The road to Phoenix (Updated 5.15.09 - Massive Brake work)

[oz_tom]

Oh man you got Italian style indicators! So jealous!

Keep up the good work - your so close to this being on the road now.

Cheers,

Tom

[TMK-001]

Its been a while since I checked this out... looks good mate! Keep up the hard work. Shouldnt be long now hey?

[Ian]

Very nice work. What's the "diesel gas method of manual transmission cleaning"? I've got a transmission to clean-up and install, and could use the pointers.

Ian

'76 M2

[BLUNT]

love all the little extra personal touches harrison. very nice work

[H_Krix]

Very nice work. What's the "diesel gas method of manual transmission cleaning"? I've got a transmission to clean-up and install, and could use the pointers.

Ian

'76 M2

Hey Ian - the flush method (as endorsed by CD) is HERE

I was surprised at the amount of crap that came out. I dd the Diesel flush twice and the second time it came out much cleaner. After that I did one round of cheap ATF, let sit, then drained. The transmission is still empty now, and I'll fill it up with ATF again when its level.

I actually heard this technique from another tech who has had a lot of experience with BMW transmissions. Apparently the diesel gas cleans and lubricates the whole box, and its th next-best thing to do outside of cracking the box open.

Random pics for no particular reason:

Dear god, please let this be the last run I have to make out to my cad platers. I swear their kids are going through college because of my car. (Yes, I know its typically cheap, but I keep forgetting little crap here and there and end up paying $100 minimum parts orders over and over again. They recently switched over to non-consumer level stuff, but they're still helping me out as a favor since I've been going to them for some time now.)

Plumbed in an oil temp sending unit in the factory-provided location. This gave me an excellent excuse to purchase a tap & die set! Had to run an additional line into my Intake Manifold harness, but I think its worth it.

This might be back in the car as soon as tomorrow!

[HarryPR]

You're making great progress, Harrison!

Looks like you'll be starting it up soon. Any hope of making it to V@V with it?

[H_Krix]

You're making great progress, Harrison!

Looks like you'll be starting it up soon. Any hope of making it to V@V with it?

Thanks Harry, Probably not much chance of me making V@V anymore, mainly due to the cost of the remaining components I need to get this all together. She'll probably be running by then, but without an exhaust or new tires.

I did get the engine & trans in this past weekend, along with new steel fuel lines and a new rear brakeline. Bending the fuel lines was an exercise in frustration, thats for sure. I started off using the factory tabs that bend in place, but they didn't like fitting around the lines too well, so in the end I riveted them in place with isolated rubber grommets.

All that took up most of my day. In the end I was able to drop the engine and transmission in with the help of my friend Joe, but thats about it. No trans mounts or driveshaft yet.

Next weekend I'm away for a wedding, then a vacation the week after, then the next weekend is V@V. I have a week off where I'll be doing work on the car, but even if some miracle does happen, I don't really want to make its maiden voyage one of 500+ miles round-trip. Next year, for certain.

Pix soon...

[H_Krix]

So, I do have shots of the engine going back in with the 5-speed transmission, but they're not on this computer (or my camera for that matter) so those are going to have to wait.

No matter, plenty of shots of other random junk:

Apparently when I get frustrated with things, I paint valvecovers. crawling under the car repeatedly and going out to purchase random little missing bushings and washers for my 5-speed install got me a little annoyed, so I did this:

My girlfriend says its too much red, and that it kind of overpowers the engine bay. Another friend of mine (who, oddly, drives a Nissan 300zx) says it might be too "Rice." Meh, changing then only takes like 5 minutes anyways. If I had the correct fuel pump, I could bolt up a header and crank it, but I pulled the pump out of a 325i instead of a 318, so I need to make another junkyard trip first.

A few more pics of my throttle cable set-up here. Like I said in the earlier posts, I used a tii throttle bracket with a few new holes drilled in. I also removed the spring on it, since the gas pedal and throttle body already both have return springs on them. With the tii one in place, the whole mess got really difficult to articulate.

Parts used were:

- e30 325i throttle cable

- 2002ii throttle bracket

- 2002 pedal linkage

- Custom brackets (see earlier post)

- Generic flanged bushing from O'Reiley (meant for power window regulators)

Got the MM 5-speed kit all bolted in. Fits really snug, but I didn't pound out enough of the trans tunnel for the slave cylinder, so I need to open that area up a little more still. The transmission shifts into all the gears smoothly, but I won't know if this thing is lunched or not until I start the car.

Worked a bit on making some new foglight mounts. Originally I drilled holes in the radiator support and hung the lights upside-down form there. This really isn't optimal though, since the metal there is flimsy and they bounce all over the damn place at speed. I came up with this solution:

This way, the lights mount to the holes where the plates used to bolt up for depressing the square rubber tubes surrounding the bumper shocks (square-light guys know what I mean.) Obviously, I'm not running bumpers so this works out pretty well. I'm pretty sure you could do this even with the bumper shocks in place but most people would just use the bumper in that instance. Oh, this mounting method is also very rigid.

Mounted up, they look nice. Tight fit, but enough to allow a fair bit of adjustment:

I've got a 320i radiator (I think) I'm using for the car. Its got brass tanks and fins, and was in the car when I got it forever ago. I had thoughts of purchasing a brand-new one from Ireland, but loooong ago when I first got Phoenix back on the road, my grandfather brazed a couple small leaks closed in this radiator. This had to be around 1999 or 2000, and he has since passed away. Being a machinist his whole life, I'd really have liked for him to see my completed car, but its nice knowing I have a bit of his handiwork in my car still.

Some before shots, with a few bent fins:

After stripping, and straightening the bends:

Measuring for some adapter brackets (I think I used aluminum box stock before, but I'd like something a little more elegant this time 'round):

Also, I scored a set of these:

NOS 1960's satin-black Talbots, straight from Germany. hotness.

More work and pics coming from this weekend, and maybe I'll get my engine install shots too. I'm hoping to get the car up on stands and finish up anchoring the fuel lines, putting the driveshaft in, bleeding the brake system, and checking the torque on all the suspension bolts. Fun times.

[ADVnut]

Great write up! It is very inspiring, especially watching your Megasquirt progress. Now I see what I can't find the crap I need from the local Junkyards-- you've pulled it all!

[oz_tom]

Nice score on the Talbots Harrison! The whole car is coming together so sweet.

[Guest Anonymous]

HKrix,

We are all waiting for the latest update(s). It has been a month, anything new? We are all waiting for the latest and greatest. Please grace us with the latest news!! We are bored.

J.E.2002

[carrosene]

I second the update. I heard this car was suppose to fired up in the past week or so when I was at CARMA recently. Hopefully there are no major issues or anything.

Eric

[H_Krix]

Well, June kind of sucked for me as far as work on the car was concerned. Between a friend's wedding & bachelor party, along with getting sent to Las Vegas for a week and a half for work, my weekends were otherwise occupied and I couldn't get a lot done.

I would have been able to fire the car this past weekend, but my Odyssey battery has decided to go flat on me. I have no idea why, considering half the circuits in the car aren't even fused up yet, there can't possibly be any power draw outside of the tests I've been doing to make sure my wiring isn't bunk. I tossed a charger on it Saturday night around 6pm and let it sit until 10am Sunday, but the battery still only showed 5v. It will be running during this week on a 2A trickle charge so hopefully it isn't kaput.

I also need to sit down with my MS board and program my sensors into it with easytherm. If I can get the coding done this week and the battery takes a charge, we could be running on Friday or Saturday... knock on wood.

Speaking of wood (snicker) I managed to find another project worth doing while I waited for my battery charger to do tis thing. I had originally planned on bleeding the clutch and brakes while the car was in the air, but it turns out I had the clutch MC in upside-down. That thing is a BITCH to remove while the transmission is still in the car, and I ended up scraping up the undercoating around the MC pretty bad. Since I had to repaint it, and since I didn't want to put the MC back into the car around the wet paint (and, subsequently, couldn't bleed the clutch without the MC in the car) I decided to employ the "Slackey" method of building my own center console.

I did work car stereo install for several years, so I know my way around MDF pretty well. For anyone looking to do this, here are a few tips:

First: screw together 2 pieces of MDF and cut your sideboards as one piece. This will make it much easier to make them as identical as possible.

If you don't have a router (like me) and you want rounded edges on your console, angle your jigsaw and cut along a 45 degree angle first.

The follow up with a DA, grinder, sander or the like, and finish with rough sandpaper:

Test fit constantly. I'm not going to have any exposed screws on my console (more on that in a later installment) so I need to make sure the fit is perfect. If you want to screw yours together for the time being, wood putty will hide the holes very well, especially once covered in vinyl.

The "faceplate" was the hardest piece to test fit. this would change size depending on how the bottom piece in the shot above was angled

Finally, when you've got it all set, spray the joints with primer or other fast-drying paint. Don't use a brush because you don't want to knock anything out of alignment...

...this way, when you take everything apart, you have nice clean lines where everything should go:

Other than that, I have the radiator and electric fan hooked up:

The fan came off an old Mercedes from a junkyard, and had a nice rock-guard to go with it. This thing is like a jet turbine, it puts out so much more air than I was expecting. I took an 89 degree switch from an e30 and put it in the threaded plug at the bottom of the radiator. This will control the fan on and off through a relay in the car.

I also hooked up my fuel pump and fuel filter, as well as all the wiring that goes with it. I'm running an in-tank pump from a 1990 318is wired to the MS board. No shots of that unfortunately (which sucks because my fuel filter bracket is SO COOL) because I forgot my camera.

Currently the car is still up in the air waiting for driveshaft install and alignment, brakes/clutch to be bled, and final check on a few things like rear axle nuts, safety wire on front struts, and a few errant cotter pins. To be perfectly honest, I keep finding other things to do besides plug in the ECU and turn the key, because I'm scared shitless of firing this thing for the first time.

Hopefully, this weekend will consist of the following (this is more a list for me than you guys):

- Install clutch MC, bleed brakes & clutch.

- Install / align driveshaft

- fill transmission w/ fluid

- fill diff w/ fluid

- fill engine w/ oil

- fill radiator w/ coolant

- safety wire front struts, cotter pin center link, torque and pin rear hubs

- paint rear drums black (why did I paint these silver??)

- mount up rusty header, plug in ECU, check fuses, twist key and pray.

I really hope my battery isn't toast. I have no idea what could be sucking the juice out of it right now. Guess I'll find out on Friday when i get out there if it took a charge. Otherwise I'm pulling all my fuses and setting it up again just in case...

[alp]

what is the "diesel gas method"? I tried to search but didn't find anything.

[H_Krix]

I actually linked it towards the bottom of page 5 on this thread. There's a link above the pic of the alternator.