M2 madness

[jgerock]

*you missed the joke.

LOL...had not had my coffee yet. got it now! :-)

I guess the joke is really on me. Sorry Clay.

[mrothe1]

You are cathcing up to me in terms of you build... I have hit a few snags. I dropped the airbox on the master cylinder and cracked the plastic nipples .... puddle of racing blue on the floor this morning!

I also cannot get the gas pedal linkage to clamp with enough force. The pedal rotates before getting to full throttle.

Beautiful wiring on your end... I should have gone with the cleaner look of the body plug versus the mess I am trying to clean up.

I still plan on heading to VIR this weekend but I have a feeling I will be addressing tons of bugs.

I like the look of the IE strut bar.... mine from mason Engineering is scheduled to show up on Monday. I'll post a pic to let you see how it looks.

[ClayW]

*you missed the joke.

LOL...had not had my coffee yet. got it now! :-)

I guess the joke is really on me. Sorry Clay.

Ha! Interesting day, that one. I'm replacing the entire motor now!

[M3M3]

Well, the last day of my M2 vacation is over. Back to the real job tomorrow. Sad to say my goal of having a moving car was not reached. But…got a ton of progress toward that end. The more I got into it the more I found to do. Oh well.

No pics today. Worked on a series of misc item.

-did initial calibration and setup of the throttle bodies

-cut up a hose so the ICV breathes through the CF airbox

-cut up the old pass floor heat shield to it will fit over the S14 header

-reinstalled DS carpet

-reversed lower bolts on the tranny mounts

-made another list of stuff I can do while waiting for an oil pan.

Back to working on the M2 on weekends! Still hoping for maiden voyage to the Vintage!

[M3M3]

Got a little time in today on the car..

Strut bar. Here is the ground down (shortened hex key for the end bolts)

In use:

The bar or end plates are angled just a few degrees different from the 35yoa strut towers. I suspect part of it is the bar itself as if the bar is flipped it fits differently.

Left side, notice slight gap under one side of plate:

Right side

Just have to loosen strut top bolts to let plates up before bolting bar to plates, then snug plates down again.

With the engine harness you can install in two orders….install on engine, put engine in car, then run harness in car. Or…..install in car, install engine and then wire engine. Since I can’t put the engine in yet, I opted to install the harness in the car.

DS corner with diag plug and c101

Overall

With the engine part draped on cowl

Will drill hole for and mount the coil in back right corner.

Now have to figure out what to do with the actuall ECU, AN, LC-1 and wiring in the pass footwell!

[M3M3]

Still need to do something about this.

Don’t really want to mount all that in the glove box and loose storage space. What I plan on doing is making a false bulkhead at the front of the pass footwell out of thick alum sheet and mount all the tron’s behind it. Pass carpet will cover it up and alum will be strong enough for the nervous passengers to push on. Gotta find some sheet aluminum.

In the meantime decided it was time to upgrade the nice but puny 4.5in MBQuart speakers on the rear deck.

Out with the old

PO did a decent job with a rear shelf. Will reuse.

The new. Infinity three way 6x9’s. no intention to create megawatt audiophile system. Just want some noise on long trips.

Ordered them without grilles. Will bottom mount and finish entire shelf in black speaker grill cloth. Speakers will be invisible.

Ok, measure 5 times,

Cut once. Again, that air body saw is a little too much fun…

And crap, should have measured 6 times….forgot about the vapor recovery tank. Was not installed when I measured the other 5 times. Oh well, guess I will find a different solution for filtering fumes!

More tomorrow….

[ray_]

Gee, uh... I don't know uh... anyone else's car that may have experienced, at least partly, that rear deck cut problem ;-).

My ECU is sitting in the console on the hump, and alpha n in the glovebox.

Car is painted and badged again... (trim is back on now too!)

Cheers,

Ray

[M3M3]

good to hear i am not alone....;-)

love the badging Ray!

though about putting ecu in center console, but how is this for lazy....i just redid the center console and don't feel like taking it out again. so instead i will do more work creating a false foot panel to hide it all behind.....;-)

[M3M3]

More speaker install.

Covered rear deck in sound deadener.

Cut bigger holes in shelf and covered top with sound absorbing foam.

Mounted speakers and wired’em up. Shelf in place for test fit. Waiting on arrival of speaker grill cloth to cover it all up.

No pic, but also made little bracket to attach oil pressure sender to strut wall and cut cardboard prototype of the pass footwell “wall” for electronics.

[M3M3]

So this arrived today while I was at work..

And the email dialogue was interesting.

Email from wife:

I believe the oil pan arrived. It looks like the piece you described.

Me

Cool

Her

If I say so myself, the oil pan looks very pretty. Too bad it’s going to be hidden under the engine and get dirty.

Me

Can we keep it on the living room table as a decoration until I install it?

Her

Absolutely, I can plant the basil in it until then.

Oooops. May have pushed my luck…;-)

But then I get home to find this. She had finished the rear deck for me!

Speakers? What speakers?

[jgerock]

Janice is too cool! She has a way with fabrics.

[Bill_Riblett]

Can you move the bracket for the vapor recovery tank down and back? It is probably just held by a couple sport welds.

You're doing a lot of great work.

[M3M3]

i could....guess i could also hack the bracket out of the purple car and use it somewhere.

hmmm..another excuse to you use your body saw Bill! lol!

[treys76bmw02]

man thats such a nicw oil pan.

[M3M3]

A bit frustrating today. Decided to connect the reserve light feature in the in-tank pump to the light in the instrument cluster. Simple? Nope. Originally intended to tap into the handbrake “on” wire. Turns out that is linked into the seatbelt control relay (upper left in footwell). Ok then, I would take wire direct to inst cluster. Spent an hour taking apart my parts car dash tracing wires and matching to 76 wiring diag. gonna have to bypass some things…more scope creep!

I did get the back seat reinstall and powered up the tunes. Speaker sound much better.

Then decided for the sport of it to hang the turbo muffler. Ez right? Nope. 2002 turbos apparently use the early round taillight exhaust hanger configuration, despite the center exit. Of course, I have a squaretail. Hangers are not even close. Argh! This was supposed to be a zero effort part of the conversion! More scope creep. I had previously converted an ansa roundie muffler to my car and it was a PITA. Really did not want to do that again.

On to the oil pan tomorrow.