E30 Zone

Brother in law has apparently decided to do a bit of hairdressing alongside his F1 and Nissan/Sony work, and has bought himself a '99 Z3.
He's emailing me about three problems, so since I've never worked on one of these, I thought I'd see if I could get a few pointers on here:
1/ Airbag light. Is the prime suspect likely to be the passenger occupancy sensor, followed by the driver's seat belt? I've told him I'll hook it up to my DIS diagnostics when I see him.

2/Odometer not back lit. Is the lighting in these conventional bulbs or LED?

3/Radio code not available from BMW - too old. It's a Philips radio.

1, seat belt pre tensioner loom is a common fault on these.a repair loom is available. Seat mat or the slip ring also fail.
2, I'm pretty sure they have bulbs in.
3, if you remove the radio there is a seriel number stamped on the side, I think it's 16 numbers.if you give the dealer this number they should give you the four digit code.try the parts department, I got a code for one a couple of months ago.if you have no luck pm me the number and I can try for you.

Thank is for the reply. After posting the above, I had the idea of looking up the instrument cluster in the ETK, and it turns out there are no less than 19 filament type bulbs in a Z3 cluster.
He's already approached BMW regarding the radio code, but I don't know if he gave them the serial number or not, or whether the dealer is just plain lazy. I'll find out.

If the dealer is no good its a tenner here - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-Radio-Cod ... 58b74e75b1

How much of a hairdresser is he BTW? Does it have an engine?

DanThe wrote: How much of a hairdresser is he BTW? Does it have an engine?

All of 1.9 litres, I'm afraid. This car replaces a V8 Cobra replica!

Brianmoooore wrote:

DanThe wrote: How much of a hairdresser is he BTW? Does it have an engine?

All of 1.9 litres, I'm afraid. This car replaces a V8 Cobra replica!

he replaced a v8 cobra rep with a limp wristed 1.9 hairdressers car??

is he feeling ok?? I think he needs looking at

steve_k wrote:
he replaced a v8 cobra rep with a limp wristed 1.9 hairdressers car??

is he feeling ok?? I think he needs looking at

he probably wants to spend less time on the hard shoulder and or keeping dry

Brianmoooore wrote:Brother in law has apparently decided to do a bit of hairdressing alongside his F1 and Nissan/Sony work, and has bought himself a '99 Z3.
He's emailing me about three problems, so since I've never worked on one of these, I thought I'd see if I could get a few pointers on here:
1/ Airbag light. Is the prime suspect likely to be the passenger occupancy sensor, followed by the driver's seat belt? I've told him I'll hook it up to my DIS diagnostics when I see him.

2/Odometer not back lit. Is the lighting in these conventional bulbs or LED?

3/Radio code not available from BMW - too old. It's a Philips radio.

PM me the long number on the back of the radio Brian. 14 digits, underneath the 65.12 part number. I have a contact who can get the code.

With regards to the airbag light, it depends on what airbag spec it has - driver only, driver and passenger, driver/passenger and door airbags. You need to get the part no from the module really but a scan for codes is a good start. Hopefully it's not one with door airbags as used modules are like RHS.

e30topless wrote:

steve_k wrote:
he replaced a v8 cobra rep with a limp wristed 1.9 hairdressers car??

is he feeling ok?? I think he needs looking at

he probably wants to spend less time on the hard shoulder and or keeping dry

Latest is that he might be driving the thing down here at the end of the week, so I'll see what's on the radio, and hook the car up to my DIS program to see what it has to say about the airbag light.
Thanks for the help so far.

Two bubs for the odometer, either 62131383311 (1.2w) or 62111391260 (1.5w)

Pretty sure its the 1.2w ones, had to do the same ones on my dads Z3 a while back.

Not got much to add to what's already been said other then... If the fault is high resistance for seat belt pretensioner (very common). Trace the 2 wires from the pre tensioner to the plug connector under the seat. Cut the wires either side of the plug and solder together. So your bypassing the plug.

The plug itself causes a high resistance... Seen it 20+ times

There is a repair kit available from BMW for the under seat plug. Have done this repair before.

This is what I used when I needed the code for my CD43 > http://www.radio-code.co.uk/

Simple and quick, I think it cost around a tenner.

The repair loom I mentioned above has a new plug connector with gold plated pins to overcome the resitance fault.I wouldn't recommend bypassing the plug and soldering the wires as its not a bmw recommended repair.
I did many of these in my time at the dealership and the repair was done with crimp connectors where the repair loom connects to the body side,however some of the techs used to solder the crimp connector as well but these cars came back a few weeks later with the airbag light on again and the resitance fault stored.
Once the soldered joint was removed and crimped only, then the fault never came back.

Update on this: The radio code he sorted out himself, via a mate of a mate.
The odometer was just a bulb.
Typically, when I connected my laptop to the car to run DIS, it refused to communicate, (since sorted), so we got nowhere on the airbag light in the limited time available.
This problem has now been resolved in a more basic way, in the form of a strip of black tape over the offending light, an enthusiastic purchaser to punt the thing on to, and the acquisition of another Z3, this time with a real engine, at least. No doubt, this will have its own crop of issues, so I'll end this post, "to be continued".
Thanks for all the help so far.