László Varga

Last year I have written a post where I have described how I managed to apply a DIY guideline to upgrade the interior trims of my car. Now, I have faced a little bit more complicated task: fix the electric window on the car.

A few months ago (well, actually last year) I have foolishly tried to force my windows to open, with a complete disregard of the fact that they were simply frozen in their sockets. Lucky for me, I did not do a lot of damage, but the cracks and pops it was doing while pulling it up afterwards really scared me. I quickly looked up on the internet the possible source of the problem and voila the solution presented itself. I just needed a garage which, sadly, is only available at my parents house, so I scheduled my repair to the next time I went home… Easter… (yes, I have a busy life and I can only go home once in a while).

The long awaited time, however, finally came and I prepared myself for the big task: I bought a brand new set of tools for 75RON (€18.00) and a bag of zip ties (cheap). Having everything ready, together with my father we sliced up the door panel (actually following this cool tutorial) like so:

I have to say I was not quite sure, that the actual problem in my case was the same as the one presented in the solution (the zip tie trick), so I was pretty relieved to find out the the same piece was broken in my case also. I quickly applied the zip tie trick, fastening as tight as I could the string to the broken piece:

After a few more finishing cuts on the zip ties, we assembled the mechanism back, connected the battery to its place and tried out the fixed mechanics: the window was moving smoothly again. We disconnected the battery again (just to avoid fault signals of the airbag) then reassembled the vapor barrier, the airbag and the door cover. Easy-peasy: 3 hours consumed, a lot more time won by reducing the time needed to find an adequate parking place: the inability to reach for the tickets at the entry of arranged parking lots was already driving me crazy…

One thing to add: make sure you have the proper tools before starting to venture on this great ‘journey’: some of the screws are not so easy to remove.

[9]

When I was searching for the best deal before buying my car (those 2-3 years of dreaming actually) I have created a picture of what the perfect configuration would look like (both exterior and interior colors and equipment). Of course when I actually gathered enough money to buy the car, I had a small window of choosing and buying one from the used car market. Naturally the first criteria was mileage, equipment, condition and last but not least: price. I have tried to choose one which had the closest match to the exterior/interior configuration I dreamed about. I have nailed the exterior and I managed to find one which had a pretty close match for the interior also. Pretty close, but not the aluminum-like trim I really dreamed about:

After a year of driving it like that, I came across an interesting article on the internet showing how this trim can be changed. The links on the thumbnails do not work, because it is a pretty old post, however I managed to find them looking at the source code of the web-site 😀 . I have quickly looked up an online BMW Part Catalog for the exact parts that I would need. The trim-type I was looking for, was the one code-named TITAN II trim (it is plastic but looks aluminum). The next step was to ask for the same parts at one of the local car-parts dealer. After this, things went fast: ordered, shipped (in 4 days!), ready to be installed 🙂 .

So this Saturday morning was dedicated to the trim-change activity. I memorized the guidelines I have seen in the article, went down to the car and did this to the poor thing:

Yeeees it is ugly, BUT: I had my brand new original, factory made TITAN II trims on stand-by next to me on the seats. So basically within a few minutes my car interior got really close to the interior I always dreamed of:

Of course the trimming is not limited to the dash only: I had to change the side-trims also on all 4 doors. The whole idea of my little experiment was to see how hard is the work of the BMW mechanics at the local dealership which for sure would have skinned me alive for this small work, just cause their mechanics have a BMW badge on their clothes. The whole trim-change operation took much less than I expected: in 40 minutes I changed all the trimming, without any problems (of course the tutorial was GOLD!, couldn’t have done it without it).

So what is missing? My TITAN II decor-trim on the steering wheel (the lower forks). I looked it up, they have it… but first I have some brake-maintenance to get through…

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Over the weekend Bugatti once again proved it’s superior performance to other sports cars. The new Bugatti Veyron SuperSports claimed back it’s trophy as the worlds fastest production car… in the world 🙂 The car clocked an average of 431.07 km/h on it’s two way record setting run, to the engineers amazement, who were hoping a speed of 425 km/h.

What I like about this car, is that not only it managed to break the record (again), but (as always), the Veyron has always done it with style. I mean yes, the SSC Ultimate Aero was the previous record holder, barely beating the Veyron’s short lived record, but just look at it… it’s… well… it lacks the glamor… And now, the new Bugatti kept it’s style (although not as fancy as the original) and has jumped ahead with 20 km/h more than the SSC. Now that’s something.

More info on autoblog.it (In Italian, but I have to be honest, that is where I have read about it first…)

Here’s another report from the guys who never really got the hang of the metric system: autoblog.com

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