BMW Hood Emblem, replacement.

After 2 years it fades and cracks.

BMW Hood Emblem:
BMW 330i 2006 E90

Hi guys I just wanted to do a quick post to talk about my BMW hood emblem.  As you can see it's looking very bad right now.  Picture to the right.

To be fair, I do park my car outside, I don't garage it, and well... the sun is very damaging. Specially to plastic.

 I just checked the last time I got this emblem and to my surprise, I have bought emblems 3 times, in the last 4 years.  They are less than $10.00 dollars, so I can't complain.

If you are looking for them this is where I got my emblem:

Amazon link at bottom of article...

Full disclosure: I am not sponsored by these people, this is just where I get my emblem.

Original BMW Emblem, AFTER 3 years.

You might think that it's a cheap knock off, but in fact the original BMW logo Emblem, didn't last long either.  Only difference being that instead of it cracking it peeled.

So pick your poison....

NEW FACTORY EMBLEM

Let me know how long your Emblem lasted...

Until next time...

Link to 82mm Emblem from Amazon:

Fog Light Repair / Bulb Replacement

Fog Light Repair / Bulb Replacement E90, 330i BMW

I have to say I am very impressed with how long the Bulbs in my Car have lasted, my car is 12 years old and I've only had to replace 3 bulbs so far.

I personally think it's German Engineering at it's best.  I've owned other cars and usually with in 1 to 2 years a bulb goes out.  It's something that happens regularly to other cars, not to my car.

As you can probably guess by now, we are going to talk today about replacing the Fog Light, Bulb.

My bulb went out when I hit something on the Freeway.  I don't think you can tell but the entire Fog light Housing is broken, it's pushed in a bit in the picture above.  When the Fog light got it, it immediately took out the bulb, I got the "Ding Ding Ding" associated with something wrong, you know what I am talking about... and I saw that a bulb was out on the display it showed a fog light symbol.  Honestly I thought it was the main headlight initially, that would have been expensive, so I am happy it wasn't that.

It's actually not that difficult to replace, but it does require a little bit of work, just follow along.

Tools: You will need an 8mm socket to remove 4 screws below and to the side of the where the bulb is located.  Just enough to have access to the bulb.

Access: The idea is to make enough room to be able to twist off the bulb so that it can be replaced.  I ended up removing 3 screws from the bottom of where you see in the picture below, and 1 screw in the fender.  Again, enough room to access the bulb.

Special Note: The Harness attached to the bulb was not long enough to twist off the bulb, as I twisted the bulb initially, it didn't want to rotate enough to be able to remove the bulb, so I looked at the wire Harness closely and I noticed that the wire harness is clipped onto the bulb housing on the left side, I undid the clip and that gave me about 2 inches of length more to be able to twist off the bulb off.  I was struggling for a good 3 minutes before I realized I could do that.

Only Enough clearance for me to reach inside to remove the bulb,
That is all you need.

Bulb to twist off

Bulb Replacement:  The Bulb I ended up getting is an Sylvania H11, it was a perfect fit. The Original Bulb was a Philips H11, in case you were wondering.

Amazon link at the bottom of article...

Bulb Close ups:  This is what the bulb looks like when you take it out from the Housing.

Bulb Clip:  To remove the bulb from the Wire Harness you will need to undo 2 clips on the side of the Harness:  You have to undo them both at the same time for the bulb to pop out of the wire harness.

Undo both sides of the clips to remove bulb.

Note:  The Bulb only goes in one way. The bulb has a keyed part that prevent it from being installed backward, in the wrong polarity.

Note the key on the right side

Replacement Bulb:

Jacking up the Car:  I did have to jack the car up to get access to the bottom of the car, I guess I could of done it without Jacking up the car, but I have to say it was easier that way.

Bad Bulb:  I don't know if you can see it but the inside of the bulb is broken.

Wire inside the bulb is broken.

I was thinking of doing an LED upgrade, if I do that upgrade later, I'll post about it.

Thanks for Reading this far, have a wonderful day and I hope this was helpful to you.

Blower Motor Replacement

Blower Motor Replacement

After months of procrastination I finally got around to replacing the AC blower motor in my car.  It was not that difficult.  But it was an experience to get it replaced.  I think the most difficult part was figuring out that I have to remove the cup holders before I can remove the glove box.  After that it was downhill to replace the motor.  I didn't get the resistor controller, I only got the motor, although later I regretted not getting the resistor controller too, I'll tell you later in story why, pictures below.

My motor was making a strange sound at low speed, it was getting in my nerves, I run my fan ON all the time, and at time it was unbearable, sample fan noise below.

If you are interested this is where I got my motor: Amazon Link at the bottom of the page

My car: BMW 330i 2006 E90

Instructions:

1.  Remove the trim around the cup holders,

2.  Remove the cup holders, (both cup holders).
3.  Remove screws around glove box, and remove glove box.  (If you don't remove the cup holders you won't be able to remove the glove box.  Disconnect all lights and switches from glove box.

4.  Remove lower trim at the bottom of the globe box, a few screws there too.

5.  Remove the duct, to get to the fan.  (note that you have 2 parts to the duct, they go to the back seat/cup holder in the middle compartment), they are only pressed in, no screws for these.

6.  Disconnect Blower Fan
7.  Pinch the release tab in the front of the Blower motor Housing,  (tab is facing front of car), then blower motor just drops off.

8.  To re-install everything follow reverse order.

The Blower Motor Resistor / Controller Concern:

Blower Motor resistor on Amazon: Link to Resistor / Regulator.

Being that my motor was only making noises, and that it was not broken, I assumed that the Resistor was okay, but to my surprise it was not, it had signs of overheating, which apparently is a common thing on this model year car.  I ended up using the same "overheating" resistor, and it is still working, but I ended up taking it apart, to see what the problem was, everything "ohmed" out good, so I ended up reusing it again.  I did end up scraping the "crud" off one of the Terminals because it very discolored, like it had overheated, the Connector "plastic" also, looked like it overheated, and melted the plastic around it, which I have to say I am very surprised there hasn't been a Recall for this type of issue.  In my case the wires on the terminal fused together, which could cause a Fire.  I cleaned/scraped both terminal and I crimped the connector to make sure they were making a solid connection, because I suspect it was a loose connection that caused the overheating.  I also separed the wires that had fused together and I re-wrapped them.  I suspect these wires were draining my battery too.

Resistor BMW part number: 64 11 9 265 892

Blower Motor BMW Part number: 64 11 9 227 670

The Melted Connector:

Melted Resistor Controller Connector

Both Wires fused together, not sure if it's Battery Power and Ground on the connector but I assume it is.

A few other interesting picture of the Resistor controller:

The final results:

Before I replaced the Blower Fan

Noisy Blower Fan

After I replaced the Blower Fan

Replaced Blower Motor (No weird noise)

I am very interested in knowing how many people have replaced their motor, only to find that the connector had been overheating, let me know in the comments below.  Thank you for reading this far.

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Please note that the blower listed below doesn't come with a resistor regulator, which is why I also included it, both links below:  

Until next time...