The Adventures of Meintii, The "NO CUT" M20 Swap

[Miked2002]

Hey Zac,

Your car looks great. Keep the good work up.

I love your license plate. I just ordered the exact same plate for my tii here in California. Nice to see that there is another one. My car is in the process of getting new paint soon as I've stripped it down to an empty bare metal shell. I'll start a blog soon.

Regards,

[Miked2002]

Hey Zac,

Your car looks great. Keep the good work up.

I love your license plate. I just ordered the exact same plate for my tii here in California. Nice to see that there is another one. My car is in the process of getting new paint soon as I've stripped it down to an empty bare metal shell. I'll start a blog soon.

Regards,

[Miked2002]

Hey Zac,

Your car looks great. Keep the good work up.

I love your license plate. I just ordered the exact same plate for my tii here in California. Nice to see that there is another one. My car is in the process of getting new paint soon as I've stripped it down to an empty bare metal shell. I'll start a blog soon.

Regards,

[jgerock]

Hey Zac,

Nice to see that there is another one. My car is in the process of getting new paint soon as I've stripped it down to an empty bare metal shell. I'll start a blog soon.

Regards,

Mike -

I notice your VIN is close to mine. Do you know the history behind the car? Was it always located in the same area of the country?

[Meintii]

An update!

The head is (was) at the machine shop, they said there is a crack, so Im going to get another head, and keep this one for kicks and giggles. Im pretty sure they said the crack was between a cylinder port and a valve seat.. but dont quote me on that.

I found a low miles (44,000) head off of a euro 71 that Im going to have the stuff swapped from my tii head into, and Im also going to get the "new" head checked out by the machine shop and have what needs to be replaced replaced.

Yesterday I finally had some free time in which it was not cold or dark or raining to work on Ol' Meintii!

I have decided that I am going to re-wrap the wiring harness with some black athletic tape, which is about 2 inches wide and made out of a cloth material (ONLY 75 cents per roll!). Its very similar to the original cloth stuff. I like it MUCH more than the crap electrical tape I had been using before.

I got most of the harness wrapped, and then saw some rust on my almost new (4 years old) nose panel, so then I took out the grills and headlights/buckets so I can get some rust stopping stuff on it before it rusts away. Then I said "why not paint the engine bay too", so now im looking into the best way to paint my engine bay too "while Im at it"

Also while looking around my engine bay i decided I might as well coat my headers while Im at it, and Im getting ready to order some POR-20 to take care of that.

The RUST I'm going to need to fix..

[jayamasaki]

WOW, hey i have been reading and looking at your photos, totally diggin the photos from start to now (who ever really finishes right?). Keep it up, glad to see you have alotta support, and really glad to see another DIY'er!!!

[Meintii]

WOW, hey i have been reading and looking at your photos, totally diggin the photos from start to now (who ever really finishes right?). Keep it up, glad to see you have alotta support, and really glad to see another DIY'er!!!

Thanks man!

[Meintii]

Today I started the process of sandblasting the engine bay of the tii. I got some really good primer from ace to put on the bare metal once I finish the rest of the engine bay (in the next day or two). I would have finished today but I ran out of sand, went and got more, and when I got home, I realized the sand was soaking wet in the bags, so now I have 100lbs of wet sand that I cant blast with .

So I may get some more tomorrow from lowes (where its stored inside) and finish up then, as long as its not freaking raining like it has the last few weekends.

Heres how far I got..

[jayamasaki]

Hey Zak,

can you let me know what type of headlight set up u have, i want to do the H4 conversion. As far as brackets go was the set up easy to do?

[Meintii]

BIG UPDATE!

I finally got quite a few things off my list completed this weekend. Instead of typing above picture like I have before, im just gonna list what I did, then add the pics at the end.

FYI: The only reason I did this was to protect my nose panel and engine bay from rusting away, since my car sits outside 24/7. This was not a concourse job, but it is effective. Im trying desperately to get this puppy back on the road by Saturday (5 days) and I havent even gotten the head back from the machine shop yet.. Yeeeeeeeeeeeea.

Forgot to mention... EVRYTHING is covered in pollen.. so it all looks more green than it would normally.

DONE WITH:

Priming the engine with rustolem heavy duty rust protectant paint

Sand the old crap on the back of the hood ( the old hood pad remnants)

Primer the back of the hood

Paint the engine bay (ended up using a dark grey rustolem gloss thats not perfect, but looks pretty darn close, looks like bristol)

Paint the underside of hood (still needs second coat, no pics yet)

CUT battery tray out (long awaited)

Install new steering wheel

Start re-assembly

Installed radiator

installed brake fluid container/ lines

installed horns

installed alternator regulator

OK time for the good stuff!

The girls before night fell...

much much more to come this week.

[Meintii]

Quick update:

Car is now in the garage (finally) and was covered in pollen... until I rinsed it off today. Its so weird seeing my car with a rear bumper.. but i like it.

not much text today, ill let the pictures do the talking.

As long as I get my head from the shop tomorrow, she should be back on the road in time for the show at stone mountain saturday

[pureaudio]

That came out pretty good, just looks like a little duller gray in the pics. Your making quick work of that project though, unlike me who always starts something like that and it ends up sitting there with primer on it for months on end.

[jgerock]

Congratulations Zac - forward progress is always good news. See you next month in NC.

[Meintii]

Congratulations Zac - forward progress is always good news. See you next month in NC.

See you there Jim!

Im gonna update this wit some more pictures later... school has been CRAZY, I ve been working aton more this / last week than I have been, and ive only been getting about 4 hours of sleep per night (mostly due to staying up late after work working on the car)

[Meintii]

So.. apparently the reason I was loosing SOO much brake fluid was because I had a massively leaking slave cylinder (leaked even when not driving)...

So I picked up a new one at the BMW dealer ($100!>!) and decided that I would change it out in between classes in front of my friends house b/c I figured it would take that long... well how wrong I was. Getting the old one out wasnt a problem (After going and buying some snap ring pliers)... get new new one in wasnt THAT big of a deal either.. And then for some reason.. I couldnt get all the air out of the lines. I went through 1 and a half pints of dot 4, and I was going to reuse the stuff that I was running though since it was all new... but it spilled out (twice). After I ran out of fluid (now 2am) and couldnt get any pedal, i decided that I should go get the key that was stuck in the lock of my drivers door before I tried to limp it home.

In front of miki's house- yes working in the rain

Damn burnt off header paint already..

Old versus new slave.

Well after taking the door panel apart, taking the handle off and apart, taking the lock apart, and BINGO out came the key. Since it was so late I didnt put the door stuff back together until the next day. I crossed my fingers hoping that the car may roll even with very little pedal... but all to no evale. I had to be towed home at 2:30am .

Got it home, and the next day it decided that I had plenty of pedal and now it wanted to go into gear... I have been driving it for a week now without problems.. maybe rolling it had something to do with it for some reason .. IDK.. but Im glad it works!

Also took the time to clean her up right for the spring, and drove to chateu elan for a photo-op.

Good looking Italians

Rear Bumper shots

New steering wheel/ hub.. the first interior pics in a long time

Still need to take some pics of the PURRRTY engine bay... ill do that after I wax her tomorrow.