zroadster.net

Mike Fishwick

OK - in that case you have a problem concerning the front foglamp indicator - just because it has always illuminated when the lights (headlights?) are on does not mean that it should, unless perhaps your car is a US market model, where they need to be spoon-fed! This is why the Z3 has a buzzer which...

Mike Fishwick

If you to read the Owner's Manual (well reccommended) you will find that the green warning lamp is provided to show that the front fog lamps are on! It even has a little picture of a fog lamp . . . You have therefore been driving around with the fog lamps on irrespective of visibility, which is an o...

Mike Fishwick

Hi Alex I forgot to mention that your car will have a Torsen (TORque SENsing) type of LSD. These units are a far better type for road driving than the locking-cloutch type, but they reduce the ease with which the car can be drifted. They operate by a clever gear train - see Wikipedia for details - w...

Mike Fishwick

Does your 2.2 have an engine-driven fan? Can't remember if they do, as the later BMW engines rely on the air con condensor fan. If it does have a mechanical fan, it may be that the viscous coupling is on its last legs - 60 to 70,000 miles is a pretty usual life for these couplings. It is easy enough...

Mike Fishwick

The N54 engine - the 2.2 and 3 litre models - are the engines which can often burn oil steadily. Some dealers claim that it is 'designed' to burn oil, as though it is a sign of a thoroughbred sports car! A lot of these engines were filled with synthetic oil by the dealers, which extends the running-...

Mike Fishwick

If your gear lever is not made of metal, what is it made from - perhaps resin, like the clutch pedal? In this case you would need to get hold of an older type of lever.

Mike Fishwick

The usual cause is clutch drag, caused by either a worn-out clutch or (more likely) the need for re-greasing of the splines on the gearbox input shaft and the clutch hub.

Bleeding the clutch slave cylinder and changing the oil also help.

Mike Fishwick

Shortening the gear lever is one of the best things I have dome to my car - the others being disabling the self-cacelling of the indicators, and the other the smaller RAID steering wheel, all of which are nice to play with even when the car is in its garage! The upper portion of the gear lever is al...

Mike Fishwick

I would put Gaydon as being a two-hour visit, but Cosford can be an all-day one, and even then you would have missed a lot.

Mike Fishwick

Cars are OK, but if you want to see real engineering design, visit the massive RAF Museum at Cosford - signed off M54 J3 - it's free, too!

Mike Fishwick

Buy two jacks - you can then raise either end of the car easily and quickly. I use a pair of Halfords 2.5 ton jacks, which have a larger frame than their 2 ton jacks - about £30 each. To raise the front of even a non-lowered car, just drive onto a pair od 50 X 200 mm pieces of wood, with one end saw...

Mike Fishwick

Which part of my article did you not understand? I thought it was clear enough, but maybe I could do better!

Mike Fishwick

Compared to VW, BMW parts are very reasonable - a front strut mount for a Mk.2 Golf GTI for example costs £75 at a dealer, and is the only decent quality mount available. Pattern mounts fall to pieces. An E46 mount for my Z3 cost £25 . . . Do not dismiss BMW parts as being expensive until you know, ...

Mike Fishwick

The cam sensors look like they use a Hall-effect sensor, with a magnet on one side, which attracts fine metalic particles from the engine oil. When enough of this debris is attracted, the sensing part of the unit is shielded from the magnet - hence it is a good idea to clean them from time to time. ...

Mike Fishwick

Clean them everyyear - it is just one of the many things ignored by the so-called 'Full BMW Service!' Cam sensors are another area of offical neglect . ..

Mike Fishwick

More likely to be a sticky idle control valve - take it off and clean it before suspecting naything else.

Mike Fishwick

Did you replace the gasket between the mount and the body? I find that two gaskets make a difference.

Also - did you use the original nuts with built-in washers? use of ordinary nuts with washers is known to generate noise.

Mod edit -Gazza

Mike Fishwick

This seems to be a complex description of an improbably drainage system, but being on an american website people tend to believe it! If this idea were true, then why could I see daylight between the rubber seals at the top of the screen frame and above the window - on a car which was two years old? ...

Mike Fishwick

My Wellstar trims were labelled as being for E36 saloons, which is logical - hence the lock hole on the passenger door.

Mike Fishwick

I have been using Falkens (in seventeen-inch sizes with staggered wheels) for fifteen years on my 2.8, in FK 451, 452, and currently 453 forms, and have no complaints. I prefer 2.5 bar all round, and get about 30k from the fronts, with 20 k from the rears.

Mike Fishwick

They are probably similar to the 'Wellstar' handle covers I have been using for about twelve years - no problems, apart from using black silicone in place of the sticky pads for the handle surrounds. They are a lot cheaper than buying complete new door catch/handle lifter units, and after many years...

Mike Fishwick

I have never seen one in the metal, but the 'normal' thermostat which was fitted to the 1.9 140 bhp engine - the M44 - was probably a two-late type anyway, as used on a Golf GTI etc. People tend to assume that things such as this are always what they are familiar with! I think that the 'electric' th...

Mike Fishwick

I'm puzzled - do you mean the connectors on the ends of the horm cables, or those on the horns themselves? Those on the cables are easy enough to buy from any motor factor, but those on the horns are part of the horn itself - and surely you would have noticed this when you replaced the horns? If 'Th...

Mike Fishwick

What were the symptoms before the RAC man decided to gut the thermostat? The electrically-controlled thermostat was introduced to permit the ECU to regulate coolant temperature between very close limits, so reducing exhaust emissions and fuel consumption. Unlike old British cars, the electrically-co...

Mike Fishwick

It is worth checking that the intake bellows pieces are both free from splits, as this will weaken the mixture and bring the emissions light on. It may not be this, but checking simple things first costs nothing. Lots of BMW owners first go for an expensive diagnostic test, which brings up codes for...

Mike Fishwick

Why not try a bit of DIY?

What are the tread depths of each tyre?

Have you removed the front wheels yourself, and checked that the sensor cables are not damaged?

Have you removed the sensors and made sure they are clean?

Mike Fishwick

While BMW engines will indeed run on 91 octane (such as American fuel) they do not give of their best - try reading the owners handbook, which states that the engines are optimised for 98 octane. On lower octane fuel the knock detectors will be at work, and the ECU then retards the ignition timing u...

Mike Fishwick

I always use 98 octane, and my CO emission is always 0.0% - in France they do not check hydrocarbons, but measure CO during acceleration from idle to 2000 rpm, which is a tighter test than the UK's 'fast' idle, whatever that means. In the UK my hydrocarbon levels doubled every year - exactly - which...

Mike Fishwick

Just the thing for Americans, who do not know where the next gear is . . . .

Mike Fishwick

The 0806 model looks to be just what I am after - many thanks! It is not cheap, but does not require any human help to get on with its job, worls for power on/off, and is very compact - should be perfect.

Mike Fishwick

None of these cams are what I really want - I do not want to be able to play it back on an attached screen, which makes the thing too bulky to hide behind the mirror along with my transponder for French autoroutes, and I want a cam which does not need a seperate battery charger, and which operates o...

Mike Fishwick

Great - thanks everyone!

Mike Fishwick

I have been looking for a small dash cam to mount behind my rear view mirror, but cannot find anything on Ebay which will start to record automatically when the ignition suppy is turned on, stores data on a removable mini SD card, and does not have a playback screen, so being as small as possible. D...

Mike Fishwick

No - the wiring diagram shows that the speed signal goes directly to the speedometer, where the DAC feeds the analogue instrument, and the digital signal feeds the mileage counters and trip computer. It must also feed into the ECU memory to log any BMW dealer servicing activities and maximum rpm etc...

Mike Fishwick

Depends on the type of sensor - if it were a magnetic reed switch it would be a negative-going square wave signal, but with the frequency involved would be more likely to use a coil, with current induced by the intermittent exposure to the magnet, so it could be a rough positive-going sine wave - an...

Mike Fishwick

The Z3 speed sensor is also magnetic, so also acts as a magnetic drain plug would! It uses two wires - earth, and a sensor wire from the speedometer and trip computer etc. The two parts of the sensor are intermittently covered by steel vanes mounted on the diff cage, which provide the switching medi...

Mike Fishwick

Hitting a deer must be bad enough, but in rural France there are lots of wild boar, which can weight up to 600lbs! 60% of all car/animal collisions involve wild boar, and the government has declared open season on them - very fortunate, as they taste wonderful! You need a serious weapon to kill tham...

Mike Fishwick

BMW Connected Drive is almost there already!

Mike Fishwick

I hope he never tries DIY maintenance!

Mike Fishwick

It hardly seems worthwhle to have a temperature guage which is designed to be as inaccurate as this - you may as well just have a warning lamp. Maybe this is why modern BMW cars only have a warning rather than a guage, modern drivers being considered to be incapable of interpreting an accurate guage!

Mike Fishwick

The answer is NONE! Some people do not seem to have a clue about their own cars, but one would think that this kind of basic thing would be obvious to the owner on lifting the bonnet - but perhaps this was never done! I suppose that there are a lot of V6-engined cars around these days, so it is assu...

Mike Fishwick

AKI - the Anti-Knock Index - is a rating used in the US and Canada, being the average of the Research and Engine Octane Numbers. It is usually about 5 numbers less that the corresponding octane number used in Europe, so 91 AKI fuel would be our 95 octane, which is used by most M owners in the UK, in...

Mike Fishwick

Yes, it is hysteria from the so-called 'Classic' car brigade. Any engine with valve seats machined directly in a cast iron head is a problem, but one with seperate valve seat inserts is fine. Even with old engines such as this, the seat's sealing area has become work-hardened with use, and also abso...

Mike Fishwick

A lot of M owners try to tell people that their mighty engine is the only one which needs high octane fuel, due to its enormously high compression ratio, which is not much higher than 2.8 anyway. Like most BMW engines, the M engines do not 'require' a high-octane fuel, but are optimised for it, and ...

Mike Fishwick

Perhaps pin 19 is not fully grounded - try linking pin 7 directly to the engine by a large battery charger-type clip. It does not take very much resistance before the logic system decides that pin 7 is not fully grounded. Otherwise - is your resetting link connected by pins which make really good co...

Mike Fishwick

I covered 500 miles across southern France over the weekend, mostly on 55 mph country roads with a little on 80 mph autoroutes, driving legally as cameras and les Gendarmes are out in force this summer. On most of the roads we were using you had to work hard to keep above 50 mph anyway. Fuel consump...

Mike Fishwick

Oh what a laugh . . .

Maybe I lack such a sophisticated sense of humour, but the post looks like it was written by someone whose limited ideas verge on the downright dangerous.

Do you really get a kick out of posting such nonsense - what is the point?

Mike Fishwick

It looks like a front vented disc on a 2.8. Those who advised you to 'leave it' etc obviously have a death wish,and/or do not know what they are talking about - they are a very bad adverisement for DIY maintenance! A cracked disc will not operate too well, and will also wear the pads quickly - not t...

Mike Fishwick

EBC Greenstuff are good low-dust pads, and work very well, without any problems such as glazing or juddering. They wear well too - our Golf has just had new pads and discs, replacing a set of Zimmermann (from GSF) discs and Greenstuff pads both of which had covered 120,000 miles. The pads stilll had...

Mike Fishwick

A good remap will give a small improvement in fuel consumption, and generally mprove the engine all round, but is more noticable on the larger engines. A well-trained right foot is the best value in terms of fuel economy. Anyway, the best way to plumb an auxiliary tank is for it to have its own fuel...

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