gastephens

If you are going to do it WOT then disconnect the fuel line so you will not be dumping fuel into the cylinder, causing a fire hazard and washing away the oil.

Thanks. I will post the story soon but here is the short version. My car should complete its journey back from the grave tomorrow when I pick it up from the alignment shop. Here is what happened to me. It was actually worse than the picture appears. The kid's insurance finally made me whole. Monetarily, I should have sold off the parts but when you spend years building a car it is hard to let go so I put her back together. http://www.bmw2002faq.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,50/page,viewtopic/t,283666/highlight,/ It took 4 years to find all the parts and do the work between the business and racing (life's necessities). I will post lots of pictures when I am done. Of course, the car will never be quite as good but I have made a few improvements along the way. And yes, I should have found some Euro bumpers but those ugly monsters saved my car from the scrapheap![/img]

I have ALWAYS been into '02s. I just don't always have one to drive. My car should complete its journey back from the grave tomorrow when I pick it up from the alignment shop. Here is what happened to me. It was actually worse than the picture appears. The kid's insurance finally made me whole. Monetarily, I should have sold off the parts but when you spend years building a car it is hard to let go so I put her back together. http://www.bmw2002faq.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,50/page,viewtopic/t,283666/highlight,/ It took 4 years to find all the parts and do the work between the business and racing (life's necessities). I will post lots of pictures when I am done. Of course, the car will never be quite as good but I have made a few improvements along the way. And yes, I should have found some Euro bumpers but those ugly monsters saved my car from the scrapheap!

It sure is a beautiful piece but it is WAAAY lighter than stock and therefore a pretty extreme change. The guys I know racing it say it really helps the motor rev much faster. Don't know how livable it would be on the street. Here is what you will experience: Less inertia in the drivetrain, so: Harder to change gears smoothly. Harder to leave from a stop. Harder to heel and toe downshift (easier to blip but harder to time the blip) You will like it when when you are running up through the gears.

'02s in Puerto Rico. Harry, you've got it made my friend. Glenn

Glad to hear it. We need the next generation of enthusiasts coming along!

Yeah me too. Could happen. They said it ran so well they were going to use it a while. Since we never opened the valve cover or pan before installing (we didn't want to know!), I gave it 25% chance of engine start, 10% chance of starting the race and 0.1% chance of finishing. I better stay away from Vegas.

How about Grünhilde ? Kind of like Brunhilde, the German princess, but green.

This report is from the September SVRA vintage race at Watkins Glen. I know it is long but bear with me, its a great story. My '56 Lotus broke a jackshaft on the practice day so I was hanging out with nothing to do. I saw some old friends who race a 2002 and helped them out with their camera system. I was impressed with the prep work they had done to the car since I first saw it 4 years ago. It was now a potential front-runner. The first day they went out with the ignition timing too advanced and blew a huge hole in the top of the piston, ruined the head, and the shrapnel destroyed the lower end also. Boom, their weekend was as shot as mine. I consoled them and they commenced drinking. The next morning I saw them going by with an engine hoist so I followed them back to their paddock area. There, they showed me the nastiest engine you have ever seen. It seems that the previous evening, in an alcohol-induced bout of optimism, they decided to go to a nearby junkyard and see if they could get a replacement engine. Sure enough, they found a cockroach-infested tii engine laying on the ground under a tarp. They parted with $400 before the beer-buzz wore off and dragged it back to the track. As an '02 guy with nothing to do, naturally I volunteered to help. Unfortunately their original motor was carbed and the found motor was injected. We tried all manner of brackets to mount the alternator and other accessories but could not so we prayed for forgiveness to the '02 gods and broke out the sawzall to hack up the beautiful tii timing cover. Now we had to get this thing running or we would be stricken dead by lightning. Four guys standing on an open trailer sawing up an engine tends to attract attention and it turns out we needed it. After re-engineering all the brackets, our belts would not fit. We sent the onlookers back to their trailers to find belts and they arrived from all over the racetrack. We tried dozens and found one to fit. After lots of bodging and cleaning we had the lump bolted together, carbs, clutch, and alternator mounted, and ready to go in. It slid right into place and mated up with the tranny -- that never happens! Things were looking good. It turned over but no fire. We checked suck and blow, spark, and gas so we had compression, fire, and fuel so the only thing left was timing. After rechecking TDC on the distributor and crank we discovered that the distributor was off a tooth. We moved it and it fired right up and settled to a decent idle. Wow. At that success I excused myself to the bar while my compadres spent the rest of the evening tuning the carbs and timing and the next morning at 9AM, they not only started but FINISHED a 90 minute enduro. I even watched the BMW gobble up a couple of Alfa GTVs down the front straight! I talked with one of the drivers and he said, "Yeah, revs right up to 7500 smooth as butter!!" So, from housing bugs in a junkyard to running an enduro the next day, that was one incredible little tii engine! Apparently the BMW gods have forgiven us.

I looked at factory setup shown in the post earlier and it includes a charcoal canister. My '76 has the plastic expansion tank but no charcoal and it definitely gets fumes. Anyone know where that original canister would have been mounted?

Nice spelunking!! I just bought a set of those wheels. Are they installed with the stock studs? Do they clear the struts ok?

Not yet. I know how the game is played. Time is on my side since I have other cars to drive. And you know what? My neck is starting to hurt and I think I may have PTSD.

Thanks for all the support. I have been pretty down about it. His insurance (Allstate) has not contacted me yet but I am armed with lots of comps and receipts. The car has won concours events and I regularly drive it on high-speed vintage rallies so it is a very nice car mechanically and cosmetically. It won't be easy to replace or rebuild to the level I did the first time around (bare metal respray, all trim removed, etc.) This could get ugly. I made sure he understood that he had destroyed a car that had gone 30 years without being hit and that someone (me!) had spent years and lots of $$$ restoring. I hope it made an impression. Hopefully I can rebuild it and I know the perfect source for parts since this forum helped me so much when I did the original restoration. Here is a picture from happier times.

Some of you may remember my BMW which I have posted many pictures from in the past. Well here is a picture as of today. The truck actually came around a turn and slid over into my lane as I approached a stop sign and knocked me off the road. Young kid driving the truck. His daddy just bought it for him unlike me who worked 3 years to restore my car.