AsparagusMike

Members BMWs · May 15, 2018

Members BMWs · May 14, 2018

So I did end up having to do a little modifying to get the headers to clear the motor mount.

After a little shaving everything is fitting up nicely.

Front suspension and steering reinstalled.

Made some measurements for a new plate for the re-positioned steering shaft and got that cut out. The hole where the boot goes in is slightly smaller then the original. The boot fits very snug in there which I like a lot. ( The new piece is out of 12 gauge stainless)

UUC shifter showed up. The guy threw in a weighted selector rod he made himself with the shifter, which seems to consist of just a bunch of heavy gauge wire wrapped tightly around. Not gonna be using it as we ended up making a dssr instead so if anyone is interested in it you are more then welcome to have it.

Speaking of dssr...

So things went a little differently then anticipated so the gap is a bit wider which meant I had to throw in nylon washers on both sides to make the shifter and selector joint fit nice and tight. Once the washers are in though it is a very snug fit and I think is gonna work out great anyways. I did remember to angle the one side 10 degrees to compensate for the angle of the g260 trans when installed. ( All materials are off stainless as well )

Got the Obd1 harness dissected up and all the connectors identified and labeled.

Everything makes sense except for one particular thing. It's the cam sensor harness connector.

It's a male connector, and so is the cam sensor. Do I need to to cut and splice in a female plug on the harness side? I did some digging and checking but couldn't find anything on it. I do know for sure it is the cam sensor though.

Now for exciting news...

Motor is off the stand now.

Got the flywheel, pilot bearing and clutch kit installed. I ended up picking up some hex bolts for the pressure plate at Menards, they worked great!

Trans is installed on the motor as well as the starter. Everything torqued down.

...

I did go ahead and hook up the shifter linkage to see how the dssr fit up. It looks like I'll be removing that flange dampener after all.

Just to be sure here, Do I have to modify the shifter carrier at all sense it is twisted as well?

On a even more positive note, Header clearances are looking great! I will be cutting off the reduced section on the one header as well.

Next things on the to do list:

Get the harness installed on the motor

Brake booster modified and installed

remove, ceramic coat and re-install headers

flock the dash a second time

clean carpet

get drive shaft and shifter linkage fully installed

I have brake rotors and brake pads showing up tomorrow so I will hopefully get around to getting those installed and bleed sometime this week.

Sent my slave cylinder back to fcp for warranty replacement, hoping to see that back sometime this week so I can get that installed and bleed as well.

This is the last week of school for me so as always I am getting slightly swamped with last minute projects and finals so I will work my hardest to find time and get over to the shop and get things cranked out. Of course I want to get the car going asap but not trying to meet any dead lines like the picnic as there is no way the car will be ready for that by then anyways. I do although still plan on coming down and hanging out with everyone, hopefully put a few names to faces.

Members BMWs · May 5, 2018

I got no pressure plate bolts with the girpforce kit. @KaiserRolls Is this normal?

Members BMWs · May 3, 2018

16 hours ago, KaiserRolls said:

Nice trash pic Lol!

Might want to test fit those headers in the car before going through all the ceramic coating. They will most likely need some coaxing with a hammer to clear the subframe/engine mount. Might have to widen out the flange holes as well

awesome progress!

Thanks for the tip! I will take a look at that

16 hours ago, KaiserRolls said:

Also use OEM gaskets on the headers if you can. The ones they provide will probably leak after 1000 miles.

Cant remember if you bought exhaust studs yet, but I think(?) people buy n54 because they have an Allen on the end for easy install (no two nut method, unless you’re into that)

Shit! that sucks. When I sold the exhaust manifolds to a guy last week I gave him the oem gaskets I had purchased for these headers as well sense I saw that they came with new ones already. Live and learn.

I did go ahead and use the n54 exhaust studs, I very much like the torque head on the end to tighten them in, lots of time is saved going that route for sure.

14 hours ago, YoungCR said:

For the trans dampener you have to remove the output flange with a thin wall 30mm socket **after removing the lock plate** around the flange nut. Most guys just grind down a cheaper impact socket but you also need a good impact too.

TLDR it’s a pain, so leave it if it’s fine.

Like u said I noticed that I would probably have to modify a socket to get it off. Seems like a pita so I'm just gonna leave her on there.

1 hour ago, snap said:

Are those harness wire connections just twisted together and heat shrinked? I am breaking up with my soldering iron because I have discovered the joy of a properly installed crimp connector. I spend way too much time soldering things.

The o2 bungs on those headers are worthless so dont toss the plugs that come with them. I didnt really have too much issue with fitment. The engine mount arm I have has already been clearancedfor the header and I just had to compress the relatively soft heat shielding material on the firewall where it bends down into the floorpan.

Yup I just twisted the wires tightly, helps if you have longerish thumb nails to get them really tightened together. I use to have a really cheapy soldering iron that barely got hot enough to melt the solder, made me hate soldering tell I finally invested in a better one that I couldn't be happier with and it makes soldering very quick and painless. I have used the crimp connects as well on other applications and I don't mind them but for the little extra time it takes for the soldering and shrink tube I think its worth it cause IMO they seem to hold up much better.

Couple more things showed up at the old doorstep dis mornin...

Also got around to finishing up with the injectors and getting them reassembled. Before reinstalling them I want to run some injector cleaner through them to make sure they are working properly.

Members BMWs · May 2, 2018

Update...

Did a few little things while waiting for parts to show up.

Swapped out connectors on the engine harness. After ciphering through a good amount of shitty pin out charts I located one from mega-squirt that literately couldn't have been more helpful. link below for others:

http://www.megasquirt.325ix.com/MS_to_Motronic/C101 to X20.html

Used a c101 connector off I snatched off an e30 at Gibson's salvage yard.

Only wire I had a little confusion but I think I got right was pin #20 abs relay wire. After some digging I found the popular choice was to wire it back on to pin# 6 which is a switched power wire on a 15 amp fuse. Only extra wires I did not hook up was pin # 2, #10, and #16. 2 and 10 are oil level sensors for the m20 and don't even exist on the 318is c101 connector and #16 is airbag related which of course will be unneeded as I removed the entire airbag system in the car. As for all the wires I did not hookup on both sides, I shrink rapped the ends of each one to avoid any hot wires short circuiting with each other.

Once the connector was complete I started cleaning up the harness and wrapping split loom around everything. Haven't finished the harness yet as I need to pickup some better electrical tape then the junk I have.

Also was able to snatch up a pigtail for the diff sensor at the salvage yard. Soldered in the wires, covered it with shrink rap and split loom, good to go. The wire or tab that held the sensor were broke and I wanted to be original so I did something a bit more creative with it 😉. (notice I used blue zip ties to go a long with the powder-coated pieces.)

Went ahead and started dissembling the injectors for a rebuild. Purchased a kit on amazon coming with all the filters and o rings needed to refurbish them. Used a wood screw to pull out the old filters...

As some of the injectors had some minor surface rust and the paint was wearing off the only right thing to do was to put a fresh coat of paint on them. I did apply a light coat of primer before the paint.

Finally got myself a brake booster that was much needed. Picked it up out of a salvage yard in fond du lac (diamond auto parts). The booster is from a 86 Porsche 944 turbo and I was very pleased with the condition of it.

As it did have some surface rust and what not I got to repainting that as well... A lot of bare metal was showing after I went at it with a wire wheel and scotch brite so I threw on a coat of primer first. Gonna head over and throw a coat of flat black paint on it in a bit. Injectors should be dry by now and ready to be installed.

As that was drying I dissambled all the shifting linkages off the trans and took the pressure washer to it one more time to see if I can't get any more grim off. I was very unsuccessful.

After a half hour of 3500 psi of water on a 0 degree tip I gave up, shit ain't comin off. Blew the thing off with a air hose and put in some fresh trans oil. Quick tip: I used MT-90 as it is recommended to be used on all getrag trans with a green tag. If yours is not green taged it is recommended to stick with redline MTL.

Quick question: On this particular trans, it came with a harmonic dampener on the flange. This was in particular is not like the one's where the dampener is on the driveshaft that I'm familiar with. Was gonna remove it but I failed miserably as none of my sockets would fit correctly. I'm thinking I'm probably just gonna keep it, any reason to be rid of it?

Received some headers in the mail from amazon the other day. Pretty cheap ones but should do the job well.

Plan is to ceramic coat them so the following day I threw them in the blasting cabinet.

I will be using the ceramic coating from eastwood (same stuff @snap used) which should hopefully be here in the next day or so.

Clutch kit showed up! as well as many other things greatly needed to get this car a few steps closer to being finished.

Parts above:

Gribforce clutch kit with aluminum flywheel

CSS clutch line

Oem control arms

Oem E36 tie rod assembly's

Oem tie rod boots

2 liters of ate typ 200 dot 4 brake fluid

oem clutch fork pivot

oem clutch release arm spring

oem throw-out bearing

oem pilot bearing

2nd bosch knock sensor

2 oem grommets for brake master cylinder reservoir

vdo oil pressure gauge I picked up on r3v

custom ashtray gauge pod a friend of mine designed and cut out for me (will be wrapping it with oem vinyl)

1 lb of black nylon flocking fibers

Stuff hoping to see in the next day or so:

IE front adjustable sway bar links

IE poly steering coupler bushing

eastwood ceramic coating

UUC EVO III short shifter

Right away I ripped open the clutch kit and did what needed to be done.

Now that that's done, on to the next thing of business... steering rack.

Applied red loctite to threads before tightening and applied some grease around the inner tie rod joint before installing the boots.

I was so very pleased with the gauge pod my buddy made for me I feel a need to post a more justified pic of it.

As u may of noticed above I did end up getting the UUC shifter. After looking around a bit I noticed a guy selling one hardly used and in nice shape for less then half of what they are new also including the aluminum shifter carrier and a weighted shifter . It was posted as an auction so for my very first time I played the bidding game and Won! For only about 5 dollars more then the starting price. Hopefully gonna be seeing it here sometime Friday.

Got myself a lot on my plate to get installed. Plan is to start getting the rear end assembled and get the trans and harness installed on the motor this weekend.

Members BMWs · April 24, 2018

https://www.amazon.com/UView-550000-Airlift-Cooling-Checker/dp/B0002SRH5G#customerReviews

One of my absolute favorite tools for putting fresh coolant in any vehicle. If your unfamiliar with what this is, It uses vacuum to suck the coolant into the cooling system ( No air bubbles, no dicking around trying to raise the front of the car or trying to bleed the system). It's super fast (literally 2 minutes and your done) and it also works as a good tool to check for any cooling system leaks before putting any coolant in. I have one you are more then welcome to use if you'd like.

Members BMWs · April 23, 2018

1 hour ago, GunMetalGrey said:

What did you end up going with?

I went with a kit from gripforce. The kit includes a lightweight billet aluminum flywheel (10.6 lbs I believe) and a stage 2 sprung hub clutch disk and pressure plate rated for 342 ft/lbs of torque.

Members BMWs · April 22, 2018

Welp, looks like I won't be using the e30 tie rods after all.

E30 outer tie rod diameter... (measurement is slightly large because of the packaging)

Aaaand E36/z3 outer tie rod...

obviously that's quite the difference and it seems even larger when looking at them side by side. Threw e36 tie rods in the cart for my next order.

On the other hand got a few more small things finished up/fixed.

My rear sway bar links are looking better now.

Went ahead and slotted the hole out with a tungsten/carbide rotary bit till the U-bracket hole lined up and faced the correct direction. Worked like a charm and sense its tight againest the reinforcement it won't slide anywhere and no welding will be necessary.

Also got around to grinding down the tab that was in the way for the front sway bar bracket. After grinding it down I touched up the exposed metal with por-15.

Also finished up stripping the blue paint off the oil pan. Before installing I did go ahead and replace the oil pan gasket and applyed rtv to both sides. All 25 Bolts cleaned up and torqued to 89 in lbs.

\

Clutch kit and flywheel ordered. Hoping to get some time tomorrow to go over to the shop and take the pressure washer to the transmission housing and get it cleaned up a bit more.

Members BMWs · April 19, 2018

12 minutes ago, KaiserRolls said:

FWIW I think e36 outers are a tad thicker than e30 tierods

I think you may be right. I actually have a set of worn out e36 tie rods from the m3 rack laying in the scrap bin so I'll dig them out when I get over there later on and do a comparison.

11 minutes ago, KaiserRolls said:

Is that at full droop?

Should be setting the swaybar endlinks with the car on the ground

Ya. I knew I wouldn't be able to adjust pre-load tell the car was on the ground. I just wanted to get the links bolted up.

8 minutes ago, KaiserRolls said:

Found this pic, I didn’t use the st reinforcements - can’t remember what you bought - but I think (??) I went with garagistic reinforcements. This is the orientation of my mount on the RTA

I am running the garagistic reinforcements. It looks like you are as well. Did the holes line up for you or did you have to do a little modifying? I think I may just try notching out the hole on the U-bracket so that it lines up correctly like yours and probably just fill any gap up with weld so there's no slop with the bolt.

Members BMWs · April 19, 2018

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I very much appreciate it.

Steering rack showed up today!

Like I said before, I picked it up off eBay. Payed $150 for it plus shipping. According to the seller its out of a 2000 non-m z3, unknown miles. Both tie rod assemblies are pretty much shot but that's fine cause I got a brand new pair of oem e30 tie rod assemblies sitting in a box anyways that I was gonna put on the old rack a while back.

Pulled the old tie rods off and spun the rack back and forth to see how she feels. This thing is gonna be awesome!

Also received a whole bunch of different size tech flex split loom rap today for my wiring. Hopefully will get a chance to work on that tomorrow or Friday.

Couple questions sway bar related

Do I need to grind down this tab so the blue spacer sits flat on the washer and sub frame bolt hole?

The rear sways aren't working out real nicely either. The way it is right now pretty much just maxes out the joint on the link and its adjusted to the smallest length it will go. The only way to fix this issue is to turn the U bracket the other direction of course. Well yets just say the trailing arm reinforcement doesn't really let you.

I'm thinking of probably welding the hole up on the U bracket and re drill it off-set so I can turn the U bracket the other direction and it lines up with the bolt hole on the reinforcement tab. Any one have similar troubles with this particular thing? I suppose a lot of you probably used the reinforcement triangles that came with the ST kit which in that case you would not have had this issue. Sigh... <_<

Members BMWs · April 18, 2018

1 hour ago, P_Roloff said:

Awesome progress, it’s looking great. What kind of rack did you pick up?

Non-m Z3

1 hour ago, snap said:

I dont think you can use an upgraded double shear selector rod with the sheetmetal shift carrier (i believe UUC has an outrageous addendum on the price of a DSSR if you need the late model aluminum carrier)

I do want to run a dssr eventually so that would be a good enough reason for me to switch over to the aluminum carrier if that's the case. I'm just curious why you can't use a dssr with the sheet metal.

1 hour ago, snap said:

Check the South Bend stage 2 or 3 street clutches depending on your future power desires. Basically its South Bend’s own sprung hub disk with a Sachs 918 pressure plate. I have the stage 3 carried over from my former turbo M20 setup “conservatively rated for 400 hp” I definitely dont like twin disk or 6 puck unsprung clutches from my driving experiences.

I've actually been looking at clutch kits through grip force. They sell kits including an aluminum flywheel and clutch disks with either stage 2 (carbon/Kevlar) or stage 3 (6 puck) Sprung hub clutch disks and a Sachs pressure plate. I do think I will be adding boost to this motor in the near future so I'm just curious if a stage 3 6 puck sprung hub clutch disk is manageable to drive with a fairly stock s52.

1 hour ago, snap said:

Are you going to be keeping the AC? I see the bracket is still on the engine.

I do plan on having AC in the car, not right away though. Right now my goal is to get the motor in the car and get it running. A/C can easily be added in later on.

Members BMWs · April 17, 2018

I'm such a procrastinator on posting updates.

So there was a few things I wanted to get powder coated a while back but sense I was doing the calipers as well and I had ordered reman'd front ones, I have been waiting on the them to arrive which I bought from centric a few weeks back. I also was gonna have the rear sway bar brackets painted as well and I wanted to get the rear sway installed before putting the rear end. Well calipers finally showed up and I was able to send everything out to finally get painted.

Fast forward about 2 weeks and everything's back and I am super happy with how it turned out. I ended up going with a safety blue. My original plan was ford blue, which is the color I painted the oil pan, but I liked this shade of blue better and it was also a much more common color that the powder coating guy had in stock. Sense the shade of blue has changed I was gonna have to change the color of the oil pan to the same blue as well. After looking it over I decided I'd rather it be just the aluminum color instead. So, I'll be taking the pan back off to strip all the paint off sometime this week.

Now that everything is back, let the wrenching begin!

Fresh new bushings, guide pins and bleeder screws for the front and rear calipers as well as the new seals for the pistons.

Set those a side and worked on getting the rear sway bar installed. Mounts worked out good after all said done, I did however have a small issue with them fitting up nicely. I suppose when the original brackets are installed they flex just slightly wider to fit the bushing and bar in between. Well, once they were welded up there was no flex and in turn caused me a great deal of trouble and I did end up having to shave the bushing on one side ever so slightly to get the bracket to fall into place. Drilled the holes, installed the upper bolts with some washers and nylon nuts and she's good to go.

After that was complete the car was ready to have the rear end re-attached.

Had a little bit of a hard time getting the two mounting bolt brackets to line up with the holes on the pinch weld but after adjusting it around a bit I was able to get the bolts through. I ended up having to replace one of those screws as the allen heads are pretty easy to round and the old one was oh so tight and ended up snapping off. Also purchased new reinforcement tabs for the outside of the pinch a while back sense the old ones were in fairly rough shape and new ones were pretty inexpensive.

Everything is tightened down and torqued with exception to the hub nuts and axle to diff bolts as it will make it much easier once the trans is in and I can lock the drive-line up. (I did wright myself a reminder so I don''t forget, I think I've heard enough horror stories of what happens when you don't torque your hub nuts to avoid not forgetting.)

Went ahead and threw on some shock reinforcements from garagistic while installing the shocks. Ya, they are red and not blue, oh well. Their gonna get covered up by the carpet anyways so not really worried about it.

Realized this a few weeks back but I didn't mention it. When I initially pulled the rear sub frame out I had not disconnected the sensor plug on the diff and it ended up ripping off. Working on finding another plug to wire up.

Enough with the car, yets talk about the motor that I haven't worked on for a quite a while now.

Finally got the motor is timed. Spun the motor by hand several times to check and after 2 spins of the crank everything was at tdc.

Now that the timing was complete I was able to throw on the new and freshly rebuilt vanos by my very own self. Put off doing the rebuild as I thought I needed the special tools sold by beisan systems but I realized that neither of them are really necessary to do it. I did however make a small mistake. When going to remove the small torque screw underneath the 18mm nut that pretty much holds everything together I hadn't realized that it was opposite threads and snapped the bitch off. After throwing every tool on the work bench across the shop I drove out to gibson's where I spent most of that morning pulling another solenoid so I could get the thing back together.

Once the vanos was back together I went ahead and reinstalled it on the motor with a new gasket and some rtv.

Before installing the valve cover I took some time to prep the surfaces well and shined up the hardware with a wire wheel.

Lesson of the day: Don't buy a non-vanos valve cover gasket for a vanos motor. It doesn't fit.

I bought this gasket over 2 months ago and its been sitting in a box up till now when I was ready to put the valve cover on. The gasket was from elring which I purchased through ecs that had the same part # as the vanos gasket on real oem. The only way to know that it was a non vanos gasket was buy looking at the picture presented and even then its easy to miss, kind of frustrating if you ask me. So I Ordered the correct one from amazon which I received this last Friday.

With the new gasket in hand I threw a layer of rtv on both sides and installed the freshly painted valve cover. After letting the rtv cure over night I went ahead installed new ngk spark plugs with dielectric grease. Picked up some oem coil packs off a fairly low mile e36 at gibsons. For those of you that may be curious, a good way to check a coil pack to see if their any good is to ohm them. Resistance between the outside 2 pins should be between 0.4 and 0.8. Also be sure that the resistance values are about the same between the six of them.

Got a few sensors installed as well as the thermostat housing. Also started on dissecting the wiring harness and getting the c101 plug soldered in.

On the other hand, I bought myself a steering rack! I got it on eBay and its actually supposed to be here later today so I'll post up some pics once its here.

Another thing I should point out is the fact that I have changed my mind and will be going with the original e36 m3 flywheel and clutch kit instead of the m20. Sense I'll be running the g260 trans I thought I had to run the flywheel that typically goes along with it. Little did I know that I can actually run the s52 flywheel with the g260 no problem and its got the benefit of being able to run a 240mm clutch disk over the smaller 228mm m20 clutch disk. Thanks for clearing that up for me @GunMetalGrey

I'll hopefully be ordering a lightweight aluminum flywheel and clutch kit sometime this week. Still deciding between going a stage 2 disk or a 6 puck, recommendations?

I'll be starting here real soon on getting the trans ready for install and I'm trying to figure if it's of any benefit to me to get am aluminum shifter carrier that came in the late models or just run the sheet metal one that's on there, is there any advantages to the aluminum one? any incite on that would be greatly appreciated.

Members BMWs · April 13, 2018

I have all my windshield washer stuff sitting in a box and have no plans of reusing any of it. I have most if not everything on that list, you are welcome to any of it.

Members BMWs · April 6, 2018

Copper nickel... Great!

I did however have a challenge with them once in a while going crooked on me when I was making a flare just because they are quite a bit softer then steel. Although, when they are tightened down they slightly crush to make a good seal so I'm not really sure how big of a deal it is if the hole is slightly not centered.

Beautiful engine bay by the way, Cars looking great!

April 5, 2018

Not sure how many people on here ever watch Hoonigan but they post some pretty rad stuff and I felt a dyer need to throw this out here for yall.

Already feeling regret for not going s54 <_<

Members BMWs · March 31, 2018

5 hours ago, KaiserRolls said:

Did the paint adhere well to the seam sealer stuff?

yup, no trouble there. Although I should add that cleaning out all the crevices in the body sealer is important for better adhesion sense those areas get clogged up with dirt very easily. I actually went at it with a toothbrush and some acetone for a while scrubbing out all the areas the best I can.

Members BMWs · March 30, 2018

Rear sway bar reinforcements complete...

Sent them off to get powder-coated on Monday as well as the brake calipers and a few other things, hoping to see them done early next week. Once they are back I can start reassembling the rear end.

Before painting the bay I went ahead and cut the hole out larger for the e36 rack, crossing my fingers that's low enough for the steering shaft.

Custom paint booth made by my very own-self. Except for the fact that there was absolutely no ventilation and I probably breathed in more paint fumes then a single person should in a lifetime it worked out pretty well.

3 rounds of simple green degreasing, a little bondoing of some holes from drilling out some brackets no longer needed, go back over the bay twice with acetone and she's ready to paint.

Went ahead and threw down a coat of sealer before the paint to help with adhesion, gave it about 3 hours to set up and its painting time!

and done. Nothing special but much better then what it was. From this pic it doesn't look too bad but there are some imperfections here and there that I could have avoided with some better prep work but I'm gonna give myself some slack being that this is my first time doing anything like this at this level, all part of the learning experience I suppose.

Members BMWs · March 26, 2018

For all those who have painted their engine bays before. What did you do about getting the fuse box out of the way? (please don't say remove it, please don't say remove it, please don't say remove it, please don't say remove it).

Members BMWs · March 21, 2018

hey Oooo!

Spent a little time after class today and drew up the reinforcements for the rear sways. Hoping to get them cut out tomorrow.

Members BMWs · March 20, 2018

6 hours ago, GunMetalGrey said:

The e30 or two that is there is pretty picked over depending on what you're looking for.
Source : It's 7 min from my shop, I get there frequentish

I can vouch for that, I get over there quite a bit as well and the e30's that are out there are pretty much just shells now. All though, the e36/e34 selection is very good indeed and I have seen a few fresh ones sitting out there (from auctions) with a tag dating from only a couple weeks ago hardly touched.

Members BMWs · March 20, 2018

Welp, fenders are shit.

It seems I will now be on the lookout for a decent pair of fenders, so if you got any sitting around in decent shape ur looking to rid urself of, hit me up! I may be interested.

On the other hand I got a few things wacked off the list the last few weeks.

Finished up cutting out all the infection this car has been victim to all these years and replaced it with some fresh stuff.

Came up with a different design for these sections. The fact is, it was gonna be tough to remake exactly what was there so instead, I did a single bent up piece cut out to fit the hole and welded on the same size box underneath. Only thing that looks a bit different was the little indent where the box stopped and the shape kept going. Even though the passenger side did however have less rust then the driver side I cut out the same areas identically and replaced with the same shapes so they would be proportional.

After those areas were completed I found me another surprise on the rear wheel well.

After getting all three sections smoothed out I scuffed them up with some 80 grit and then applied por-15 metal prep to help the por-15 rust preventive coat adhere well. Once that was finished I moved on to masking off the car for the undercoat.

Skip ahead a few days, undercoating is complete!

I tried this product off amazon called raptor by U-pol. It's commonly used for truck bed-lining. I found out about the item from a buddy of mine that used it on his truck and had nothing but good things to say about it. Most of the time for a full size truck U will need 4 quarts of this stuff but I was able to get it done with only 2.

I got to admit, the stuff worked really well!

And with what I had left I was able to spray a sturdy coat over the bottom of the gas tank. I did scuff it up before doing so with a scotch brite pad to help with adhesion.

After letting that dry for a few days, was able to throw a few things back on the car.

Originally I was gonna use copper nickel for all my brake lines but after many trials and errors I could not get the line to bend a perfect 180 for the small brake lines that hook to the three way adapter under the rear subframe. So I went and purchased a stick of zinc coated steel line to see how it would do sense its harder and all, much better.

I still plan on using copper nickel everywhere else as I haven't had any issues with it kinking except this area.

Gas tank reinstalled... check

All new 5/16 fuel hose installed with fresh fuel clamps as well as a new fuel fill neck to gas tank hose I picked up from the stealership last week.

I did reuse the original fuel pump and and assembly as it was in good working condition before. I will probably be seeing myself replacing it down the road but for now it will do fine.

Only one issue I ran into when installing the tank was one of the holes was not lining up quite right. So I took a drill bit and widened the hole just slightly so the bolt would line up with the threads. Other then that it was a good fit. Still working on coming up with an idea for a tube to connect at the center.

Met up with a fellow WI bimmer member about a week back and I traded my 4.10 for his 3.73. A bit better ratio behind an s52, the future goal is a 3.25 or 3.23 but for now it should do just fine. Thx Merl!

Overall very pleased with the condition of it, clutch plates appear to still be in good shape as well as all the seals. Took a little time to clean her up a bit before bolting it into the subframe.

For the casing, I pretty much just cleaned the entire thing really well. Wire wheeled all the rust off and applied 2 coats of por-15.

For the cover, I blasted all the corrosion off it and to keep it from re corroding put two good coats of satin clear coat over the front. Was gonna blast the bracket that held the sensor on but it was too far gone so I got a friend working on cutting another out for me.

Ordered sway bars last Wednesday, hoping to see them here sometime this week. Working on designing up a reinforcement bracket for the rear sway similar to the one sold by turner. I will keep yall up to date on how that comes out.

Once the rear sway is installed the rear sub frame will be going in as well.

As I wait for that I'm gonna start getting the engine bay ready to go for paint. As I have not this week but the following week off of school my goal is to get the bay repainted during that week off.

Also I should throw out there that I am on the lookout for a z3 steering rack. I gave my best shot at redoing the e36 rack I got for cheap, After many attempts I still can't seem to get the center seal out of the rack and don't really know anyone that has any experience with rebuilding racks. Even if I did find someone willing to do it I don't think it would be worth the money spent in labor to do it anyways so it's time to put it behind me and move on.

March 17, 2018

So clean!

https://sheboygan.craigslist.org/cto/d/xi-sport-bmw/6511025758.html

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March 13, 2018

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1301042283330634

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March 7, 2018

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't these cars come with a limp mode feature to possibly avoid damaging components on the engine such as the head-gasket?

March 7, 2018

Agreed. Could be something simple, could be the whole motor. Which I know from experience are very expensive to swap out after all miscellaneous related items.

I saw this ad the other day and was considering buying it as well to swap (fix and sell) or make it a good daily but with the headgasket being blown due to overheating I was a little skeptical about the motor having more serious issues (really warped or cracked head, blown motor, etc.)

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