What have you done to your car today?
- Thread starter Buckz
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jamesdi said:AndyJ1 said:Finished off replacing my offside rear wheel bearing. Took about 9 hours all in including have to do a round trip of 90 miles to get a hydraulic puller from work to push out the drive shaft. Needed heat and the puller to shift it. Later found out the BMW use adhesive on these when they originally assembled the car. No wonder it was difficult to get out. Here’s a couple of pic’s
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One major mishap I had was somehow dislodging the handbrake cable at the handbrake end when re installing the brake shoes
Does anyone know if the cables can be accessed from inside the car? Don’t fancy taking the exhaust and prop shaft out to get to the mechanism below.
Good news is that the noise I could hear was the wheel bearing and not the diff. Nice and quiet now.
Which bearings did you replace with? How is the car feeling now? I'll be doing the same job soon...
Hi James,
I fitted a Merle bearing kit with the circlip and nut purchased from Autodoc.
The noise had been getting louder over a period of about 500 miles, yet no play in bearing. On removal the bearing felt ok and the grease still looked clean. Thought I had been wasting my time until I drove the car. Can now hear the exhaust again instead of the drone of the bearing.
When the bearing arrived I noticed it was identical in spec to one I already had that I had purchased for my E87 but hadn’t used because that issue had been the diff!
Here are some of the tools I had needed to change the bearing over.
As stated above, the most difficult part of the job was getting the driveshaft out of the hub. Couldn’t have done it without the hydraulic puller.
Inspected the paintwork in daylight after getting the car back in the dark last night…. Very, very, nice work 
(hard to appreciate from this photo)
need to detail the Grey looking black grills and make the plastics look black again. Also need to clean the compound out from the front parking sensors…
Can’t decide on whether to keep the 325m’s, stick on the set of 295’s I’ve picked up or do something completely different. If the 325’s stay they’ll be refurbished back to sparkle silver week after next
(hard to appreciate from this photo)need to detail the Grey looking black grills and make the plastics look black again. Also need to clean the compound out from the front parking sensors…
Can’t decide on whether to keep the 325m’s, stick on the set of 295’s I’ve picked up or do something completely different. If the 325’s stay they’ll be refurbished back to sparkle silver week after next
Robster68 said:
Finally finished,very satisfying job done ,now every time I’m under the car I see this instead of this.
Total cost of parts €10 for gaskets,nuts and bolts and exhaust paste I already had,
If I used all oem bmw,gaskets €50,bolts +nuts €68.shocking.
Attachments
Looking at the exhaust joints on Robster68's photo above - mine doesn't have the additional straps between the two pipes. My indy did the bolts originally a few years ago and didn't put any back if they were there in the first place. I've had the exhaust off a couple of times since to renew prop centre bearing and guibo etc. No obvious damage anywhere and easy to make some if really needed but does anyone know how necessary they actually are? Thanks.
In the first photo they weren’t doing very much,thé nuts holding them on were pretty much disintegrated,now they act like a washers and hold the two flanges together rigidly,these rusty flange bolts are a common problem on z4s I think as my old 2.2 had the same condition. Not sure if you need them though.Spriteracer said:
Thanks for that. Since posting I looked at Realoem and they show only one on the diagram. My pipes seem quite rigid without them, but I might put one on next time I have access just to be safe. It did occur that they may prevent / reduce vibration further up the manifolds. Cracking there wouldn't be fun....
Devon
Quick detail wipe ready for a run up to Mallory Park on Sunday for Retrorides show. Looking forward to it 
(Over the weekend)
Stripped the front end, gave it good clean, mended the broken plastics and refixed the badly fitted lower grille. While the bumper was off, repainted the flaky slam brace and the bolt-through strip on top of the bumper, and gave the headlights a polish, then put it all back together.
Damn it, trod on one of the headlight washers
, but fortunately had a u/s spare so was able to rebuild 
.
Then went out for a drive
Stripped the front end, gave it good clean, mended the broken plastics and refixed the badly fitted lower grille. While the bumper was off, repainted the flaky slam brace and the bolt-through strip on top of the bumper, and gave the headlights a polish, then put it all back together.
Damn it, trod on one of the headlight washers
, but fortunately had a u/s spare so was able to rebuild .Then went out for a drive
Hi Paul_RK,
At what mileage did you nee to replace the windscreen trim you showed us ? Just curious, because my "new" 2006 coupe came to me at just under 80K but with the rubberized edge of that trim all brittle and crumbling. Replacing it, and an oil change, were my first maintenance tasks. Hopefully this is a once in a lifetime replacement.
At what mileage did you nee to replace the windscreen trim you showed us ? Just curious, because my "new" 2006 coupe came to me at just under 80K but with the rubberized edge of that trim all brittle and crumbling. Replacing it, and an oil change, were my first maintenance tasks. Hopefully this is a once in a lifetime replacement.
