Blogs

Trunk boards and some other stuff.

This weekend I stopped by the shop and installed headlights, some new Hella horns and painted the core supports flat black. The boys are also working on the engine bay, continuing with wiring clean up and installing one of Patrick's custom radiators as well. We've hit a little lull as we wait for some parts to arrive. At this point, Master Patrick has kinda run out of grasshopper level stuff for me to do. He's going to start rewiring the dash area and run add

Reproducing the Tii Cold Start Relay

January 21

New board is built and tested (and works!)

Solid success today. Received the two new boards on Monday and built them today. Looks really good, the spade connectors are solid and tight, the components all fit. Test fit: Soldering it up: Ran it in the test rig and works! However still one more iteration. Sharp eyes will see where I had to enlarge one of the notches for it to fit the black plastic housing.

JsnPpp

January 16

Headliner, beltline trim and trunk stuff.

This is a long one... The boys at Midnight Motorsports have been busy. Patrick was able to weld in an early model shift boot flange that I got from @Vintage-Autobahn to the tranny tunnel. This is so that I can switch to a shorty console and attach a round rubber shift boot. Andre finished most of the trunk area. This included installing the gas tank and fuel pump, associated hoses, the electric trunk opener and hardware, and the trunk gasket. He

January 14

Ken Sears

Back at it.

Back at it, life got in the way but plan to keep this moving forward until completion.

Ken

January 14

Suspension

With the rolling stock and brakes squared away, it was time to address the suspension. To my untrained eyes and ears, I could tell that the bushings and mounts were all shot, the car bottomed out on hard bumps and the front tires had a comical amount of caster. I’d been stockpiling parts in plans to tackle the entire thing at once. Thanks to this site (again) as well as @BLUNT I had accumulated what I needed: Steering links Tie rods Lower control arms All front

January 7

Wheel Saga part 2: Electric Boogaloo

If you spend enough time on this site, you tend to see a variety of wheel/tire combinations, some rarer than others. When I put the Style 10 wheels on my car I had only seen 2 or 3 photos of them mounted on 2002’s. I noticed that the wheels were pretty heavy, the steering felt slower, and I was lusting after other setups. I had seen @bluebmw car on Alpinas and really liked it, and was excited to have basically stumbled into this set of wheels on accident. I decided this would be my inspiration:

January 6

2404Ti Build

Can't bring myself to put it in hibernation

It's taken 4+ years to get this rolling tetanus shot on the road. At this point it's really not a BMW any more. That needs to be made clear, this car was missing much, damaged and significantly rusted. Add to that a cross country relocation compounded by this being my first ground up. I say all that to say I would have done things very differently. Due to the moving and original plans of a track car, much of the interior little bits are gone. I have had to build my own over the last few wee

maikell77

January 6

It followed me home

This all started as a desire to replace my seats, but turned into the find of the year. The original seats in my car were completely shot, and I had replaced them with a set of blue 320 comfort seats as an interim solution. They didn’t match the interior and looked heinous, but at least I could drive the car. I found a guy in the foothills of Northern California selling a ‘non running’ 1983 320 for $1500. I called him for some information about the car, and to see if it had the Reca

January 6

Brakes and Safety

It’s been quite a while since I posted anything about this car- it’s been a slow process but I’m still smitten with it. Our son became an older brother in 2018 and then again in 2019, so my time and attention is elsewhere most of the time. For those keeping score at home, that’s 3 kids aged 3 and under as of this writing. After mounting the wheels and tires, I began focusing on the braking system of the car. This was my first time performing brake work on any vehicle, and thanks to

January 6

Finished adding Dynamat to the floors.

Finally finished installing the Dynamat to the floors last night. This took me way longer than I thought it would. And it didn't speed up things when I needed to take a break every 20 minutes to stretch out my aching back. With the fronts repainted, I got after removing the old factory sound deadening. I was going to try the dry ice trick, but someone suggested trying an oscillating multi-tool with a scraping blade instead. This seemed to take l

Reproducing the Tii Cold Start Relay

January 5

Cold start timer relay - board design done

Took longer than I had hoped but I'm glad to report that v3 of the board design is complete. I had to modify the original design to support the new relay design (since the OEM is NLA), and then add a daughterboard to support the 6 spade connectors. The photo shows the mockup of the board using paper. Its a decent way to sanity check measurements. I was off width by 1mm and height by 1 mm. Height isn't a big deal but width is since the board fits into the aluminum box.

JsnPpp

January 3

Refinished door card chrome.

The chrome finish on my door cards were shot and most of it had flaked off. Based on what I have read here on the FAQ, I decided to try to refinish them myself with the chrome vinyl that others have posted about. I ordered the following role of vinyl from Amazon, if for no other reason than this was the one that shipped for free with my Prime account. Based on the reviews, they all seemed like similar products. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E3K3W66/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_i_yFAdEbQ6V