A new little cheap toy - BMW 130i

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I've been meaning to make a post about this for a while - but just for those that are interested in these cars, I've just kept a bit of a running log.

At the moment I'm running it alongside my C63 but I'm probably looking to sell the C63 in the next couple months as I just fancy something a bit cheaper and that I can worry less about. I've always fancied a 130i and there is little I could find for something which has a decent engine, decent interior, some decent "tech" (albeit a bit older), rear driven and is fairly cheap and cheerful to run. I finally found a fairly decent example online and managed to get it for £4250. It's a 2007 LCI LE with 153k miles on the clock, FSH, Bi-xenons, full electric memory leather, i-Drive, brand new Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 5 tyres all round. It came with crazy amounts of service history and repair receipts from a BMW specialist and with only 2 previous owners. Last owner alone spent £3k on it a couple of thousand miles ago putting in front and rear M3 control arms, Bilstein B14 coilovers, full service including diff/gearbox etc etc and from before that, judging by the invoices it's always had everything it's needed without money seemingly an option!

It's needed a few bits doing on it since I bought it, but I managed to get the price down quite a lot to account for this. These cars really aren't that difficult to work on, and after working on the C63 and E92 M3 - it's such a revelation to have space in an engine bay to allow you to work without having to do everything with your fingertips (even though this is the smallest car in the range and has a 6cyl 3litre engine!).

Anyway, this thread was just going to be a bit of a running log of bits and pieces that I've done. I've done a few bits already, so I'll put them up

First things first, this is what she looks like:

 

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First things first, when I bought it I could see that the oil cooler and the oil filter housing gasket was leaking, so I set about changing that. I used OEM Elring parts and I think for both gaskets it was around £20. Took around 2-3 hours when i was taking my time and cleaning things up along the way. This job was one that needed doing promptly, as the oil filter housing sits right above the auxillary belt and if oil leaks onto the belt, it can cause the belt to snap and the belt somehow can get ingested into the crank seal, which is not good! I had a few other bits to do whilst I was in that area so I got them done at the same time, including new belt, pulleys and tensioners. Managed to get the belt/pulleys/tensioners for around £50 - again all OEM high quality SKF parts

I also decided to change the "mickey mouse flange". This is a coolant pipe with a flange which connects into the oil filter housing and which is made of plastic from factory. This plastic flange frequently gets very brittle, cracks up and causing a coolant leak and pieces of plastic to go into the cooling system where it can cause blockages or damage to the water pump. For like £10 on Amazon they make an aluminium one which fits perfectly and will never need to be changed again so it's a no brainer. The old plastic one is secured to the coolant hose with a one time clamp so the best way of getting it off, is just by crushing the plastic flange with some water pump pliers, then pulling it out, removing the one time clamp and replacing it with a jubilee clip and the aluminium flange. Needless to say, it was very brittle.

 

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Great alloys and makes a change from the common ones that appeared on the 1 of that era.

Yeh definitely, really like the LE alloys. The alloys were in a bit of a state when I got it though (forgot to take photos though!) - all four were completely curbed and they had brake dust staining on that simply wouldn't budge. A refurb was the only option which I got done a couple of weeks ago. Cost me £230 all in for them to be powdercoated and they look so good now. The centre wheel badges were completely messed up also (they were the factory ones) so I got some new ones of those. I paid about £9 for 4 replica ones (not paying BMW prices for these which I think are about £50 for 4 these days!). I've bought replica ones before and was blown away by how good they look a feel which makes buying the BMW ones pointless.

Then I realised that the old rusty horrible wheel bolts ruined the nice new look - so I got some new Febi wheel bolts from Autodoc for £30 for 16 of them, which I thought was pretty good. As a comparison BMW charge about £4.50 each and the Febi ones are absolutely identical to the last detail. So much so that I think that Febi must make these for BMW.

Much better!

 

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Did a few other smartening jobs as well that just make it look a bit better all round.

The wing mirrors on these tend to sort of delaminate and "corrode"/bleed around the edges - so for £15 each side, I got new items which look a lot nicer. BMW charge around £50 per side for the mirror glass!

Also, noticed on a previous MOT that it had had an advisory for fuel cap seal. BMW don't sell the fuel cap seal separately to the fuel cap, so it would have been around £35 for a new fuel cap. If you haven't got the my gist yet, you should know I'm not paying that!! So I searched the trusty internet and there was someone who was selling the seals on eBay for around £5 for a pair, so I got them and a new fuel cap tether for £3 as well as they always snap on BMW's. Again BMW don't sell the tether separately.

 

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Looks pretty tidy especially for a 2007 car. I like the black car with oyster interior combo too - exactly what I've got (albeit on an F30).

Cheers, it has got a few chips and minor dinks around it, which don't show up in the pictures. I also has as a fairly sizeable dent in the rear quarter which I can't work out how it happened. But it's not too bad at all really. It's not a show pony, and that's one of the reasons I bought this car - I want something I don't have to worry about when it's parked up.

3L 6 cylinder with about that amount of BHP/tonne and a decent bit of torque has always been the sweet spot for (everyday) driving for me personally.

Yeh, coming from a near 500bhp 6.2litre V8 - I thought it was going to feel really quite slow, however I have actually been pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong, the C63 goes like **** off a shovel in any gear at any speed and doesn't stop, but the N52 engine in the 130i feels brisk, and even sounds good and overtakes are nice and easy. The whole car, with a proper manual gearbox also, feels engaging, albeit the steering isn't the best - it just has very little feel to it. It's not "bad" as it's still really responsive, but just doesn't have much feel - which is in contrast to the C63 which has really really good steering feel (way better than my M3's). However, when you consider modern day cars which almost all have absolutely dead steering which is slow - it's still a big cut above that.

 

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Wheels looking spot on now. No Locking nuts?

Any chance you ou can post the links to the center caps and bolts please.

Cheers, yeh got locking nuts. I'm refurbishing them myself and waiting for the coating on them to harden before I put them back on the car

Re: the wheel caps - these are where I got them from: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235096154634

And the wheel bolts: https://www.autodoc.co.uk/febi-bilstein/8008104 - currently £1.18 each (plus £8 del)

 

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Awesome thanks.

Did a quick blow over on mine too as they were shabby.

What have you done to your car today?

can you get any kind of plugin for waze to avoid that .. otherwise maybe a commercial satnav Possibly although hoping it’s not an issue now I know to look for it! The mental thing is I seem to be doing more journeys since I’ve got this van than when I had a car. Half the reason of switching...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

What did you use out of interest?

I've used some spray Hammerite on mine but it takes at least a week or so for it to harden up fully

 

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Just as an update - I've done a few extra little things over the passed week or two:

Firstly, the large DISA valve on these is known to go, I wasn't sure if mine had but since it was still the factory original one, I thought it best to change it out as it will have likely been passed it's best. Low and behold, it was broken and I found the flap in the inlet manifold. Luckily it hadn't broken up and been inhaled by the engine, but worrying none the less! Quite an easy job really and again, after working on the C63, I'm still basking in the love of having space in an engine bay. Replaced with a Febi part - I can't believe how much a motorised flap is. The Febi part I got for a good price of £120 from Germany, but the OEM one is around £170 and I think the Genuine part is about £220!

 

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Another thing I noticed whilst doing the oil filter housing gasket was a bolt in the head, seemingly without a head on it. I Googled it and found that this is actually pretty common on the N52 due to the aluminium bolts not being strong enough. As you can see from the picture, access to it wasn't exactly good so I had to remove the bolts for the inlet manifold to get enough space in there. From there, it was a case of getting two picks and trying to rotate the bolt around enough to get it out. Slow work and back breaking due to leaning over constantly. Thankfully, because it didn't have a head and because it's aluminium, it was pretty free moving.

Now, annoyingly, I had to do this job twice, because I actually sheared the replacement bolt also. I said some bad words when that happened. So I had to extract that one, and go back to BMW and get another bolt I snapped the second bolt due for two reasons - A) you need to reallllly clean out the threads in the head of any oil so you are able to torque it properly and B) I found online the torque spec - but it was the wrong torque. I read that it should be something like 28nm + 90 degrees and then I found the proper TIS and saw that it should be 15nm + 90 degrees. It doesn't matter so much when it comes to steel bolts, but aluminium bolts are totally unforgiving of **** ups.

 

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Next job on list was the Valvetronic motor gasket. It looked as though it was weeping a bit, with remnants of oil around the spark plug tubes on the valve cover. It seemed plausible that it was leaking given it's age and mileage, and with the replacement Elring gasket only £12 on Amazon - seemed like a no brainer. OEM gasket from BMW costs around £40 so another decent saving.

Fairly easy job, plenty of DIY's online and because I've got a good scan tool, I could set the limit points of the Valvetronic motor afterwards properly.

 

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Ok a bit of an update!

The mission of tidying up the car continues - and it's a bit of a pleasure to do. For a car on 154,000 miles it looks and drives like it's done half or a 1/3rd of that. Firstly, as I've had my head under the bonnet a bit I've noticed that the gas springs were getting weak. So for a whole £6.70 each from Amazon DE I got the original OEM Stabilus ones.The Genuine BMW ones (which are Stablius) are about £55 each - it really is mad to think of the markup on parts. I also took the liberty of doing the boot ones as they were also getting weak - think they were about £8 each.

Spot the difference!

Next up - like I said, I've had the bonnet up quite a lot and kept noticing the bonnet release was quite stiff, which was confirmed in the history when the last owner snapped the cable just before he sold it and had to have the cable replaced at £120. Unfortunately, they didn't replacing the latch at the same time, so the new cable was liable to snap again at some point. The cable only snaps as a result of the bonnet latch being rusted/stiff so it makes no sense to only replace the cable. When the latches get rusted, you can try and lube them, but they really don't last, they almost always need replacing. So I managed to get the bonnet latch from eBay for £15. It looks like some kind of decent OEM one with the markings scratched off so not sure exactly what brand. It's only a very simple thing and when I got it it felt every bit the same as the Genuine BMW one. The BMW one is around £30. Had to remove the intake snorkel, then the two Torx screws and carefully wiggled it out. New one went in, gave it some extra lube so it stays rust free and it's now lovely and smooth/easy to open the bonnet again.

 

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Next up was a mod I've been wanting to do since before I even got the car. The 340mm 4 pot brakes from F20 M140i cars fit the old E8x cars (this never happens on BMWs!) and they are just a straight plug and play fit. I'd had a couple of advisories on the MOT history for the front brake hoses perishing over the years so thought I'd do them at the same time.

I bought the full setup from Quarry Motors BMW breakers who did the front and rear calipers, plus brake discs and pads for £550 delivered. Now, I didn't need the rears because they don't fit without modification - so I chucked these back on eBay and sold them for £370. This means the front 340mm M140i brake system cost me £180. And then I'm going to sell my old 130i front brake system for about £200 so it'll mean that switching to four pot calipers will have hopefully netted me a £20 profit, which is one hell of a bargain for a lite-BBK!

They came like this, with the white M logo half worn off which is very common...

With a bit of a 5 minute polish the M logo was completely gone. I bought new heat resistant M logos from eBay for about £10 - however when they arrived, they are bigger than the originals...

...being an OEM whore, I couldn't have that so I cut them down to the correct size. And this is how they looked afterwards...

Next - onto fitting!

 

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Fitting was fairly straight forward. I had to do the front hoses though, which means releasing the original flexi hoses from the rigid brake pipes. These were put on at factory 15 years ago and 154k miles ago so I knew they'd be seized. I'd watched several videos online as to how to release them etc and most people said you had to cut the pipe and do all sorts, which I didn't want to do. I tried soaking them in WD40/Plusgas but nothing.

As you can see, both brake hoses and the brackets seemed to have embraced the rust-life.

I didn't want to start cutting brake pipes and I found one video who showed you just have to apply a bit of heat and they'll release right off. And he was right! One the first one, I took the blowtorch to it for less than 5 seconds and it came straight off without any hesitation. The blowtorch is a bit unwieldy and liable to melt other bits of plastic/rubber nearby so for the second on I used a BBQ lighter which uses lighter fluid to produce a mini bunsen burner flame. It's a lot smaller and precise and after 20 seconds or so pointed at the nut, again it released off with no issues!

I wanted to get new brackets as well but once again BMW were being silly with their prices. For both of these metal brackets it was £70! I wasn't paying that, so I got one from a scrapped car for £20 for the pair and cleaned them up...

Then after a few coats of Hammerite to protect them...

Then the brakes fitted...out with the old cast iron calipers and 330mm discs:

In with the new aluminium 4 pot calipers and 340mm discs

Nice unsprung weight saving too, not counting the lighter discs also

Andddd with the wheels back on, they look pretty good!

Next up was the saga of bleeding them...

 

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So it's been a couple of weeks and I've done a few more bits to the 130i! It's now on 155,000 miles and I'm using it a lot more now.

First up - the front undertray had been broken at some point, along with the passenger side brake ducts being missing. So I had to remove the front bumper to fit the new brake duct, which I could only get from BMW as there were no used ones anywhere. It was only about £35 so not the end of the world. I forgot to take some photos unfortunately, and what was meant to be a 20 minute job, turned into a 2 hour job as several of the bolts that hold the bumper on (behind the plastic mesh trim) had seized solid, which caused me some hassle. I managed to cut them off in the end and replaced them with new ones. I also got a new undertray from a breakers yard with the brake brackets above for £20 and gave it a clean up to be looking as good as new:

Old and busted undertray:

New hotness:

The old undertray had some screw missing and some of the little fixings seized/missing so they were replaced with new ones and greased to stop them corroding again.

Next up was the rear propshaft donut which had come up in a couple of MOT's for being cracked and perished. As you can see it was passed it's best.

New one was £54 and came with new bolts/fixings. It was Febi part number 43520 and was the original BMW part as you can see where they have scratched off the BMW logo and the BMW part number on the new Febi part. BMW charge a whopping £140 for this exact same part.

Not a horrendous job to do, but not nice especially on your back trying to undo bolts which have been there for 15 years. The worst bit was trying to force the propshaft forward enough to get the old donut out and over the little bit that comes out of the diff. I ended up using a big fricking pry bar but my arms hurt afterwards. Looked a lot easier in Youtube videos!

The next thing I did was replace the gearknob. The previous owner had put the BMW Performance gear shifter in which was alright, but didn't feel particularly good in your hand as it's too stumpy, small and sharp. It's got nothing on the classic E46 ZHP gear knob which appears to still be selling well! Cost £65 from BMW, and hopefully I can sell the BMWP for about £55 so only a tenner to change it.

Andddd finally in this weeks episode, a little something to make the front end look fresher - headlight restoration! I got the 3M headlight restoration kit initially which was horrendously ****, which I was surprised about. The sandpaper went smooth almost instantly, the velcro on the foam polishing pad came away after no time etc etc. So I had to ditch that and dig out some wet and dry sand paper from the shed, which worked a treat. Started with 360 grit, then 450, then 600, then 1000, then 1500, then 2000 then polished it with plastic polish. It worked really well, but I just want to give it another going over at some point to remove a few remaining very light scratches.

How it started:

Midway through:

How it finished:

And that's it for this week....next up is some infotainment upgrades inside the car....

This should make it obvious:

 

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Ok so it's been a bit of a while since I've updated this - first up, the infotainment update. I was originally looking into one of the Android screens with android auto. They look really good quality and have great functionality but they're just too fricking big. They're 10.25" and obstruct a decent portion of your N/S view, which I just didn't want. So I thought about doing a CIC upgrade. I knew nothing of how to do this but with a bit of reading, found out it wasn't that hard at all. As luck would have it, I found a bloke on FB marketplace who was selling an E8X iDrive kit complete with screen, controller and CIC unit, along with the USB 6NR connectors and another couple of cables that would be of use. Paid £300 for it including delivery which I thought was a bit of a bargain!

Here are some fitting pictures - everything is really pretty straightforward to physically remove and replace - only took a couple of hours...

Old CCC system:

New system going in:

The new CIC controller and trim didn't slot in like I thought it was meant to, which meant I had to get the dremel out and take a few millimetres off a couple of places. Nothing much at all and then it clipped in nice and snug.

It pretty much started working straight away, but just for thoroughness I just had to do a little bit of coding which meant firing up NCSexpert and trying to remember how to use it, changing the build date of car to 2009 onwards to get the option to code CIC into the NFRM and DME, then code the CIC unit itself. If you knew what you were doing this would take you all of about 5 minutes.

 

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Now, my plan was that I was going to get an Android Auto box to work with the screen and my primary reason for this was to get bluetooth audio streaming. These boxes are like £300 and can be a pain to get to fit in the dash. So, as I only cared about bluetooth streaming, I decided to look into the Combox retrofit. There's a few really decent guides online but from what I could see, I just needed a Combox BN2000 (doesn't matter if it's telematics or media one anymore) which I bought for £50 on eBay, needed a couple of cables which I had in the kit that were included in the CIC kit i bought, needed a MOST passthrough connector from eBay for £5 (there are two modules in the boot for the CCC, and the combox replaces both of them so you have an open MOST loop if you don't get the passthrough), and then just needed two new connector blocks which I got from BMW for about £15.

Then, after that all it was was getting a pick, popping the individual wires out of the old connector block, and putting them into the new connector block (all wires are numbered on the connector block, so with the online guides telling you which number's to remove, then where to put them on the new connector block, it was really very easy).

The overall cost of the project was £300 for the CIC kit, plus £50 for the Combox and £20 for misc items - so £370. I managed to sell my old CCC controller for £70, and the old CCC screen for £120 so I'm only £180 into it and still have the CCC unit to sell which I'm hoping to get around £160 for - so that will mean the grand total for the CIC+Combox swap cost £20! Bargain!

Old stuff:

New stuff:

Combox needed a software update which i downloaded from BMW's website. This makes the Combox work with modern phones and fixes a few small things. It was a bit of a pain as BMW make you type in your VIN to give you the right update - which I obviously didn't have. I managed to get it eventually though

Then a bit more coding in NCSExpert

Et Voila!

 

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Couple of other little bits. The Xenon lights were sucking badly - it was like driving with candles on. They were just old, factory original bulbs that were well passed their best. As a drive quite a lot at night, I needed some decent lights so I got some Osram Xenarc Cool Blue Intense bulbs. Got a decent deal on them - £50 each from Amazon DE and they are night and day (pun intended ) difference from the old ones. Really good bulbs these are. They're a very subtle bluey which is perfect - I was originally worried they'd be stupidly blue but this definitely is not the case. Look very OEM and original

 

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Managed to book a trackday too! The car did brilliantly on track - however, the brakes gave me a bit of hassle as they had quite a bit of vibration and no matter how many times I bled them, I still had the dead spot for 2cm at the top of the pedal sometimes, but not others. When you're looking for braking points, that is a bit unsettling! More on that in a minute.

Anyway, the suspension was brilliant. The Bilstein B14's somehow found a way of being supple on the road, but taught on the track. Really impressive. Unfortunately, the tyres overheated pretty badly. I've had this was Goodyear Eagle F1A5's before - they really are not good on track and after a couple of lap they are really going off. I'm going to wear them down then get something a bit more track orientated, that won't kill me on the road.

 

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Now... the brakes - ever since I fitted the M140i calipers, i've suffered with an inconsistent pedal feel. I originally thought it was air in the system, but I had pressure bled the ABS pump and brakes 20+ times and it hadn't really cured it. I didn't really know what it was and thought it might be a master cylinder issue or rubbish pads. After the trackday I thought i'd change them anyway. The pads upfront were some Apec thing (these are utterly turd from previous experience - never buy Apec brake pads) and had some Ferodo ones at the rear, which had melted away on the trackday. So I got some new ATE pads front and rear. I didn't realise that brake pads have to come with a friction rating on them if they are sold in the USA - the cheap pads are "EE" (first letter is friction coefficient at low temperatures, second letter is between like 400-650 degrees Fahrenheit). A lot of brake pads are FE ratings from Brembo and the like, with FF pads being what are normally found on BMW M4's and similar high performance vehicles.

The ATE pads however are GG rating which means they have incredibly good stopping power at both low temperatures and at high temps. Long story short, the pads didn't fix the issue. It was a bit better but still there. It was only when fitting the pads though that I noticed A) just how warped the discs were and B) how low they had gotten!!

So it was time for new discs. Got Textar 2 piece front discs for under £200 for the pair which was a bargain.

For those who say brake discs never warp!

This might be why I was having problems with the brakes also:

Starting thickness is 30mm, minimum thickness is 28.4mm - they were on 27.5mm when I measured them!! :/ I'll keep a better eye on them next time!

I can confirm with the new discs and pads on - the braking is *hugely* improved. The brakes are *so* strong and sharp - hopefully this continues as they get bedded in!

 

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Great price on those discs. Are Textar still a BMW OEM for discs and pads?

They are still the OEM provider for pads to BMW I believe. The Genuine BMW pads all say Textar on them. Genuine BMW discs are made by a company called VNE which are a French company. Still, any offering from Textar/ATE/TRW/Brembo are all OEM quality as all are OEM manufacturers for various car manufacturers. I wanted the two piece discs as these weigh some 1kg less each than the single piece discs which the cheaper manufacturers produce.

Managed to get them from Arnold Clark Autoparts with free next day del for £196 for the pair which is bargainous. I often find that Textar are the cheapest of the high quality OEM providers.

130i is a bit of a underappreciated bargain considering the prices of everything these days. Brakes, LSD and suspension and you have a solid fun car that can do everything.

Yeah I'd agree with that. There are plenty of 130i's that have been looked after for £5-6k with some ropey ones around £2.5-3.5k. And a lot of the £5-6k examples often already come with the M140i BBK, decent coilovers and M3 control arms as these are all very popular mods. And as you said, if you sort a couple of weak spots in the original car (suspension especially) you have a pretty compelling car for some fun. 265bhp, 3litre 6 cylinder engine and RWD. All in a German package which means you can get a decent bit of tech in the car, and decent build quality.