The Nine Man Month Baby

So, 9 months after starting the motor swap project it's finally back on the road. Here's a summary of what's happened and lessons learned:

• The E46M3 six-speed was a tremendous pain in the ass. I got it for an absolute steal, but didn't do the proper look-over and it ended up having a hairline fracture on the bottom rear case (leaking significant fluid) and the shifter centering springs were busted. I ended up getting a replacement transmission, and will be repairing the old one to sell.
  
• The six-speed was SOOOOO worth it. Gear shifts are snickety-snick, and with the 3.73 rear end, it rips through the gears like nobody's business
• I forgot to replace the coolant temp sensor for the E30 gauge with the correct brown-top version. Luckily, there was enough room to throw an 18mm deep socket + universal on there and replace it.
• The 3.5" MAF is another one of those questionable mods...it made the intake fitting problematic, and it's also throwing a CEL now under WOT after 5500RPM. It looks to be a known failure mode related to turbulence hitting the MAF (the cone intake is attached directly to the MAF). I'll have to get some piping and put some distance between the filter and the MAF one of these days.
• I need to roll the fenders and trim the lining...with the Z3 1.9L rack at full lock, the fronts are rubbing. And over mild bumps, the left rear is scraping.
  
• With no primary cooling fan, the coolant temp creeps above halfway in mid-seventy degree weather while idling after a hard run. I'll do a debug session on the thermo-switch to see why the aux cooling fan isn't turning on...maybe get a lower temp thermo-switch.

All in all, the car is an absolute hoot to drive. I can't find enough excuses to take it out for a drive. Nailing 1st gear will smoke the tires (and these are 235/40-17 NT-05s!) ...in the rain, forget about it! I'll definitely get in trouble if I'm not careful.

Once I solve the engine oil level sensor issue (maybe a bad sensor?) and fix the tire scraping, I'll try and grab some videos.

How NOT to build a car.

1. Violate your 2 rules (stay in budget & no feature creep) by drooling over the thought of a slick-shifting close-ratio 6-speed manual transmission
2. Pick up a half-price example of this "feature"
3. Throw away the CSB, driveshaft and flex disc from your old car because the 6-speed is just SO AWESOME that you won't need those old parts anymore
4. Don't do a thorough inspection of the transmission, so that you miss the soft/broken shifter centering springs AND the hairline fracture at the rear of the case that leaks badly
5. JB weld the crack without taking the transmission out of the car (not only did it not seal the leak, but now you've jeopardized the ability to repair the case with a proper weld)

At this point, your head hurts because if you put in the old transmission that you do have, you would have to replace the clutch, lightweight flywheel, short shifter kit, flex disc, starter, driveshaft, center support bearing, pilot bearing, master slave cylinder, throwout bearing, clutch fork AND fabricate a custom transmission mount.

You could also pull the transmission and find someone who's willing to pop open the rear case and fix it (or replace it with one from some old core)

But then you realize at this point that you've been waiting almost a year to drive this car, you've completely blown your budget, and you are SO CLOSE to getting on the road that you just give up, bite the bullet and get a replacement transmission, hoping that you could convince some other sucker to make the same mistakes as you and buy your mistake.

Argh.

Next time, I'm just getting a Honda.

Corded

Argh. Pulling into the garage tonight the headlights revealed that I've corded the inner shoulder on my front passenger side tire. I was hoping to delay this as long as I could but it looks like I have no choice. Now the hard part...do I:

• Put new street tires on the TRD wheels and get another set of wheels to mount the R-comps?
• Get new street wheels & tires and mount the TRDs with the R-comps for the track?

And if I do get new wheels? What kind?
I'm really partial to these:

They look to have good clearance for any future potential BBK, and they're super light @ 12.3 lbs.
Or I could go scrounge eBay/forums/classifieds for something dirt cheap and nasty looking...

Jolly Rancher

More progress in the parts department:

Fuel Injection rebuild kit from eBay (check out the complimentary sweets! haha)


Another S50 valve cover
New (used) 80A alternator
Crank, cam, knock sensors
And.... (drumroll please)


An extra gear!

This is way beyond what I had originally planned for the project, but someone was selling it at a price that was just too good to pass up.


There's still quite a bit more parts to go...but finally (after over a month) got confirmation from FedEx that all the oil pan parts are on route (hopefully he didn't forget the charcoal cansister). Other remaining big pieces that I'll pick up from the yard on Monday:

• Brake booster
• Steering rack

As far as additional work on the motor, it's been slow going to say the least. Tonight was the first night I've touched it for over 3 weeks...I dropped the oil pan and pickup in preparation for the E34 pan and pickup (and safety wiring the nut).



I was hoping to drop the water pump too, but for some reason that bar used to lock the pulley has just disappeared :( So I ended up spending the rest of the hour reorganizing the quickly growing messy pile of parts. Now I can walk around that part of the garage without breaking something. I really should sell/trash all those old parts sitting on the shelf to make room for all the new crap.

So the short term work remaining currently stands at:

• Clean the motor (somewhat)
• Install new thermostat, new housing, new water pump
  
• Install oil pump nut w/safety wire, new pickup, new pan
• Replace the VANOS seals
• Beadblast and powdercoat the valve cover then install plugs, seals, coils
  
• Prep the fuel rail and injectors

More of the little stuff to buy:

1. VANOS seals from beisan
   
2. Tool to remove water pump pulley :(
3. Water temp sensors
4. Fan belts
5. Exhaust manifold studs and nuts

Realistically, getting this stuff done by March is going to be a stretch. Unless I shake this stupid cold soon so I could put in more hours in the garage. Viruses suck.

80 shot

So I have abandoned hope of entering into organized club racing events (SpecE30). The addition of a son to our family last year has shifted priorities to diapers, wipes and regular visits to the pediatrician. Regardless, the need to hit the track for the occasional has been just too difficult to resist...but one big problem: I'm losing coolant. There appears to be a nice slow stream of what looks like mud oozing out of the area where the head gasket on cylinder #6 is. Do I pull the head and hope for something easy? Or do I just change out the entire 20-year-old hunk of 12-valve iron for something better?

Right.



Stumbled on a nice S52B32 advertised in bimmerforums and picked it up over the Christmas break down in Orange County. 117K miles, pulled out of a 4 door '97 M3. No compression or leakdown numbers, no maintenance history. Just acquired out of blind faith. I'm hoping that wasn't the wrong decision...



The plan:

• Full OBD-I conversion
• 3.5" HFM
• Lightweight flywheel
• Keep the current driveline (G260 transmission & 3.73 LSD rear end)
• Fan delete
• Keep A/C: it doesn't work now, but I'm hoping new lines and R134A conversion will work
  
• Keep PS: this will be a daily driver

3/2/2007, 160363 miles: 22.9MPG

So after a month of driving about 30 miles per day, I'm hitting just around 22 miles per gallon. There's tons of work to do on the car before I could even consider taking it out on an HPDE. Namely:

1. Under braking, car pulls to the right ... but that's because the cheap-ass ghetto previous owner put different sized tires left and right! L: 195/65-14 (stock size), R: 185/65-14. Man, talk about cheap! This'll be remedied soon with a whole set of 5 ultra gummy sticky Hankook Ventus R-S2 Z212 (the full size spare is toast also)
   
2. Tie rods are scary. Underneath the car the other day, I grabbed the center of the tie rod end (where it's threaded for toe adjustment) and I could move it back and forth 1/8"!! Definitely not safe.
3. Possible driveshaft wobble. Right around 85MPH there's a really high Hz vibration that shakes the rear view mirror. I'm guessing guibo and center support bearing (known to go bad around this mileage), but won't know for sure until I fix #4 and #1 first
4. Blown shocks. This is the biggest dilemma of all...shocks are total toast. So bad, that when I hit rough patches on the 101, the car starts drifting into the right hand lane (also partly because of #1)!! Dilemma because I'm not sure whether I should go all out with the full SpecE30 suspension now, or go daily driver/non fun mode with a set of cheapie KYB GR-2s.
   
5. Brakes need to be replaced. New OEM rotors and new dual-purpose street/autocross pads (probably Porterfield R4S) and a spare set of dedicated track pads.
   
6. Bushing replacements everywhere. Under acceleration, the rear end is "squirmy". But to be honest, this can probably wait. I just think urethane is cool.

Despite all the shortcomings, it is SO much fun to roll around in a 17 year old beater. I don't have to worry about car dings, I can drive the bejeezus out of it, I don't have to worry about following anyone (because of the rocks they'll kick up, marring the hood finish), I can kick the tail out everytime I go around corners... hehheheheh, what a blast. It's so utterly completely different from the Q-ship barge long-haul luxury liner M5.

I can't wait to get this car sorted out!!

1/27/2007, 159342 miles: Timing Belt, Water Pump

It pays to read.
There's plenty of resources out there on doing the timing belt service, and I got them all. Picked up the Bentley, the really good book from Pelican, a Haynes (useless, not worth it), and a Chilton (same one I was using for the M5). I also read and re-read the write-up on E34.net and on E30.net.

Parts arrived earlier that week, and with the missing tools bought that morning, I felt I was ready. With the hood removed, it was pretty easy to get at everything. I was working slow, and got off to a really late start (12:30ish) so it took almost 5 hours to finally get the belts and crank pulley off. The biggest hassle of all was the radiator fluid...I'll never understand why engineers can't design the engine block drain to make less of a mess. This is the third car I've done the block drain, and it's the same result: fluid EVERYWHERE. So I spent a chunk of time cleaning up the floor on the (borrowed) garage.

One other hitch was the accessory drive belts (power steering, alternator, A/C). I was rushing things a bit and forced the toothed adjuster nut, ended up stripping the teeth on the mounting bracket for the power steering pump (doh!). You're supposed to loosen all the bolts first and then loosen the adjusting nut. So now I gotta order a new bracket (was able to tighten the belt OK, though).

I've been working on Nissans so much, I got really used to the socket sizes...the most common ones are 10mm, 14mm and 17mm. But on the German car, I spent SO MUCH time relearning the different sizes. Turns out they like to use a lot of 13mm nuts/bolts. That took a while to get used to, reaching 3 or 4 times for different sockets and wrenches.

Other frustrating thing is I didn't read closely enough. To remove the camshaft sprocket, you need a T-50 torx SOCKET, not the bit. I wasted at least 90 minutes trying to find this special socket (really tough to do on a Saturday night). So instead of delaying the project any further, I decided to postpone replacing the camshaft seals (damnit) until the next timing belt change. Hopefully, not too much oil is leaking out of that area.

All in all, with a 2 hour dinner break, I ended up calling it quits at midnight, with the motor pretty much wrapped up, leaving only the coolant fill & bleed the next morning. It was waaaaay too late to be firing up a loud ass 2.5L with no cat.

Came in the next morning to fill the coolant, bleed, and reattach the hood. All was well.

Except I didn't read how much coolant the system held (11 quarts). And I only bought 1 gallon of BMW antifreeze. For a 50/50 mix with distilled water, that leaves me 3 quarts short of full. Doh!!! So the mix is actually more water than antifreeze, but it should be OK in this climate.

It sure was a nerve-wracking moment preparing to turn that key! My mind raced through the checklist: any bolts missing? Timing checked and rechecked? It was definitely a relief to hear that motor spring to life with a roar. (And a slight squeal of a fan belt - damnit - I'll get to that next time)

Next up, valve cover gasket and ignition (distributor, rotor, coil, plugs, wires). And after that, the go-fast suspension goodies, then tires, then LSD, then new seats.... oh, the fun never ends!