nfbr's 2007 Ruby Black Z4 Coupé! Blog/Build-Thread

[MACK]

I love reading this thread/blog but i was gob smacked when I read you've only done 1,200 miles in it! I though i was low at 2,000 since July but you've got me beat. How do you justify the cost to yourself (or perhaps more importantly your better half if you have one) to do such low miles, get out and enjoy it!!!

[nfbr]

Haha, thanks MACK.

Scary thought is, I've done as many miles on my Mountain bike in two years as I've done in my car in one year!
I'm lucky enough to live just 1/4 Mile from my workplace, so don't use the car to commute, and being a complete and total workaholic; I'm pretty much always in work! (I have a 44" TV with Netflix in my office lol...)

I generally use it to go see my parents or to pick up supplies for my birds (the winged kind) or otherwise to just go for random 50 ish Mile drives.
I actually enjoy working on the car and improving it almost as much as I do driving it Cars are my whole world. I really couldn't enjoy life without having one, no matter what the cost!

I'm kind of glad that I'm single to be fair, as I never have to justify things or beg forgiveness for certain actions. It's great! Although sometimes I spend so long looking at things for the car it makes it impossible not to buy/do them...

[Hugman]

oh the joys of being single

[Mr Tidy]

Happy anniversary OP!

I was wondering if I was doing enough miles to justify having mine, but I've done over 7,000 miles in 18 months so inter-galactic compared to yours!

And even now every time I drive it feels like a special occasion.

[nfbr]

oh the joys of being single

Yep!

Happy anniversary OP!

I was wondering if I was doing enough miles to justify having mine, but I've done over 7,000 miles in 18 months so inter-galactic compared to yours!

Even if I only did 10 miles per year, It'd be enough to justify the joy of owning, maintaining and improving a car! Even if I got banned (which should never happen as I don't drive like a t**t) I would still not sell the car!

2016 has some relatively big trips planned though. I'm hoping to go back to Cork (Beara Peninsula) in April for a week, and will be heading upto Glasgow to visit Ecotune, then Aberdeen for a Friend's wedding, before heading into the highlands for a few days in October!

Exciting year ahead!

[nfbr]

and it begins...


Pics and report will be up on Thursday evening

[Beedub]

OK, So... Brake fluid decided.



One of my suppliers had some un-opened tins of ATE 'Super Blue' Racing Fluid left over from when ATE Stopped making it.
The 'Super Blue' fluid is as the name suggests, Blue in colour, so it makes it a little easier to identify when you've bled through all your old fluid.

ATE Super Blue is a Motorsport DOT4 Fluid so is compatible with 99.9% of modern Cars.
It has a Dry Boiling Point of 280ºC, and a Wet Boiling point of 198ºC (Standard DOT4 is Dry 230ºC / Wet 155ºC)
The information on the packaging suggests it's good for 2-3 years road use, so no less than a regular DOT4 Brake fluid.

ATE 'Super Blue' has been replaced with ATE 'TYP200' which has the same attributes, only it is clear/yellowish in colour, rather than blue, So in 18 months time, I'll switch over to the 'TYP200' Stuff, which will again make for an easy job of Identifying when the old stuff has gone!

I'm hoping to be getting the job done one evening this week, so should have some pictures up before Christmas

great stuff but it staines the res tank an off blue colour.

[stevo///m3]

1200 miles in a year? Behave!
Stevo

[Ed Doe]

Pfft that's so little time to enjoy the car! I've done just under 21k since I bought the car in April 2014 - And I couldn't drive it for 4 months as I broke my leg!! Me and the coupe are now thoroughly acquainted!

[nfbr]

great stuff but it staines the res tank an off blue colour.

A lot of people do say that! We started using the stuff 8-Years ago but stopped using it in 2012 when it's Type Approval was revoked by the Department of Transport in the USA. The only ones I've seen with a noticeable amount of staining were customers that had been using it for a fair few years. Most of the cars which had gone from Super Blue to TYP200 alternately each year had very little colouration to the Tank.

The way I see it, if my Tank gets colour stained, I'll just replace it.

1200 miles in a year? Behave!
Stevo

It'd been a busy year with no real reason to drive anywhere. What can I say

Pfft that's so little time to enjoy the car! I've done just under 21k since I bought the car in April 2014 - And I couldn't drive it for 4 months as I broke my leg!! Me and the coupe are now thoroughly acquainted!

That's some driving I just worked out I've done around double the amount of mileage in Company vehicles this past year!

[bmwZ]

I'm in the same shoe... I enjoying modding as much as driving my Z. Only did a very few miles this year... The Z has been a lot of time in pieces this year

Love your wheels and colour combo. Very fun to read the thread

[nfbr]

Thanks

Here's another 'top down' photo...

[MACK]

Nice, you do have to love that "power bulge" the coupes have in the roof!

[nfbr]

Nice, you do have to love that "power bulge" the coupes have in the roof!

Cheers man! Absolutely, it's one of the coolest features of the car, along with it's amazingly well shaped rear end...
Must resist the temptation to buy an 'M' bonnet...

Anyway... Brake line install...

So here we go! I decided to start at the rear, as these were likely to be the biggest pain to do...
Firstly, Clip removed at trailing arm mounting position, but old line all still installed.


New line installed at trailing arm mounting position, so far so good!


This point, I realised the flaw in the designs of the people who'd done these before. Had the rubber nut/circlip mount been installed the opposite way round on the hose, it'd have slipped straight through, with the fitting for the caliper, however as it was the wrong way round, this bracket had to be cut to allow the hose to pass through... (more on this later)


Hose installed at rear caliper position, showing the 'loop' under the drive shaft with good clearance


Comments regarding the original design - The overall length of the hose was slightly too long, and had to have a couple of cable ties installed to stop the hose slipping through the two rubber fittings into it's most comfortable position which left it slightly closer to a few things than I would have liked it to. With an overall length of 700mm, rather than 720mm and the 'small circlip nut' installed the opposite way around, these would have been miles easier to install!

This diagram is how I believe they would be best laid out...


Onto the fronts! These were really very straight forward and took 7 minutes per hose to install!

Here is a picture of it installed at the caliper end, with the rubber bung in the original position at the damper


and this one shows the usage of the original chassis mounting point


These are the leftovers!


Brake Bleeding...

As luck had it, myself and Mike (E46 M3) were working away on the hoses, when Kev (E46 330ci ClubSport) showed up! So we ended up doing probably the most foolproof type of brake bleeding!
Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of this as I drew the straw of sitting in the car pressing the pedal, Kev kept an eye on the fluid levels and Mike rolled around the floor with the catch bottle and brake nipple spanner.

Whilst installing the hoses, I noticed that the brake pipes were dripping fairly constantly throughout the job, so as I attached the new hoses at the hard pipe end, they were pretty much gravity bleeding themselves! This meant that by the time came for us to bleed everything up, the system actually bled up really quickly and with very little effort.

Overall we used 800ml of the ATE SuperBlue racing fluid and went round each caliper twice, working in order from the furthest away from the master cylinder, to the closest.

Road Test...

The bit where you're butt clenches when you first try the pedal - Nope! It was fine! I wouldn't say 'Rock Hard' like many people say after having braided lines, but then I'm not prone to exaggeration. The pedal was slightly firmer than it was previously and felt good!

At first, I slowly pulled the car out of the workshop and gently gave the brakes a couple of squeezes, I then drove around the works carpark just gently testing the brakes before going out onto some empty 30mph roads to do a bit of low speed braking. - All good, no issues!
I then took the car onto the bypass for a little more speed (luckily we were at Midnight, so my repeated braking / accelerating wasn't causing anyone a danger). I did some 60mph heavy stops to almost zero just to get a bit of heat into the brakes and make sure all was OK.

Conclusion...

I'd say it's been a good improvement! Hard to say what has actually improved, however noticeably stopped short of a roundabout and a set of lights and felt like I had a lot more say in what the brakes were doing. Very happy with the results and would recommend this to anybody looking to improve their brakes!

[guerra1976]

After a quiet period in which I've been mostly chasing tail... I've received my made to measure stainless steel pipes!
My plan is to give the Coupé a little more aural presence by removing the centre silencer!

Here are the pipes:


And here's the offending silencer: (Photo borrowed from someone on Z-Post)


I'm gonna have a word with our Tech genius guy Wayne and get him to do me a little Drive Away video of the standard exhaust, Then keep my fingers crossed that I measured it up right, then re-measure it all again another two or three times before cutting and joining... Then get another video on the same road with the silencer bypass pipes fitted

An update maybe later this week on these.

I made this also, and did like extra aural
But after 2 days the Light from the emissions its on, did it happen with you?