In Corona times, one meets many challenges. Such as repairing a quality car like the BMW at home. Something we would never envision to do in normal times. But as our beloved Z3 was standing in our home garage with a loose throttle pedal connection, and as garages are still on lockdown at the moment of writing, the only thing to do was to tackle the repair ourselves. Moreover, as we have to move up a gentle upward slope when driving our of the garage, we need more than just idling power, so we had no alternative than to get the throttle connected again.   

So we took all our courage and screwdriver in our hands, and first removed the cover beneath the dashboard on the driver’s seat, shielding the throttle linkage. This proved rather straightforward, with only two plastic screws to be loosened. Then we gently took the cover off, and looked at the throttle mechanism, more especially the lever where it takes up the hook at the end of the throttle cable. We just hoped and prayed that this hook just had snapped off the lever commanded by the throttle, and that the throttle cable itself was not broken.

We fixed again the hook end of the throttle cable into the hole of lever commanded by the throttle pedal…

We remember when we abruptly went of the throttle when we saw the female jogger almost jump in front of our car, we didn’t hear any noise of a popping or snapping cable, so a loose hook was probably it. The cable hadn’t been sticky either, as throttle operation was always very smooth and progressive, so again it was unlikely that it had snapped.

And hurray, the throttle cable was not broken, and indeed only the hook had come off its hole in the lever. The reason was also soon found, why this has happened. The rubber stop to prevent the hook from sliding out of the hole in the lever was just missing. So the thin hook was just gingerly lodged in the hole of the lever, as the photo here below clearly shows.

As the throttle lever has two holes, we did have to check whether we had chosen the right one when we reconnected the hook, and we had to check that the engine was responding well to the throttle movements and still idling well properly when we did not touch the throttle pedal.

So yes, we took our beloved BMW Z3 for a brief spin, and were delighted that throttle movements where as smooth as ever, and that the engine responded beautifully.

Now we just have to order the right rubber backstop preventing the hook from (again) sliding out of its hole, and we will try our luck with our local dealer BMW Jorssen in Aartselaar. Then we can re-assemble the cover again neatly, and everything is again forgotten, hopefully.

To be continued!

Hans Knol ten Bensel