Thanks for all the kind words guys. Its been one hell of a learning experience, if I didn't have such a deep love for the E89 Z4 35i this car would have been given away for anything else LONG time ago.
Anyways so last night I decided to try tackle a problem that has been bugging me for a while, my steering wheel makes a weird buzzing/squealing sound when I turn it when the car is stationary or I'm turning into a parking etc.
I tried spraying WD40 in behind the steering wheel before to no avail so last night I unplugged the battery and decided to see how this steering wheel comes off and see if I can find the problem.
So after struggling for around half an hour to 45 mins I finally figured out the trick to releasing the air bag!
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And its off!
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So I was fiddling around and then this happened
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So I had no idea WTF this was or how the hell to put this alien puzzle back together and after hours and hours and hours of fiddling I ended up doing some damage. I think I actually shed a tear or two! as I had no idea what this was or how to fix it and more importantly how expensive it is going to be to fix and how the hell I'm even going to get my car to someone who can fix this! I really started to panic!
So I left the garage and went into my house and tried to relax and calm down and think! I finally came to the conclusion that this is just a carrier signal wire for the controls on the steering wheel and the air bag. This helped me relax. I initially thought it was the mechanism that controls the tension of the steering wheel when you flip the car into sports mode.
Apon figuring this out I ripped out the clear ribbon that I just couldn't get back inside which left me with just two actual ribbon wires that I tried for another couple of hours to wrap around this wheel mechanism to no avail, I started to panic again but kept calming myself down to try and do it slowly and carefully till I finally got it right and put it all back inside.
Now keep in mind that I had no idea that this thing had a special certain amount of rotations in each direction, plus it was very late the sun was coming out and I needed a car for work so I put it all back together and switched the car on being very wary of the air bag popping on me from doing something incorrectly!
Everything seemed fine! I then turned the steering wheel all the way to the left and that was fine! And then I turned it to the right.....FML is all I have to say.....there were actually no words to describe the pain and suffering I was feeling at that point in time, honestly I really just wanted a magical time machine to manifest itself into my garage and port me back to yesterday lol! FFS
So yea I broke the plastic locking pin that keeps this unit in place and manage to twist the one ribbon infront of the other and flip it. Needless to say it was a catastrophic failure.
Anyways I tried to fix it and when I pulled the thing apart it didn't look good. Anyways long story short I managed to twist the cables back the right way round and I managed to break the front plastic retaining bracket and and and.
But I did put it all back together and started the car and the air bag didnt explode in my face and crack my face in half. so that was the silver lining. Have to always be positive haha
Anyways nothing on the steering wheel worked after that, no paddle shift, no multifunction controls, no nothing, how I didn't get an air bag light is still a mystery to me I wont lie.
So I woke up and phoned BMW and that was just funny so I left that idea to rest and phoned a scrap yard that I know had a z4 they were stripping and sent the guy some photos and to my surprise he had this part for me! so I went to fetch it and here is my repair process that I will post on the next post.