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

[Meintii]

Welcome to the new, Zac. A Zac that will actually be working on his love abused tii again. School my last semester of college proved to be way more time consuming that I had hoped, but now Im graduated and I have just now got back on the grind to get the tii finished. Its finally in the re-assemble stage!

But, let me back up just a hair. When I last posted the engine bay had just been spayed with its first coat of primer. Well, since then we have sprayed 2 more coats of primer, as well as FINALLY PAINTING THE ENGINE BAY/NOSE! Pics

Second Coat of Primer

Third Coat of Primer

And Finally Shiny Paint!!!

YAY! My car has been sitting in primer since my last update waiting for Jason to have a chance on a nice day to spray it, that day finally came and now its painted! Still need to wet sand it and buff it, but its looking really good.

THIS means that I can start to put this baby back together!

So, that day after it got painted I went over and started re-assembling my shiny black front sub frame and suspension bits so we can move it around once more. It took all day to put it back together, I wanted to be sure that everything was done properly and not thrown together such as I have done in this area before (and majorly regretted). I actually don’t have pics right now of the shiny pieces of this assembly, but Ill grab some when we take it back off to mount the engine on it. I have adapted a new law when installing this stuff on this car…Lightly blue Loctite everything (suspension related), and mark everything with a yellow paint pen for quick reference to see if its moved over time (even though everything is torqued, call me crazy) Pics

Subframe- This has had some re-enforcements built into the usual places (the motor mount tab). I also went through and welded all the areas that were only spot welded from the factory for additional strength, as well as seam welding the edges of the subframe (well, Jason did that  ) Pics

In the car

Man these pics are crappy, but here you can see most of the other bits. (Red urethane bushings, black urethane tie rod boots). Everything gloss black powder coated because I can.

And yes I didn’t forget about these MOFOs (this time)

Next up… wet sanding and Re-furb’d heater box install.

[M3M3]

congrats on graduation Zac!

now get it in high gear putting that car together! :-)

how much and what kind of flex agent did you put in the paint on the air dam?

[jgerock]

Ditto on completing some college edu-ma-cation!

[Meintii]

Honestly, we were going to use it. But this bmw brand spoiler is so solid i cant get it to flex at all no matter how hard I tried to bend it. We'll see how its fairs. It has 8 coats of paint Apparently. Im repainting the car shortly after the build so if (when) it cracks, ill address it then!

[M3M3]

the flex agent is not to prevent cracks....it is to protect it from road debris. without it, rocks, dirt and debris will destroy the paint job in very, very short order.

[Meintii]

hmm. Maybe we spray it with a clear coat of flex agent?

[craaaazzy]

Congrats on graduating Zac!

[dasfrogger]

Any updates on this project? Excited to see the end result!

[Deutschman]

.....not that anybody is looking at this...

Yep people just comment less on the FAQ. I think it is a good thing. Usually the comments are less frequent, but more insightful/helpful. Other forums such as Stance Works you get 25 comments every day, but its usually just empty words and ass kissing.

Your doing really great work! Loved reading this. Keep it up.

[Deutschman]

.....not that anybody is looking at this...

Yep people just comment less on the FAQ. I think it is a good thing. Usually the comments are less frequent, but more insightful/helpful. Other forums such as Stance Works you get 25 comments every day, but its usually just empty words and ass kissing.

Your doing really great work! Loved reading this. Keep it up.

[Deutschman]

.....not that anybody is looking at this...

Yep people just comment less on the FAQ. I think it is a good thing. Usually the comments are less frequent, but more insightful/helpful. Other forums such as Stance Works you get 25 comments every day, but its usually just empty words and ass kissing.

Your doing really great work! Loved reading this. Keep it up.

[Meintii]

Wow it must have been a long time ago the last time I was on here because everything is extremely different on this site. If I can figure out how I will move this to the new project blog spot so it wont disappear into the archives!

 

Life up date coming up.

[jgerock]

I was just wondering how the heck you were doing Zac!   How's everything in the Miata racing world?

[M3M3]

Zac who?  

 

don't think you can just move thread to new blog area.  have to repost everything you had individually.  if you find a better way, i am all 40 pages of ears...

[Meintii]

Hola Amigos!  

 

Apparently this new site format has scared me away (afraid of change!). Although I am going to try and get this ball rolling again! Ive decided to just create a new blog and link to this one. and with that, here is the link the NEW blog!

 

http://www.bmw2002faq.com/blog/68-the-adventures-of-meintii-m20-swap-continued/