New member intro - '03 Imola Red ZHP (Denton TX)

[John in VA]

A great start, and keeping Bezos wealthy!

Sonax makes a good Alcantara cleaner, but some Woolite in cold water with a microfiber can also work with a matted wheel.
https://www.sonaxusa.com/upholstery-...a-cleaner.html

[rix617]

Welcome to the group! Hope your ZHP brings you plenty of joy.

I too had a leaky headlight washer system and I disabled mine for the time being at least because it seems prone to leaks and doesn’t really provide any value. I went to a junk yard and pulled a reservoir off a car without the headlight washer system and just unplugged my pump and tucked it away.

I also have the AVIN 4 system in my car and I really love having Apple car play, it’s the only thing I really use. The actual OS isn’t really very intuitive and the tech support is mediocre. I could like to get the ibus for it and maybe the integrated back up camera eventually but just haven’t yet. One thing I’ve heard from people is you should opt for the version (PX6 I believe?) with additional memory as the boot times are significantly reduced. I don’t have that version and I’ll say can be a little slow to load sometimes but it doesn’t really bother me.

[TXRedDevil]

After a hellacious work week, a little ray of sunshine popped back into my life: I finally got the Red Devil back from the paint shop. All passenger doors have been repaired and repainted. The front driver's door had a mess of tiny little white door dings from the previous owner's wife (took years, he said lol), and the faded bumper is painted to its glorious Imola red color again. I opted not to have the rear passenger door blended into the rear panel so it's a wee bit off from 100% perfection, but at this point I'm not complaining (it would've been at least a grand or more). I got a big list of preventative maintenance to do.



Prior to sending it to the shop, I removed all black plastic door and bumper protection (except rear) because it needed to be done and it saved me money. I gave the pieces a super thorough cleaning with grease, wax, and tar remover a few times and put some ceramic bumper coating on the pieces. I did two coats in fact. That stuff is magic. I was pretty excited to fit the door bumpers back again but unfortunately and yet again, FCP Euro messed up my order. This time they sent the wrong clips and grommets so I packaged them up and promptly ordered them from Pelican Parts. I think I'm done w/ FCP.

I was able to secure the front bumper pieces including the new front license plate holder and i test fitted the passenger door pieces for this photo (promptly removed because they were so loose). And no, that's not an AI cat haha.

So now I'll wait until next Wed to get the door clips and grommets. This evening, I generously applied Leatherique on all the seats and it'll be in the mid 90s here in TX, so the ideal conditions for the Rejuvinator product to work its magic while I help the wifey with her things tomorrow.

One thing I wanted to ask you guys who disabled your head lamp washer systems: it seems that the easiest place to do it is right at the pump hose barb that attaches to the pump itself. True? And did you folks plug or cap it? I read a few threads where some members did so, but no one mentioned the cap or plug size:

EDIT: Oh, it looks like the shop pulled out the rubber plug I put in between the head lamp male/female harness that I had previously disabled. I thought for some reason, despite disabling the pump at the harness, that the pump was somehow working and pumping out washer fluid. So it a 3/8" plug. I had a spare vacuum plug and it worked.

[///Mark_D]

For the washer reservoir...

The previous owner on one of my cars had installed a plug for the headlamp washer pump, and it started leaking. I opted to just buy a used washer reservoir from a car that didn't have the headlight washer option. Only cost $5 from the pick and pull and now I know for sure it won't leak.

[TXRedDevil]

Mark,

I didn't even think about that, but great idea and a lot less work than what I just did. I'm pretty new to this vehicle, so I didn't know the reservoir was cross-compatible w/ our ZHPs.

Here's how I disabled mine: http://www.zhpmafia.com/forums/showt...025#post619025

[rix617]

For the washer reservoir...

The previous owner on one of my cars had installed a plug for the headlamp washer pump, and it started leaking. I opted to just buy a used washer reservoir from a car that didn't have the headlight washer option. Only cost $5 from the pick and pull and now I know for sure it won't leak.

I also got a reservoir from the junk yard that didn’t have the washer system. It was actually almost new looking and like $5.


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[///Mark_D]

What you did with capping off the outlet on the pump seems like a nice solution that would be easily reversible.

This was the fix the prev owner of my car came up with... I have no idea where the yellow plastic plug was sourced from, but it was slowly weeping fluid.



Swapping out the whole reservoir made sense in my case since I was missing the pump and the original rubber grommet.

[cakM3]

I believe subframe cracks are more common on the M3 cars, so you should be good there . . .

fredo, rear subframe cracks can occur on any E46. I had rear subframe cracks on my first BMW, a '99 323i that I got BMW to repair under warranty. I can say they are not more common on just M3 cars and can occur on any E46 . . . YMMV. It is always good to have the rear subframes checked every time you put your car on a lift for service and if you find cacks beginning to form, address them when you can.

Bob, welcome to the forum You will find lots of good stuff here thru people's project threads as well as discussions and DIYs. There is alot of info that can be found here thru this forum as well as forum members. We are all here to help each other out.

Sorry to hear about your car getting keyed . . .

[MINIz guy]

I'll say that I found significant subframe damage to my car when I bought it. It wasn't damage related to the four points where the subframe bushings mount to the chassis, although there was one crack there, but cracking and popped spot welds along the wheel arch area. It's all stitched up now and has reinforcement plates on the 4 mounting points, so we'll see how well it holds up after a few race seasons. I am NOT doing any topside reinforcement as it isn't within the spirit of the rules for SE46, so it'll be a good experiment whether it is truly needed.

[TXRedDevil]

Miniz: Did you do the work yourself or did you pay a shop to do the reinforcement work?

I have a welder and have welded a rusty MBZ back together and my rear tire carrier on my 4runner, so I don't think it's beyond my capability to weld those reinforcement plates in, but dropping the subframe is another matter. Space would be another issue esp since my wife insists on parking in our 2 car garage almost all of the time. I don't blame her since we're now in north TX and we've had a few mild hail storms since we moved here.