discs and Pads too!

 

[nfbr]

So it's not always fun in the world of playing with cars!
When I bought my lovely Z4 Coupé, the independent car sales company I bought it off did an oil and filter change - despite me telling them not to and that I'd do it myself...
6 months, 729 miles and a strange noise coming from the oil filter housing later, I have finally got around to replacing the oil and the oil filter that they had used.

When I picked the car up and found that they'd done an oil change, I asked to check the invoice for the parts they'd used, so I knew that the oil grade was right, but never actually thought to check the brand of oil filter. Having looked around google to find out what this strange noise just off idle was coming from my engine, it turned out that quite a few people had experienced the issue and had found it to be a replacement oil filter manufactured called 'FRAM', which people are lead to believe are a good quality manufacturer. This unfortunately is not the case.

FRAM make inferior quality filters, they stick to the stock sizes, but they don't stick to the stock design of filter (i.e. number of pleats, end finish type, filtration media etc).

Here's a quick picture of what I saw after removing the oil filter cover:

As you can see, the date stamp shows the filter was manufactured in May of 2014, so definitely a good sign that the filter had indeed been changed, but check out the warped shape to the rubber head of the filter!

Upon removing the filter from the housing, I was even more shocked!

This thing was completely screwed. This is usually something that we see when a filter has been in a car for 50,000+ miles, Not 500-1000 miles! But what I've now seen through research on the web, this is fairly standard for a FRAM filter.

The other side of the filter showed yet another horror story! The rubber base of the oil filter had cracked and split! In this pic, I've compared it to a Mann Filter (who make the genuine BMW filter for the N52 motor) and you can see it is a completely different design!


With the new oil filter fitted, the engine is quiet as a mouse and the weird noise is now gone

Anyway - It's not all doom and gloom this week as I accidentally ordered these...

8.5J x 19" - ET38 and 9.5J x 19" - ET43
Along with some Goodyear Eagle F1 ASSY2's in 225/35/19 and 255/30/19

More pictures to come next week once the tyres arrive and I get them on the car.
Really can't wait to see them on the car and to experience life after runflats!

 

[srhutch]

I had a weird noise from my old n52 which was due to the oil filter. Mine was a BMW one though. From memory it was a whistle/whine.

 

[nfbr]

I had a weird noise from my old n52 which was due to the oil filter. Mine was a BMW one though. From memory it was a whistle/whine.

Yeah, This was a bit of a whine, to be fair, I'd thrown away the idea that it could have been the oil filter as all the videos of people with the same kind of noise which were cured by a fresh oil filter were much much much worse and far louder than mine was. I did find on one of the forums at one point that someone did some digging with BMW in Germany and found that there was a faulty batch of oil filters produced around 2008-2009 (if my memory serves me well).

Just glad it's fixed it and massively glad I'd only covered such a small amount of mileage since first hearing the noise!