heinzboehmer's 2012 Alpine White 128i

[heinzboehmer]

Was up in the mountains last weekend, so got the car prepped for that. First up, a quick filter change.

Engine one was due and cabin one was nasty. Not entirely sure why I didn't swap these out when I bought the car. Think I just forgot to order them then...





Then I re-aimed the headlights in an attempt to make the (potentially snowy) drive with the sun down a little less sketchy.

Before:



After:



Driver's side was the one that was most out of alignment, but honestly it did not make a huge difference. I think it's time to start looking into upgrades for this thing. Driving at night with the halogens really sucks.

And here's the car wearing its winter clothes:



Unfortunately no snow on the roads during the entire weekend I was there, but it still made for an awesome roadtrip car.

[heinzboehmer]

Okay so I've lived with the Induktiv wireless charger for a while now and it's fine. All my previous complaints are still valid, but in steady state driving it does do its job. Fortunately, it only makes that high pitched noise for ~30s after starting the car, but the slippery surface + 1 coil combo does mean that any lateral acceleration will move my phone around and make it stop charging.

It turns out that the E82 cubby/tray thing where the charger goes is pretty cheap, so I bought one and 3D scanned it alongside the 996 calipers on the M3. Here's the result:



Will be designing my own version of this product that fits better and charges my phone at a more acceptable rate. I'll also make sure to contour the top of it so that I can put the stock rubber mat over it to keep it looking as factory as possible.

[heinzboehmer]

Driver's side door lock actuator died suddenly. Apparently a common failure on E8x/E9x cars. Was curious to see the failure mode, so I took it apart. Was fun to see how everything worked in there.

Unlocked:



Locked:



Anyway, here's what failed:



Fortunately, all that gear is used for is the power lock function, so I just removed it to keep it from jamming again. With it removed, the actuator can still be used manually, which is great.

New actuator on the way, along with stuff for an oil change and rear brake pad change.

[heinzboehmer]

First wireless charger enclosure test went great:




Couple small tweaks needed to get it to fill the space better (+ reliefs for the board) but should be done soon.

[heinzboehmer]

Done:





Choosing a different print orientation resulted in a better surface finish. Happy with that. Now just need to figure out where to get power from and install.

[heinzboehmer]

Okay, so fuse 65 is a 10A fuse that feeds the auto transmission gear indicator lighting and the "longitudinal dynamics management". As far as I can tell, the latter is active cruise control, which this car does not have. So essentially the 10A fuse is powering an LED. Should be fine to steal power from.



Having trouble finding a part number for the connector, think that's probably easiest to just go grab at a junkyard.

[heinzboehmer]

Exterior rear pads were running low so swapped them (old left, new right):



All four rotors and the front pads were doing great, so those were not touched. Turns out rear pads were original to the car!



And of course all of the brake pad wear sensor retaining clips disintegrated in my hands when I went to remove them. I forgot to order new ones, so zip ties it is until I place another FCP order:



I then swapped side markers as a decade of California sun had them looking pretty bad:




Next exterior job is (re)polishing the headlights and windshield. Hopefully not something I'm going to have to do too frequently now that the car is garaged. I should probably paint correct the whole car, honestly. Alpine white makes me lazy though. It hides imperfections too well.

[heinzboehmer]

Finally took a trip to the junkyard and grabbed the connectors I needed for the wireless charger.

Harness for the charger made:



Charger installed:



And all back together:



Very happy with the end result. Looks completely stock!


Next up, door + window servicing. Ever since I bought the car, the anti trap on the driver's side window would intermittently trigger when rolling the window up. Easy enough to ignore as it only did it every once in a while, but lately it's been doing it every single time.

New door lock actuator showed up, so I decided to clean up and regrease all the window related parts when I swapped that out. Unfortunately, I accidentally unwound the window regulator cables when I was removing the motor. Struggled with rewinding them for a couple hours before I gave up and just bought a new unit. Ended up being a good thing, as a lot of the plastic on the original regulator crumbled apart when I pulled it out.

New unit ready to go in:



I guess I technically did regrease this part. Used the non-traditional method of buying a brand new part that comes pregreased, but the end result is the same, right?

Anyway, when I was installing the new unit I found what I'm pretty sure is the root cause of the false anti trap triggering:



Looks like the interior rubber surface on that seal had been dragging on the window and adding enough extra friction to trigger the anti trap. I'm not sure what caused this fold in the seal, but the leading theory is that whoever tinted these windows accidentally did this with the squeegee.

I cleaned up all the seals and made sure to install this one so that it wouldn't fold over again. Looks to be doing its job correctly, but only time will tell if it's going to need replacement. So far haven't had the anti trap trigger once (in probably 30ish times), so I'm happy!