968 CS
Just a couple of jobs over the winter. Mainly looking at the MOT advisories. First of which is the brake discs which they have marked down as "pitted and corroded" hmm, even before removing a wheel, I can see from the outside face that they look fine...well having taken both rear discs off, they're fine on the inside face too.
So I've given them a cleanup and put them back on. This is them before I cleaned them:
Hardly SJ levels of corrosion!
Anyway, the other advisory was play in the the front wheel bearings, which are adjustable on the 968. So I've adjusted them to the spec in the workshop manual. Also while I had the wheels off, I cleaned up the front and rear calipers and inspected them for the infamous plate lift. Fortunately both front and rear calipers are all good. This is half way through cleaning a rear caliper:
And of course cleaned the wheels inside and out while they were off.
Tyres are a bit old now, will replace them in the next year.
Will tax it during the week and take it for its first drive since being stored over winter.
Here's a pic from last year:
M3 CSL
Went a bit further with winter maitenance on the M3.
Firstly, when I was giving the carbon airbox a wipeover, I noticed that one of the torx screws was rattling when I wiped over it (marked with a blue paint pen below). Turns out at some point, someone had cross threaded and over tightened it, and the nut the other side was spinning. So with some difficulty I disassembled the airbox only to find that the air filter is in the way. As it has a metal gauze, it was pretty diffucult to move out of the way. After that I managed to get some locking pliers on the nut and extract the torx screw from it.
I got my motorcycle mechanic to recut the threads on the nut. After that, I found the same 3M 2 part epoxy that BMW use and stuck the nut back on. Hope it holds!
Damaged the airfilter prying it out of the way, so a new one is going in. Most money I've ever spent on an airfilter. Lots of CSL tax! Gave everything in the plenum chamber a good clean up while I had the filter out too:
Have also given the underside and the rear wheel arches a bit of a clean:
Not perfect, but still magnitudes better than before.
And naturally, while looking at the rear wheel arches, I noticed that one of the rear bumpstops had broken.
So off the rear dampers come. They were both knackered too, one of them wasn't rebounding at all, the other was very slow to rebound.
So two new dampers were ordered from BMW. New top mounts and bumpstops and re-used a few parts which were still in fine condition, or NLA because CSL.
Crusty old dampers which lived under the sea (maybe)
Shiny new dampers, which I gave a coat of Dynax UC (
Underbody Clear Wax, not
U C U N T) after fitting:
Will be interesting to see how improved the car will feel. I'll look at doing the front dampers & springs next winter, I think.
When I bought the car, the previous owner had given the wheels a rather unsatificatory refurb (along with some panels getting a not so great respray too, which I've mostly rectified in the past) So it was time to finally get the wheels properly refurbished. Used a local company (Wheelhouse Ipswich) who have a good reputation and Mike Rainbird had a set of CSL wheels refurbed by them and was full of praise. (Think Harry/ integrale_evo has used them in the past too?)
So had them refurb the wheels and fit new tyres too.
Shiny inside:
Shiny outside;
They did a great job imo. Dead happy with them and the brothers who run Wheelhouse Ipswich are really nice lads.
After picking them up, I spent a silly amount of time preparing them and applying Gtechniq C5 ceramic coating. Will have anxiety about kerbing them now
Pic from last year:
Nearly done now. Some other small jobs to do and the wheels need to go back on. The airbox needs reinstalling along with an oil change and it'll be on the road soon too!
