AustrianVespaGuy

You can get a new vinyl rear set from Aardvark from $250. I'm just about to do my fronts but just bought the plywood cards for them because I think my vinyl is still good enough to be reused, but I did notice that their full prices aren't too bad so thought I'd mention it to you: http://www.2002parts.com/bmw/door-panels.html -Carl

Hi Kyle and welcome! If your planning on doing carpets, then be sure to talk to Esty here on the forms for a new kit and check out this thread with lots of great advice and pictures on how to do it! http://www.bmw2002faq.com/topic/146841-black-layer-on-1975-bmw-02-floor-pans/ -Carl

Seriously? That's very disappointing to hear; never would have guess that. Also a big negative on the 4c that hasn't yet been mentioned, it's will only be available with 2 pedals! But we've digressed, so back to the original question for power for the 2002. All of the previous suggestions have been good, but if you're not looking to spend that much and really just want some more output, (and you already have the carb and timing, etc. set right), you can always pull off the head and have it rebuilt with a slightly more aggressive cam. Be warned, this will lead to increased wear on the bottom end of your motor, but you're serious about the car, then you'll be saving up and have a plan to do the bottom end a little while down the road anyway. Just one other idea to consider. -Carl

Afla is a good one and I might consider an E30 M3, but again that's still a tier up from 2002 price wise. Contrary to some of the other opinions here though, I would NOT chose an older 911, and I can support this as I have lived with both a 2002 (mine) and a 76 911S (my father's) in the garage at the same time, and both of us agree, the 2002 was just better to live with. The 911 was a good bit higher performing car to be sure, but it's 'fun-band' was much narrower also. Took forever and a half to get all 13L of oil warmed up, not as nice in less-than-ideal-weather, less cargo space for errands, backseat isn't usable, targa top was noisy, parts all cost 6-8x as much and jobs took 2-3x as long, and note the unavoidable drip pan that comes with the territory. Still, the 911 can't be beat on a twisty mountain road on a nice sunny day and makes a great second fun car, and I'm not really trying to knock it, but I'll put it this way, the BMW ran a heck of a lot more errands for the Porsche than the Porsche did for the BMW. If you can only have one oldie that you want to drive a lot, I would pick the '02 every day of the week.

+1 for this answer to the answer for a modern lightweight RWD coupe! This is going to be my next car; just have figure out how to justify having one in addition to the 2002 Rainy days vs. Sunny days is the best I've come up with so far. But seriously, if you're after a modern contender to the 2002 I think this is it. One major advantage the the 2002 still has though is that wonderful greenhouse with P-51-esque visibility, something that I find to be extremely lacking in all modern cars -Carl

Hi Schoir! My 2 cents, the FIRST thing you should do is this ~$15 upgrade to an electronic flasher unit. This will solve your blinker problems forever and will take a *little* load out of the system as well. Full instructions here: http://www.bmw2002faq.com/topic/85984-signal-flasher-upgrade-easy-to-do-what-a-difference/ Then start tackling your fuel pump circuit. Make sure the ground is really good, and then make sure it's getting the +12V supplied via a relay. Not sure how the tii pump circuit was originally setup, but for a high current application like that you always want the same general setup: Battery -> Fuse -> Relay -> Load -> Ground. The key is using a relay to do the high current switching for the load and then you use whatever low-current circuit to control the relay. -Carl

Back when with my first Hayne's manual: Slightly more recent, same interests though: -Carl

+10 for original color, ESPECIALLY because the original color was Mint! But I admit to being so biased when it comes to my love of the Mintgruen on 2002s that I've had it painted on cars that were *not* originally mint! But here's pic, to try to help sway you: -Carl

Hi Roget, First of all, don't get discouraged, but do understand that these are the typical kinds of problems to expect on a 2002, and you need to be willing to spend some time, all of the time, chasing down and fixing things. That's part of the fun of ownership for many of us, but you can certainly contract a shop to do the work for you, but just be aware that either way work will be needed periodically. For your current problem, I think I know what is going on. It sounds like you have either a leak in your head gasket, or potentially a crack in the head itself. The 'magic' stuff in the coolant can sometimes work to plug a small leak in either area, but you will still need to keep an eye on it because the patch may fail and the problem will come back again. What I would recommend: 1.) Pull the head and determine if it is the gasket or head itself that is the problem. A replacement head it not too tough to come by here on the forums usually if that's what you need. 2.) While you have it off, you may want to get the head reconditioned a little. Clean the valves, make sure the seats are ok, maybe new valve stem seals, etc. You may not really *need* to do anything, but it will be an opportunity if it looks like anything needs it. 3.) While the head is off and there's no coolant in the system, go ahead and replace the water pump on the front of the engine and consider having the alternator rebuilt, and backflush the radiator. 4.) Put everything back together, with a new head gasket and a new v-belt, refill with good coolant, and you should be good to go! Hope this helps! -Carl

Here's me back in 2003 when I was 18 and got my then-28-year-old (and rather rusty) '75, named Asterix: And here I am this year at 28 myself and now 38 for the car, and well, I haven't changed much but Asterix sure looks 10 years younger not 10 years older! Man, I'm still such a sucker for that Mintgrün!

See my post on my fan solution in this thread that you might want to try: http://www.bmw2002faq.com/topic/60242-for-those-of-you-with-electric-fans/

What I did was mount my electric fan way up in the nose, right behind the kidney grill, attaching a picture which hopefully shows this. Just a generic/basic fan; think I got it from O'Riley parts. Has nice recesses which can 'capture' bolt heads though, so I have one bolt in the top of the fan going up through the top of the noseclip, and then just some zipties holding the bottom corners I think to the stations for the side grills. I think with the fan pointed a bit 'upward' the airflow isn't perfect, but seems to be working for me so far and some shrouding could always help this. I just didn't like hanging the fan directly off of the radiator fins, as the mounting equipment that came with the fan was designed for. Hope this helps! -Carl

Well, I'll be honest, I don't quite know what that is in your picture, but I don't think it's your brake light switch. The brake light switch should be back by the firewall behind the brake booster, where the linkage coming up from the pedal box meets the booster linkage. Really no guess as to what that is in your picture though. . . :\ -Carl

Totally normal from just regular airflow while you're driving. If you want a cheap-n-easy fix for you broken fan problem though without removing your heaterbox, you can do what I did, which was to just snip the plastic ribs that hold the fan and just remove the dead fan from the engine side, and then slip in one of the mack-daddy computer fans (such as this one: http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/de12tfexhisp.html) in its place, for only around $25! The 120mm ones fill the opening in the heater box quite nicely and they are thin enough that you can manage to slip them in there from the outside. Doesn't move quite as much air and makes a bit more noise than the stock fan, but replacement stock fans cost a pretty penny and if you have good coolant flow an no leaks from you heater box, IMO not worth the effort of fishing that thing out and dismantling it. -Carl

Were you able to get this sorted out yet Austin? In general it looks like you have it in right, with the bar itself 'up' relative to the bolts on the inside of the hood and the arms wanting to spring 'forward,' aka needing to work against the spring to pull them back towards the rear of the car, correct? Only two other things I can think of to check. First make sure you play with the slotted bolt point where the arms attache to the fenders; that can actually move things around a good bit. Second thing is, on one of my cars, the end caps (which bolt to the inside of the hood) had worn and weren't holding the end of the torsion rods in place, so I didn't have any 'spring' and the hood wouldn't stay up. I was successful in swapping them, so as to give the business end of the torsion rods a nice fresh spot to gain purchase. Not sure how something like this would lead to your problem, but might be worth looking at if you still haven't sorted it out and need to take the rod off again. HTH! -Carl

*WARNING!* Want to help you avoid a problem that I had. When I did my rebuild I ordered new ARP main bearing bolts. Turns out, all of the ARP bolts come in 10mm increments, so for the M10 the give you 80mm bolts. BUT, factory bolt length was only 75mm. On mine, the ARP bolts *just* bottomed out in the bores when assembled. Had good torque, good plastigauge, but there was no real 'clamp' on the joint, so as soon as things warmed up, yup, no oil pressure! I ended up fixing it by adding some nice thick, hard washers in there, so I wouldn't have to wait for new 75mm bolts to come from Germany with the car up on the lift and and pan off. Been fine for me ever since (fortunately I found the problem before driving around with a loose crankshaft! :-O) But anyway, just wanted to warn you to check your bolt lengths and bore depths to save you the trouble I experienced! -Carl

Ha, I was just asking in another post about this. Any guess when you'll have these available Andrew? Thanks! -Carl

This is actually a project that I'm just about to embark on also so while we're on the topic I'd like to verify what seems to be the consensus as to the proper method. Please correct any steps that aren't right: 1.) Jack up, jack stands, etc. 2.) Remove wheel and brake caliper (hang out of the way, no need to disconnect hydraulics) 3.) Cut the safety wire and undo the three bolts holding the strut to the control arm 4.) Separate tie rod end from front knuckle. 5.) Undo three top mount bolts on top of fender well 6.) Remove if enough clearance, if not, go to steps 7 and 8. 7.) Disconnect stabilizer bar link from control arm 8.) Disconnect control arm and radius link from front subframe. That all sound right? Also, does anyone know where to get new spring pads/seats? I figure I ought to replace those while I have everything apart. Thanks! -Carl

One of the hols for a plug bolts is stripped out on mine and slowly leaks, so I figure it's better to replace rather than try to repair. Needed for my '75 squarie (non tii), not sure if the early or tiis used different housings, but figured I'd mention it just in case. If you have an extra one lying around, I'd love to hear from you! Email is ceichel02 at gmail. Thanks! -Carl

No hassles daily driver, keep the cost down? I'd say stick with a good 32/36. More interested on spending $ on a go-fast toy and have something to tinker with? Then I'm a big fan of an EFI setup, and you can do that with whatever type of induction track that you can make bolt onto the head; plenum manifolds, ITBs, single-sidedraft, whatever. And there's so much cool stuff you can do with EFI that wasn't possible 20 years ago. But hey, that's just my opinion, do with you 2002 whatever makes you happiest, since that's what a 2002 is all about after all! -Carl

Got all of the kinks worked out on my new engine and am now starting to dial in the tune. Trouble I'm having is with how much ignition advance I should be running. Looking over some other postings such as this one: http://www.bmw2002faq.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,57/page,viewtopic/t,357278 I see people running INSANE amounts of advance, up to almost 60* BTDC and in the mid 40s* in the 2500 RPM area where stock I thought the M10 ran with about 25* of advance. In any case, my current spark table is attached, and seems to run pretty well, but I feel I should be making a little bit more power and after seeing these others I'm wondering if I should be running a good bit more advance. My specs are as follows: IE 9.5:1 pistons IE 284 cam w/single HD springs MS2 w/EDIS 318i intake/325i throttle body Supersprint headers Also including data log, FWIW. Thanks for any thoughts! -Carl 2013-03-12_16.40.16.zip

To follow up, I guess it IS all in the technique. Re-tested the compression today, this time after driving the car with the engine warm and the throttle open, and got 110 psi on cyl. 4 and still read 110 psi on cyl. 1. Didn't test 2 & 3 because I was done burning my fingers at that point, and I can't really understand the huge difference, but I feel much more comfortable that nothing is horribly wrong now that I see 105 instead of 75, hooray! (With 9.5 pistons in an ideal world after break-in I should be ~125 psi, correct?) I'm still planning on going ahead and getting a full leak down test done on Saturday though, so will let you know if anything else new turns up there. Thanks guys! -Carl

Shit, you know what? I did forget to open the throttle when doing the test, although I'm not sure I can hang my hopes on that. Doubled checked the valve clearances and they are fine, but I don't have my own air compressor so I guess it's of to a so tomorrow afternoon. Does the engine need to be dead cold to run a good leak test? Local machine shop did the work on the short block. It seemed to me that they did a pretty good job, but maybe this is why it cost $4000 less than taking it to Korman :/

That's a pretty good idea Toby. Any thoughts as to where I can go to get a leak down test done? Is that something most garages can do?

At 400 miles with the rebuilt engine and did a valve adjustment and compression test today, cylinders 1-4 compression readings in order were 110, 110, 85, and 75. That's pretty different! Is it just not really broken in yet or should I be concerned that something is really wrong?