M Force 1

[RVAE34]

Attachment 665529

The sunroof on this car has never been quite right. Diagnosing some wind noise with the inner sun shade open but the roof closed. Masking off the seams makes it silent on the inside, so planning to replace the flocked felt outer seal. Planning to order 54128169710 though it seems that part number might be out of date. Our parts guys at BMW of Austin know their shit, so they'll find the right one. Plus my account there is marked for wholesale pricing, so almost always cheaper than buying online plus no shipping costs.

Also de-nibbed the tires, because once someone tells you that's a thing, you can't unsee it.

Attachment 665530

After:

Attachment 665531

Haha, I like your attention to detail!

I feel like e38 sunroofs always have wind noise when the sliding shade is open. As you know, I despise BMW sunroofs!

[jimbojsb]

Busy day today. Trying to figure out what the hell is up with the sunroof. I posted above that I had planned to replace the sunroof seal. Today I finally got around to it. I told the wife, who was watching, "This is exactly as hard as I expected it to be". Pulling the sunroof glass off, and pulling the sunshade out (more on this in a bit) was trivial. Pulling the old seal off, trivial. Removing the adhesive (it's the 3M foam type), well that's where all the effort comes in. After an hour with an eraser wheel, finally got it all cleaned out. Another 10 minutes with a blow gun and a shop vac got all the debris cleaned up. What a mess. Putting the new seal on was no big deal. It has a nice form to it that fits the body shape of the sunroof opening, so it's easy to align. Reinstall of the new seal took maybe 10 minutes at most.

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[jimbojsb]

That brings me to the sun shade, which has some issues. First of which, the handle is cracked. It had a hairline crack when I bought the car. Originally just the outer rim had a corner cracked off, but then, in my infinite wisdom, I tried to get the handle to seat better into the Alcantara-wrapped sunshade, and pushed my fingers right through it. So that piece is shot. Looks like you can't buy just the handle, and certainly not in black, as that would be an M5-only piece in addition to not being sold separately. Unless someone has a spare they want to sell me, I'm considering 3D printing a replacement since it will have to be finished and painted anyway. This would give me the opportunity to modify the design to accommodate the thick Alcantara while still snapping positively into place.

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Then we come to the real problem. I believe this is all down to a missing screw. There are 2 pieces of spring steel that hold tension on the sunshade. One of these was missing the hold-down screw on one end, so at some point that spring steel got lifted up and bend and tangled up in the mechanism. I don't think it's salvageable so I'll have to see if I can source a new one either from BMW or a junk yard. I'm also of course, missing that screw, which is an M4 torx bolt. It looks like it might have it's own part number on RealOEM, but not sure. yet.

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If anyone has any sunshade parts in their spare parts bin that fit the bill, let me know, and I'd be happy to buy them off you.

Forgot to attach this one in the first post - old seal vs new seal, you can see the difference in thickness:

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The upside to all this is that this was about as normal a Sunday as I could ask for in these crazy times. A day spent in the garage playing with my toys.

[e30topdown]

Always a good day when it's spent in the garage "playing."

[jimbojsb]

Drafted some parts to replace the sunroof handle. I was hoping to be able to print this all in one piece but the shape just isn't well suited to that. I'll just glue these 2 pieces together, and then fill, sand and paint the part. I'm printing it in PETG plastic rather than ABS, so it has a little give to it, and I'm using "friction bumps" to lock it in place rather than the OE design's snap tabs. This will be as good or better as the OE piece, costs pennies to produce, and doesn't require that I destroy a perfectly good shade/handle combo off eBay or whatever to make it work.

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[jimbojsb]

Printed in black PETG plastic, which already gives a matte finish. Fitment is perfect, and the finish is good enough that I might not even sand and paint it.

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[purplecty]

Impressive! Nice work!

[jimbojsb]

Another project complete. I finally got my GMRS radio fully installed. I'd been putting it off because There isn't really an easy wire pass through from the trunk without removing the back seat. Finally got around to that today. I added a Scosche Magic Mount, which is how I mount this handset in all my other cars. I didn't really love sticking it to the redwood trim but it's fairly straightforward to remove if needed, and I couldn't figure out any other reasonable way to get it done. I also have a spare redwood console piece in immaculate condition so I'm not too worried.

I use Cat5 wire to extend the handset from the radio in the trunk to the cabin, and I use a Cat5 coupler as a disconnect point. For this car, I designed and 3D printed a mounting point for the coupler that clips onto the center console trim in the passenger side footwell. Pretty happy with the results.

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[jimbojsb]

I had some renders done of my cars. I thought the E38 one would go well on this thread.

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Other cars, just for fun:

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IMG_0639.jpg

[jimbojsb]

Acquired from a friend, this is the last Strong Strut ever made for the E38, so I jumped at the chance to snatch it up, especially as they are out of business now. After getting it installed, I realized it's going to need a minor (1/8" or so) shim at the bar/mount joint to clear the S62 intake plenum. It's really close, but the rear edge does touch once it's all torqued down.

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[007008]

Acquired from a friend, this is the last Strong Strut ever made for the E38, so I jumped at the chance to snatch it up, especially as they are out of business now. After getting it installed, I realized it's going to need a minor (1/8" or so) shim at the bar/mount joint to clear the S62 intake plenum. It's really close, but the rear edge does touch once it's all torqued down.

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I had to shave about 1/3 of the thickness off the bottom back edge of the strong strut to clear the plenum.

[jimbojsb]

I had to shave about 1/3 of the thickness off the bottom back edge of the strong strut to clear the plenum.

Do you happen to have a picture of that? After tinkering with the fitment I think that's going to be the right approach.

[007008]

Do you happen to have a picture of that? After tinkering with the fitment I think that's going to be the right approach.

No, I measured though. The bar is 13.5 thick. the back side of mine is 9.5. I used a small benchtop belt sander, it's ground down from the middle of the holes back. I also have some washers on the inboard mount holes to kick the middle of the bar up a bit.

[jimbojsb]

Finally got around to getting the Strong Strut properly fitted. Since I own Strong Strut the company now, I had my machinist do a little work on the E38 piece to add some relief for the S62 plenum. He said this was quite challenging to get a CNC program dialed in for.

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[purplecty]

Oh wow looks great! Wait! What? You own the strong strut company?

[jimbojsb]

Wait! What? You own the strong strut company?

I do. The original founder operated it as a hobby business and just got tired of doing it so he shut it down. I thought it was a thing that deserved to still exist so I bought the domain name and all the remaining stock and engineering drawings from him, and we're re-starting production here in Austin.

[Sabreslight]

I do. The original founder operated it as a hobby business and just got tired of doing it so he shut it down. I thought it was a thing that deserved to still exist so I bought the domain name and all the remaining stock and engineering drawings from him, and we're re-starting production here in Austin.

Oh word that's badass, I'll definitely be looking for one to go on my 01 plus I look for any reason to drive down to Austin lol.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[arthbkins]

Very impressive print of the sunroof handle! I too have put my hand through one trying to insert it into an Alcantara wrapped sunroof card. I recently picked up my first 3D printer (Ender 5 Pro) and am slowly getting up to speed. So far I've test printed with success B Pillar clips from ThingVerse:

Top:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4153979

Bottom:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4153963

Now waiting on ABS filament to arrive to print ones that I'd actually use. So far I'm only printing models found on the web - I need to figure out how to design my own parts.

I'm very curious what else you have printed for an e38? Regardless impressive work and I don't mean to highjack your thread into a 3D print thread.

Printed in black PETG plastic, which already gives a matte finish. Fitment is perfect, and the finish is good enough that I might not even sand and paint it.

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- - - Updated - - -

And incidentally, I have a Strongstrut on my e38 and love it - got one from one of the final bathes. Very happy to hear you are picking up the torch and continuing!

--Arthur