cpandrewschmidt

Body shop supply on greenway crossing, the SEM trim black matches the black trim and stuff on our cars almost exactly. 

Battle wounds, the chicks dig it.  i usually drill/cut to remove the rubber part of bushings and then cut through the metal sleeve and they collapse and fall out.

Got the nut off no problem with impact wrench.  Got to buy a new one  I finally got this putting it back in last night.  This job sucked.  Part of the bearings froze onto the hub, had to cut and hammer and wedge in a vice to get it off.  2 hours alone messing with that.  Bushings were all ok to put back in.  Press was a life saver.  No idea how anyone could do this without one.  Some pictures of the carnage along the way.  Saw online people burning their bushings out.  That proved to be pointless because you still had to press out the metal sleeve.  But I'm sure my neighbors appreciated the fire.  Smashed my hand with a hammer and have taken more showers to get grease off in a week than I would normally in a month.  Picture doesn't do justice to how dirty I really was!  New GC Coilovers arrive today.  Will get the rears in and button everything back up.  Will get to the fronts in the next week or two.  I have to cut 2" of the sleeve and reweld for the type of shocks I got.  Gotta find a welder.  I'll post more pictures when all done! 

hot damn

no go for me   will be up north

looks great.  Looking forward to seeing another e30 vert around Madison!  I have a black '91.  Now if only we could actually drive them with the tops down.  

Here is some video content for you guys!
And a few recent pictures...

Actually I dont mind it. Looks like a saw blade LOL

count me in!

Bought another set of wheels. They should be getting delivered via friend in the next day or two. I will need to refinish them and I didn't really need another set, but I couldnt pass up a good deal on a rare set of wheels.
They are Crenshaw Classics and I have no idea what the specs are yet, but my guess is 16x9.5 or 16x10 et of something insanely high.
Actual pics of the wheels:

And a pic for reference:

Or,

At least you caught it before they came all the way off!! 

note to my idiot self.  it usually helps with vibrations to actually tighten lug nuts.............
rtabs all better now.

note to my idiot self.  it usually helps with vibrations to actually tighten lug nuts.............
rtabs all better now.

note to my idiot self.  it usually helps with vibrations to actually tighten lug nuts.............
rtabs all better now.

Hey all,
So working on this right now tonight.  I followed the steps above (cam locks, backed off torx bolts, tension on chain). I wanted to check chain movement before uninstalling vanos just to see where it was at. Applying pressure and activating the solenoid the chain didn't budge. You can hear the vanos make a blurping noise and the cylinder with the gear moves in and out just a little bit. Appears the solenoid is fine as it clearly does something when voltage is applied to it. 

So, figured it was installed wrong, uninstalled and re-installed. Same thing. I'm very careful to make sure I'm catching the 1st possible gear. 
I'm surprised that 60 psi is going to move the chain.  It's hard enough to move the chain clockwise with the cam gear wrench.  Doesn't seem like anything will move with the CAM blocks on.

I took a video but not sure how to post a video. I'll try to figure that out. If anyone has any ideas in the meantime please let me know.

Also, I was going to make large uprights for the back of the rack and wing, allowing the wing to sit atop the roof rack, but seeing it just sitting on the trunk, I am starting to think differently. I added pics of random uprights and then the original pic.

 
Also maybe the Joystick controls strobeing LEDs inside of roof mounted cannon things? 

Got to do some fun stuff while waiting for my injectors to come back from testing.  Painted the spoilerless trunk i found at the junk yard.  Still need to wet-sand clear coat tonight.  Hopefully it comes out OK and matches well.  

Headers will need some more hammering in order to clear subframe/motor mounts. Hoping they line up with the midsection of exhaust that I have. Needed to drill out every hole on the flange in order to get them remotely close to lining up. Kind of a PITA.


Figured out the intake location for the SC. Initially since there is a lack of room I was going to run it out the headlight hole. I really wanted to keep my headlights as well as the “stock” appearance of the car so I opted to go thru the engine bay. This also allowed me to use the stock VF intake tube which has provisions for the bypass valve & pcv hose. I will need to create some for of splash shield or just not drive in the rain ever





After that pic I spun the MAF 90° in order to point the connector back towards the harness. Cleaned up the routing and left some more slack for the connector. The hole was pretty rough but I cleaned it up later.





Doesn’t look pretty, but should be snagging fresh air and not soaking up heat from the engine bay/radiator. We’ll see how it works.


So that left me with expansion tanks. The stock one just wasn’t going to work. It physically fits in the stock location, but the outlet on the tank runs it directly into the VF intake tube & the angle the hose would need to navigate made me uncomfortable (it was also very close to the sc). So I opted for an aftermarket tank/cap. Stock e36 system is a 2bar cap so I went with a stand lev r vent 21-25lb. Little bit lower pressure rating but safer than going over the stock cap rating. I hacked out all the mounts and “cleaned” them up to what I consider good enough for this cars intended purpose is. In drops the 1.25 quart (less capacity from the stock by .75(?)) tank.


The outlet on the left side of the pic is for the overflow & the outlet on the right side is for the top of the radiator. Kind of sucks that it was 180°, but this is what I had to go with.


Found some 90° bends and called it good. This hose will work it’s way back to the “coolant spider hose” which I have replace with 1 line with a T fitting to get rid of the explosive nature of the stock rotted hoses.


This location is maybe 2” below the stock outlet- if I have issues bleeding I’ll just hold the tank up in the air unbolted from its mounts and crack the bleedable cap.


Another reason for mounting stuff the way I did is I will be running a vacuum block. This left the fender wide open for this piece


After dealing with the seemingly millions of vac ports on Miata Intakes and the 1 on an e36 obd1 manifold I figured I’d get this to simplify vac sources & routing.


Also got the two married dipsticks back from my welder friend. Basically I didn’t want to tap the pan because I didn’t want to remove it and greasing up a bit to catch the shavings isn’t something I wanted to do. So I had an e36 OBD2 dipstick merged with an e34 Dipstick. Overall length stayed the same and now I have a fancy oil drain


Come to find out he welded it in the wrong orientation of what I told him, but it should still work anyways.


Red arrow is direction of drain tube, he welded it about 45° the wrong direction. Running a tad longer hose is the answer here.





Random shot of coolant hose that is flipped 180°, will just need to be trimmed up to fit and a stock hose should be an awesome solution to an annoyance of finding random hoses that work.





All the oil distribution stuff is finalized as well, got the pressure sender hooked up as well, this was an annoying mass of dongles to get lined up.


Chase bays front brake ABS delete stuff is installed but not tightened, waiting for the mid/rear lines to show up & to install the headers to figure out front brake line clearance (their kit runs it along the sway bar. Dumb)


After the line stuff shows up I pretty much have everything to get this back together and going, found out last night I’m missing an Injector clip but should have one on the spare harness hopefully - need to get the 30lb ones clipped in.


Ordered some harness wrap to put some more lipstick on this pig as well.


(You can see the before pics if you scroll up and see the electrical taped mess)





It’s about as close as I could get to the stock harness wrap (shown here at DME connection thru firewall).


It’s a self wrap style that you spread open & tuck the wires into. It then self closes, kinda neat and can with stand some pretty high temps and withstands sharps well too-it was nice for going through the hole in the firewall. I will be doing most of the engine bay harness with this.


That’s about it for now hopefully this weekend I can beat this flu and get out in the garage and get the headers fitted up for good.

Finally got around to making brackets and installing the roof rack. It was a way bigger pain that I anticipated and I still need to change some things to make it stronger/ safer. For now I can stand on it and it holds my weight just fine. I can also grab it and shake the whole car and it has almost no flex near the roof line. The back side where the long brackets go down to the quarter panels does have some movement, but I plan on machining uprights that will fit the wing and the roof rack to be dual purpose. 
*Make note that the self tappers are there as a temporary fastener until I swap out to better hardware - Black paint is also on the list*
Before:

After:


Yes, the trunk still opens. 

Now that I have the extra storage space, I loaded all of the boxes and misc parts I have for the car on the rack.

There would be a CAT closer to the headers on the stock exhaust
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=BB13-USA-07-1991-E30-BMW-325i&diagId=18_0170
Here's what the rear section should look like
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=BB13-USA-07-1991-E30-BMW-325i&diagId=18_0171
Suppose we could have looked this up last night
Andrew
 

Drove the car to work (about 20min) for the second time now without a hiccup. Driving it is awesome, but I seemed to have noticed more things that I need to address by doing so.
I am also still on the hunt for a front valance!

not much new going on for the M3.  Finally got around to a much needed interior and engine detailing.  Saw Gliptone recommended on some other sites for leather seats. This stuff is great.  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VV423G/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1  Cleaned and re-treated with it.  Finally fixed the saggy glove box too.  Now just need some real M3 floormats and zhp knob.
 
 

Ha, yep that was me!  I was wondering if you'd be on here

The next episode looks like this:
M52B28 from 1997 E39 528i 139k miles
OBD1 conversion with 413 red label DME and Sssquid Tuning stage 2 tune
S52 cams, M50 intake manifold, Supersprint replica long tube headers, single 3" exhaust 
Achillies upgraded oil pump shaft and oil pan baffle and every other reliability upgrade I can find
E30 G260, lightened single mass flywheel, South Bend stage 3 street clutch disc, Sachs 918 pressure plate, Z3 shifter with DSSR, S3.25 rear diff

All of the gaskets and seals are being replaced (except for the head gasket), I purchased brand new coilpacks, sensors, hoses, vanos rebuild kit, and a host of other refresh items.
So far I have pulled the exhaust manifold, removed all the exhaust manifold studs, started pulling the intake manifold, began the tedious process of scrubbing the block for a fresh coat of paint, and have cleaned up the injectors, and sent them off to Injector Rehab for some cleaning and testing.

Underneath the valve cover, nothing out of the ordinary, the cam lobes are in great shape which helps re-affirm that this engine was maintained to some extent.

I can't help but sit here counting all of the valves and wonder how I got to this point in my life.