Convertiblau! My 1996 BMW 328iC

[Jake]

Next up, since I have all this free time before the July Dominion event with the M3, is re-aligning the whole top. BMW used shims to align it to the body, and I think mine is a little tweaked. The driver's side sits just a hair forward and occasionally makes it a pain to latch to the windshield. Greg said he'd walk me through it so I'll give it a go soon enough.

I took this morning to investigate why the top seemed a little mis-aligned. Turns out the shims are to adjust the height, which is more important for sealing the rear of the top to the tonneau/body when the roof is raised. But, you can loosen the whole top frame and move it around.

These are the two 13mm bolts that allow fore/aft movement of the top frame:



So I loosened those, then realized there is another bolt that helps control position:



To get at that bolt, I had to pull the interior trim apart. Thankfully it's mostly press-fit stuff.



I shoved the driver's side of the top toward the rear of the car by about half an inch, maybe a little more - and it worked!

One benefit of this is that the windows all go up and should seal better now. My procedure for raising the roof before was to put the roof up, hold the front panel up from the windshield header, raise the rear windows, latch the roof, raise the front windows. Now I can just put the roof up and hit the "all four" window button, and they all go up at the right angle and seal correctly. :thumbup:

Also took a few minutes to replace my busted third brake light. They are a giant strip of LEDs (on the convertible only) and when they burn out, it's easier to replace the whole unit. I had a replacement sourced about six months ago and just never took the 10 minutes to install it. Good to have that working again.