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!

[heinzboehmer]

Alright, finally time to give this thing some attention, mostly in the form of regular maintenance. Addressing three main things:

1. Brakes need bleed/flushing (maybe RBF 600 in a daily wasn't the best idea...)
2. Oil filter housing gasket is leaking
3. Visibility at night is once again terrible

Started with the easy one: brakes. No pictures cause it's a boring job, but the fluid that came out of the front brakes was a bit dark and I did see some bubbles. Ran 500ml of fresh RBF 600 through the system, which should restore the pedal feel.

While the car was in the air with the wheels off, I also replaced the clips I broke when doing rear pads:



Next, the oil filter housing gasket. This is what the area looked like when I started:



Not terrible (i.e. just weeping, no drips), but the gasket is clearly gone.

Off came the housing:



Mating surface cleaned up. Didn't want to, but ended up having to use some scotchbrite on the lower left corner, as there was a significant amount of gasket material transfer that did not want to come off:



Now onto the housing itself. This is what the gasket looked like, in case the mess around the interface wasn't enough to indicate that it was bad:




Housing cleaned up and ready to go back on with a new gasket:




I also leaned that Rein/CRP makes an aluminum version of the mickey mouse flange, so picked up one of those. I'm glad I did because this is what happened when I disconnected that hose from the head:




The style of clamp used by BMW to hold that flange to the hose needs to be cut off, so I took my time with the dremel and make sure to not nick the hose underneath. Basically went super slow and made multiple cuts, then broke the clamp with a flathead once there was little material left:



Unfortunately that effort was useless, as the plastic flange had cut the hose up nicely:



Fortunately, there's a bit of slack in the hose, so I just cut off the end of it and fit it on the new clamp.

Much better:



I did also have this happen while doing this work:



Didn't lean on it heavily on anything, guess the plastic was just old and brittle. Honestly a bit surprised to see this as this car only has ~80k mi, but whatever. New hose (+ expansion tank since I don't trust the plastic on that anymore) on their way to me as we speak.

[heinzboehmer]

And now for the most involved part of it all: my attempt to restore nighttime visibility. I've identified the following as things that are affecting it negatively:

• Headlights are cloudy (again)
• Some previous owner thought it was a good idea to tint the front windshield
• Stock BMW bulbs do not put out as mush light as I would like
• Both front and rear glass needs a polish

Gonna take one last stab at making these halogens useable before I go full crazy and do an LED projector + headlight auto leveling retrofit.

Started with what I thought was going to be the worst part of them all, the front tint. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was mistaken. Pulled up a small corner of the tint, then used a shitty handheld steamer to soften the adhesive and remove the rest of it:






I did pull a little too hard at one point and ripped a chunk of tint off without using the steam. This left some adhesive residue on the glass, but I was able to get it off fairly easily with some isopropyl alcohol. Would not want to have had to do this on the entire surface of the windshield though.

Overall, the process was way, way easier than I thought it would be. I should have done this years ago.

Then moved on to removing the headlights. I gotta say that I much prefer the E8x/E9x front bumpers to the E46 ones. Significantly more pleasant to remove and much, much easier to align with the other panels when reinstalling:



I did find one more thing that was likely contributing to the bad visibility when removing the driver's side headlight. The two bolts that control the angle of the headlight assembly were loose, so the headlight was able to rock back and forth while driving. Never noticed it doing so, so it must not have been a lot, but still not great. The two circled bolts are what I'm talking about:



This is what the headlights looked like before any restoring (keep in mind I polished them about a year and a half ago):



Compounded and polished, then added a few coats of Meguiars headlight coating. The results were pretty terrible, which is exactly what happens every single time I try to paint something. Ended up with way more orange peel than I wanted:




Initially, I was going to wet sand them and then repolish, but I've decided that I don't want to keep doing this every year. Instead, I've ordered a can of SprayMax 2K Headlight Clear. Will sand them down back to bare plastic then use that to clear coat them. I've heard very good things about these 2K products and the ease of application, but I'm sure I'll find a way to screw it up. I'm just hoping that the results will last way longer than with the regular clear coat stuff. Plus, the car is out of commission until the new cooling system parts arrive, so it gives me time to mess with the headlights.

Man, I hate painting stuff almost as much as I hate brake fluid.

[heinzboehmer]

Compounded and polished the front and rear glass today. Did the typical masking tape before/after thing and it's impossible to tell the difference with the glass dry. However, get it slightly damp and the difference is quite apparent. Polished side on the left:



Notice how much less hazy the glass looks, think this should help a bit with visibility. Yes, the glass is pitted, but I take this thing skiing quite often, so a cracked windshield is almost a guaranteed. Gonna wait until that happens before replacing.

And now I've officially ran out of things to do to this car before the parts arrive, so it's time to just sit and wait.

[heinzboehmer]

Great news, fancy clear coat worked incredibly well. Kinda blown away at how good it came out. Here's a closeup of the finish:




Bear in mind that this is straight out of the can. No postprocessing whatsoever.

To get this finish, I mostly followed the instructions in the video on SprayMax's website. This was the final procedure:

1. Cleaned headlight
2. 320 grit dry sand
3. 500 grit dry sand
4. 800 grit dry sand
5. 1000 grit wet sand
6. 2000 grit wet sand
7. Shake (warm) can for 3 full min
8. Activate
9. Shake can for another 3 full min
10. Spray light coat and wait 2 min
11. Spray medium-heavy coat and wait 2 min
12. Repeat step 11 two more times
13. Wait 24 hrs for them to fully cure

Ended up doing three of the medium-heavy coats instead of just one because I got some pin holes on the first one. Didn't seem to affect the finish quality at all.

Anyway super happy with this stuff. I'll likely use it again in the future for things like this. Unfortunately, it is incredibly toxic and requires appropriate PPE. Sprayed outside and took my respirator off ~5 min after spraying the last coat and the smell was still very strong. Respirator immediately went back on and I ended up doing the clean up in full PPE.

I also swapped in these bulbs. They should output significantly more light than the stock bulbs, according to the spec sheets. Note the tube of threadlocker I used to make sure those top two headlight screws don't come loose again:



Here's a before and after of the entire project:




But of course not everything went well. Managed to break another coolant line while replacing the line I broke a couple weekends ago:



I thought I was going to be able to cheat the BMW cooling system curse for a bit longer since the car is fairly low mileage (~80k mi), but I guess that's not the case. I bet the high operating temps of this engine also help these plastic pieces degrade much faster.

I've ordered every single plastic part in the cooling system and will be replacing all that soon.

[bigjae46]

Nice! I'd love to get a 1 series to eventually stuff an S85 in.

[heinzboehmer]

Nice! I'd love to get a 1 series to eventually stuff an S85 in.

S85 E82 would be a riot.

This thing is starting to approach the age where it needs a full rebush. Might do M3 subframes/control arms/etc. instead of refreshing the base E82 stuff. Which will likely eventually lead to stuffing an S65 in there...