pynacl

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.

Dash starting to look complete once again

So the douchebag on ebay I purchased the black carpet set from cancelled my order for no reason. Decided to try my hand at dying my existing carpet. Non of the purists will want it anyways after I strategically cut it to remove. So here goes nothing...
I am terrible at taking pics while I'm in the zone, so these are all I have.
After a vacuuming and cleaning


And done. Was hard to get the color to show in the pics due to the lighting in garage. Trust me when I say it actually turned out pretty well with consistent dark black color. And still feels relatively soft.


I will be giving it one last light mist coat in the morning and throwing it back in the car. Then I can get the remainder of the interior back together as well.

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) 

You are doing a lot of good things! Nice work! I enjoy the updates.
Post a sound clip in the spring once its back on the road

The concours judges certainly won’t

Aluminum trim set is complete! Meant to post this update earlier, but the first set I bought was damaged in shipping. Excited to have rid the car of that crappy plastic titan trim. 
Also picked up a Rennline phone mount, but just can’t seem to get it to fit just right. Might have a defective one

I hope that you never forget that bolt is backwards.

Really got after it with the warm weather today. Dashboard and front half carpet removed. Dashboard was fairly straight forward and simple. The carpet removal would not have been purist approved. Had to cut it back behind center console otherwise the heater core and many other things would have to have been removed in order to get carpet out whole. Wasn't going to get that involved. Plus where I cut will never be seen when new carpet goes in. 

Dashboard was disassembled and the "pods" were prepped for paint. Along with the kick panels too. New black dashboard didn't come with the "pods" and are near impossible/expensive to find.


LVP paint applied to all pieces. Need to get another can for final coats. 

Once new front half carpet arrives in mail things can start getting reassembled again.
 

Had to toss the car up on stands again to bleed the brakes since I messed with brake lines again. While it was up I decided to toss the new X pipe on. Overall was super easy to install, just tedious with all the metal braces that have to come off.
 
Only hiccup was the pipe didn’t come with hardware to transfer over the factory pipe’s heat shield. If I’m going to do it might as well do it right so I went out and found some nice grade 8 yellow zinc hardware to attach it. One bolt had to go backwards because of the clearance, which bugs me, but oh well. 

Had to toss the car up on stands again to bleed the brakes since I messed with brake lines again. While it was up I decided to toss the new X pipe on. Overall was super easy to install, just tedious with all the metal braces that have to come off.
 
Only hiccup was the pipe didn’t come with hardware to transfer over the factory pipe’s heat shield. If I’m going to do it might as well do it right so I went out and found some nice grade 8 yellow zinc hardware to attach it. One bolt had to go backwards because of the clearance, which bugs me, but oh well. 

Dang you removed all the seasoning 

Thanks Brian! There's quite a few things on the car that were inspired by your build, so I'm thankful for that. Especially ECUWorx, I've used the hell out of that program.
 
Same, I was super impressed! It also claims to add protection to the metal to help keep rust from forming in the future, so hopefully it stays this clean.

Wow, Ospho is no joke and it turned out great. 
Stoked on the aluminum trim too. 

Aluminum trim set is complete! Meant to post this update earlier, but the first set I bought was damaged in shipping. Excited to have rid the car of that crappy plastic titan trim. 
Also picked up a Rennline phone mount, but just can’t seem to get it to fit just right. Might have a defective one

Snagged myself a resonated X pipe for the section 2. This seems to be the piece that removes rasp and drastically changes the exhaust note. Guess we’ll find out come spring.
I bought it used and it arrived in pretty good shape, but @Rekpointsuggested I try some Ospho metal cleaner on it. Holy shit did it do a number on the pipe, looks brand new! Definitely have to be careful with this chemical though since it’s phosphoric acid based and pretty much dissolves whatever it touches. Also need to wipe down with water after to neutralize it. But damn does it work.
Here’s a few before / after of 5 min of light scrubbing:

Aluminum trim set is complete! Meant to post this update earlier, but the first set I bought was damaged in shipping. Excited to have rid the car of that crappy plastic titan trim. 
Also picked up a Rennline phone mount, but just can’t seem to get it to fit just right. Might have a defective one

Aluminum trim set is complete! Meant to post this update earlier, but the first set I bought was damaged in shipping. Excited to have rid the car of that crappy plastic titan trim. 
Also picked up a Rennline phone mount, but just can’t seem to get it to fit just right. Might have a defective one

Snagged myself a resonated X pipe for the section 2. This seems to be the piece that removes rasp and drastically changes the exhaust note. Guess we’ll find out come spring.
I bought it used and it arrived in pretty good shape, but @Rekpointsuggested I try some Ospho metal cleaner on it. Holy shit did it do a number on the pipe, looks brand new! Definitely have to be careful with this chemical though since it’s phosphoric acid based and pretty much dissolves whatever it touches. Also need to wipe down with water after to neutralize it. But damn does it work.
Here’s a few before / after of 5 min of light scrubbing:

Ah see but then I'd have to officially take the loss of overpaying for the car! Only half joking but, I really do love this thing. It's in storage since it felt wrong to expose it to it's first winter when I have that extra parts bin of an M3 I've been driving

Ah see but then I'd have to officially take the loss of overpaying for the car! Only half joking but, I really do love this thing. It's in storage since it felt wrong to expose it to it's first winter when I have that extra parts bin of an M3 I've been driving

Update - it is now a barn find. Think I can register it as "chalk gray"?

 

Update - it is now a barn find. Think I can register it as "chalk gray"?

 

Started working on a set of wheels that I've had laying around for a little over a year. Had some custom Radinox lips made by Felgenfuchs in Germany. The wheels are 18" AC Schnitzer Type 2 Racing, made by Ronal. I had to buy an entire e36 M3 to get them.... Thankfully, everything came apart without breaking any of the unobtainable titanium hardware. I need to have a friend machine the faces before powder coating. Can't wait to get these together!

Sorry guys, busy weekend/week!

I was pretty fortunate my travel plans didn't get affected by the storms, got into Newark about 20mins late on friday afternoon. Ironically my Lyft was a E53 X5 and holy hell was it a hooptie. Made it to the dealership though and literally just grabbed the keys and went after adding the temp plate on my iPass account. Motor fired right up, added my phone into the bluetooth connections and I was on my way. I of course wasnt too shy on the first on ramp.

I was heading to the Hartford, CT area for the weekend and decided to take the scenic route. I had seen a recommendation for Bear Mountain state park which wasn't too far out of the way and kept me off the George Washington bridge as well. The park was beautiful in winter, would love to come back in summer. This area is equivalent to Devil's Lake for us, a older resort from the early 20th century turned into a park. There is even a public pool nestled into the cliff which is pretty neat. I wanted to see the bridge and rail lines as well. Hiked down the *closed* path to the boat dock to get this view of the bridge. It was a little icy but worth it. Overall did about a 2mi hike which was a nice break after flying and driving. 


Made it up to Hartford friday night without seeing any snow on the road which was good, but next day was a different story. Its snowed all day but luckily I was just at an expo. No complaints about driving this in 4in+ of snow though even with all seasons. Winter storm Keenan ended up dumping 9”+ that day.

Made it over to Newport, RI Sunday night. Had to stay at The Wayfinder while Ben's wife was still in town and I would highly recommend it for anyone looking to visit the area. The rooms were incredibly nice and the most friendly staff I've encountered at a hotel.

First task Monday was to address the hood latch, at some point between the inspection and me picking it up the cable decided to not work anymore. Of course HF doesn't sell any cheap radiator picks so I got the ICON set and was able to push the drivers side latch hook and get in. The iDrive system said the oil was over capacity so I verified it WITH A DIPSTICK! I had seen mentions of the dipstick on the FB group but its not listed anywhere in the owners manual. I had to actually check the parts diagrams to find it hidden under the intake. Turns out the car lot just overfilled it ever so slightly so its good to know that level sensor is still in calibration and I'm ecstatic to have a dipstick. If I knew these had one back in the day I had certainly forgotten. 


After that it was back to vacation time. After Ben got off work we headed to the Newport Car Musuem. Very nice collection of ~100 cars including all the recent mercedes and lambo's, a Z8, all generations of corvettes, all the Porsche speedsters except the original 356 and probably the best group of Shelby package mustangs I've seen in one place. 

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Tuesday was a meh day but I got my exercise in at least. Stopped by the BMW dealership in Newport as this was the last place the X5 was serviced on the carfax before trade in which was convenient for me. I had to twist the service advisors arm to get ONE service record. The first advisor scoffed at me saying "they couldn't do that for me since it would be a HIPPA violation". What the hell does that have to do with anything at a car dealership? After dickbag passed me off to the guy next to him he was a little more accommodating after I told him the main dealership this X5 was serviced at told me it was no issue to get all the previous service records from them after showing proof of ownership. I didn't want the customers info either which was the concern apparently but after 20 min he finally got it printed and redacted their info. I'll start another post with the records once I get the other ones but yikes. It just sucks my first dealer experience sitting on that side of the desk went that way. I begrudgingly bought a keychain and some rear license plate screws.
I was told there was free public parking at Easton's beach so I posted up there for the day. Even in winter the beach was still a relaxing sight.

I walked downtown Newport to visit the Audrain Automotive Museum. I was a little bummed by the size of whats actually on display, although they were all very interesting and high quality cars. I'd literally seen 5/10 of them the previous day at the other museum and saw 10x the amount of cars for the same $18 admission price. The Audrain functions more like an art gallery which rotates its exhibit every 3 months, so if planning a visit I would check to see what would be on display first. If I were to make a trip out here again I think it would be far more worth while for car specific activities to visit during their concours week. Complaints aside seeing a 1800 mi 904 Carrera acquired from the original owner with the original purchase documents was extremely cool. 

From there I walked down Bellevue Ave to the coast past all the old mansions. Unfortunately most were closed for renovations so I continued on to the end of the Cliff walk. This was pretty treacherous in the snow but I was determined and it was worth it for the views of the houses and the ocean itself. Basically its a 2.5mi public access trail connecting two beaches along private land. I did stop to tour the Breakers though which was the Vanderbilt family summer home. My self guided tour would have been more informative if the ticket lady had told me about the accompanying app for audio tours. Still an incredible place to vist even seeing very little of the 140k sq/ft. The truly unlimited wealth is clearly put on display for a home they spent 6-8 weeks a year in  Side note though, I highly recommend the James J Hill House in Minneapolis, MN. The MN Historical society does a fantastic job touring that 40k+ sq/ft mansion with very detailed explanations of what daily life was like in that house, hence my disappointment with the Breakers. Hopefully the tours will improve more once some of the covid restrictions are laid off.



Made the walk about to my starting point totaling 18k+ steps in, great for a warmer winter day on the coast  Im in town for the rest of today and then head out for Lake Placid tomorrow. Got right around 400 miles driven so far with no major complaints.