Rekpoint

KW coilovers, Ground Control camber/caster plates, lower control arms,  TC Kline rear shock mounts, sway bar links and bushings all installed the past week or two. Had some time to do a paint correction yesterday as well as install a paint matched rear wiper delete. Getting closer to being satisfied...for now. 

I've been working on a side project for the Coupe. Knowing that you have to remove the entire interior to access the top rear strut mounts, wasn't ideal for coilovers and dampening adjustments.
Took a chance to design some 3d printed access caps that can be installed in the carpet humps that cover the strut tops. Will allow dampening adjustments for coilovers or regular access to the strut tops for replacements or repairs without the need to remove the interior. 
First go around was a little ambitious with a threaded cap into a flange set that sandwiches the carpet for mounting.


Got the opinion of a true mechanical engineer (aka Brian) who gave me the idea of making it a press fit with oring instead of threads. Made designing and printing easier. Also added a slot on the side for a flat head screwdriver to pry cap off when removing. Seems to work pretty well. 




Next up is test fitting to the carpet and if all is good, getting these printed in ABS for longevity and heat resistance. 

Started on some brittle plastic repair since any screw you remove from these cars seems to disintegrate the plastic. Glovebox mounting points were some of those. Used some metal brackets to cut up and epoxy on. Was skeptical at first and went a little heavy on the epoxy, but it actually turned out great. Super strong too. Call me impressed.





Also started repairing the new door panels I picked up. The mounts tend to tear away from the press board material that the panels are made out of. So I got some epoxy, 3d printed some new ABS mounts and secured them back on. 


Just gotta do the same with the one map pocket that got detached and I can move onto customizing the door panel inserts to walnut brown for my interior color scheme.

Car back from the shop. No more coolant in my footwell. 
Actual spring can't come soon enough.

Over-reving resulting in non-catastrophic bottom end failure seems unlikely. Putting my $0.02 on bent valve(s).

Mistakes were made this past weekend 😔
Pulled the car out of winter storage on Saturday. After taking it out for a little shake down I went for a ride over to a little local car meet going on. Well one thing led to another and here I am on the highway doing a few pulls against a couple quick cars. Downshifted down to 2nd... 3rd, went for 4th and instead grabbed 2nd again and dropped the clutch. Car banged the rev limiter once or twice before I got the clutch depressed again. As I'm rolling in neutral I checked my gauges, still got oil pressure and the engine is still running and sounds somewhat fine so I continued to drive along another half mile tell I found an exit to pull off. Came to a stop and I find myself driving to what seems to have about the power of a 3 cylinder. Luckily my buddies house was only about a mile up the road so I slowly limped the car, which still had good oil pressure, over to his place and shut it off. Got a ride home and the following day I came back with the truck and trailer and hauled it back over to my grandpa's shop who was less then excited to see it back so soon.
Right off the bat I whipped out the old trusty compression tester and started cranking.

After seeing my low compression numbers on 4 and 6 I drained the oil and pulled the filter to check for metal pieces or shavings.

Oil looked clean and normal as well as the filter so that was at least somewhat encouraging.
checked out each cylinder with an inspection camera and found that none of the piston heads appeared to have any markings from a valve hitting them.

The quality of the images aren't the greatest so I can't be 100% on anything but it was nice to see the possibility of no valve damage.
As of right now i'm thinking one or more of the following things happened:
Bent connecting rod
bent valve (but seeming less likely after what I found)
blown headgasket (it was just an oem one)
or recked piston rings
Things to consider: When I pulled the car into my buddies I shut it off and restarted it in which it fired right up again but was of course misfiring and had a slight knocking noise from the bottom end. I can also spin the engine by hand no problem and it doesn't feel like there is any binding.
Gonna try to start disassembly and removal of the head tonight.

I'm 90% sure I own this car now haha. I recognize the pin stripe and tape residue on the back door trim (and the fact that it's a white 318i sedan)

Got the center console in and everything hooked up. What a huge pain in the ass that was! Hooking things up with little to no space to put hand behind was super frustrating. Hopefully everything works as it should or it's gonna stay that way for awhile, lol. 

With the new job came a new reason to buy another car!
Since I gave up the take home car with the old job, I needed a new (to me) daily for the upcoming commutes. 
After thinking about what I wanted for a bit I settled on finding myself a nice E46, since a 2003 325i was the first new BMW I have ever owned, and haven't had one since 2006.
After a few weeks of looking, and passing on a few cars, I came across this gem!
2005 325ix, 106k, premium package, cold weather package, MK4 Navigation, Harmon Kardon, Xenon, and best of all.... Oxford Green with Carmel Leather!
Overall a very solid car, and it drives wonderful. Gonna work on a cooling system overhaul and some minor maintenance this week.
Next week it's off to the body shop to have MTech bumpers fitted, door dent removal, and rust mitigation.  
I love it when a plan comes together...
-Timmer
 
 
 

Setback after setback....this is the final result! 295 rear tires and 245 fronts, fitment is great but I plan to lower it just a bit more.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hardlines are finished 


Next up is s52 stuff I think

Saw this at the Kwik Trip by Appleton North. Very clean, had a Dinan badge on it, not sure the validity of that or what that all entails with an E39.
 

Cars been down since August of last year. Was leaking coolant into the drivers footwell. Believed to be heater core valve. Purchased the valve, heater core, and O rings that should be here end of this week. I don’t want to deal with draining coolant or any of that shit so I’m having the guys at Auto Clinic do it. I also don’t really have anywhere to do the repair at the moment.
 
I did take the interior apart to make it easier for them to do the repair. Now it’s exposed and ready for them to replace.
 
You can see where it appears to have been leaking based on the carpet. It might be the O rings that failed, but I’m just going to replace all of it.

 

A decision was made.

 
The story goes like this.
Had a clunk in my front suspension and popped off my LF wheel while still on snows and stock springs. Had a bent sway bar link from my romp on the lake. But mostly because in my haste I had put the wrong front strut on the wrong side.  I'm a dummy, but no biggie, I'll get to replacing that when it's time for summers. 
Pulled off the right front when it was time to swap springs and put the summer setup on and was greeted with this.

That's a big ope, fellers.

I also put some meme scoops in to match my hotboi heat wrap job i did on my 3 stage intake. Like that, it will likely make zero difference. Ordered up the turner motorsport intake as well, so that's happening. Hoping to get to the exhaust sometime this summer. Also gonna start getting the wagon in better shape cosmetically. Front and rear bumpers are ugly with scratches and failing clear coat.
The X5 got ceramic coated and front window tint to match. Gonna black out the window trim soonish depending on how motivated I get.

 
 

Wel, Ive still been plugging away at this. Lots of issues ordering the right parts, and fabrication to make everything work the way I want. The steering column has proved itself to be one hell of a pain in the ass. Partially my fault, but partially not. The latest issue was that the original shaft i ordered was roughly 4" too short. I knew it was going to be close, but when I placed my order, the option was 16" shaft or 48" which was way more expensive. I happened to find a shaft on ebay that was 48" for the same price as the 16" I bought. It showed up and as I should have expected it was a "oversized" part. apparently the supplier messed up and made a few thousand shafts 1m bigger than 3/4" and thats how the description read, but not the listing title. UGHH
I ended up machining the D shaft down and cut it to length. Here is what I got:

Here is what it should have been:

After that bummer, I kind of hit a dead end for the steering and brakes until I got the column mounted. I needed to make sure the angle was correct, so that once I machined the shaft and cut it down, it was a good fit. This literally took days of cutting, welding, and measuring. I didn't take any pictures, but I will be adding some eventually. Once I get the column in and everything mocked up, I will be cad modeling a new steering column bracket based on my dimensions and getting parts  from Sendcutsend to weld it all together. (unless someone has access to a laser or water jet?)
 
So I started pulling the engine harness. I forgot how simple and easy this harness was. It might look like a mess, but it took me about 20mins to have everything out and on the workbench. I cant wait to build a new harness for this thing.

So once I had the harness out, my main objective was to figure out what Mil-spec firewall plug I would need. I had to figure out how many wires would pass through the plug, and plan for any possible updates as these plugs are expensive. I geeked out and spent a good weeks worth of time reading this site: https://www.rbracing-rsr.com/wiring_ecu.html and researching and ordering  materials for building the harness. I HIGHLY recommend reading through that site, as it has tons of information on building high quality wiring harnesses. 
Here is some of the stuff I ordered:
Ty-rap metal tab'd not marring zip ties Full 1jz plug kit. this has every connector I need with pins and gaskets Kapton antistatic tape in various sizes Magnetic polymer magnetic jaws for my vise to use while spinning the leads Zip Tie Mounts for laying out the harness Nylon coated wire for temp tying wire bundles Deutsch DTM 12 Pin Connector for my injector harness ( I plan to upgrade later and this will allow me to without having to rebuild the harness 61 way Mil-Spec connector kit with plug/receptacle connectors , shrink boots and shrink boot adapters. 
 
Finally as of today my firewall support bearing for my steering shaft showed up, and it the last part I needed to check the steering off of the list. Due to using dual U-joints for my steering, a support bearing is needed to prevent binding. In addition to that, this will also help seal the hole in the firewall that the shaft passes through.

 

Interior stuff is all done, remote Knob used the area for the fog lights (which Are being removed for the OEM “delete” panels) 

hoping I won’t have to touch interior stuff anymore for this chapter (wideband is already routed, just not connected to anything) 
made a quick “bracket” for the bias adjuster out of some scrap 3/4” alum square tubing. 

removed the factory heat shield for the exhaust (firewall area, still running the one in the tunnel) as it was pretty disgusting and had seen better days.

Eventually I’ll add some DEI stuff if needed. Also removed the factory sound deadening thing from the firewall/tunnel. After removing the flanged plastic nuts the stuff basically fell apart as I removed it. It was also gross. Have seen rot behind these before on other cars, but luckily this car has never seen winter. Removed all the studs with an angle grinder as well. 
should have a lot more room to access trans stuff now if I need to. 

next up is to finish making hardlines to go from master to bias valve and master to front brakes. Once that’s done I can start on the engine stuff 
 

Went to wire up the center gauges and install center console, but ran into a whoops moment. While testing the interior dash lights, I bumped a couple terminals with my small pick tool and shorted it out. Dash lights immediately turned off and wouldn't work again.
Checked the fuses, radio fuse was blown. Good, easy fix. Nope wasn't the issue although probably part of it. Did some googling and came up with the rheostat inside the headlight switch that dims the dash lights easily fry apparently. 
One fix is jumpering some pins in the headlight switch to bypass the rheostat. Tried that and I was able to turn the entire car on by pulling the headlight knob out. Ummm, no thanks! Reversed that.
Another fix is completely disassembling the headlight switch to solder the broken area and everything should work as normal. Let's give it a try!
Disassembled the switch

Found the spot on the rheostat that fried. Hard to see but it's the very first coil of the spring behind the silver tab.

Soldering this small is nearly impossible for my giant solder gun, so big blob it is. 

I tested the continuity between the end of the tab and the other end of the coil spring wire. Looks good to me. 
Threw it back together and into the car. All works as it should! Sorry no pics of that yet. Glad I was able to save some cash as every part of this car seems to be priced like gold. We shall see how long it lasts now. 

Dropping it out of the bottom Is the way to go

 
ABS pump is already gone, as well as all the front brake lines. Working on getting the bias adjuster mounted and remote cable ran. 
quick bend of the rear line gets the angle right for the cable to run to an already existing grommet in the firewall next to the main fuse box harness 

Are we still doing this?
 

Dash and cluster back in.

i see you are reselling DEPO kits. just a fair warning - their quality is subpar. I can tell you are dedicated to selling a really great product, and the DEPOs are not up to those standards.  just have your customer service person ready to field those calls 😜
a suggestion: be willing to open a set of the DEPO lights and sell replacement parts from it if someone requests. no other vendor does this. you may actually get business from this alone, and it would also support your own product. youll have to learn to disassemble (and/or make some special tools) without breaking stuff, but it doesn't take much practice. 
what i've personally seen/experienced:
1. broken or stripped adjuster knobs (plastic is bad quality) 
2. broken glass (thinner glass than oem, cracks easier) 
3. leaking seals. (the gasket on the back bulb covers and the o-ring on the parking light are a joke) 
 

3/7/2022
Sitting here at 3am dreaming about driving this car again. Car is in cold storage and I hope I can be driving it by the end of March? Wishful thinking as there is still plenty of snow and tons of salt on the ground up north as of now... 
I have decided that everything I did to the car back in December wasn't up to my standards. Here is a slight update/explanation and solutions of everything starting from the top...
The sweet new steering wheel had a weird gap between the M trim and leather that bugged the hell out of me. (I paid a decent amount for it so I wanted perfection) I proceeded to send it back to Germany to get a new one. Should be arriving there today. Then I should be getting an ETA on my new one.
I refinished the M trim on the wheel before the original wheel came. I didn't notice at the time but it was too blue.. I ordered a brand new M wheel trim from FCP euro. Should be arriving today. 
The F80 knob retrofit turned out great and I loved the knob. But unfortunately when looking at the lightly used knob right next to the brand new steering wheel it just didn't look quite right. I decided that ordering a new F10 M5 knob would be the way to go. As I can just switch boot rings and not have to go though the extra effort as I did with the F80 knob. The F10 knob is still illuminated and I can retain that. 
Oval mirror retrofit was awesome, gluing back the trim wasn't as easy as I thought. I purchased a new oval mirror from a guy that switched from the oval to the BMW assist mirror that I am taking out of the car back in 2008. So I got a perfect oval mirror that doesn't need glass replacement as of now for DIRT cheap. I have already performed the de-pin. I am keeping my replacement mirror for when I need to replace it in the future. Ill run it as is for now as I don't want to risk braking the housing again. 
So now I need to re-install the new steering wheel when that comes in, install the F10 m5 shift knob and oval mirror. In addition to that stuff the section 2 and OEM muffler need to be removed and the Eisenmann Race + section 2 needs to be installed as @pynacl is wanting to sell the "Parts" car. So I need to remove the stuff I need before that leaves.

The last month was pretty crazy figuring out this whole lighting biz. But I got caught up on the first wave of orders and had a night to just work on the car. 
It's back on the ground. What I've completed up to this point: 
ABS Delete using the Chase Bays brake line kit.  Chase Bays power steering reservoir and hoses. Patch some rust in the engine bay and paint it.  New water pump, timing belt kit, transmission input shaft seal.  Ditched the Garagistic DSSR in favor for the IE Motorsports DSSR and oem shift selector joint. Rebuilt the HVAC box with all new foam on the flaps and the joints and fixed one of the recirc flaps. Redid the body harness going into the engine bay (lights, fan, etc.) with new loom. What's left: 
Finish putting interior back together and redo the gauge wire harnesses.  Paint a couple pieces. Fluids.  Odds and ends. 

My printers hard at work. 

These lighting adapters have been a lot of fun and really cool to see all of the reactions to them. I'm trying really hard to make them look and feel just as good as they do function.

Almost ready to drop the m52. 
Need to remove: Fuel lines, heater core hoses & front suspension (to make it easier to manage on a jack) 

And back in...