thehackmechanic

You know, whenever I see a car in that kind of shape (or a hulking boat poking out of the weeds somewhere), I always wonder what its story is, when was the last time it was driven at all, when was the last period of time in which it was used regularly...

Yup, driving them in my not-so-much-a-rat-rod-anymore right now. Pull the sliders off the 02 seats, bolt 'em on the Recaros, it's a beautiful thing. They sit a little low; I'm thinking of putting in a one-inch vertical spacer.

thou must be shiting me

As the late great Johnny Carson used to say, I did not know that...

At a bare assed minimum, buy 2002Haus' U-shaped conversion bracket. Best hundred bucks for a piece of steel you'll ever spend!

steering wheel, if it has the sport wheel

Now THAT'S shiny paint!

Wow, all my years working on 2002s and I've never been able to successfully do it that way... great to know that it in fact can be done. Coincidentally I just replaced a broken spring on my E39 528iT wagon and, for the first time ever, was able to do it in this fashion, without unbolting the strut from the control arms, by swinging it out from beneath the wheel well.

I have this '73 2002 that I bought last year. It is fairly solid for a New England car, but had been sitting outside for several years. I thought I'd keep it as something close to a rat rod, a car I'm not afraid to drive anywhere. Once I washed through the layers of bugs and sap, what was beneath was horrifically sun-oxidized agave paint. After quite a bit of looking locally on Craigslist, I found someone who knew about compounding and polishing these old single-stage paints (something of a lost art, apparently, in a world where everything new has a base coat and a clear coat). For two hundred bucks managed to get a shine on the car, yet when you look at it closely the paint still has this wonderful patina of age about it. It sets off nicely against the gold basketweaves off an E30 325i convertible. Gee, now that it has the shine, AND the basketweaves, AND the 320i Recaros, AND the 5-speed... not such a rat rod anymore, is it?

Are you talking about this coming Sunday, August 30th? It's my 25th anniversary, and as much as I gushed about my wife in the recent "gawd I love this woman" thread, that'd be pushing it. Plus my current '02 is such a rat rod that you would actually be able to year adjacent cars in the paddock depreciate...

The twin peaks of 1963: split-rear-windowed Corvette and Jaguar XKE. And I'd go into the garage and look at them every single night before I went to bed.

oh. my. god.

I own nine cars. Need I say more? When I drove up to Portland Maine to look at an early '72tii, I called her on the way home. "I bought it," I said. I went on and on about the original body panels (so I thought) and the original paint (so I thought) and how much money I thought I could potentially make on the car (so I thought). Finally I said "I think I know what I'm doing." She said "yeah, I think you do." But that's not the good part. The good part was when neither of the above turned out to be as true as I thought (the original panels and paint), and I made a little money but not a lot. And she didn't say boo. You go, girl. One of the great stories Maire Anne tells is when, 20 years go, I was parting out a 3.0CS. I was out of town and she got a call from a guy who wouldn't take "he's out of town" for an answer, and was trying to describe some trivial trunk part he needed. "Ok," he said, "you know how, if you stick your head inside the trunk, then look backward at the back panel, you see..." whatever it was. When I got home, Maire Anne said "I used to think you were bad, but now I see that, viewed against the broad scope of automotive wackos, you're actually fairly tame." Here's to all of our spouses who put up with all of our shit! Oh, and regarding the girl in the denim skirt standing in front of the inka '02 with the air dam, that makes my dick stiff... and the girl ain't bad either.

c.d.iesel, man, now yer just showin' off! :^)

I concur that the way to do it is use a low starting price that generates its own heat, light, and excitement, and have a buy it now, and possibly also a reserve. You also can go without the reserve, and if it isn't close enough to where you want it to be 12 hours before the end of the auction, you still can cancel. I also agree that eBay has totally mucked it up. "The NEW ebay automotive?" Gack. The old one was not only fine, it was much better. It was fine and they broke it.

Leaking through the shift selector rod seal is VERY common. You say you haven't changed the seal. This one isn't too bad to change with the trani in the car. You'll probably need to pull the driveshaft to get good access. Then pull the shift lever and the extension to the back of the shift selector rod. You can pull out the seal with a hooked seal puller you can buy at Sears or at any auto parts store. They sell the seal at any number of places including www.bavauto.com. The quick and dirty thing to do is not to pull the old seal at all and just use a new seal to push the old one further in, but I've gotten pretty good at pulling them so I just do it. For the output shaft seal, you don't need the puller shown in the other post; you can unbolt the flange that the seal sits in, and then just bang it out from the other side. Be sure to order a gasket if you're doing it this way. Of the two, I think that the selector rod seal is the more likely culprit. --Rob

I was eating blueberries in my cereal the other morning and noticed this perfect Torx blueberry. I think a caption contest is in order. I'll start: "Sure, they don't strip like the Phillips blueberries, but if you don't have the tool, you're boned." --Rob

If you want to know if it's a dogleg or not, just take a Phillips screwdriver or other dowel-shaped device and put it through the hole in the selector rod to give you leverage, put it through its shift pattern, rotate the input shaft and note which way the output flange turns.

The later E30s had 195/65 14 tires; the earlier ones had 195/60 14s. These are a better fit, so if you're looking for rims with tires already on them, look for 195/60 14s. But the bottlecaps themselves are all the same. They fit perfectly, but they do come close to the tie rod ends. Also, on the rears, if there are weights hammered on to the inside edge of the rim, and if the handbrake cable housings aren't properly secured, the housings can hit the weights (ask me how I know).

Oh, it's not too bad. Take the lower trim piece off that hides the bottom of the steering column. Reach up behind the instrument cluster and feel the speedo cable and the big knurled nut. Loosen the nut. You can see where the cable goes through the rubber grommet in the firewall. Go beneath the car and undo the other end (forget what that's connected to with the two-piece cable). Note where the upper cable snakes. Get back inside the car and pull it through, taking care not to destroy the rubber grommet. Reverse the process to install the new cable.

To close this out... I spoke with some known transmission experts, and they strongly advised against thinking I could just separate the end cover and squirt in some RTV. But as per the above post, I drained the trani, cleaned the seam up with brake cleaner, epoxied it, refilled it, and installed it, and it seems fine.

25 years ago, I rebuilt a 2002 trani as literally the first repair I ever did on a 2002. It had a cracked end cover from a flange that had flown apart. I replaced the end cover, and while I was in there, replaced the bearings, the seals, and the bad 2nd gear synchro. It was great for two months, then the synchro started to crunch again. Lesson: you have to know what you're doing in terms of measuring and shimming to get one of these right. If you have a source of another known good gearbox, take it instead of trying to rebuild yours yourself.

I downloaded this manual and it appears to show the disassembly process only for the four-speed, not the five speed.

Or... seal the door to the cave with RTV? :^)