DeathTrap's Blue ZHP Sedan

[DeathTrap]

At the tire place... I got a whole set of black painted w/ chips Style 135s for $200. Great!

I get to the tire place. One front and one rear have run flat damage. I'm going to replace them all with continental contact for $400. Booooo!! The lesson here is to never ever let these tires go even a little flat. I will be switching to a square set of 17s very soon.

F these pretty wheels.

I've spent about $1500 in tires in less than a year. Hopefully things will start to level out now

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[DeathTrap]

Not bad. I think I like the black wheels! With some re touching, they would look pretty good. And I have a full sized spare.

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[DeathTrap]

Today, something hit my windshield on the interstate. All I heard was a loud bang and two little cracks appear. I can't get a break with this car, pun intended. I'd be a bit more upset if this wasn't a daily

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[BMWCurves]

Oof, sorry. That's never fun to have to deal with.

[ZHPizza]

Car looks good tho. That's fo sho.

[DeathTrap]

Car looks good tho. That's fo sho.

Thanks! I was in your neck of the woods last week. My wife and I took a trip to Charlotte and Asheville for a little vacation.

More good news!

My alternator went out. Not surprised as it was a POS Autozone unit. Really just a matter of time before it took a dump. I have one on the way from FCP Euro right now.

<Story>
So here is how my day went on Wednesday evening. I proceed to return to my car after a solid days work to enjoy some good ole South Atlanta highway driving. Starter cranks over, engine fires up, oil light goes off, battery light does not. Uh oh, what's this about? Turn the car off and back on again like a cell phone, hoping the problem would go away...nope, still there. I drive around the parking lot at work, the light is still on. I open the hood, check the belt, connectors, even tap on the rectifiers a bit. Nothing.

I text my wife that she may need to pick me up. I proceed to connect my scan tool to my phone so I can monitor my batt voltage during my 29.1 mile drive home. I started at 11.9 volts and ended up at 11.7, according to the scan tool. A successful limp home! I proceeded to remove the alternator...had to have been one of the second easiest things I've done on this car, probably second to filling the windshield fluid reservoir.

With alternator in hand, I head to the nearest friendly auto parts store to run some tests. "Oh sir, I can't find a connector that fits your part." I'm thinking in my head, why the hell not? I eventually said let's just get the part...two to three alternators later we realize that something is amiss. We found out the hard way that BMW likes to do strange things sometimes, like put plastic coolant expansion tanks in their vehicles. Anyway, my Bosch alternator has the two pin oval connector. Luckily, I brought the part with me or I'm sure I would have assumed that all 330i alternators were the same part and had the same connector. We find the part number to cross-reference their stock and their are none, zero, nada to be found in the state of Georgia and he would have to order it. I told him I may be back if the next friendly auto parts store didn't have it.

Store #2, the lady at the register was super confident that they had the part in stock....until we opened the box, make that two boxes, that were the rectangular pin style alts. Damn it...so no one has this alt locally, might as well order it online. Enter FCPEuro, with a few swift clicks and a quite painful choice of 1 day shipping my search was done.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the locking tab on the harness side of the 2 pin connector broke while I was removing it. I'm thinking about grabbing a whole engine harness from PAP here, and reconditioning it.
</Story>

Now the ZHP is at the house on the trickle charger waiting for me to install the new alt, and a new oil pressure sensor that I ordered with it. I'm having a random red oil light flickering at idle, or if I blip the throttle quickly it will flicker sometimes. I'm going to go ahead and replace this part first. If it still flickers, I'll have to throw a gauge on there.

EDIT: Looking at my sig quote now...so funny

[DeathTrap]

Oof, sorry. That's never fun to have to deal with.

I added some windshield repair resin from Wal-Mart. It sucked, but it did conceal it a bit.

[DeathTrap]

I added some windshield repair resin from Wal-Mart. It sucked, but it did conceal it a bit.

Pics are truely representative of the fix

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[DeathTrap]

Decided to get off my ass and do something constructive. RX350 projectors with lowered shield, low beam only because it was cheap. Also swapped headlights. The driver's side was damaged. The light output is way better than the burned ZKWs. I expect even more once I replace the 15 year old xenon bulbs.

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[DeathTrap]

Haven't been in here in a while! A few more maintenance things have been completed. It feels like it never ends, but I know that the list is getting smaller...hopefully.

Air filter, fuel filter(original with over 170k miles ), steering coupler, FCABs, GAS CCV, key fob battery, trans and diff fluid.








Whew, I still have a few more items in inventory that need to be done. P/S fluid and resevoir, VANOS hose, oil pressure switch, window regulators and sound deadening. I'm also considering removing the unnecessarily dark tint that this car came with and replacing it with something more legal...