mechanic
BMW 325 e36 Comfort Relay Fix
Our BMW’s windows started to get flaky. They wouldn’t move for a few minutes after the car started, but eventually worked normally, an annoying intermittent problem that wasn’t worth a trip to the repair shop in the hope they wouldn’t work for the mechanic.
I checked the fuse under the hood (#33, 10A) and poked the baby-head-crush safety breaker a few times to no avail.
Then, last night, the windows stopped moving all together. Testing as advised, neither did the sunroof. I found this link and decided it was probably my comfort relay too. This page had a nice list of resources, but the best is gone and only partially available on the internet archive so here’s what I did (and, not to spoil the suspense, this worked).
The panels you need to remove are under the steering wheel. You’re looking at them if you’re lying on your back in the driver’s side foot well, looking up at the bottom of the dashboard. You will need to get through two layers of material to remove the relay, the plastic cover and an aluminum crush panel that protects your knees in a crash. You will need the following tools:
- #2 Philips screwdriver
- Small (1/4″ or so) flat screw driver
- 10mm socket
- Socket extension
- Socket wrench
- Soldering iron
- Solder
First remove the plastic panel
Step 1 – remove the plastic cover that hides an unsightly screw head with the flat screw driver. You just pry it off.
Step 2 – Remove the now-exposed screw, one of three holding the plastic panel in place.
Step 3 – Remove screw two of three.
Step 4 – Remove Screw three of three. The panel should now sort of flop a bit, but it is still retained by a tight fit and two clips between the dash and the driver’s door.
Step 5 – Pull the plastic panel straight aft, releasing the clips shown and remove it. There is a speaker attached to the plastic panel attached by some wires. If the speaker doesn’t pop out of it’s own accord, you can either pull it out or release the wires.
Step 6 – Remove the knee panel with the 10mm socket. The heads are recessed so you will either need a long socket or an extension to reach them. There are three bolts holding the panel in. As it is removed, lower it gently, there is a metal bracket clamped between the panel and the dash structure that will be loose now.
Step 7 – A previous mechanic had solved the assembly problem of the loose mechanical bracket with some electrical tape. This seemed to work well and made reassembly easy.
Step 8 – Remove the blue comfort relay. This is a bit tedious as I did not remove the bracket first – rather wiggled it out of it’s mount. There are two retaining clips that I depressed that may have aided removal (or not). The relay is pulled “up” – away from the ground and up into the tangle of the dash. This is probably the most tedious step, it is all easy from here.
Step 9 – The comfort relay removed. You can replace it or fix it. If you fix it, pry open the case with your flat screw driver by popping the clips on either side and sliding the blue cover off.
Step 10 – Identify the bad joint. Like other people have found, mine was cracked all the way around.
Step 11 – Solder the joint back together. I was generous with the solder so it might last another 200,000 miles.
Step 12 – After putting the relay back, reinstalling the knee panel, and mostly replacing the plastic panel, snap the speaker back into the back-side (inside) of the plastic panel then replace the screws and cover the unsightly head of the visible one with the plastic bit.
Windows go up. Windows go down.
Yellow Fiat Panda
We had some amusing rental cars in Italy. First and last a Ford Focus that was quite competent, had enough room, and handled quite well. Then we went to Portugal and rented a car to drive to Spain. Perhaps because Spain and Portugal still have some hard feelings, it is absurdly expensive to rent a car in one country and return it in the neighboring company. It would cost less to pay someone to push the car back.
So we were given a “Spanish car” in Lisbon, a Toyota Yaris with a really pronounced fuel delivery problem at anything above 1/2 throttle which had the car juddering and barely making it up hills. Hertz sent out the mechanic who asked if we had the AC on (yes, it was 40 out) and then said it was normal. I told him it felt like it was running on 3 cylinders and he said that was right, it had 3 cylinders. Now we’ve rented a couple of Yarii before, and they make it up the mountain in Italy fine with the AC on, and would easily have climbed the hills of Lisbon, but they wouldn’t take it back and besides even if they wanted to there simply wasn’t another car available in Iberia. So we got a reservation from EuropeCar and called Hertz and were told we could drop the sick Yaris off at LIS.
But when we got there, that wasn’t the case – apparently Hertz Spain would charge Hertz Portugal €25,000 if they accepted it. As we made it clear we wouldn’t be driving it away, there was suddenly another Spanish car at the Hertz downtown office.
We drove downtown where they were super nice and promptly produced another of the same competent Ford’s we had in Italy with one minor variation – the driver’s side mirror had been destroyed by the car wash just before we got there. So they gave us a nice Portuguese Renault Laguna III with the key card ignition system. It worked great and was a fine car to drive with a useful 6 speed manual transmission.
It got us to SVQ without any problems and we could even keep up with our friends in their Mercedes C230 with the strange transmission that switched into “limp home mode” immediately. Yes, the car rental adventure was not ours alone, their car, a high end rental Mercedes was flawed as well. They asked “why does the car redline at 150? Is that bad?” It took a little work to be sure there wasn’t a button or feature being missed (like some manual shift override), but no… it was a “feature” not a bug, and was to remind the driver to get to a service station before the transmission fell out of the car. It made it to Spain and back in 2nd.
When we got back to BLQ our Focus was touring around Florence, so we picked up the cheerful Yellow Fiat Panda. Pandas are great little (little) cars. They handle surprisingly well, have surprising pickup and, like the tardis, are bigger inside than outside. Even so, a panda can’t really hold more than two people and their normal travel luggage, and three is a tight squeeze even if one is only 80% full size. But we all packed in and zipped back home suddenly noticing that the yellow panda must be the year’s most popular car.
Finally we returned the Panda, got our Focus, and drove to Rome with three adults, one awfully tall 12 year old, and a lot of luggage in relative comfort and in good time.