Salty's 2005 330Ci ZHP Jet Black Coupe Restore

[Sockethead]

That's great news! That should give you some peace of mind, eh?

[SaltyNC]

That's great news! That should give you some peace of mind, eh?

Yeah, that was good news and nice to strike that off the list of things that go boom (or crack) on the E46.

Salty

[Sockethead]

I see you posted in the subframe reinforcement thread... thanks for doing that. That's good info!

[SaltyNC]

[ZHPizza]

Great pictures. Thanks for the info!

[SaltyNC]

Thanks, Nate.

It felt so good today compared to the cold weather we have been dealing with, so I decided to swap out the thermostat. I didn't really want to do it, because I also plan to do a complete coolant system refresh, and I also need to remove my front bumper and take out the aux fan, and it would make so much more sense to do everything at once...except, I didn't have time to do everything, and didn't have all of my parts in, though I had most of them. On the hidden menu under test 19-7, my temps were staying in the 45-55C range, and my temp gauge was leaning toward the cooler side. You can see where the temp gauge was running in this shot on my way back from picking up the car:


It just seemed inhumane to let the engine stay cold like that. It's old. It needed a shawl.

I placed one of those rubber jack pads used for the plastic jack points under the front reinforcement plate in the oval recess, and jacked the car up to lean it back, so I wouldn't lose as much coolant, and put a couple of jack stands in the appropriate jack points on the front sides, and scotched the wheels with rubber tire chocks. Even though it was close to 60F today, the snow we had earlier in the week is still sticking around. Our house is back in the woods, so it's always about 10 degrees colder that the surrounding area. I went with a Wahler thermostat, You can see the Wahler box on the engine. It comes with the required gasket.


I was able to release both hoses from the thermostat without losing a lot of coolant. I had wedged a couple of aluminum baking pans under the hoses to catch most of it, and then was able to transfer it to a bucket. I probably could have re-used it, but I played it safe and refilled with fresh coolant.


Here you can see the makeshift coolant catch pan.


The thermostat has low torque values ~7.4 ft-lbs for the smaller bolts and ~16 ft-lbs for the 13mm bolt. Getting the fan clutch re-installed was probably the hardest part due to the tight working conditions and having to work around the shroud, and another reason I would have liked to have done everything at once, since I'm going to do the electric-only fan mod, and that would have made the job a snap putting everything back together.

I bled the coolant system, adjusted the coolant level, then drove it about a mile, and the temp sensor was right in the middle, and the hidden 19-7 menu was showing around 88-90C.

Salty

[nextelbuddy]

awesome work man!

[SaltyNC]

awesome work man!

Thanks, bud. I have a lot more to do, but it is getting there. It's all been fun with no major snafus so far.

Salty

[SaltyNC]

Tonight I fixed the rear view mirror. It was a bit loose and would vibrate while driving. A lot of information out there in forums and in videos unfortunately has some bad information. They say to rotate the mirror mount counterclockwise to remove it from the glass, and that seems like it would be the right thing to do. But, BMW says that can actually damage the mirror mount, which may be what caused this one to be loose in the first place.

The correct procedure is to remove the rear housing, disconnect the electrical connector, center the mirror, rotate the mirror down as far as it will go, so the ball joint is at its lowest point, then give it a quick hit toward the glass with the ball of your hand. The mirror will pop right off. That's what I did, and it worked like a charm.

Here is the back of the attachment point. You can see the three bars that provide the tension on the window mount.


With the three screws removed, the rods can be removed:


The rods weren't bent bad, but enough to make it loose. I drew a straight line and placed the rods against the line to determine how bent they were. I lightly tapped them straight with a hammer, and re-assembled them.


Replacing the mirror on the glass, you do hold the mount to the window at an angle, then rotate it clockwise to snap it into place. I have the BMW TIS for all of their mirrors if anyone needs it.

No more wobbly mirror.

Salty

[danewilson77]

Great work Salty

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk