brianstj

Make sure your fuses and wiring can handle the additional load - otherwise you will have no brake lights at all.

We put some Corbeau GTS II seats in the wife's E30. They are a bit narrow for me in the rib area. The dye they use SUCKS!!!! The car sees some sun, but the amount of fading on the black seats is ridiculous. Another thing I don't like is that you can not get them without the big ol' "CORBEAU" stitched across the seat. My favorite seats ever are the ones from an early Acura Integra that I am running in the '02

Rear disc conversion

What are you having the problem with - the shocks and camber plates or the sway bars? Sway bars should be a straight forward swap. If you are having trouble with the strut assemblies and camber plates, there are a couple things I can think of that could give problems. If the aluminum strut spacer is in there, that can be tossed out. There are longer studs on the strut assemblies that used those spacers, and those studs can come in real handy if you are trying to sandwich in camber plates, strut braces, etc. When I put in my fixed camber plates I had to grind the sheet metal a bit to get the struts to go in because of interference with the rubber cone on the upper strut bearing.

I just bought one - haven't installed it yet though.

I like mine, but if I ever get to painting it I will go with a different color.

Don't remember - told them what I have and they suggested something. I think I have it written down somewhere...

I use an "L" bracket with a hole in one side. Run a bolt through the hole to the block, then swivel the bracket until the other side of it lands in the flywheel teeth. You want to swivel it so the flywheel is pushing against the bracket TOWARDS the bolt, so it goes one way for tightening and the other way for loosening.

Depends on how low you want to go. I am running coil overs, stock length tubes, and Bilstein sports, never had a bottoming out issue and the car is actually fairly low. If you were going to race it or seriously drop it in the weeds, then you may want to consider shorter struts to allow more suspension travel.

Started off with H&R progressive springs, but I wasn't happy with the stance of the front end - too high. Went to IE adjustable coil overs in the front, had the strut tubes bent for more negative camber, plus added fixed negative camber plates. Running Bilstein sports all the way around. All urethane bushings, IE adjustable sway bars, strut brace. Wheel tire combo is Kosei 15x7 K1's with Yokohama AVS ES100 195/50/15 tires. I think the wheels and tires are both NLA now Had to roll the rear fenders to prevent rubbing. The only rubbing I get now is in the front if there is another person in the car and I turn in to a parking lot or something. The car handles like a dream. Very responsive and controlled. The ride quality is firm, but not harsh.

You can just do the flexible stainless braided line with AN fittings. There are a gazillion adapters,so I'm sure you can find one to tie in to the S14 fuel rail. Summit Racing is a good place online for the hose and fittings, but they can be had almost anywhere. I would just double check to make sure the hose you get is rated for the fuel pressure you are running - probably a non- issue with braided line. I redid the fuel line on my carb'd car, ran -6 up to the regulator in the engine bay, and then -4 to the carb. FWIW that has been working fine.

I don't think the MSD works that way. The connections to the coil are actually high voltage leads so they could arc if you leave them dangling. Best thing to do would be to d/l the manual for the ingnition box and then figure out how you can remove power from it in your car - could be tied in to a fuse or something. As others have mentioned, you could also rig something up to crank the starter with the ignition switch off so there will not be an issue.

All of your rubber bushings are probably going to be deteriorated, possibly lower ball joints on the front end, maybe strut bearings. Most of this is not hard to deal with yourself if you are so inclined. You are dealing with a 30 some odd year old car that has worn out parts. No matter if you are going quickly or going reliably, you should make sure to go safely. At least replace the stuff that could be dangerous. Many 02 drivers are prefectly happy with basic replacement parts for their suspensions.

Please email me at "brianstj AT att DOT net" and let me know what you would like for it.

Email me if you have a good working unit.

I am thinking of stepping up to dual 40's. Any recommendations on who to get them from for best linkage, manifold, and pricing? And do you convert to a throttle cable or keep the mechanical linkage?

15x7 Kosei

I have been searching around trying to find a copy of an article in an old issue od Sports Car International. I am thinking it was around 1989. The article was about a turbo 2002 where the owner did all of the fab work themselves. I think the car was red. The main article in the magazing was on the RUF CTR Yellow Bird. Ring any bells for anyone?

The distributor is an MSD Pro Billet unit made for the air cooled VW engine. Terry Tinney in Livermore, CA www.terrytinney.com makes a custom shaft to adapt to the M10 engine. It uses a magnetic pickup so you have to also use the MSD ignition box or something else compatible with that type of signal - not the same as a Pertronix. The distributor also comes with a couple sets of springs, advance stops, and charts of the advance curves when they are all mixed and matched. I just asked Terry to set up what he thought would work best for this engine.

Planning on dual 40's at some point in the future, currently running a 38/38.

I bought a kit from Summit that came with 20' of -6 braided hose and I probably have more than 6' left. Their kit came with a canister fuel filter that was on back order, so I had them substitute the billet inline filter you can see on the inlet to the pump. It is just a screw together piece with a mesh disc inside. The kit also came with a regulator but it only went down to like 5 PSI. Since the recommendations on the Weber is 3.5 PSI, I found a Holley regulator in the catalog that would work and had them substitute that as well. I didn't mount the pump in the trunk because of what I have heard about mounting the electric fuel pump close to the tank and as low as possible since they do not "suck" well. Does anyone have any experience with mounting it back there? I would love to toss it back there if it would work OK! And yes...the fancy clear filter came from Napa.

First to the comparison - there is none. I first had the MSD ignition box installed with the stock vacuum advance distributor and a Pertronix. The car ran well before, but the acceleration seemed to come a little easier. When I installed the distributor I also rebuilt the carb because I was having some strange flooding issue after I shut down, plus the idle was not totally stable. Obviously the ignition has nothing to do with the puddle of gas that was sitting in the manifold, but after getting everything back together things seem to be totally sorted out. The Weber is responding like it is supposed to for small adjustments in the lean-best-idle procedure, where before you could tweak things further without noticing as much. So I don't have the ignition isolated as the only variable and I have only done 1 shake down drive, but the car is running smooth, seems to pull a little more effortlessly, and is idling rock solid. For the plug gap I just went with the lowest setting on the range MSD recommended for my compression ratio. I did not even consider any issues with clearance with the larger gaps. I guess I will pull the plugs at some point and see if the pistons have decided to close up the gaps for me As for choosing MSD, I wasn't even aware that other ignition companies had options that would work in the '02 - the Tii distributor upgrade was the only option I had really heard of. When I had my engine rebuilt I was asking my machinist if he had any experience with the Tii distributor and how it would compare and he suggested that the MSD distributor he had used before would be a better option, sighting the adjustability of the advance curve, reliability of the magnetic pick up, and the overall performance of the system. The complete package was a little spendy, but so far I at least perceive a nice improvement in the car and I am happy. If anything changes as I drive the car more I will keep you posted.

I thought I would share my purdy new MSD ignition system in the 2002! It is all 100% MSD - Pro Billet distributor, Heli Core plug wires, Blaster 2 coil, 6AL ignition box, and tach adapter to keep the factory gauge working right. The plugs are gapped to either 0.050" or 0.060" - I forget which. The distributor was set up with 24 degrees of crank advance that operates between 800 and 2500 RPM. I set the total timing to 34 degrees and the car seems to be pretty happy with it. It winds freely and quickly right up to the 6000 RPM rev limiter installed in the ignition box, no hesitation anywhere in the RPM range, and no pinging that I have heard so far. FUN FUN FUN

Well, since no one chimed in on their own experiences running braided fuel lines with AN fittings in their car, I had to go and figure everything out for myself At the tank, I bought a -6 steel fitting that was meant to screw in to pipe threads on the other end. I machined off the threads and drilled out the remaining pipe thread portion to fit the fuel sender tube. Then for a whopping $6, my local welding shop TIG welded it on for me. I ran the -6 braided line under the trunk panels to the left side of the car, and then up and through the rear seat panel in to the car. I had to test fit the seat and play around a bit to make sure it would not squish my fuel line when installed. From there it was in to the electric fuel pump mounted on the vertical panel that the front edge of the rear seat rests on - This seemed like the lowest elevation I could get for the pump while not exposing it to any road hazards. The fuel pump was wired up with a relay. I had done a battery relocation with the E30 battery cable some time ago, and I finally found a good use for the smaller gauge wire that parallels the big one - I used it to feed power to the fuel pump relay. I threw in an inline fuse holder between the relay and pump, and wired up a key-on power wire (through a "safety" switch under the dash) to turn the pump on with the car. Getting back to the plumbing, I ran -6 line off the pump and popped a hole through the floor under the rear seat to run the line on the under side of the car. I used rubber insulated clamps to secure the line a little ways up in to the drive shaft tunnel. Clearance was pretty goot, but the fuel line came about 2" from the exhaust at one point. I put a lenght of rubber hose around the braided line where it was closest to the exhaust.and wrapped that in aluminum tape hoping to insulate/reflect some of the heat - we'll see how that goes. Snaking the -6 line around the pedal box, I ran up to the fuel pressure regulator I mounted on the inner fender well up near where the battery used to live. The final piece of the puzzle was to get from the regulator up to the carb, and this was a little bit of a pain. I called around and found that really the only way to run an AN fitting on the Weber 38/38 was to press out the existing fitting and drill/tap the carb top. I didn't want to go that route, so long story short, I decided to transistion to 1/4" rubber line after the regulator. I bought some "super-duper" 1/4" hose and a barb adapter to tie in to the regulator. Apparantly this hose was too super-duper to stretch around the flare on the carb inlet. So, I split the line and threw in another filter so I could use the cheapo 1/4" hose from the local parts store that would fit on to the Weber inlet. Whew! Finally done! Everything worked out pretty well when I fired the car up. I had one little seep that went away with tightening up a fitting. I set the regulator to 3.5 PSI, but it does seem to fluctuate around a bit - however there do not seem to be any signs of fuel starvation or overflowing the bowl. My only complaint is that the fuel pump is LOUD. It came with a thin rubber isolator on the mount, but I am going to put some thicker rubber in there to see if I can quiet it down some more. Hopefully when the back seat is back in that will also help. I hope this will help anyone else considering te same type of mod. I'll keep the list posted if anything explodes

Hi All, I am redoing the fuel system with an electric fuel pump, braided lines, pressure regulator, etc. I have the pump mounted under the back seat and the regulator up in the engine compartment with a -6 line between the two. I could use some help figuring out the connection between the tank and the pump as well as between the regulator and carb. Hopefully someone has been down this road and can point me in the right direction I was thinking of running -4 line from the tank and to the carb because it is closer to the the size of the old lines. So question 1 is, would running the smaller line at the beginning and end cause any issues? Question number 2 is, what is the best way to connect the fuel line to the tank and carb? I have AN fittings on everything between, but the end points are slip on connectors. The -4 line slips on the tank perfectly, so I was thinking of just cinching down a hose clamp (unless that is a bad idea or the -4 between the tank and pump is a bad idea. The -4 is too small for the carb and the -6 is too big, so what do I do there??? Any suggestions or BTDT advise would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks.