Dropping the Motor In

So Then came the day when it was time to put the motor in. This day marked a huge swing in momentum. I have really turned up the juice since this day. In any event, I had to start by clearing a bunch of space in the garage. I was stoked to be able to do this on a lift, it made it a hell of a lot easier.

After I cleared space, and got all the necessary tools together, everything started to work itself out. I covered every painted surface with a thick blanket to help with safeguarding the paint, and rolled the engine over to the car.

Fetch Me The Engine Hoist!

The engine leveler that we had was barely adequate.  I had to work it pretty hard by installing it almost all the way back, and then using literally all the threads it had to get the motor to tilt enough to go into the transmission tunnel easily.

But that was pretty much it.  It was really that easy – there weren’t any tricks except for muscle. And for that I never EVER could have done it alone, I had the help of Matt (fellow HMS Rocka) to help guide the motor in. You can’t see him in any of the pictures, but he’s under the car making it all happen. We got it to slide in really easily – those of you that have done this swap already know how easy it actually is.  We just took our time to make sure it wasn’t hanging up on any of the freshly painted sheet metal.  We didn’t even tear up any of the brand new sound insulation that was installed on the firewall.

So once the engine was installed, I bolted up all the mounts and got on to putting the shift linkage together.

With the E36 ZF transmission, you can still use the E30 transmission crossbrace. These are stock transmission mounts – I fully expect to blow through these pretty quickly, but I want to run them to see what it’s like. Remember, I’m not going for a race car feel, I want it to be cush and quiet. So wherever I can use rubber mounts, I am.  I installed the UUC Short Shift Kit with DSSR.  This is an awesome piece.  And even though it’s made for an E36, it fits my E30 perfectly.   The shifter is a little bit farther towards the passenger side than it normally is in an E30 with the Getrag G260 transmission, but It’s not uncomfortable at all.

The next few pictures are just some shots I took of the engine sitting on it’s mounts.  This felt really good – a real milestone, and as I mentioned before a turning point for my own energy putting the car together.

These motor mounts are not the ones i will run for real.  As you can see on the Driver’s side, the mount is tweaked pretty good.  I have already replaced these, as you will see in subsequent pictures with the Green Trapezoidal 535i mounts.  I found a thread somewhere on some forum with these mounts listed as working well.  They obviously didn’t work for me.

More Wrong Parts Arrive

So then I ordered a brake master cylinder to go with my new E30 M3 brake setup.  I wanted to ditch my standard E30 MC and upgrade to an E30 M3 unit so that my brake system felt exactly like the M3 system.  Having fallen in love with the way my buddy Kael’s M3 brakes felt, I wanted to get that same feeling in this car.  So I did what any good consumer would do, I called a supplier and ordered it.  Showed up a couple days later and was totally wrong.  I couldn’t put this thing in if I tried.

So, return it and try to get the right part, but wouldn’t you know it – that was the “last one” and they aren’t going to re-order the part.  Ok, send it back, pay the restocking fee (I swear to you that HMS Motorsport has the most lenient return policy of anyone in the business) and find the part elsewhere.

*sigh*

On Wheels… Finally.

So I got the front subframe installed with no real issues.  I installed the E36 M3 steering rack with a kit from Zionsville Motorsport.  Expensive? Nah, it was worth not having to fab anything and knowing that I got a good steering rack, not one that I’d have to rebuild instantly.  With the front subframe installed, I was able to put the front struts on and get the whole front end mildly setup.  The tie rods aren’t fully torqued in, and I haven’t done an alignment.  I’m waiting to do that until the car is totally ready to roll.  So because of that, the boots aren’t installed, they’re just chilling there.

So the front was going together pretty quickly, so then I went to work on the rear subframe/trailing-arm assemblies.  Unfortunately, this was much more difficult.  In a previous post, I talked about how I had the rear toe and camber kits from Ireland Engineering welded on to my rear subframe.  I went to install the subframe without the trailing arms to make sure that everything fit with no issues, as I had read some e-wisdom about how some people had to bang their sheetmetal with a sledge to make room for everything.  As you can see in this photo, there is plenty of room for the trailng arm brackets that were welded to the subframe.  But if you notice, there is very very little room between the bracket and the subframe bushing (the green polyurethane thing).

So I pulled the subframe down, and got on to figuring out how to make this all work.  First off, I installed the trailing arm bushings.  Rubber, because this is a street car, and I want it to be cush and quiet.  The first ones went in, but tore on the way in.  I was using the special tool, but they didn’t really want to go in.  So I got another set, and lubed them up real good with some dish soap, which I have since used millions of times while putting the car together.  Once they were lathered up, they went in much easier.

But getting back to the adjustable trailing arm mounts.  I wanted to keep the adjustable brackets, not to mention being fairly committed to them, as they were already installed and powdercoated.  So I shaved the top of the polyurethane to make room for the nut on the outboard side of the trailing arm mount point.  I don’t think I lost much support, because there is a heavy duty washer that goes over the top of the bushing, as shown here.  Only time will tell if this setup works.  If it doesn’t work, I’ll happily go back to stock subframe bushings, as I like the way they feel.

Right, so then after I successfully installed the trailing arm bushings, and the trailing arms into the rear carrier, I had everything laid out on a pallet waiting to go in the car.  Here are a few photos of how it looked before going in the car.  I was kinda surprised at how light the whole assembly is, but there’s no brakes, or anything on this so that’s probably why.

But then I ran into my next problem.  I installed the whole assembly in the car with little problem, but then I went to install the little plates that bolt to the side of the body.  The bolt holes came nowhere near lining up.  They were about 1/4″ off, which is miles in this application.  So I assumed that the pins were bent.  I had to move the car shortly after, but knew that I’d be dropping the subframe again, so I could just fix the problem then.

So now I had to put some wheels on the car in order to move it around.  I started messing around with wheels that we had laying around to see what it all looked like.  So I’ll just post all the photos I took messing around with the wheels, as there’s nothing really important about any of the pics.  At some point I got a little excited and just started taking photos of the car.  The pictures are quite grainy, but they are there in any event.

Gas Tank Refurbishing

I didn’t feel like buying a new fuel tank – and I wanted to try out the POR-15 rust proof paint. There was only a few small spots of surface rust on the outside of the tank, so I figured it was worth a shot. I purchased the POR-15 fuel tank refurb kit, and went to town.

In the first couple of pictures you can see the condition of the tank prior to my work. There were a couple patches of rust, but also exposed metal where spilled gasoline stripped the original paint off the tank. Granted this car won’t be driven in the snow, but exposed metal rusts quickly so it’s good for me to coat it.

I won’t get into all the steps of the tank refurb work, because POR-15 does that on their website and it’s not that exciting. Suffice to say I cleaned the tank, sealed the inside with the kit, and then painted the outside. It seems to have worked very well, as the coating has stood up to some harsh treatment so far, including a couple stray tool strikings, etc.

In addition, I POR-15′ed the pedals as well, as they see some pretty harsh treatment in the car, so I wanted the paint to be pretty durable.

Suspension Build

Mario up at Vintage Sports & Racing did the prep work on my suspension pieces. He welded in the reinforcement tabs on the front subframe and welded in the rear toe and camber adjustment plates in the rear. He also welded in the front swaybar reinforcements on the front strut assemblies and installed the wheel bearings. Everything was powdercoated in a light grey color. I love the color, especially for the under-the-car stuff like the suspension pieces.

Then I built the front struts with pieces I got from TC Kline, Ireland Engineering, Ground Control and H&R. Why cobble together a setup from scratch? I didn’t really, I bought it all through TCK, but the springs the sent me were 60mm ID rather than the 2.5″ ID that the GC perches and Ireland top mounts were. TCK suggested I file down the spring perches to work with the 60mm stuff, but I didn’t like that idea, so I decided to switch the springs to 2.5″ rather than try to make the 60mm stuff work. I just bought the same spring rate springs from H&R, and everything went together pretty easily.

I made spacers for the Koni inserts to get the body of the strut sitting where I thought I wanted it. This was admittedly a guessing game, but putting everything together, it looks like I’ll be stoked. I have plenty of travel both up and down, so that’s what I was going for. I then went to put everything together with 8″ front springs, which I would soon find were too long, but not until I had installed them all in the car.

So, the next puzzle I had to figure out was how to put the top mounts together.  TCK sent me these tapered Red top mounts, that had a very small surface area where all the force generated from the spring would meet the top mount spherical bearing.  You can really see this in the photos to the left.  The first one shows the top mount slid onto the strut piston, and the small ring is a spacer that is the only thing that contacts the spherical bearing. You can see when it is all put together, that this setup gives you a lot of articulation of the spherical bearing, but keeps the entire weight on the bearing alone.

The Ireland design had a much larger area rollerbearing type setup that put the force generated by the spring on the large machined aluminum plate.  You can see that in the photo on the left.  The sliver ring is the top piece of the roller bearing.  I’m not an engineer, and don’t even pretend to really understand everything that goes on in suspension work.  But I was wary of installing those red top pieces because I figured the bearing would self destruct instantly.  So I put it all together with the Ireland piece instead.  I’m hoping that if any of you readers out there have experience with this setup, you’ll let me know what you found.

Installing the Interior

I installed the window motors and arms in the doors along with the door glass. Once that was all together, I got to installing the sound deadening on the floor pan. I bought a product called Brown Bread from some place in Canada. The whole roll of the stuff only weight something like 20 lbs, so it’s pretty light and from the specs will do a good job of cutting the road noise.

Once I got the majority of the floor pan covered, I installed the OEM carpet. This carpet is really nice, and fits perfectly as you would expect from a BMW part. It doesn’t have the plastic guards against wear in the footwell, but where I will always have floor mats in this and won’t be getting in the car with muddy shoes, I’m not that worried. It does have the molded foam attached to the back, which makes it infinitely better than the cheap aftermarket carpets available. Also, all the holes lined up for the seats and seatbelts.

Random Work

So when faced with the task of putting an entire car back together, one can easily become daunted, which I did. I started doing a few little random things here and there, like installing new wiring for the doors. You can see that the ones that were on the car had carried out their service life and then some. I wanted to not have to worry about the wiring to the doors, so I just replaced it with new stuff. It was a lot easier than I expected to rebuild the connectors. They are a two piece connector, which is kind of a weird design, but whatever. It works. So that’s all set and ready to rock for another 20 years.

I also got the fuse box back together and installed. That was a lot easier because of the notes that I took.

Continuing in the engine bay I decided to install the new sound deadening material on the firewall. Remember, the aim of this is to be a sick street car, not something as light as possible. So sound deadening is definitely something I’m interested in.

In the interior, I started getting things together by putting the dashboard in. Perhaps not the best idea, but why not – the heater box was already in. But of course, the E30 hawk eyes will notice that the carpet it not in yet. I knew the carpet had to go in after that, but needed to get the dash out of harms way, so put it in place.

Moving back to the exterior of the car, i mounted the front bumper and valence. These are still not in their final resting place, but they are very close. I absolutely love the way this kit looks.

M-Technic II Body Kit Installation

A good friend of mine helped me snag an OEM Kit from Germany. I offer many thanks to him. In any event, I had to buy a bunch of clips from BMW to make the whole thing work together. Here are some shots of the clips. These are the ones that hold the side skirts on. I was able to buy the drilling jigs for the side skirts, but they were NLA for the front and rear pieces, which made it more nerve wracking to install the front and rear, so I started with the sides.

This proved to be a much easier task than I had expected, but it wasn’t without its hurdles. First off, I had given the body shop the drilling jigs so they could pre-drill the holes, but due to my own lack of foresight I didn’t figure out how large the holes needed to be. So I had to enlarge the holes after the paint was sprayed.

I measured the clips where they would eventually sit in the sheet metal (closer to the plate on the plastic clip) and then drilled the holes. I kept them a little on the small side so I could then use a reamer to make the holes just the right size for the clips. Then I painted the bare metal to keep it from rusting. It was handy to have some Imola red leftover from when Mike sprayed the car. It was very very difficult to take a drill to my freshly painted sheet metal, but it was all for the good of the cause.

I took a couple photos of the “bullet holes” in the sheet metal to keep for posterity.  I never want to have to do this again.  Although having typed that I know that I still need to finish the rear bumper cover installation which needs 4 holes drilled in the car.

So After I drilled the holes and started to install the side skirts, I made a startling discovery. I realized that the passenger sideskirt was actually for a 4 door. But the chances of finding just a single side skirt in the US were slim to none. And the one I had was already the right color. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and try to modify the skirt to accept the 2 door rear side pod. This went pretty well, but not quite the way I wanted it to go. The rear side pod doesn’t sit quite where it is supposed to, it’s a little bit farther away from the body than the piece on the passenger door. But for now I will let it sit. When the car is in running condition, I plan on replacing the side skirt with the correct unit from a 2 door. It bothers me that this is the only thing on the car that isn’t “right”, but it doesn’t bother me enough to fix it at the moment. A side skirt is pretty easy to change later. Here you can see me with a dremel (!) on the side skirt, modifying the plastic. This was a very scary day, and this is precisely why people tell you to mock up the car first, then disassemble it and then paint it.  Too bad I didn’t listen.

Here are some finished pictures of the sides of the car. I got real excited and put the M-Technic stickers on. Perhaps a little prematurely, but still fun.

Vehicle Wiring Harness Back In

So I started work by installing the vehicle wiring harness.  I also rebuilt the heater box with new gaskets and made sure all the doors and motors worked.  They needed some refurb, but the work great now.  Also, it was a good feeling to really clean the inside of the heater box where all the air that comes through the vents originates.  Nobody wants to breathe air that’s come in through a moldy old heater core.

Paint is done

Ok, so of course when the car was painted, Mike called me and had me come take some shots of it.  Totally awesome.  You can see that it is a full color transform, every part of the car is Red.  The only part that still has some black paint is underneath the front subframe (there was a subframe on the car when it was painted.  Words could not describe the excitement, but it was all uphill from here.  After I had it towed back to the shop, I washed it to get some of the bodyshop gunk off, and just to wash it.