E60: New front bonnet-badge... cheap eBay replica.

With all but one job complete on the 5 Series I decided to treat the car to a new bonnet badge, since the last one has become severely de-lacquered, as they do.

A genuine BMW one will set you back about £25. Cheap fakes can be bought off eBay for as little as a fiver, but these don't look promising, with visibly low-cost manufacturing and the quality of plastic used in festive tree decorations.

In the end I couldn't justify the cost of the real deal and plumped for a middle of the range one - a 'replica' OEM badge. It was £10 delivered and is complete in every detail - the BMW roundel on the back, authentic looking packaging and even the right BMW part number.

Despite the 'realistic looking' markings on the back, which were nothing like on my original one, the quality of the plastic was not great and the overall depth about half of the original, which meant fit isn't great either. The locating pins were far too long, tapering to a point from manufacture and needed cutting down for the badge to sit flush, which it does barely - there is still a tiny bit of movement if the badge is rocked back and forth. Ok, this may be a pretty critical review of a fake badge still costing less than half that of a real one, but wouldn't the money spent on packaging and fancy insignia been better spent creating a more quality badge?

At the end of the day it looks fine on the car and you would have to be an expert to spot it was a fake, but then again, most BMW fans are and, most importantly, I know it is. In future would I spend the full £25 on a genuine badge? Yes, I think so.

E60: Opening Stuck Bonnet.

PROBLEM:
The annoying turbo whine from my previous post can only be heard while underway and not while stationary, so the bonnet is up and down for every bit of work and test drive. After several such runs, the O/S (driver's side) bonnet latch refused to open. Nearly an hour was spent with a helper pulling the bonnet-lever while I tried to push / pull / wiggle the O/S bonnet up, but it was stuck solid. The front bonnet lip on the E60 (and all modern BMWs) extends right down over the slam-panel / grille and the latches are a good 6 inches up inside it. It's impossible to slide something up through the gap between the rubber seal and pop the latch from outside, as you can with older cars, so I turned to the internet and eventually found a superb solution.

CAUSE:
Yes, this is quite a common problem with the E60, especially when you are working on it at home. The cable splits in two and a separate one runs to each latch. The end of the cable fits through an eyelet on the 'release-switch' and is kept under tension by a plastic collar that fits into a notch in the latch-frame. If the plastic collar pops out of the notch, cable tension is lost and the bonnet-lever simply will not pull the release-switch far enough. Removing the bonnet-lever reveals a plastic-cage with the cable housed deep inside, so yanking that further with a pair of grips won't do either. If you've been working on the front-end of the car and changed the location of the bonnet-latches / slam-panel, even slightly, then there's a high chance the collar will start popping out.

SOLUTION:
There are a few forum threads saying the latch can easily be opened from underneath the car, with the front under-tray removed. This is true, but the E60 engine-bay is so tightly packed there is a bit more to it than that. I have to give props to Kilty1 on forum.BMW5.co.uk, for his amazing guide, linked below:

http://forum.bmw5.co.uk/topic/87159-bonnet-release-not-working/

Getting to the latch requires removal on the front under-tray, both pieces of the O/S brake air-duct and the plastic inlet-pipe that runs to the air-filter. These can all be removed from underneath the car, as shown in Kilty1's guide. He used ramps, though I managed to open mine with the car raised a few inches on an axle-stand. Looking up with a torch, you will just see the latch next to the inner corner of the headlight.

Luckily, my brake duct, inlet pipe and tray were already off as I was working on the car, so I could get straight to the latch and will just show a couple of steps and pics from Kilty1's guide:

1. Reach up and slide a steel-rule or similar slim/flat object into the bottom of the latch, just to the inside of the right-hand spring-wheel [shown on the left in the pic, looking from front]. When the steel-rule is far enough in there should be a small clunk. Now slide the steel-rule quickly out and the bonnet latch should release on the O/S. 

2. The collar doesn't take much to pop out, so to stop it from happening again as soon as you shut the bonnet, wrap a cable-tie round the back of the collar and round through the gap in the steel-frame. It will be solid.

E21 316: Big bonnet dent filled.

This ding in the bonnet was from a dropped tool by the look of it and this pic doesn't really give an impression of how far the metal was pushed down.

The rub-down showed an area of of about 2" round that needed filling. A nasty drop whatever it was.

It took one big fillet of P38, a lot of rubbing with a flat-block, a quick coat of filler-primer and two quick skims of filler to eliminate pitting.

The final skim was then rubbed well flat with P600 Wet/Dry paper.

This was the worst bit of damage on the 316 and something that everyone noticed - I'm glad it's been put to bed.