BarrettN

Thanks for following up on this - very timely, I should finish up messing with my parts car this weekend and finally get to work on my tii. You've all made me feel that I know what I need to in order to pin it down. (BTW, so no one thinks I've been wasting their time - when I first posted this I hadn't bought my parts car. It certainly set my schedule back, but lots of good parts and a better understanding of how it all comes apart has made it all worthwhile).

Given everyone's responses I think I'll just reuse these units and press in a set of shorter studs so that I don't have to put the spacers on top. It might be interesting for someone to get the Moog parts (RockAuto carries them, listed under the e21) and report on the quality.

OK, I'm finally finishing dismembering my parts car, and am on to working on my tii. Some of you may remember that once I got tires on it, it sits really high, turns out to have rear springs in the front and heavy duty springs in the back (what was someone smoking?) I have bought Ireland Engineering stage 1 springs to put in it - I have zero history information on the car, my suspicions based on battery date code and a few other things that it may be as long as 10+ years since it was driven. I'm questioning if I should replace the strut bearings when I swap the springs, what is in there looks ok to me: But I don't have a lot of experience with classic cars - I'm happy to hear opinions if others think that they should be replaced. If I do replace them - I noticed that Moog has shorter stud e21 strut bearings (I'm planning on removing the spacers). Given the varying quality that many have reported with even more reputable brands - does maybe trying the Moog parts sound worthwhile? They're $65 each, so more money than Meyle but less than BMW OEM (and I'm not convinced that the OEM are anything better than anything else). Moog has always seemed to have decent quality parts, or at least they have had in the past. Lastly - can anyone confirm the apparent height of these bearings - I know there were some soft ones that let the upper spring perches rub. I ask because as I dig into this I'll still need to figure out what's up that's causing the steering center link to drag on the transmission. As far as I can figure it, the wrong spring heights nor even if the strut bearings have stretched and the tops of the struts are high should cause the center link to be high. The link itself is straight, the transmission is all the way to the top of the tunnel, and the clutch cylinder has clearance. The engine mounts look OK, next step is to check the sub-frame engine mount to make sure it's not cracked. I'm not above hoping maybe there's something I'm missing and once I get the springs right magically the center link drops down and clears Thanks! Barrett

M10x1.5x80 grade 8.8 - Use an allen head instead of a hex head and nylon lock nuts and you'll find it makes it easier if you ever need to remove it again.

The car was completely loaded with acorns - if weasels could do this maybe squirrels could too? No one was more surprised than me when the oil pan came off - I was just hoping none of the boy scouts asked me "why are those parts all shiny when the rest is all gunked up?"

Nothing special in the fuel delivery department, it had the stock intake on it with no carb when I got it. Given the chassis itself is a 76 I don't attribute too much importance to the e12 head, at this point I'm guessing maybe a thrown rod or horrible bearing damage ended up making swapping in the 69 block the easiest solution. I haven't eyeballed the cam closely, I'll check it and see if it's anything other than stock. Wish someone could decode the other stampings on the crank, I see ck45 come up as an alloy type related to cranks, the 126 is related to a BMW part number - but is it a OEM crank or?

Polydyn is based here in Houston where I am - I have a friend who rebuilt a euro-spec Porsche 930 and used a variety of different Polydyn coatings inside the engine. I'll send the pics to him and see what he thinks - but given it looks like whatever happened looks like it was done with the crank assembled I'm still at a loss.

Well, I took a straight blade screwdriver and scraped off whatever this gold stuff is. It wouldn't come off just scraping it with my thumbnail - has a bit of a waxy feeling to it. Given how it covers the threads and everything I'm leaning towards some sort of snake oil. No evidence of anything like it on other parts, I can't see how it could be oil breakdown.

And I'm doing them a service - these kids had never used a ratchet before, didn't realize you could go back and forth with it, they were spinning it all the way around! I have classes lined up for them on changing oil, doing brakes, spark plugs - there are a couple who want to learn how to drive a standard, so there may be hope for them yet

Digging through the faq it mentions the 126 as being a number seen on OEM cranks, but I could see where another maker might borrow that designation to denote it's application. With the amount of marks on it I was surprised that Google didn't find anything when I ran them through it.

Please add my name to the list for your next run. Thanks!

OK, so I've been stripping apart my parts car "tetanus", it's a '76 with the block from a '69 in it (with a '75 e12 head and a tii dizzy) - so a bit of a hodgepodge. Completely rusted beyond any hope of salvage, compression on one cylinder was low, so I wasn't surprised with what I saw when I pulled the head. This is after hitting it with some engine cleaner to get some of the carbon off, it had a lot more build up on it. I had the local boy scouts over for a "how cars work" and decided to have them pull the oil pan so they understood how a crankshaft and connecting rods work (I've busily been trying to finish off the rest of the "corpse" and free up my garage again) - and was surprised to to see this: To my eyes that looks pretty new. Anyone know how to decode the casting marks or have seen a "golden" crank and rods like this before? I'll admit to being a novice to all things 2002, so if this is nothing out of the ordinary feel free to make fun of me Given the condition of the pistons the only thing I can figure is that the block was swapped long before the bottom end work was done.

Mike Perkins from Bavarian Machine Specialties has passed away, he was very much a big part of what made BMS what they were. I've not done business with them since, but I have heard that they no longer do as much work on older BMWs.

There's a Facebook group "Vintage BMW steering wheels" where I bet you could get some answers!