heinzboehmer's 2006 Some-kind-of-grey SMG ZCP Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Nice work on the SMG shift knob. Where did you order the new emblem for it from?

There's someone selling reproductions on eBay. Haven't received it yet, so can't comment on quality, but the reviews I've found online are pretty positive. Also, anything is better than the emblem that was on there before.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/302693544178

[0-60motorsports]

Nice work on the SMG shift knob. Where did you order the new emblem for it from?

[heinzboehmer]

Also started on the aesthetics this week.

SMG knob was looking pretty tired. Don't have a good picture of it, but you can kinda see the state of it in the pictures above of the trim refresh. New ones are ~$600 (!) and used ones are pretty much impossible to find in decent shape. The chrome parts of this knob are still in great shape, so I decided to try refreshing it on my own.

First up, the finger pads. They're usually a hard gel of sorts that is covered in alcantara. Only two of mine were still in that shape though. The other two looked like this:



No idea what caused this failure, but that stuff was not fun to clean up.

There is no good way to separate the pads from the knob cleanly, as they're attached by melting the ends of plastic posts on the back to create "rivet heads" inside the main knob structure. Not the best description, but the pictures that come later in this posts should clear it up. Anyway, I decided to break the rivet heads off to get them out. Was easy to do with a plastic pry tool:



The alcantara is just glued onto the plastic carrier, so that was also easy to remove. Here's all four pads disassembled and cleaned (you can see what that goo is supposed to look like):



With those out, I then disassembled the rest of the knob. I tried to pry the emblem off, but it's on there pretty good. So instead, I drilled a small pilot hole and drove a sheet metal screw into it:



As I was driving the screw in, the emblem broke in half and left me with a sticker that was very easy to scrape off with a plastic tool. Under that I found a screw:





With the screw removed, the whole knob was able to be pulled apart. Here's everything that makes up the knob, including the remaining plastic rivet heads:



I had some leftover foam and dinamica from when I made those cushions for the seats in the blue car, so I traced the shape of the pads onto them and cut everything out. I added some tabs and holes on the dinamica parts so that I could attach it to the plastic posts and hold the fabric taut as the glue dried:




I then covered the back and edges of the plastic carrier in 3M Plastic Emblem and Trim Adhesive (which is fantastic for this type of work btw) and let everything dry:



After a couple hours, I trimmed the excess fabric from the back and was left with this:




Quick test fit looking good!




I then masked the visible chrome parts on the knob and attached the pads to it with more of that same adhesive. I made sure to also put adhesive on the inside of the knob to mimic those plastic rivets that were there from the factory (but forgot to take a picture of that):



No finished product pics yet, as I'm still waiting on the new emblem to show up, but I'll post some up soon.


Also received a new toy in the mail:



And here's a sneak peek of the next project:

[heinzboehmer]

Was getting a pretty terrifying vibration under braking at higher speeds (~70mph), so I decided to swap pads with the almost brand new set of Textars I had in the garage. These came off of the blue M3 when I swapped in the 996 calipers.

Fronts (what went in on top and what came out on the bottom):



Rears (I don't think I need to say which is which...):



As I was doing this, I noticed the front right caliper was mostly seized. Tried to unstick it and ended up popping the piston out accidentally So I grabbed known good parts from the calipers that came off the blue car and did an impromptu rebuild.

Also flushed the brake fluid. This is what came out of the car:



I guess a good amount of air got in the lines when the piston popped out, as the pedal felt terrible. Took three bleeds, two bed ins with the new pads and about an hour of driving around with track pads up front to get the pedal feel back to normal. Surprisingly, the track pad "machining step" ended up making the biggest difference. Guess the seized piston deposited a bunch of stuff on the rotor surface.

Anyway, street pads back in and it feels like a regular M3 sliding caliper pedal again

[0-60motorsports]

Ha, yeah was great to confirm my diagnosis when I removed the thermostat housing.

Although to be honest, the biggest reason why I suspected that failure was because I destroyed that same o ring in the exact same way a couple weeks after buying my blue car lol.

Yeah it seems to be a common or well known mistake done on install.

[heinzboehmer]

Ha, yeah was great to confirm my diagnosis when I removed the thermostat housing.

Although to be honest, the biggest reason why I suspected that failure was because I destroyed that same o ring in the exact same way a couple weeks after buying my blue car lol.

[0-60motorsports]

Good catch on that O-Ring

[heinzboehmer]

Tackled a quick job after work today.

When I did the bearings, I noticed there was a small coolant leak between the thermostat housing and water pump. Most of the cooling system components look like they've been replaced relatively recently, so I assumed whoever did the work pinched the o ring when reinstalling the thermostat housing.

Took the housing off and yep! Suspicion confirmed:



(I did also manage to only spill a couple drops of coolant on the floor. Definitely a first!)

Bolts and both o rings on the housing got replaced with new parts:



Fixed:



Also, another suspicion confirmed:



Thermostat was manufactured in 2018 and —according to the carfax— the car has only covered about 15k mi since then. So these parts have at most that amount of miles on them. Glad I didn't go too crazy and replace a bunch of unnecessary stuff.

[heinzboehmer]

Nice work!

It looks like someone had the intake manifold off at some point and they used the wrong clamps lol

Yeaah. Likely when the SMG pump was done. They used the airbox side clamps on the throttle body side too, annoying.

[Slideways]

Nice work!

It looks like someone had the intake manifold off at some point and they used the wrong clamps lol

[heinzboehmer]

Success!

[heinzboehmer]

Took the car for a test drive earlier today and surprisingly, the SMG feels more drivable than it did before. Nothing has changed on the transmission side, so it's either a fluke or it has something to do with the VANOS work. The only thing I can think of is that the engine was out of time/valves out of spec and was not producing the torque that the SMG ECU was expecting. Anyway, happy with this outcome.

I ran a VANOS test just to confirm that everything was working well:



I've also been getting a code for TPS1 recently. Fortunately, I have a bunch of spares in the garage, so I swapped it out:



It looks like it had been changed sort of recently, so hoping it's just a bad sensor and not some wiring issue. I did notice that the screws holding it in were fairly loose, so it's possible that this allowed the housing to rock a bit, which in turn caused the code.

New one in with some hex head screws to replace the pozi ones that I hate:



We'll see if this fixes the issue. I also need to figure out what to do with the broken wire conduits...

[heinzboehmer]

Long history in Texas - I was surprised at the conditions and thought how lucky I was after driving it about 500 miles from purchase. I’ve finished the subframe reinforcement and the front mounts under the seat has minor cracks in the factory spot welds. Someone did the Vanos and hubs but it looks like the tensioners are stock. Crazy to go that far and not upgrade like you did.

Nice work! Had a similar experience with this car. There's receipts for the VANOS seals, but for some reason the hub and tensioners weren't swapped out.

[Loveconvertibles]

Long history in Texas - I was surprised at the conditions and thought how lucky I was after driving it about 500 miles from purchase. I’ve finished the subframe reinforcement and the front mounts under the seat has minor cracks in the factory spot welds. Someone did the Vanos and hubs but it looks like the tensioners are stock. Crazy to go that far and not upgrade like you did.

[heinzboehmer]

I’m going through the same maintenance. 110k miles on my LSB and my bearings were toast. Like you, my clearances were all in spec. I went with VAC bearings and ARP bolts.

Wow yeah those are worse than the ones that came out of this car. Was your car ever driven in a cold climate?