hood swap query

Luckyluke · Post by **Luckyluke** » Sun 02 Oct, 2011 20:01

Need a bit of advice, I have opportunity to purchase a second hand hood for my Z3, its in better condition than mine but is off a manual mechanism whilst mine is an electric one, will it fit or do I need to look for one off an electric roof Z3? appreciate any advice.

Post by **Robert T** » Sun 02 Oct, 2011 20:26

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Yes it will fit. The manual roof has a gas strut in the same place as the electric roof has its hydraulic ram. The bracket is the same on both.

Swapping roofs is not a trivial exercise. If you are at all unsure, have a read of some of the other threads on here on the subject.

Pre- and post-facelift hoods should be the same externally, but the post-facelift ones are lined. The lining can be retrofitted to pre-facelift hoods.

Cheers R.

Luckyluke · Post by **Luckyluke** » Sun 02 Oct, 2011 20:51

thanks for the advice, so if I swap gas strut off mine onto the donor manual roof I should be able to swap them around without removing the hood from the frame?

Post by **Robert T** » Sun 02 Oct, 2011 21:46

You should be able to remove the mechanism from both roofs, and swap, leaving your ram in situ. It will either uncouple at the top ball joint of the ram, or by unbolting the mounting plate for the ball joint if the two joints are not identical.

Cheers R.

XVar · Post by **XVar** » Mon 03 Oct, 2011 05:33

Just to make sure you don't think Robert T was even slightly joking about it not being a trivial job by the way, take a look at this guide

http://webspace.ringling.edu/~dplassma/str/str.html

Luckyluke · Post by **Luckyluke** » Mon 03 Oct, 2011 06:07

Thanks both, I,ve looked at the link and can see its not like swapping my old MGB hood around! Will have to have a go though as present hood is holed in several places. Will attempt job next month when I have some time off work. Glad I found this site, its full of very useful advice and tips.

Bill- · Post by **Bill-** » Mon 03 Oct, 2011 17:03

Have you thought it may be a good idea to keep an electric hood . I love mine

Luckyluke · Post by **Luckyluke** » Mon 03 Oct, 2011 17:17

Thats what I plan to do, fit the manual mechanism and hood onto the electric mechanism, hopefully only changing the gas strut.

Post by **Robert T** » Mon 03 Oct, 2011 19:15

Don't forget to remove the microswitch and wiring to it from the passenger (left) side of the roof. You'll need to put this onto the new roof frame.

To clarify - the ram and gas strut are not part of the roof - they sit in the same position - behind the lateral trim panel on the passenger (left) side of the car. They push the roof up from below and attach to the roof frame just above the hinge for the passenger (left) side B-pillar.

And no, I wasn't kidding about it being an involved job.

Cheers R.

seaDog · Post by **seaDog** » Wed 05 Oct, 2011 08:47

I did mine earlier on this year. Got a manual roof in excellent condition from a breakers and swapped out my powered one. Mine is prefacelift and the donor was as well, there is no difference at all between the two.

As above just swap over the microswitch, the fitting for the hydraulic ram is the same as the the gas strut.

The hardest part is removing all the old butyl tape ready for fitting the new one (Plastic scraper and white spirit seemed to work the best). Be very careful when removing the Sealing frame (51718398104) they get brittle with age and are easy to crack and expensive to buy.

Mine took me a morning to complete and was relatively straight forward if you take your time and think about what you are doing.

I bought the butyl tape from BMminiparts but got the felt tape from ebay as the BMW tape is a long roll and seriously expensive.

Good luck

Jas

Luckyluke · Post by **Luckyluke** » Wed 05 Oct, 2011 09:08

Thanks for advice Jas

Hels Z'd · Post by **Hels Z'd** » Wed 09 Nov, 2011 14:13

Could be being completely daft here, but if you bought a complete roof already fitted to a frame, could you not remove the trim panels, undo the retaining bolts on rear bulkead, strip old sealant, remove roof mechanism / cover complete, prepare for the new rof and refit as a reverse of the original process?

That would seem a lot easier than having to follow the whole 30 part process.

Only reason I ask is because I might be doing ours in the spring, so advise is appreaciated.