HipMF

One of our assemblers at work pulled in with this. Just bought it yesterday. Definitely not something I was expecting to see today.

One of our assemblers at work pulled in with this. Just bought it yesterday. Definitely not something I was expecting to see today.

One of our assemblers at work pulled in with this. Just bought it yesterday. Definitely not something I was expecting to see today.

Or, on a more serious note:

Your spacers reminded me of something:

Or, on a more serious note:

I got some good news last week Thursday, and I think we all need some good news about this.
I only know one person who had this disease, a friend of my Dad's/acquaintance of mine.  Heard from my Dad that last Thursday he has fully recovered.
He went into the hospital on or around April 30th and tested positive for coronavirus.  He went home.
The guy is a friend of my Dad's from the VFW, a Korean War veteran who is 90 years old.  When my Dad forwarded me the e-mail that Mr. B had contracted the disease, I thought he was for sure a goner given his age.
Unfortunately I don't know a lot of details about how bad it was and such.  My Dad is pretty freaked out about this so I didn't drill him for a whole lot of answers.
I hesitated to even type this given the only other person I told immediately slapped me down with "WELL PEOPLE HALF HIS AGE ARE DROPPING DEAD LEFT AND RIGHT!".  But whatever, I understand some people are really concerned this is the end of the human race.  With the talk here of hundreds of millions of people dying from this, I decided to take the chance and put out a positive note.

The denial is strong with this one.
 
 

These jokes are waffle. I pancake it anymore.

Even before this virus hit, my wanderlust has been creeping up on me. I've got a little change in my pocket again, and there's still nothing holding me down, so it's looking like it might be time for me to hit the road again. This time I've got my eyes on Mexico. Years ago when I thought about doing this I thought I'd travel by bicycle. Pedaling all day burns a lot of calories, which means you can eat as much as you want once you get somewhere. One of the biggest attractions to Mexico is the food, so in theory, this works out perfectly. However, the northern part of Mexico is pretty spread out, similar to the southern US, so my current plan is to fly to Cancun, and buy a bike there, then start pedaling my way back north. The towns in the Yucatan peninsula are only 20-30 miles apart, so it's a reasonable way to travel that part of the country. Once I get farther north I'll either be in better shape and able to handle the longer hauls, or I'll be sick of biking and ditch it in favor of a bus.
My last trip was really poorly planned, but I've got a pretty good head start on it this time. Lot's of pins in my map and bookmarks in my browser. I resubscribed to Duolingo and have been hitting it hard the past couple of weeks. Last summer I was biking 25 mile round-trips to the Dane county farmers market every weekend; not sure what I'm going to do this summer to get in shape... It's a long way off, and it's hard to tell what will happen between now and then with the way things are today, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. 🤞

These jokes are waffle. I pancake it anymore.

You guys... lamborghini started producing surgical masks and THEY EVEN HAVE A LITTLE LAMBORGHINI TAG!  When, and I say when because there will be a when, when there is pandemic memorabilia in decades this will be up there in the automotive world.
https://www.lamborghini.com/en-en/news/covid-19-lamborghini-is-producing-surgical-masks-and-medical-shields

I heard some similar belly-aching on the radio about students missing their graduation ceremonies. They were talking about it like kids were going to traumatized or something. I wish my life was so perfect that that's all I had to worry about. 😒

Differential was fully dissembled for the case and cover to be sent in for sand blasting.

That Thursday I dropped the case and cover off at a local industrial painting shop. I stuffed the casing full of newspaper and duct taped the holes to help prevent to much sand from getting inside or hitting the bearing races for the pinion gear shaft.

The following day after work I picked them back up.

As for the smaller components I threw a wire wheel on a die grinder and went to town cleaning them up. 

After going through and de-greasing/blowing everything off I prepped all the metal with some por-15 metal prep to add an extra etch to the metal for better adhesion.

It's a pretty simple task, just simply brush it on all the areas where paint will be applied and let it sit for a half hour. Once a half hour has past rinse everything off with water and your set to go.

Did two medium coats of por-15 waiting about an hour in between coats. After the last coat I let it dry for a full 24 hours.

While the paint dried I started on the lsd rebuild. As a refresher this is getting the 3 clutch disc upgrade from thayer motorsports increasing the lock up to around 50%.

The rebuild is very straight forward and Thayer includes a link on their site with a step by step process. Biggest thing here is taking your time and double and triple checking yourself making sure everything is in the right order facing the correct way. After removing all the guts I did soak the lsd unit in de-greaser cleaning it thoroughly before beginning reassembly. Remembering to lubricate every component with diff oil as it is being installed is crucial. Left over parts after the rebuild was the two old clutchs and dog ears, 4 mm spacer that the third clutch takes the place of and the eight old carrier cap screws.

The following day I removed the masking off everything and cleaned everything once more through. I also threw a few light coats of satin clear to the diff cover to protect from corrosion.

First part of the rebuild is reinstalling the rear pinion gear. I did replace the clamping bushing and the dust cover. After inspecting the bearings I chose to reuse the original ones as they were still in good shape. Being that I hadn't changed anything with gear clearances I simply torqued the nut down to 137 ft lbs as specified from bmw and what I confirmed on a couple threads on other forums and called it good.

After installing the freshly rebuilt lsd with the ring side retainers and axle shafts I took a little red paint and brushed it on the ring gear and spun it a full turn to ensure that the gears were still properly meshing. I also checked for any crazy amounts of backlash which was also within spec.

Used some permatex "the right stuff" gasket maker to seal the diff cover to the diff.

After ensuring the preload of the pinion gear was within spec I popped in a new locking plate for the nut.

Added 1.75 qts of castrol 75w-140 diff fluid which includes the lsd additive needed for the clutch plates. Also popped in the speed sensor with a new o-ring and metal plate. She is ready to be installed in the car.

3.73 diff that was in the car on the right.

On to the next thing. In a previous post @KaiserRolls mentioned the detent pins in the zf trans. I had not looked into these and did a bit of research as well as checking that it didn't need the replacement done. One of the major signs of failure was the shifter not popping back to center after pulling it out of 5th gear. Luckily everything still felt good.

New guide tube came in and the damaged one from the clutch disc was replaced.


After that was all said and done and the clutch disc was flipped around the correct way the trans was re-installed.
Also installed a fresh guibo
\
For the manual e36's the 325i guibos were thinner and a bit smaller while the e36 m3 guibos were slightly larger and thicker. If you chose to run the m3 guibo which I preferred the dssr has to be modified. They usually are bent in order to add clearance. Being that I would have had to make a whole new dssr I instead chose to grind away the area that came in contact with the guibo. I over did it on the grinding in order to insure I had no clearance issues. I always knew about the bent dssr's but never knew why until now.


After re-installing I found that I had plenty of clearance now.

Up next... brake cooling. About a year ago I drew these up on Solidworks in a class I was taking and had them cut out on the water jet. As for the tubing portions I had some left over 2.5 inch stainless exhaust tubing laying around that I cut into sections and had my buddy tig weld them up.

In order to get the adapters for the air ducts on the valance attached I picked up some jb weld plastic bonder. The stuff is designed to attach plastic to metal so I thought I'd give it a try. After letting it dry for about an hour it was solid and definitely not coming off. 

Towards the beginning of March I ordered some ducting tubing 2.5 inch on amazon. I ordered two 1 meter sticks which would be more then plenty for both sides.

Unfortunately, I did not take any pics of the backing plate installed but it fit up really well. I did have to cut out the original dust shield in order to fit these up. My bigger challenge with this hole setup was where to route the ducting. Originally I thought I'd just run it right through the hole that the factory duct ran through but I ran into issues with the wheel rubbing on it when turning in. I found that my only option was to route straight back and then along the bottom of the frame rail up to the front. 

I didn't really have any other method to hang it other then zip ties so I got some beefier ones to make sure it was tight in place but not to tight that it would collapse the tubing.


Plenty of clearance with the wheel turned in and enough flexibility with it all the way out.

After this was finished I had the car back on the ground and buttoned up the last little bits and pieces. The same day I took the car out for a short drive around the neighborhood and I found the car was running really rich and there was a ton of drone in the cabin. After taking a look through tuner studio I had found that I had left the flex fuel sensor settings enabled and it was messing with the tune. After disabling it the car was back to normal running at the right afr's and no more drone.
I never did take any pics or mention anything about it but I did get a flex fuel sensor installed. I ordered a gm sensor which seemed to be the popular option among many tuners. I ran the sensor on the feed line right below the intake manifold where it goes from hard line to rubber hose. I ordered a gm pig tail as well and wired that in except for plugging it into the ms unit which I decided on waiting to do tell I get the car back into the tuner to get it tuned for 91 octane fuel so I have the option to run both e85 and 91.
 

The following Sunday morning I took the car for a drive down to the local gas station and ran it through the car wash. First impressions with the new setup were pretty great. The zf trans shifts so smooth compared to the g260 and with the power numbers I am making it handles it so well. The stage 3 clutch surprisingly does not feel that much heavier over the stage 2 and with the zf trans the pedal feels like it is much less grabby and has a more consistent feel. Right away I took the car for a 25 mile drive of very easy driving to break in the new lsd clutch packs properly.

Still on the list to get done is finding some replacement seats and ordering some fresh rubber for the upcoming season. Very excited for this summer and really hoping this pandemic pans out soon.
 
 

At least you caught it when you did. Somewhere on my pc I have a diagram that someone made about the correct way to install the clutch for the fx kit. I guess it’s pretty common to install them backwards. 
 
At least you’re not this guy who friction welded it together and couldn’t get his trans separated lol

I resisted the urge to pull the e21 out of storage while I was there. I did take the snows off the compact though, so if it snows next week it's partially my fault, but I wanted to try on the style 30s that I picked up recently. So 90's.

They're wrapped in some 600 treadwear falken all-seasons that grip about as well as you would expect. Ride quality is much improved over the koseis, which is what I was going for (it's official; I'm old). Kosei K1s will be for sale once I clean them up and take some pictures, if anyone is interested.

I resisted the urge to pull the e21 out of storage while I was there. I did take the snows off the compact though, so if it snows next week it's partially my fault, but I wanted to try on the style 30s that I picked up recently. So 90's.

They're wrapped in some 600 treadwear falken all-seasons that grip about as well as you would expect. Ride quality is much improved over the koseis, which is what I was going for (it's official; I'm old). Kosei K1s will be for sale once I clean them up and take some pictures, if anyone is interested.

I resisted the urge to pull the e21 out of storage while I was there. I did take the snows off the compact though, so if it snows next week it's partially my fault, but I wanted to try on the style 30s that I picked up recently. So 90's.

They're wrapped in some 600 treadwear falken all-seasons that grip about as well as you would expect. Ride quality is much improved over the koseis, which is what I was going for (it's official; I'm old). Kosei K1s will be for sale once I clean them up and take some pictures, if anyone is interested.

Finally re-worked the exhaust mid section. I got rid of the crappy glass-pack and replaced it with a pair of more substantial mufflers
Before (old pic):

 
After:

 
I promise the welds are less boogery than they look in the picture. I'm going to re-paint it sometime this summer, so for now I reinstalled everything and took it for a test drive (also first drive of the year, this car is so fun). Its not necessarily much quieter, but the awful rasp is significantly better and it finally sounds half decent. The ground clearance is a little worse but I'm overall really happy with how it came out.

A U T O M A T I O N

A U T O M A T I O N

One of our customers is an "essential business"; therefore, it's already been decided that we will be staying open. Guess I'll save my 2-weeks off for after I get sick...
I've officially been transferred to the front lines. Wish me luck boys.