E30 M52-swapped Trackday Car
Discussion
So this is my daily driver:
It's been a solid and reliable workhorse for over 7 years and 95k miles of service. I bought it as a 1-yr old ex-demo with under 3k miles on the clock. Fun to drive when I want it to be but still returns well over 50 mpg on a run! Current average mpg (past 9000 miles) is sitting at around 48.
Then I've also had this work in progress. This build thread is on the E30 Zone and it was on the PPC forum before that died, which is why I'm relocating it here! Basically, I purchased my 2nd E30 (first was sold years ago to buy a house) with the intention of turning into a dedicated track car, on a budget. So here's how the story goes...
I have a few photos I have collected over the years, so I'm going to upload them to this thread bit by bit. The gist is, I started off with very little mechanical experience and little more than spanners, screwdrivers and a socket set. I am now nearing completion of this M52 track car build and my knowledge - and toolkit - have expanded considerably.
It's not open chequebook by any means - I've scavenged parts as and when I've been able, but I've not cut costs on key items. I'm also limited to about 10 hours work a week at best and I abandoned it for 6 months in 2011 to save for a trip to NZ. I work in a 3x8 metre garage a few miles from my house with nothing but a little 3.2 kW generator for company when need be. So it's taken bloody ages and it's tested my faith and resolve many, many times. But now it's getting there.
So - elements and finances have been against me and my car is a little rough round the edges. But hopefully this will provide a little inspiration to people in a similar position and hopefully it's going to go like hell...not looking forward to all the teething problems once I get it running though!
This is where it all started: a breakup with a girl, some spare cash in my back pocket and then - a tired, but solid and clean 318i lux that I picked up for around £800 at the beginning of 2009:
In the common words of many, "I didn't mean to go this far!"
As was the case with this.
The early days - I stripped the interior and binned the Clifford alarm/immobiliser that was causing me so many problems and rocked about in it like that for a couple of months!
First ever experience with auto electrics! But reading wiring diagrams isn't so bad. The Germans know how to wire a car logically.
Then I got the combined feelings of fear and regret that I'd taken a perfectly good E30 and ruined it. It was time to quickly move on before these feelings consumed me.
I decided to commit myself to taking the car off the road and doing an engine swap. I had an LS1 in mind at the time, so I thought a welded cage and some stitch welding around key seams wouldn't go amiss. It was about this time that I got my garage.
And the stripping began in earnest.
This did nothing to quell the dread that I'd ruined a nice car. So still thinking that further progress might be the cure - or just that the more work I did, the less I thought about it - out came the engine & box.
More doubts arose as I began to worry about how to put things back together
: But I persevered and took advantage of having a bare rolling shell in front of me to do a proper rust recon. This came out surprisingly favourable. There were a few bits and bobs, but nothing majorly structural or not easily fixed with some MIG and steel. So I needed to get a quote for the stitch welding and rollcage installation and I took some photos of the rust to get these included too. I also wanted the sunroof welding up for good measure.
Driver's footwell:
Under the arch liner, rear nearside arch:
Arch lips on both rear arches:
Couple of small patches on the sills:
Northwest RS centre came back with a quote that I was happy with, to do all the work plus a blowover in the paint booth and the shell went on holiday for a couple of weeks.
I'd spoken with the head honcho at the RS Centre beforehand and had a look at the Escorts, Fiestas and Capris in their workshop. Was really impressed with the quality of their welding and build work.
But they had never worked on an E30 before! Here's what they did to mine.
Sunroof welded up with a section of Capri roof skin:
Sunroof tray stayed in though, unfortunately. In my early days of learning and naivety, I didn't realise the benefits of cutting this out! Merely a minor annoyance, but we all know how these can add up (more on minor annoyances later!)
They stitch welded the front and rear inner wings and turrets:
They cut out rusty metal and replaced with new. In the process, they subtly flared the rear arches. They cut off the old arch lips, added new ones with some extra metal and stitch welded the seam between inner and outer wings.
And they custom made a 6-point welded rollcage from CDS tubular steel, with harness bar.
Following the blowover, my car was left looking like this:
Okay, so onto more minor annoyances.
As I have already said, I knew little about all this stuff when I started and blown away by my shiny new motor, I didn't thoroughly check the work that had been done. Now, I am both happy, but also a little unhappy - working on the car since has given me a real good look at the work.
Sunroof job, roll-cage and welding, metalwork - they are all top notch jobs. It's the little things that annoy me. The inner lip of the arch was not smooth and half was rolled, half wasn't. Paint finish over the stitch welding wasn't quite right and I've had to wirebrush some of this back and re-do and the colour doesn't match 100%. Where the welding heat had caused underseal to peel off (e.g. rollcage floor plates), or where it had been removed - it hadn't been re-done. Minor annoyances. Anyway, I've since gotten round to addressing most of these, but the half-rolled arches created a little bit more of an issue I've only recently come across. So more on this later!
It's been a solid and reliable workhorse for over 7 years and 95k miles of service. I bought it as a 1-yr old ex-demo with under 3k miles on the clock. Fun to drive when I want it to be but still returns well over 50 mpg on a run! Current average mpg (past 9000 miles) is sitting at around 48.
Then I've also had this work in progress. This build thread is on the E30 Zone and it was on the PPC forum before that died, which is why I'm relocating it here! Basically, I purchased my 2nd E30 (first was sold years ago to buy a house) with the intention of turning into a dedicated track car, on a budget. So here's how the story goes...
I have a few photos I have collected over the years, so I'm going to upload them to this thread bit by bit. The gist is, I started off with very little mechanical experience and little more than spanners, screwdrivers and a socket set. I am now nearing completion of this M52 track car build and my knowledge - and toolkit - have expanded considerably.
It's not open chequebook by any means - I've scavenged parts as and when I've been able, but I've not cut costs on key items. I'm also limited to about 10 hours work a week at best and I abandoned it for 6 months in 2011 to save for a trip to NZ. I work in a 3x8 metre garage a few miles from my house with nothing but a little 3.2 kW generator for company when need be. So it's taken bloody ages and it's tested my faith and resolve many, many times. But now it's getting there.
So - elements and finances have been against me and my car is a little rough round the edges. But hopefully this will provide a little inspiration to people in a similar position and hopefully it's going to go like hell...not looking forward to all the teething problems once I get it running though!
This is where it all started: a breakup with a girl, some spare cash in my back pocket and then - a tired, but solid and clean 318i lux that I picked up for around £800 at the beginning of 2009:
In the common words of many, "I didn't mean to go this far!"
As was the case with this.
The early days - I stripped the interior and binned the Clifford alarm/immobiliser that was causing me so many problems and rocked about in it like that for a couple of months!
First ever experience with auto electrics! But reading wiring diagrams isn't so bad. The Germans know how to wire a car logically.
Then I got the combined feelings of fear and regret that I'd taken a perfectly good E30 and ruined it. It was time to quickly move on before these feelings consumed me.
I decided to commit myself to taking the car off the road and doing an engine swap. I had an LS1 in mind at the time, so I thought a welded cage and some stitch welding around key seams wouldn't go amiss. It was about this time that I got my garage.
And the stripping began in earnest.
This did nothing to quell the dread that I'd ruined a nice car. So still thinking that further progress might be the cure - or just that the more work I did, the less I thought about it - out came the engine & box.
More doubts arose as I began to worry about how to put things back together
: But I persevered and took advantage of having a bare rolling shell in front of me to do a proper rust recon. This came out surprisingly favourable. There were a few bits and bobs, but nothing majorly structural or not easily fixed with some MIG and steel. So I needed to get a quote for the stitch welding and rollcage installation and I took some photos of the rust to get these included too. I also wanted the sunroof welding up for good measure.Driver's footwell:
Under the arch liner, rear nearside arch:
Arch lips on both rear arches:
Couple of small patches on the sills:
Northwest RS centre came back with a quote that I was happy with, to do all the work plus a blowover in the paint booth and the shell went on holiday for a couple of weeks.
I'd spoken with the head honcho at the RS Centre beforehand and had a look at the Escorts, Fiestas and Capris in their workshop. Was really impressed with the quality of their welding and build work.
But they had never worked on an E30 before! Here's what they did to mine.
Sunroof welded up with a section of Capri roof skin:
Sunroof tray stayed in though, unfortunately. In my early days of learning and naivety, I didn't realise the benefits of cutting this out! Merely a minor annoyance, but we all know how these can add up (more on minor annoyances later!)
They stitch welded the front and rear inner wings and turrets:
They cut out rusty metal and replaced with new. In the process, they subtly flared the rear arches. They cut off the old arch lips, added new ones with some extra metal and stitch welded the seam between inner and outer wings.
And they custom made a 6-point welded rollcage from CDS tubular steel, with harness bar.
Following the blowover, my car was left looking like this:
Okay, so onto more minor annoyances.
As I have already said, I knew little about all this stuff when I started and blown away by my shiny new motor, I didn't thoroughly check the work that had been done. Now, I am both happy, but also a little unhappy - working on the car since has given me a real good look at the work.
Sunroof job, roll-cage and welding, metalwork - they are all top notch jobs. It's the little things that annoy me. The inner lip of the arch was not smooth and half was rolled, half wasn't. Paint finish over the stitch welding wasn't quite right and I've had to wirebrush some of this back and re-do and the colour doesn't match 100%. Where the welding heat had caused underseal to peel off (e.g. rollcage floor plates), or where it had been removed - it hadn't been re-done. Minor annoyances. Anyway, I've since gotten round to addressing most of these, but the half-rolled arches created a little bit more of an issue I've only recently come across. So more on this later!
I now turned my attention to suspension.
My plan was to do a full 5-stud conversion. My reasoning behind this at the time was that I would gain extra track, get big brakes and essentially have E30 M3 front geometry for a fraction of the cost of E30 M3 parts and a bonus big brake kit to boot. It's not quite turned out like that - more on that later on down the line - but this is how it started.
I sourced some E36 318ti rear arms and got a camber/toe adjustable beam from DanThe on the E30 Zone. I was also lucky to get a 2nd hand but unused set of E36 compact Koni coilovers for a good price. And I got an entire car set of Powerflex poly bushes 2nd hand but unused. So at this stage, I had a set of coilovers plus everything I needed for 5-stud, save for the E36 M3 Evo front arms, kingpins and adjustable top mounts, for little more than £700.
I set about removing the rear end.
Sadly, I managed this and needed a new subframe pin
Bushes, E46 rear top mounts and Black Diamond braided brake lines:
Good as new rear beam after I'd pushed in the Powerflex bushes:
Quality work from DanThe, as always.
318ti rear trailing arms:
New rear t-piece brake lines made up:
Koni adjustable rear dampers ready with E46 rear top mounts:
Before installing, I made sure rear wheel wells were well and truly wire brushed, painted and undersealed:
Then onto installation - forgot to mention, new handbrake cables went into this too
Note the brake pipe going through the rear seatbelt hole. This was the original plan but I'm now (as in currently) scrapping this idea.
Note that 318ti driveshafts do NOT fit E30 small-case differential output shafts - hence the bungee cords. A temporary measure. I also did the complete rear beam removal, overhaul and refit as a one man job - with 3 jacks and a bit of patience, it can be done! I was getting a little more cocky with me new-found mechanic's skills and the earlier doubts about being unable to reassemble the thing were beginning to fade. A little.
And I also needed to source some 5-stud wheels to roll the shell on.
My plan was to do a full 5-stud conversion. My reasoning behind this at the time was that I would gain extra track, get big brakes and essentially have E30 M3 front geometry for a fraction of the cost of E30 M3 parts and a bonus big brake kit to boot. It's not quite turned out like that - more on that later on down the line - but this is how it started.
I sourced some E36 318ti rear arms and got a camber/toe adjustable beam from DanThe on the E30 Zone. I was also lucky to get a 2nd hand but unused set of E36 compact Koni coilovers for a good price. And I got an entire car set of Powerflex poly bushes 2nd hand but unused. So at this stage, I had a set of coilovers plus everything I needed for 5-stud, save for the E36 M3 Evo front arms, kingpins and adjustable top mounts, for little more than £700.
I set about removing the rear end.
Sadly, I managed this and needed a new subframe pin
Bushes, E46 rear top mounts and Black Diamond braided brake lines:
Good as new rear beam after I'd pushed in the Powerflex bushes:
Quality work from DanThe, as always.
318ti rear trailing arms:
New rear t-piece brake lines made up:
Koni adjustable rear dampers ready with E46 rear top mounts:
Before installing, I made sure rear wheel wells were well and truly wire brushed, painted and undersealed:
Then onto installation - forgot to mention, new handbrake cables went into this too
Note the brake pipe going through the rear seatbelt hole. This was the original plan but I'm now (as in currently) scrapping this idea.
Note that 318ti driveshafts do NOT fit E30 small-case differential output shafts - hence the bungee cords. A temporary measure. I also did the complete rear beam removal, overhaul and refit as a one man job - with 3 jacks and a bit of patience, it can be done! I was getting a little more cocky with me new-found mechanic's skills and the earlier doubts about being unable to reassemble the thing were beginning to fade. A little.
And I also needed to source some 5-stud wheels to roll the shell on.
Jamirecluse said:
Would you recommend one of these as a first project car to learn with? I've just seen one advertised but I have limited mechanical knowledge and no skills or tools.
Looks like you found a nice base car.
Haha more to come on the quality of the base car! But yeah I could've done worse. They are very, very good mechanical/electrical wise as a car to learn with but as I'm finding, unless you have a welder & capability to weld, it gets expensive passing jobs onto the pros. Looks like you found a nice base car.
It helps if it's not a daily driver too, then you have the time to scratch your head over problems without getting too stressed. The further into the project you get, th more experience you gain and the easier things become.
M159V8 said:
Nice, love projects like this however is there not a danger of the cage collapsing onto the driver if a bar is not welded in like so?:
I seem to remember seeing a picture of a red Audi where this happened
It 'should' be okay, as the cage conforms to the minimum spec in the MSA blue book - if you check out that diagram. Plus it has additional door bars, harness bar and single diagonal brace, all specced as 'optional' additional bars. If the cage is manufactured from the correct spec CDS steel (which it is), it should hopefully perform as prescribed in an accident however is there not a danger of the cage collapsing onto the driver if a bar is not welded in like so?:I seem to remember seeing a picture of a red Audi where this happened
Was it potentially one of these 'show cages'? They can be a liability!
It was about this stage of the project where I had to park things to save for the excursion to New Zealand. I did get on with a few cheap, simple jobs though. Sourcing some interim wheels, removing the thick bitumen sound deadening and spraying the interior. I also refitted lights, trim pieces etc and plugged all the wires back in for the rear end.
When I got back from New Zealand some 6 months later, it was time to recommence - beginning with the front end. Of course I already had E30 M3 eccentric bushes in Powerflex flavour and E36 Compact coilovers, so I just needed to source E36 M3 Evo front wishbones, kingpins and brakes. I got the wishbones, kingpins and carriers for about £100 iirc and decided to buy a pair of remanufactured calipers (brakes international) and new Mintex discs, which set me back about £240 all in - I got a very good deal on the calipers. So a complete 5-stud conversion complete front rebound and height-adjustable colivers and rebound adjustable rear shocks for not much more than a grand
In this case, taking my time allowed me to sit and cherry pick parts as and when they popped up, which has saved me a bit in the long run.
In addition to all the 5-stud crap, I got an E46 clubsport rack off this DanThe dude along with one of his solid splined shafts (designed specifically with thic conversion in mind) and 1 E34 UJ. I got the other E34 UJ off Ebay for the silly price of £15. Some people still don't know what they are worth...
Anyway, onto the build! Firstly, fitting the rack with fresh E30 track rod ends. I sourced jubilee clips from B&Q for the boots.
Then, the linkage:
One completed hybrid E30/E34 UJ:
I had some issues with a subframe I sent off to a certain member on E30Zone to be powdercoated and reinforced - before I found out about his unreliable reputation! Anyway, after chasing him up forever, I gave up and just bought one off Ebay, cleaned it up with a wire brush and gave it a lick of paint. I used suitably sized welding spacers as rack spacers - 15 mm did the job perfectly. I pressed the bushes into the lollipops and then onto the wishbones and bolted the whole lot together. With a liberal wire brushing, painting and undersealing of the front wheel wells first!
E36 M3 Evo Wishbone:
Coilovers fitted with E36 M3 Evo kingpins.
I then replaced the Koni top-hats with the roller-bearing ones that came with these camber-adjustable top mounts from Lithuanian source, NP-Team:
Subframe and wishbones fitted. I later binned what was left of that poxy heat shield.
Steering rack fitted:
And then coilovers, minus brakes. I fit the brakes later on.
Slight clearance issues with the E46 offset wheels! Hence the cheapo 3mm spacers in the previous pic, again purchased only as an interim measure to roll the shell around. But of course, this factored into my choice of offset for my actual wheels later on.
Photo of my car with 3 wheels in the air, supported by just one axle stand! Wouldn't work underneath the car like this of course, but a nice demonstration of rigidity
Then there's the E36 M3 brake calipers and carriers...
...with HUGE pistons - 50 pence piece added for scale.
I've actually only just fitted these - and as the project is still a month or two off, I'm refraining from buying pads until I have to to avoid any contamination. Discs are going to need a quick run over with the wire brush before it sees action.
Anyway, this is how the arrangement sat on the E46 wheels:
It was at this point I ran into issues with the E36 5-stud setup. Although I don't have any of the serious wheel centering problems or contact with chassis rails on full lock, as others have occasionally reported, I have noticed the following:
1) Despite using all the right bits, castor might still be within stock E30 spec (yet to confirm - but it looks okay), it is still not up to E30 M3 spec.
2) Scope for negative camber isn't that great. Even with the top mounts on full neg.
Okay, it will be easier to tell for sure once the engine is in and I've done the alignment proper. And there are other ways to increase scope for camber - shims between the bottom kingpin and strut mount for one. But the acid test will be in how it drives. For the moment I'm trying to remain optimistic.
So back to the project - at this point, the sheer amount of cost and effort required for an LS1 swap had frightened me off and I'd settled on an M52, at least just to get the car up and running and get a few trackdays under its belt. I decided that whichever LSD I ended up with would be the determining factor in what gearbox I was going to use, as you can use either the E30 M42 'box or the E36 5-speed ZF as fitted to the 328i and M3. With regards to the diff, I looked at various aftermarket options from Quaife, Kaaz and Gripper but the most cost effective option was to get a used E30 item and get it rebuilt by another E30 Zone member, Gareth, the resident diff specialist.
Then this Z3M diff popped up. It didn't have a backplate - the seller had already sold that on as they go for good money themselves - but it allegedly had only 15,000 miles on it and for the price, it was worth a punt. Worst case was, I'd just end up getting Gareth to rebuild it anyway.
I got a standard medium case diff backplate off for 15 squids and got a new gasket, new fill/drain plugs and a new set of casing bolts. I already had the poly diff bush from my earlier mass bush purchase
So, all eager and excited again, I trundled my diff under the car...
...and an hour or so of vigorous jiggling and swearing later, I had it securely bolted into place, only to find this:
Of course 318ti driveshafts flanges don't fit Z3M diff output flanges. So I want home in a grump and had a think about things. What was required was 318ti diff output flanges - some research assured me that these would fit but what kind of person sells used diff output flanges without a diff? I didn't want to pay big money to get them from BMW, especially as there was the potential scenario of them still not fitting. But a used diff was going to set me back £70-£80 too. Enter a nice American chap from the E30Tech forum who mailed me a pair. Arrived within 6 days and cost not much more than £50 including shipping. Win. So I pulled the flanges from the Z3M diff and replaced them with these. The smaller ones on the left are the 318ti flanges.
At first, I wasn't sure they would fit:
But it just turned out they were a snug fit.
Back to here again:
More vigorous jiggling and swearing and everything lined up nicely:
Then I found out that the M10 hex bolts and spreader plates from the E30 didn't fit the 318ti driveshafts and flanges. So I went on realoem, got the part number for what turned out to be M8x40 items for the 318ti and orderd a set of those with the associated spreader plates. Again, all keen and excited I went to bolt things up and found I was missing an E15 torx socket from my socket set. In fact I found out that pretty much every torx socket set sold in the UK is missing an E15 torx socket. A 10mm 6-sided socket can finger tighten them but can't exert any real torque. I f*cked off paying £15 to get an E15 off ebay, delivered from the states, and ordered some high tensile M8x40 mm hex bolts instead for about £6 delivered.
(I have since found out that my torx socket set is all to cock and that has been resolved, but it was a pain at the time!)
Finally, my diff was in position and properly torqued up.
If I thought all that was a saga, the brakes are up next...
When I got back from New Zealand some 6 months later, it was time to recommence - beginning with the front end. Of course I already had E30 M3 eccentric bushes in Powerflex flavour and E36 Compact coilovers, so I just needed to source E36 M3 Evo front wishbones, kingpins and brakes. I got the wishbones, kingpins and carriers for about £100 iirc and decided to buy a pair of remanufactured calipers (brakes international) and new Mintex discs, which set me back about £240 all in - I got a very good deal on the calipers. So a complete 5-stud conversion complete front rebound and height-adjustable colivers and rebound adjustable rear shocks for not much more than a grand
In this case, taking my time allowed me to sit and cherry pick parts as and when they popped up, which has saved me a bit in the long run.In addition to all the 5-stud crap, I got an E46 clubsport rack off this DanThe dude along with one of his solid splined shafts (designed specifically with thic conversion in mind) and 1 E34 UJ. I got the other E34 UJ off Ebay for the silly price of £15. Some people still don't know what they are worth...
Anyway, onto the build! Firstly, fitting the rack with fresh E30 track rod ends. I sourced jubilee clips from B&Q for the boots.
Then, the linkage:
One completed hybrid E30/E34 UJ:
I had some issues with a subframe I sent off to a certain member on E30Zone to be powdercoated and reinforced - before I found out about his unreliable reputation! Anyway, after chasing him up forever, I gave up and just bought one off Ebay, cleaned it up with a wire brush and gave it a lick of paint. I used suitably sized welding spacers as rack spacers - 15 mm did the job perfectly. I pressed the bushes into the lollipops and then onto the wishbones and bolted the whole lot together. With a liberal wire brushing, painting and undersealing of the front wheel wells first!
E36 M3 Evo Wishbone:
Coilovers fitted with E36 M3 Evo kingpins.
I then replaced the Koni top-hats with the roller-bearing ones that came with these camber-adjustable top mounts from Lithuanian source, NP-Team:
Subframe and wishbones fitted. I later binned what was left of that poxy heat shield.
Steering rack fitted:
And then coilovers, minus brakes. I fit the brakes later on.
Slight clearance issues with the E46 offset wheels! Hence the cheapo 3mm spacers in the previous pic, again purchased only as an interim measure to roll the shell around. But of course, this factored into my choice of offset for my actual wheels later on.
Photo of my car with 3 wheels in the air, supported by just one axle stand! Wouldn't work underneath the car like this of course, but a nice demonstration of rigidity
Then there's the E36 M3 brake calipers and carriers...
...with HUGE pistons - 50 pence piece added for scale.
I've actually only just fitted these - and as the project is still a month or two off, I'm refraining from buying pads until I have to to avoid any contamination. Discs are going to need a quick run over with the wire brush before it sees action.
Anyway, this is how the arrangement sat on the E46 wheels:
It was at this point I ran into issues with the E36 5-stud setup. Although I don't have any of the serious wheel centering problems or contact with chassis rails on full lock, as others have occasionally reported, I have noticed the following:
1) Despite using all the right bits, castor might still be within stock E30 spec (yet to confirm - but it looks okay), it is still not up to E30 M3 spec.
2) Scope for negative camber isn't that great. Even with the top mounts on full neg.
Okay, it will be easier to tell for sure once the engine is in and I've done the alignment proper. And there are other ways to increase scope for camber - shims between the bottom kingpin and strut mount for one. But the acid test will be in how it drives. For the moment I'm trying to remain optimistic.
So back to the project - at this point, the sheer amount of cost and effort required for an LS1 swap had frightened me off and I'd settled on an M52, at least just to get the car up and running and get a few trackdays under its belt. I decided that whichever LSD I ended up with would be the determining factor in what gearbox I was going to use, as you can use either the E30 M42 'box or the E36 5-speed ZF as fitted to the 328i and M3. With regards to the diff, I looked at various aftermarket options from Quaife, Kaaz and Gripper but the most cost effective option was to get a used E30 item and get it rebuilt by another E30 Zone member, Gareth, the resident diff specialist.
Then this Z3M diff popped up. It didn't have a backplate - the seller had already sold that on as they go for good money themselves - but it allegedly had only 15,000 miles on it and for the price, it was worth a punt. Worst case was, I'd just end up getting Gareth to rebuild it anyway.
I got a standard medium case diff backplate off for 15 squids and got a new gasket, new fill/drain plugs and a new set of casing bolts. I already had the poly diff bush from my earlier mass bush purchase
So, all eager and excited again, I trundled my diff under the car...
...and an hour or so of vigorous jiggling and swearing later, I had it securely bolted into place, only to find this:
Of course 318ti driveshafts flanges don't fit Z3M diff output flanges. So I want home in a grump and had a think about things. What was required was 318ti diff output flanges - some research assured me that these would fit but what kind of person sells used diff output flanges without a diff? I didn't want to pay big money to get them from BMW, especially as there was the potential scenario of them still not fitting. But a used diff was going to set me back £70-£80 too. Enter a nice American chap from the E30Tech forum who mailed me a pair. Arrived within 6 days and cost not much more than £50 including shipping. Win. So I pulled the flanges from the Z3M diff and replaced them with these. The smaller ones on the left are the 318ti flanges.
At first, I wasn't sure they would fit:
But it just turned out they were a snug fit.
Back to here again:
More vigorous jiggling and swearing and everything lined up nicely:
Then I found out that the M10 hex bolts and spreader plates from the E30 didn't fit the 318ti driveshafts and flanges. So I went on realoem, got the part number for what turned out to be M8x40 items for the 318ti and orderd a set of those with the associated spreader plates. Again, all keen and excited I went to bolt things up and found I was missing an E15 torx socket from my socket set. In fact I found out that pretty much every torx socket set sold in the UK is missing an E15 torx socket. A 10mm 6-sided socket can finger tighten them but can't exert any real torque. I f*cked off paying £15 to get an E15 off ebay, delivered from the states, and ordered some high tensile M8x40 mm hex bolts instead for about £6 delivered.
(I have since found out that my torx socket set is all to cock and that has been resolved, but it was a pain at the time!)
Finally, my diff was in position and properly torqued up.
If I thought all that was a saga, the brakes are up next...
Brakes. Rarely is something accidentally c*cked up so severely than in a modified braking system. Deliberate bodges occur in everything else but at least if the hundreds of forum threads/posts I have read are to be believed, lots of people undertake 'upgrades' to their brakes and then complain that they are sh*te. I sincerely hope I'm not going to fall into this camp!
The E30 vacuum servo is a big old thing and to fit pretty much anything other than a stock E30 engine or another 4-banger (e.g. SR20, YB), something needs to be done about clearance between the servo and the engine. There are 3 solutions:
1) Relocate the servo. I have seen them moved to the front of the engine bay or to the passenger footwell.
2) Fit a smaller servo. I.e. Clio, VW Polo etc.
3) Remove the servo and make up for the loss of assistance in some other way - or not.
My original plan was to go the common Clio servo route. Well documented, easy, cheap. But this plan was flawed in that my 5-stud setup had calipers at the front with the biggest pistons known to man and calipers at the back with titchy little pistons. This meant that the back brakes would be doing pretty much nothing, even when braking really hard. All I would be doing would be paying for new rear discs and pads twice a year as they rusted to nothing from lack of use. So, if I wanted to make the most of my brakes, I had little option but to go for a full aftermarket pedal box. I don't know how many of you have considered this option, but it's not cheap at all! My heart sank.
So I looked at various options from the universal ones from the likes of Tilton and OBP, bespoke E30 ones and even Mk1/2 Escort ones - as these are significantly cheaper. I thought if I could get one of these, I could hoik it down to the local engineering shop and get it modified to fit into the stock E30 pedal box holes.
Again, being in no rush here, I took my time considering options and then my favourite kind of part popped up in the for sale section. A 2nd hand unused one. Moreover, it was the bespoke E30 floor-mounted pedal box from OBP, complete with cylinders, reservoirs, feed lines, bias bar and remote adjuster. That's about £650 worth of kit brand new. I got it for less than half that
Now unused stuff is all fair and well, but as I didn't know how long the master cylinders have been sitting around for and in what conditions, I didn't want to take any risks. So I whacked these ones on Ebay as untested and bought some new Wilwood ones, in the sizes calculated by a spreadsheet I'd created - with the maths checked by someone else who knows what they were doing. Sizes I now forget. Anyway, the clutch m/s I ordered was based on the size of the stock E36 item (as I would be using an E36 clutch slave cylinder). I then proceeded to bolt the lot together, excluding the throttle pedal for now. Lots of PTFE lube was used.
Following recommendations from various documents I read, I fitted large washers either side of the bias bar spherical bearing and made sure the clearance of the pivots from the washers was no more than 2 mm yet allowed plenty of free movement.
[imghttp://farm9.staticflickr.com/8385/8570849163_f01fed99b6_b.jpg[/img]
Ready to go in the car:
This didn't go to plan either. The f*cker wouldn't fit right, no matter what I did! I even resorted back to OBP's engineering drawings and measured all the angles - but no, the pedal box was fine. Then on closer examination, I found that there was a tiny dent in the floorpan, beneath where the throttle pedal had been mounted. This was sufficient to throw the fitment off completely and I guess it had been caused by numpty tyre fitters using the so called 'jacking pads' at the corners of the footwells (they arn't jacking pads!) to lift the car. Anyway, some panel beating later, it was nice and flat and the pedal box fitted snugly. I could now brace myself to drill holes in the floorpan to fit it. If you've never done this before, it's a nervy moment! But I measured again and again and knelt and prayed and the holes drilled right. I then made some spreader plates to go underneath the floorpan out of 2mm x 30mm bright steel bar.
I used low-profile hex bolts so there nothing to catch my heels on in the car and skateboard grip tape to protect the footwells.
Next job was to figure out how I was going to route my brake lines. With the stock pedal box, master cylinder and servo gone, I had to do everything from scratch. First up was to cover the now obsolete gaping holes in the firewall. I did this with a sheet of 1 mm aluminium, some pop rivets (more chassis drilling *sigh*) and some gasket sealant. I made a card template, with holes marked in for the brake lines and then cut the ally piece.
The bolts you see are M8 bolts that fit into the stock pedal box bolt holes - minimised the number of holes I needed to drill for pop rivets!
I then fitted some bulkhead brake fittings for front brakes and clutch (rear would run through the car), a grommit for the flexi-lines to the reservoirs and a 'custom' mounting point for the t-piece to mount the hydraulic brake light switch.
The stock pedal box holes are M8 - but an M8 bolt wouldn't fit in the t-piece. So I cut a bit off a piece of M8 threaded bar and turned it down using a file and my grinder. I then gut an M6 thread onto the thinner bit and the T-piece bolted up just fine to this.
So, first I decided how I was going to route my front brakes and to make sure I got it right, I made dummy lines up with cheap copper first.
Then I used these as patterns and started to make nice kunifer lines.
But once again, there was a problem. The problem was with the bulkhead fittings. They just didn't feel right when I torqued them up. When I undid them and inspected what was left of my flare, I saw this.
The male part of the fitting was cutting into the flare rather than sitting inside of it. I was scratching my head for a week over this then I just decided to order some bulkhead fittings from a different supplier - Rally Design. When the new ones arrived and I compared them, this is what I saw:
The old one is on top - the new one is on the bottom. Looks like the originals were for 1/4" pipe to me and not 3/16". Either way, with the new fittings in place, everything went together like Meccano.
I also stripped the heater panel of sound deadening and gave it a coat of satin black, along with the gearbox cross-member.
And I managed to fit my anti roll bars. A 14 mm rear ARB (325i) and a 22.5 mm (iirc) front ARB from a 325i Cab.
And all of this meant that my engine bay looked like this:
So while the diff and brake sagas were ongoing and progress was a little slow, I was still cherry picking various bits and pieces off the E30 zone and from Ebay and various other sources.
I got a used double-skin fibreglass bonnet for the measly sum of £50. I estimated that it would just about fit in the back of my Fabia, but when I got to South Cumbria to collect it, I realised that I estimated wrong. Some bubble wrap and some bungee cords and a very slow drive home ensued, but got it back in one piece. I also noticed when driving with the boot open, my Fabia vRS sounds frickin' ace! Turbo whooshes and hisses and allsorts coming from the exhaust. It drowned out the diesel clatter from the front, that's for sure.
Anyway...
So, I hole-drilled and primed the bonnet when I got it back.
I also managed to source a pair of bucket seats and 6-point harnesses. These are out of date items ripped out of Uniroyal fun cup race cars - it was the son of the series organiser who was selling them on. They are in very good nick, the seats match my car and again, I got them for a very good price. They arn't a matching pair; one's a Sparco and the other is a Toora, but they are pretty close.
Then I had to source the actual wheels I was going to use. I'd resigned myself that 17"s were going to be the way forward, due to the E36 M3 brakes. Measuring up with the E46 wheels fitted and a little bit of number crunching suggested that for 8J wheels, I would need offset of between 27-32 if I didn't want to use spacers.
Enter MSW 22s in anthracite grey. 17", 8J, ET29, 5x120, and £380 for four with 40% off RRP.
They arn't exactly E30 style, but they are the right size and in budget. Before I got tyres, I had a quick check for clearance:
It was going to be close. I was thinking 225/45/17s for tyres, but as I was going to be using trackday tyres and these are often a little wider than the stated width, I opted for 215/45/17s for now. I could always go wider later if there was room.
Federal RS-R trackday tyres fitted and balanced:
And I sourced a donor car! The most important bit. £450 of damp 328i convertible turdage. But it ran, it ran well, and it was MOTd.
I was initially suspect of the 101,000 miles on the odo, given the state of the thing. But 3 owners from new on the V5 and the condition of some of the mechanical bits I've been ripping off it are now suggesting the mileage might be genuine! What wasn't in such good condition was the oil.
Nevertheless, it didn't smoke and pulled like a train. So I gave all this cr*p a good clean and replaced the rocker cover with new gaskets in the hope a few flushes of fresh oil once it's running again will sort it all out.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, the half-rolled arches came back to bite me. And this is where at all came apart.
I had to roll the rear arches completely so that the wheels and tyres would be sure to clear under hard cornering. So I went out and purchased an arch roller. This hurt as it's £100 for a tool I'm going to use once - but I justified it in that I'd get a good chunk of that back when I sold it on.
So I borrowed a heat gun and went at my rear arches.
I rolled the arches perfectly without cracking the paint. However I forgot about the fibreglass skim that was under the fresh paint on the arch lip. This DID crack. So now I have the nasty job of scraping the arch lips back to bare metal, re-skimming and repainting. Potentially with paint that won't match 100%. Minor annoyance. I tell myself it doesn't matter - it's a budget track slag - it just has to resist the tinworm. But in the back of my mind, I can't help feeling that it matters a little bit. To me. Anyway, that job can wait, as I have more important things to do in the coming weeks.
In order to prevent potentially gay mismatching laser blue paint on the bonnet, I just sprayed it satin black to match the cage and the wheels. 2 coats black + 2 coats laquer. I brush painted the underside, also satin black, so now it just needs the paint cutting in then the bonnet fittings, washer jets and bonnet badge fitting.
The car is looking rather dusty at the moment as it's been in the garage for nearly 2 years since it's blowover! But it will be treated to a wash soon enough. The masking tape on the door just stops me bashing the crap out of it against the garage wall.
So I collected all the bits I needed to service the M52 and fit the lightened M20 flywheel, M20 starter and M20 clutch kit to the E36 ZF box. BMW have also earned some hard money from me in the way of various nuts, bolts, fittings, fuel pipes and other bits and bobs. It all adds up!
Eggs don't feature in the build - they belong in my digestive tract. Anyway, at the time, my car looked like this.
Perhaps the wheels are a little big for the E30, but as I said I needed these to clear the brakes. Might look better with the weight of the engine and 'box in there too and it squats down a bit. I need to find a way to either stop the slight tyre contact with the plastic on full lock or increase castor. I've read the Treehouse Racing control arm bushing could move the wheel forward another 10 mm or so in the arch? That would be more than sufficient.
(Now not an issue as with the weight of the engine and box and at the correct ride height, castor looks good with no scrubbing on full lock. But I will still need to increase max. negative camber)
The engine and 'box were to go in Easter weekend. Up until then, I had some rear shock reinforcing plates to go on and I needed to dress a few bits of the engine bay - namely underneath the radiator mount, that didn't get attention at blowover time.
Couldn't wait to get the thing running.
The E30 vacuum servo is a big old thing and to fit pretty much anything other than a stock E30 engine or another 4-banger (e.g. SR20, YB), something needs to be done about clearance between the servo and the engine. There are 3 solutions:
1) Relocate the servo. I have seen them moved to the front of the engine bay or to the passenger footwell.
2) Fit a smaller servo. I.e. Clio, VW Polo etc.
3) Remove the servo and make up for the loss of assistance in some other way - or not.
My original plan was to go the common Clio servo route. Well documented, easy, cheap. But this plan was flawed in that my 5-stud setup had calipers at the front with the biggest pistons known to man and calipers at the back with titchy little pistons. This meant that the back brakes would be doing pretty much nothing, even when braking really hard. All I would be doing would be paying for new rear discs and pads twice a year as they rusted to nothing from lack of use. So, if I wanted to make the most of my brakes, I had little option but to go for a full aftermarket pedal box. I don't know how many of you have considered this option, but it's not cheap at all! My heart sank.
So I looked at various options from the universal ones from the likes of Tilton and OBP, bespoke E30 ones and even Mk1/2 Escort ones - as these are significantly cheaper. I thought if I could get one of these, I could hoik it down to the local engineering shop and get it modified to fit into the stock E30 pedal box holes.
Again, being in no rush here, I took my time considering options and then my favourite kind of part popped up in the for sale section. A 2nd hand unused one. Moreover, it was the bespoke E30 floor-mounted pedal box from OBP, complete with cylinders, reservoirs, feed lines, bias bar and remote adjuster. That's about £650 worth of kit brand new. I got it for less than half that
Now unused stuff is all fair and well, but as I didn't know how long the master cylinders have been sitting around for and in what conditions, I didn't want to take any risks. So I whacked these ones on Ebay as untested and bought some new Wilwood ones, in the sizes calculated by a spreadsheet I'd created - with the maths checked by someone else who knows what they were doing. Sizes I now forget. Anyway, the clutch m/s I ordered was based on the size of the stock E36 item (as I would be using an E36 clutch slave cylinder). I then proceeded to bolt the lot together, excluding the throttle pedal for now. Lots of PTFE lube was used.
Following recommendations from various documents I read, I fitted large washers either side of the bias bar spherical bearing and made sure the clearance of the pivots from the washers was no more than 2 mm yet allowed plenty of free movement.
[imghttp://farm9.staticflickr.com/8385/8570849163_f01fed99b6_b.jpg[/img]
Ready to go in the car:
This didn't go to plan either. The f*cker wouldn't fit right, no matter what I did! I even resorted back to OBP's engineering drawings and measured all the angles - but no, the pedal box was fine. Then on closer examination, I found that there was a tiny dent in the floorpan, beneath where the throttle pedal had been mounted. This was sufficient to throw the fitment off completely and I guess it had been caused by numpty tyre fitters using the so called 'jacking pads' at the corners of the footwells (they arn't jacking pads!) to lift the car. Anyway, some panel beating later, it was nice and flat and the pedal box fitted snugly. I could now brace myself to drill holes in the floorpan to fit it. If you've never done this before, it's a nervy moment! But I measured again and again and knelt and prayed and the holes drilled right. I then made some spreader plates to go underneath the floorpan out of 2mm x 30mm bright steel bar.
I used low-profile hex bolts so there nothing to catch my heels on in the car and skateboard grip tape to protect the footwells.
Next job was to figure out how I was going to route my brake lines. With the stock pedal box, master cylinder and servo gone, I had to do everything from scratch. First up was to cover the now obsolete gaping holes in the firewall. I did this with a sheet of 1 mm aluminium, some pop rivets (more chassis drilling *sigh*) and some gasket sealant. I made a card template, with holes marked in for the brake lines and then cut the ally piece.
The bolts you see are M8 bolts that fit into the stock pedal box bolt holes - minimised the number of holes I needed to drill for pop rivets!
I then fitted some bulkhead brake fittings for front brakes and clutch (rear would run through the car), a grommit for the flexi-lines to the reservoirs and a 'custom' mounting point for the t-piece to mount the hydraulic brake light switch.
The stock pedal box holes are M8 - but an M8 bolt wouldn't fit in the t-piece. So I cut a bit off a piece of M8 threaded bar and turned it down using a file and my grinder. I then gut an M6 thread onto the thinner bit and the T-piece bolted up just fine to this.
So, first I decided how I was going to route my front brakes and to make sure I got it right, I made dummy lines up with cheap copper first.
Then I used these as patterns and started to make nice kunifer lines.
But once again, there was a problem. The problem was with the bulkhead fittings. They just didn't feel right when I torqued them up. When I undid them and inspected what was left of my flare, I saw this.
The male part of the fitting was cutting into the flare rather than sitting inside of it. I was scratching my head for a week over this then I just decided to order some bulkhead fittings from a different supplier - Rally Design. When the new ones arrived and I compared them, this is what I saw:
The old one is on top - the new one is on the bottom. Looks like the originals were for 1/4" pipe to me and not 3/16". Either way, with the new fittings in place, everything went together like Meccano.
I also stripped the heater panel of sound deadening and gave it a coat of satin black, along with the gearbox cross-member.
And I managed to fit my anti roll bars. A 14 mm rear ARB (325i) and a 22.5 mm (iirc) front ARB from a 325i Cab.
And all of this meant that my engine bay looked like this:
So while the diff and brake sagas were ongoing and progress was a little slow, I was still cherry picking various bits and pieces off the E30 zone and from Ebay and various other sources.
I got a used double-skin fibreglass bonnet for the measly sum of £50. I estimated that it would just about fit in the back of my Fabia, but when I got to South Cumbria to collect it, I realised that I estimated wrong. Some bubble wrap and some bungee cords and a very slow drive home ensued, but got it back in one piece. I also noticed when driving with the boot open, my Fabia vRS sounds frickin' ace! Turbo whooshes and hisses and allsorts coming from the exhaust. It drowned out the diesel clatter from the front, that's for sure.
Anyway...
So, I hole-drilled and primed the bonnet when I got it back.
I also managed to source a pair of bucket seats and 6-point harnesses. These are out of date items ripped out of Uniroyal fun cup race cars - it was the son of the series organiser who was selling them on. They are in very good nick, the seats match my car and again, I got them for a very good price. They arn't a matching pair; one's a Sparco and the other is a Toora, but they are pretty close.
Then I had to source the actual wheels I was going to use. I'd resigned myself that 17"s were going to be the way forward, due to the E36 M3 brakes. Measuring up with the E46 wheels fitted and a little bit of number crunching suggested that for 8J wheels, I would need offset of between 27-32 if I didn't want to use spacers.
Enter MSW 22s in anthracite grey. 17", 8J, ET29, 5x120, and £380 for four with 40% off RRP.
They arn't exactly E30 style, but they are the right size and in budget. Before I got tyres, I had a quick check for clearance:
It was going to be close. I was thinking 225/45/17s for tyres, but as I was going to be using trackday tyres and these are often a little wider than the stated width, I opted for 215/45/17s for now. I could always go wider later if there was room.
Federal RS-R trackday tyres fitted and balanced:
And I sourced a donor car! The most important bit. £450 of damp 328i convertible turdage. But it ran, it ran well, and it was MOTd.
I was initially suspect of the 101,000 miles on the odo, given the state of the thing. But 3 owners from new on the V5 and the condition of some of the mechanical bits I've been ripping off it are now suggesting the mileage might be genuine! What wasn't in such good condition was the oil.
Nevertheless, it didn't smoke and pulled like a train. So I gave all this cr*p a good clean and replaced the rocker cover with new gaskets in the hope a few flushes of fresh oil once it's running again will sort it all out.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, the half-rolled arches came back to bite me. And this is where at all came apart.
I had to roll the rear arches completely so that the wheels and tyres would be sure to clear under hard cornering. So I went out and purchased an arch roller. This hurt as it's £100 for a tool I'm going to use once - but I justified it in that I'd get a good chunk of that back when I sold it on.
So I borrowed a heat gun and went at my rear arches.
I rolled the arches perfectly without cracking the paint. However I forgot about the fibreglass skim that was under the fresh paint on the arch lip. This DID crack. So now I have the nasty job of scraping the arch lips back to bare metal, re-skimming and repainting. Potentially with paint that won't match 100%. Minor annoyance. I tell myself it doesn't matter - it's a budget track slag - it just has to resist the tinworm. But in the back of my mind, I can't help feeling that it matters a little bit. To me. Anyway, that job can wait, as I have more important things to do in the coming weeks.
In order to prevent potentially gay mismatching laser blue paint on the bonnet, I just sprayed it satin black to match the cage and the wheels. 2 coats black + 2 coats laquer. I brush painted the underside, also satin black, so now it just needs the paint cutting in then the bonnet fittings, washer jets and bonnet badge fitting.
The car is looking rather dusty at the moment as it's been in the garage for nearly 2 years since it's blowover! But it will be treated to a wash soon enough. The masking tape on the door just stops me bashing the crap out of it against the garage wall.
So I collected all the bits I needed to service the M52 and fit the lightened M20 flywheel, M20 starter and M20 clutch kit to the E36 ZF box. BMW have also earned some hard money from me in the way of various nuts, bolts, fittings, fuel pipes and other bits and bobs. It all adds up!
Eggs don't feature in the build - they belong in my digestive tract. Anyway, at the time, my car looked like this.
Perhaps the wheels are a little big for the E30, but as I said I needed these to clear the brakes. Might look better with the weight of the engine and 'box in there too and it squats down a bit. I need to find a way to either stop the slight tyre contact with the plastic on full lock or increase castor. I've read the Treehouse Racing control arm bushing could move the wheel forward another 10 mm or so in the arch? That would be more than sufficient.
(Now not an issue as with the weight of the engine and box and at the correct ride height, castor looks good with no scrubbing on full lock. But I will still need to increase max. negative camber)
The engine and 'box were to go in Easter weekend. Up until then, I had some rear shock reinforcing plates to go on and I needed to dress a few bits of the engine bay - namely underneath the radiator mount, that didn't get attention at blowover time.
Couldn't wait to get the thing running.
Bank holiday weekend! The time for the engine swap was upon me. I'd collected lots of parts in preparation for the big day - various new fittings, engine and gearbox mounts, stuff to refresh the gear linkage, M52 service parts, exhaust manifolds and downpipes etc etc...
Exhaust manifolds and downpipes were the ones made by the E30 Zone's own DanThe. I drove down to a snowbound Cannock to pick these up:
Random box of bits from BMW and various other Zone members, including some of DanThe's high-pressure power steering pipes. And more eggs.
I also picked up some cheapo Z3M type rear strut tower reinforcement plates - £9.90 a pair on Ebay. They needed a tickle with the grinder to fit snugly - but ultimately, steel plates are steel plates right?
And with all the bits and a complete donor to hand, the swap began. In order to get it all done in good time over the weekend, I employed the help of a couple of pals, Ian (who came all the way up to Warrington from Milton Keynes to help out) and Will. Ian, as a motorsport engineering graduate and long-time daily E30 driver brought a mass of experience to the project and Will had an engine crane and a 4x4 for transporting the engine and 'box - and he's more than handy with the spanners too - he's currently in the process of building a k-series MG Midegt.
Any road, on Good Friday, we attacked the donor car, got the engine to my lockup and left it there for the night.
On Saturday, Will had to leave us, but Ian hung around and we cracked on with doing the M20 flywheel and starter conversion and replacing key items on the engine and gear linkage.
Difference between the M52 dual-mass flywheel and a lightened M20 flywheel:
Crank spigot with everything removed:
Then we got to this little fooker!
This is a spacer that goes between the flywheel and crank - it's an M20 item - and it didn't fit! I can only assume it was from an auto M20 and not a manual - nevertheless, the centre bore was 2mm diameter too small and one of the holes for the flywheel bolts was too small for a little spigot thingy. I didn't have the pleasure of time here - with a borrowed engine crane and only one weekend with guaranteed help, it had to be done now. We had to somehow make this spacer work. So we opened up the middle slightly with a drill and grnding stone - it took time but it worked. The bolt hole on the other hand was a nightmare. It had to be opened to 14.5 mm. So we bought a HSS drill bit locally and tried that - to no avail. These spacers are made out of very very hard steel and it shaved the flutes right off the drill bit! We had to resort to using a conical grinding stone to open it up bit by bit. 2 hours later, we were done and it fitted snugly, like it was the correct part!
(It actually was the correct part but we'd fitted it in the wrong place. Again - more later!)
While I was *rsing about with the spigot hole, Ian had gotten on with changing the thermostat, thermostat housing, water pump and refreshed the gear linkage with new bushes and clips. We were then ready to but the engine and box back together with a new E30 325i clutch.
We fitted a new slave cylinder and refilled the gearbox with oil and we were good to go! I also realised I forgot to mention the E34 M50 sump and pickup we fitted - but yeah, thet's there too. Along with a brown temp sensor. With everything now ready to drop into the car, we called it a day and went home for refreshments and movies.
Easter Sunday, the engine went in.
We fitted the high pressure steering pipes first as this would be much easier with the engine out.
Then we jacked the car up as high as we could at the back to get as much angle as possible, to help the gearbox into the tunnel. Then we found that the legs of the engine crane wouldn't fit under the front bumper. B*llocks. So we lowered the car to the ground again, removed the front wheels and jacked the coilovers up as high as they would go. Another problem solved, onto take 2. I used some old carpet to protect the paint and we got on with dropping it in:
Clearance is bloody tight at the front - but it went in first time. Almost vertical to begin with, then slowly level out, lower, level out, lower until the box sat nicely in the transmission tunnel.
We aligned up the engine mounts, bolted the gearbox on place (only mod was to drill out the holes in the cross-member for the E21 gearbox mounts as these use an M10 thread as opposed to the E30 M8 ones). We patted ourselves on the back for a job well done.
Ian headed back down south, but then I spotted something we missed!
I loosened off the opposite mount and jacked the engine arm up on a bottle jack. This gave me enough clearance to slip it into place and we were laughing. Engine in!
I still have the propshaft to do as well as wiring and cooling but the back of this project was broken - or so I thought...
To finish up the transmission, I pulled the 328i prop centre-bearing to fit the new E30 one. Then decided I would replace the two dust caps and circlip while I was at it, but the dust caps are back order parts and I'm currently waiting for these to arrive. I also order a new prop donut, so by the time I've sorted the c*ck up on the flywheel (more on that in a bit), I will be able to bolt all this stuff right up.
Secondly, I originally intended to sort the wiring myself. But when I looked at the donor car, I was overcome with a sudden urge to take a cr*p in fear of the multi-coloured spaghetti. Good thing about taking a cr*p is it gives you time to think, so I came to the quick conclusion that although I probably could spend 50 hours of my time learning and sorting out the wiring and get it at least 80% right first time, it would just be easier to find some cash and pay DanThe (again) for one of his plug and play solutions and get it 100% right first time, whilst spending a fraction of the time. So I purchased the loom and an electric fan loom too. I also picked up a used 325i exhaust from him for a reasonable £40 - I originally planned to take this to an exhaust shop and have a single pipe backbox drafted onto it so I don't need to cut the valence and to maintain more of a 'sleeper' appearance.
Thirdly, I re-fitted the bumper strips to the doors. It was raining, so I didn't want to work outside. This was easy. But it does instantly improve the look of the car as I no longer need the masking tape down the edges of the doors to protect them. I could've done a little more work on Saturday I guess, but I owed a mate a favour for helping me out with the engine swap. So I helped him return the partially restored shell of his MG Midget to the horizontal, tidy his garage and then trial fit the 1400 k-series that is going in it. A good deal of cutting, welding and customised parts are required! Fitting a FWD Rover engine into a rear wheel drive MG with a RWD Ford gearbox in the middle is an altogether more challenging prospect than an M52 E30.
So back to my car and...er...the back supposedly being broken. I was wrong. A well regarded zoner kindly sent me a pm to inform me I'd misunderstood the term 'spacer' (Part 10) on this parts diagram:
It is in fact a washer for the flywheel bolts. This explains why it took so much
machine shop work to make it fit! Sadly, I've never seen a clutch and/or flywheel before so I made a classic error of reading too much into RealOEM where it was unclear and proceeding without checking. So I've sourced another unmolested 'spacer' so that, weather allowing, I can take the engine and gearbox out again and refit the flywheel properly. While I'm at it, I will be replacing the chipped p/s pump pulley, the aux belt and replacing a new standard 88-deg thermostat with another new 80-deg thermostat, also based on advice from E30 Zone. I'll also probably do the engine loom while it's out as that will make it a lot easier.
Thankfully, my glacial progress on this project has saved me a little bit here as wiring/cooling havn't been connected up yet meaning removing the engine and box again shouldn't be too much of a ballache. It could've been worse.
So a few weeks later, I cracked on with sorting out my balls-up with the flywheel and 'spacer'. The weather on the Saturday was quite fine and perfect for the job, although this time I had no mechanically minded aides to help me out. I did still have willing assistants though (colleagues from work paying an interest in my project!), which is not so bad. Sometimes when your craning engines in and out, all you need are a few spare sets of eyes and hands to help you out.
So I started nice and early, getting to the garage by 8.15am. My first two helpers turned up about 9am and by about 10.30 am, we had the engine and box out on the deck again.
I split the engine and box and wasted no time in taking apart the clutch and flywheel assembly. I removed the spacer I'd wrongly situated on the crank output flange and refitted the flywheel CORRECTLY with a new 'spacer' in the CORRECT place!
With everything amended and the engine and gearbox back together, slave cylinder and starter motor all replaced, we ate Burger King and my first two colleagues departed. I started cracking on with some other jobs I had to do - little things that I might as well tackle with the engine out. I replaced my 88-degree thermostat with an 80-degree one and fitted a new power steering pump pulley (the old one was chipped) and auxiliary drive belt.
While I was doing this, my next helper turned up. This poor fellow reminds me of myself when I started this project 3 years ago. Barely understanding the difference between a ratchet and a spanner. But, I was grateful for his help and between us, we cracked on. We fitted the modified manifolds - they look real good. They run pretty much as close to the engine and box as can be gotten away with to get maximum clearance to the steering linkage.
We then removed the inlet manifold and detached the engine loom completely. We began plugging in the nut-ache saving loom I had purchased. With most of this done, we craned the engine back home and called it a day.
And here's the clearance from the manifolds to the linkage. Looks closer than it really is in the pics, due to the angle but they never get closer than about 20 mm. i.e. plenty of room,
I ended up finishing at about 6pm. So not a bad day's work at all really for one spanner-wielding noob and 3 rookie assistants.
Over the following week, I put the E30 centre-bearing onto the E36 prop. I was initially confused by this prospect as it is said the E30 bearing should be fitted 'backwards' onto the E36 prop - but of course the bearings only fit one way! On closer inspection, the reason was obvious. The join on the E36 prop is the opposite side of the bearing from the E30 prop, so the bearing and housing face the opposite way. So this all became perfectly clear. Fitting the bearing the 'right' way on the E36 prop means that it's facing the opposite direction it would if it were fitted the 'right' way on an E30 prop.
Pulling the old one off was easy, but putting on the replacement front dust cap just seemed impossible. No amount of heat or pressure would get it on - even to the point that the zinc coating started peeling from the heat! So in the end I tried driving it on with the bearing. This worked, to a point, until the dust cap refused to go any further and it just bent, ending up jammed against the rubber outer rim around the bearing. So it had to be pulled off again. This was the resulting state of the part.
Coming to the conclusion that this dustcap wasn't going on without a press and the proper shaped tool, I did a spot of comparative research between the E36 and E30 centre-bearing assemblies/parts. It turns out the rubber rim on the E36 bearing is ever so slightly smaller rim diameter, so the dustcap could probably be pressed on with the bearing. Also, there is no dustcap of this sort on the E30 propshaft!
Conclusion?
Run without this dustcap for now and see what happens. Without it, the bearing, rear dustcap and retaining circlip went together easy as pie.
On to fitting the propshaft. After I'd fitted the centre bearing, I thought it was going to be easy as pie. I was wrong!
First problem was that I'd ordered the wrong prop guibo. For some reason, 328i saloons have different, smaller, guibos to all other 328is. So I'd made an assumption and had fallen foul of assumption being the cause of all f*ck ups.
Original guibo is on the left, the one I ordered is on the right:
Second problem was the centre bearing didn't fit. I don't know if this is because it was a cheap Meyle item or because it was for a pre-facelift rather than a post-facelift car. Nevertheless, this was the result once I had one bolt loosely in:
The other just wouldn't line up. So, I ordered a Lemforder guibo for the RIGHT car and a Febi-Bilstein centre bearing and housing for the RIGHT car and refitted everything.
I did notice that the housing on the FB bearing wasn't symmetrical whereas on the Meyle one it was. The whole E36 prop assembly actually sits slightly offset in the E30 transmission tunnel. Anyway, bolting this lot up was now no bother. New lock nuts from BMW used on the guibo/gearbox end of course.
Then I turned my attention to mounting the clutch/brake fluid reservoirs. Again, trying to keep chassis chopping/drilling to a minimum, I don't want to cut a hole in the battery tray, but room for the flexi-lines is tight. So I made some 90-degree fittings from 1/4" pipe and the required UNF fittings:
Of course, it's good practice to keep joins etc to a minimum to minimise fluid leaks, but as this is in the feed line and isn't under pressure, I'm quite happy that there shouldn't be any issues. I drilled the bulkhead to fit the mounting bracket that came with the reservoirs and used some nylon washers as bushes/gaskets to ensure no metal on metal action. I needed to order some lock nuts for the reservoirs, then I can get everything lined up, tightened and hopefully in order. As of now, I left it looking like this:
I also need to rearrange the feed lines slightly so that the engine doesn't pinch them closed against the battery tray on left hand bends 8O
Then I began on a job I'd been putting off due to sheer awkwardness. The front-rear brake line inside the car! I used a short section of copped to make a dummy bended pipe for the awkward part around the pedal box as this would be easier to manoeuvre. I then used this to begin making up the real line, which I will finish at the weekend.
I've also decided on wear to mount my battery (nearside of the boot, as close to the rear-seat bulkhead as it can get) and prepped a suitable earthing point, connected fuel lines, fitted bonnet badge and gearshift rubber and done various little odd jobs. As my pre-made starter lead and earth straps are now here too, I may even get round to trying to start the b*stard pretty soon.
Exhaust manifolds and downpipes were the ones made by the E30 Zone's own DanThe. I drove down to a snowbound Cannock to pick these up:
Random box of bits from BMW and various other Zone members, including some of DanThe's high-pressure power steering pipes. And more eggs.
I also picked up some cheapo Z3M type rear strut tower reinforcement plates - £9.90 a pair on Ebay. They needed a tickle with the grinder to fit snugly - but ultimately, steel plates are steel plates right?
And with all the bits and a complete donor to hand, the swap began. In order to get it all done in good time over the weekend, I employed the help of a couple of pals, Ian (who came all the way up to Warrington from Milton Keynes to help out) and Will. Ian, as a motorsport engineering graduate and long-time daily E30 driver brought a mass of experience to the project and Will had an engine crane and a 4x4 for transporting the engine and 'box - and he's more than handy with the spanners too - he's currently in the process of building a k-series MG Midegt.
Any road, on Good Friday, we attacked the donor car, got the engine to my lockup and left it there for the night.
On Saturday, Will had to leave us, but Ian hung around and we cracked on with doing the M20 flywheel and starter conversion and replacing key items on the engine and gear linkage.
Difference between the M52 dual-mass flywheel and a lightened M20 flywheel:
Crank spigot with everything removed:
Then we got to this little fooker!
This is a spacer that goes between the flywheel and crank - it's an M20 item - and it didn't fit! I can only assume it was from an auto M20 and not a manual - nevertheless, the centre bore was 2mm diameter too small and one of the holes for the flywheel bolts was too small for a little spigot thingy. I didn't have the pleasure of time here - with a borrowed engine crane and only one weekend with guaranteed help, it had to be done now. We had to somehow make this spacer work. So we opened up the middle slightly with a drill and grnding stone - it took time but it worked. The bolt hole on the other hand was a nightmare. It had to be opened to 14.5 mm. So we bought a HSS drill bit locally and tried that - to no avail. These spacers are made out of very very hard steel and it shaved the flutes right off the drill bit! We had to resort to using a conical grinding stone to open it up bit by bit. 2 hours later, we were done and it fitted snugly, like it was the correct part!
(It actually was the correct part but we'd fitted it in the wrong place. Again - more later!)
While I was *rsing about with the spigot hole, Ian had gotten on with changing the thermostat, thermostat housing, water pump and refreshed the gear linkage with new bushes and clips. We were then ready to but the engine and box back together with a new E30 325i clutch.
We fitted a new slave cylinder and refilled the gearbox with oil and we were good to go! I also realised I forgot to mention the E34 M50 sump and pickup we fitted - but yeah, thet's there too. Along with a brown temp sensor. With everything now ready to drop into the car, we called it a day and went home for refreshments and movies.
Easter Sunday, the engine went in.
We fitted the high pressure steering pipes first as this would be much easier with the engine out.
Then we jacked the car up as high as we could at the back to get as much angle as possible, to help the gearbox into the tunnel. Then we found that the legs of the engine crane wouldn't fit under the front bumper. B*llocks. So we lowered the car to the ground again, removed the front wheels and jacked the coilovers up as high as they would go. Another problem solved, onto take 2. I used some old carpet to protect the paint and we got on with dropping it in:
Clearance is bloody tight at the front - but it went in first time. Almost vertical to begin with, then slowly level out, lower, level out, lower until the box sat nicely in the transmission tunnel.
We aligned up the engine mounts, bolted the gearbox on place (only mod was to drill out the holes in the cross-member for the E21 gearbox mounts as these use an M10 thread as opposed to the E30 M8 ones). We patted ourselves on the back for a job well done.
Ian headed back down south, but then I spotted something we missed!
I loosened off the opposite mount and jacked the engine arm up on a bottle jack. This gave me enough clearance to slip it into place and we were laughing. Engine in!
I still have the propshaft to do as well as wiring and cooling but the back of this project was broken - or so I thought...
To finish up the transmission, I pulled the 328i prop centre-bearing to fit the new E30 one. Then decided I would replace the two dust caps and circlip while I was at it, but the dust caps are back order parts and I'm currently waiting for these to arrive. I also order a new prop donut, so by the time I've sorted the c*ck up on the flywheel (more on that in a bit), I will be able to bolt all this stuff right up.
Secondly, I originally intended to sort the wiring myself. But when I looked at the donor car, I was overcome with a sudden urge to take a cr*p in fear of the multi-coloured spaghetti. Good thing about taking a cr*p is it gives you time to think, so I came to the quick conclusion that although I probably could spend 50 hours of my time learning and sorting out the wiring and get it at least 80% right first time, it would just be easier to find some cash and pay DanThe (again) for one of his plug and play solutions and get it 100% right first time, whilst spending a fraction of the time. So I purchased the loom and an electric fan loom too. I also picked up a used 325i exhaust from him for a reasonable £40 - I originally planned to take this to an exhaust shop and have a single pipe backbox drafted onto it so I don't need to cut the valence and to maintain more of a 'sleeper' appearance.
Thirdly, I re-fitted the bumper strips to the doors. It was raining, so I didn't want to work outside. This was easy. But it does instantly improve the look of the car as I no longer need the masking tape down the edges of the doors to protect them. I could've done a little more work on Saturday I guess, but I owed a mate a favour for helping me out with the engine swap. So I helped him return the partially restored shell of his MG Midget to the horizontal, tidy his garage and then trial fit the 1400 k-series that is going in it. A good deal of cutting, welding and customised parts are required! Fitting a FWD Rover engine into a rear wheel drive MG with a RWD Ford gearbox in the middle is an altogether more challenging prospect than an M52 E30.
So back to my car and...er...the back supposedly being broken. I was wrong. A well regarded zoner kindly sent me a pm to inform me I'd misunderstood the term 'spacer' (Part 10) on this parts diagram:
It is in fact a washer for the flywheel bolts. This explains why it took so much
machine shop work to make it fit! Sadly, I've never seen a clutch and/or flywheel before so I made a classic error of reading too much into RealOEM where it was unclear and proceeding without checking. So I've sourced another unmolested 'spacer' so that, weather allowing, I can take the engine and gearbox out again and refit the flywheel properly. While I'm at it, I will be replacing the chipped p/s pump pulley, the aux belt and replacing a new standard 88-deg thermostat with another new 80-deg thermostat, also based on advice from E30 Zone. I'll also probably do the engine loom while it's out as that will make it a lot easier.Thankfully, my glacial progress on this project has saved me a little bit here as wiring/cooling havn't been connected up yet meaning removing the engine and box again shouldn't be too much of a ballache. It could've been worse.
So a few weeks later, I cracked on with sorting out my balls-up with the flywheel and 'spacer'. The weather on the Saturday was quite fine and perfect for the job, although this time I had no mechanically minded aides to help me out. I did still have willing assistants though (colleagues from work paying an interest in my project!), which is not so bad. Sometimes when your craning engines in and out, all you need are a few spare sets of eyes and hands to help you out.
So I started nice and early, getting to the garage by 8.15am. My first two helpers turned up about 9am and by about 10.30 am, we had the engine and box out on the deck again.
I split the engine and box and wasted no time in taking apart the clutch and flywheel assembly. I removed the spacer I'd wrongly situated on the crank output flange and refitted the flywheel CORRECTLY with a new 'spacer' in the CORRECT place!
With everything amended and the engine and gearbox back together, slave cylinder and starter motor all replaced, we ate Burger King and my first two colleagues departed. I started cracking on with some other jobs I had to do - little things that I might as well tackle with the engine out. I replaced my 88-degree thermostat with an 80-degree one and fitted a new power steering pump pulley (the old one was chipped) and auxiliary drive belt.
While I was doing this, my next helper turned up. This poor fellow reminds me of myself when I started this project 3 years ago. Barely understanding the difference between a ratchet and a spanner. But, I was grateful for his help and between us, we cracked on. We fitted the modified manifolds - they look real good. They run pretty much as close to the engine and box as can be gotten away with to get maximum clearance to the steering linkage.
We then removed the inlet manifold and detached the engine loom completely. We began plugging in the nut-ache saving loom I had purchased. With most of this done, we craned the engine back home and called it a day.
And here's the clearance from the manifolds to the linkage. Looks closer than it really is in the pics, due to the angle but they never get closer than about 20 mm. i.e. plenty of room,
I ended up finishing at about 6pm. So not a bad day's work at all really for one spanner-wielding noob and 3 rookie assistants.
Over the following week, I put the E30 centre-bearing onto the E36 prop. I was initially confused by this prospect as it is said the E30 bearing should be fitted 'backwards' onto the E36 prop - but of course the bearings only fit one way! On closer inspection, the reason was obvious. The join on the E36 prop is the opposite side of the bearing from the E30 prop, so the bearing and housing face the opposite way. So this all became perfectly clear. Fitting the bearing the 'right' way on the E36 prop means that it's facing the opposite direction it would if it were fitted the 'right' way on an E30 prop.
Pulling the old one off was easy, but putting on the replacement front dust cap just seemed impossible. No amount of heat or pressure would get it on - even to the point that the zinc coating started peeling from the heat! So in the end I tried driving it on with the bearing. This worked, to a point, until the dust cap refused to go any further and it just bent, ending up jammed against the rubber outer rim around the bearing. So it had to be pulled off again. This was the resulting state of the part.
Coming to the conclusion that this dustcap wasn't going on without a press and the proper shaped tool, I did a spot of comparative research between the E36 and E30 centre-bearing assemblies/parts. It turns out the rubber rim on the E36 bearing is ever so slightly smaller rim diameter, so the dustcap could probably be pressed on with the bearing. Also, there is no dustcap of this sort on the E30 propshaft!
Conclusion?
Run without this dustcap for now and see what happens. Without it, the bearing, rear dustcap and retaining circlip went together easy as pie.
On to fitting the propshaft. After I'd fitted the centre bearing, I thought it was going to be easy as pie. I was wrong!
First problem was that I'd ordered the wrong prop guibo. For some reason, 328i saloons have different, smaller, guibos to all other 328is. So I'd made an assumption and had fallen foul of assumption being the cause of all f*ck ups.
Original guibo is on the left, the one I ordered is on the right:
Second problem was the centre bearing didn't fit. I don't know if this is because it was a cheap Meyle item or because it was for a pre-facelift rather than a post-facelift car. Nevertheless, this was the result once I had one bolt loosely in:
The other just wouldn't line up. So, I ordered a Lemforder guibo for the RIGHT car and a Febi-Bilstein centre bearing and housing for the RIGHT car and refitted everything.
I did notice that the housing on the FB bearing wasn't symmetrical whereas on the Meyle one it was. The whole E36 prop assembly actually sits slightly offset in the E30 transmission tunnel. Anyway, bolting this lot up was now no bother. New lock nuts from BMW used on the guibo/gearbox end of course.
Then I turned my attention to mounting the clutch/brake fluid reservoirs. Again, trying to keep chassis chopping/drilling to a minimum, I don't want to cut a hole in the battery tray, but room for the flexi-lines is tight. So I made some 90-degree fittings from 1/4" pipe and the required UNF fittings:
Of course, it's good practice to keep joins etc to a minimum to minimise fluid leaks, but as this is in the feed line and isn't under pressure, I'm quite happy that there shouldn't be any issues. I drilled the bulkhead to fit the mounting bracket that came with the reservoirs and used some nylon washers as bushes/gaskets to ensure no metal on metal action. I needed to order some lock nuts for the reservoirs, then I can get everything lined up, tightened and hopefully in order. As of now, I left it looking like this:
I also need to rearrange the feed lines slightly so that the engine doesn't pinch them closed against the battery tray on left hand bends 8O
Then I began on a job I'd been putting off due to sheer awkwardness. The front-rear brake line inside the car! I used a short section of copped to make a dummy bended pipe for the awkward part around the pedal box as this would be easier to manoeuvre. I then used this to begin making up the real line, which I will finish at the weekend.
I've also decided on wear to mount my battery (nearside of the boot, as close to the rear-seat bulkhead as it can get) and prepped a suitable earthing point, connected fuel lines, fitted bonnet badge and gearshift rubber and done various little odd jobs. As my pre-made starter lead and earth straps are now here too, I may even get round to trying to start the b*stard pretty soon.
M159V8 said:
I seem to remember seeing a picture of a red Audi where this happened
If that was the ~600bhp S2 which was used in racing in the 'States, I think it had more to do with being launched roof-first at a tree at more than 100 miles per hour than the design of the cage. Remember, Georg Plasa was killed at about that speed in a hillclimb car with an FIA-approved cage...My silicon radiator top/bottom hoses arrived. These are cheapo ones from China - not something I would normally invest in to be said, but I did quite a bit of research on this Winner Racing seller on Ebay beforehand and nobody has said anything negative about their hoses - some people (Supra/Scooby forums and the like) have had them fitted for up to a year with no issues. So at £30 delivered, at least worth a punt I thought.
Yeah, unfortunately I wasn't thinking when I took that pic. Anyway they seem to be polyester reinforced 4 ply just like the real deal. So I'll let you guys know how they work out once it's running. I am still waiting for my remaining hose bits and pieces (Ash for these) to arrive so I can plumb in the heater matrix and refit the manifold. For now I will bypass the throttle body with a length of hose until I can get someone with a welder to plug the holes in the block/pipe properly.
I chopped up the cowling on the E36 electric fan to make it fit in front of the radiator in the E30.
I was going to mount this with a couple of small brackets and bolts.
Finally got fluid reservoirs mounted properly.
But I need to order some p-clips to finish of the front-rear brake line. Either way it's been routed fully and cut to length so that should be a half hour job when I can get some. Then my brake/clutch circuits will be complete :twisted:
I've also changed the oil filter and filled the engine up with oil. That was more of a saga than I'd hoped. The oil obviously hadn't been changed in some time - I knew this from the state of the rocker cover when I cleaned out under there - but the filter came apart in my hands leaving the bottom bit stuck in the housing. Half an hour of arsing about trying to pry it out with a pair of screwdrivers eventually resulted in breaking the plastic. Then I just pulled it out with my fingers. Note to self - if this happens again, just break the plastic.
Then I moved onto finishing up on the wiring. Fitted a pair of 16 mm2 earth straps, making sure all connections were clean and free of paint/oxidation:
Then moved onto interior wiring, labelling what I could figure out and connecting what can be connected.
So now, provided that I have my hose bits (so I can refit the manifold without having to remove it again), a battery and some wiring conundrums sorted, it will be time to turn the key and see what does
Yeah, unfortunately I wasn't thinking when I took that pic. Anyway they seem to be polyester reinforced 4 ply just like the real deal. So I'll let you guys know how they work out once it's running. I am still waiting for my remaining hose bits and pieces (Ash for these) to arrive so I can plumb in the heater matrix and refit the manifold. For now I will bypass the throttle body with a length of hose until I can get someone with a welder to plug the holes in the block/pipe properly.
I chopped up the cowling on the E36 electric fan to make it fit in front of the radiator in the E30.
I was going to mount this with a couple of small brackets and bolts.
Finally got fluid reservoirs mounted properly.
But I need to order some p-clips to finish of the front-rear brake line. Either way it's been routed fully and cut to length so that should be a half hour job when I can get some. Then my brake/clutch circuits will be complete :twisted:
I've also changed the oil filter and filled the engine up with oil. That was more of a saga than I'd hoped. The oil obviously hadn't been changed in some time - I knew this from the state of the rocker cover when I cleaned out under there - but the filter came apart in my hands leaving the bottom bit stuck in the housing. Half an hour of arsing about trying to pry it out with a pair of screwdrivers eventually resulted in breaking the plastic. Then I just pulled it out with my fingers. Note to self - if this happens again, just break the plastic.
Then I moved onto finishing up on the wiring. Fitted a pair of 16 mm2 earth straps, making sure all connections were clean and free of paint/oxidation:
Then moved onto interior wiring, labelling what I could figure out and connecting what can be connected.
So now, provided that I have my hose bits (so I can refit the manifold without having to remove it again), a battery and some wiring conundrums sorted, it will be time to turn the key and see what does
This instalment was never going to go well after I'd snapped the horn-push switch whilst talking bucket seats out the car.
Despite my fears, this is not an NLA part from BMW and a week later I had a new one sitting around ready to fit. In the meantime, I'd begun to crack on with sorting heater matrix hoses. I wanted to get these done ASAP because that would mean I could fit the inlet manifold (without having to remove it again later) and try to start the thing! Unfortunately, this has proved quite difficult. It's the block to matrix-in hose that's the crux of the problem, due a very tight 90-degree bend with different sized outlet/inlet (22 mm to 17 mm to be precise). It wasn't helped by an attack of retarditis the first time I measured up either and I ordered an assortment of hoses and t-clips that fitted - well, nothing. To be frank.
Anyway once I had the right sized hoses and clips, I tried a 22 mm - 16 mm reducing elbow at 45-degrees and a length of flexi hose, using a plastic joiner.
This was the closest I got. But although it may have done the job, it was too bodgetastic for my liking and I wasn't convinced it would stay kink free with the engine moving around under cornering.
I also tried some 22mm flexi-hose with that wire helix reinforcement in it, but that wasn't flexible enough and kinked too readily. I did notice that some 13 mm wire reinforced stuff was easily flexible enough, so now I have my fingers crossed that the 19 mm hose I have now ordered will be too. Other than that, it's going to be a custom hose jobby - more money thrown at something that shouldn't have been a problem
Anyway, I did manage to bypass the throttle body coolant feed and plug the various redundant vacuum take-offs in the M50 manifold.
I just need to plug the take-off for the brake servo now seeing as I no longer need that, then this is pretty much ready to go on. As E30BeemerLad mentions in his M50 manifold swap guide, the hose clip that goes from the underside of the manifold to the ICV fits about as well as - well, the appendage is loose in the hole, put it that way. Was thinking some PTFE plumber's tape would solve this.
For good measure, the car has now been fuelled and a new fuel filter has been fitted, all in preparation for starting!
Still trying to put off the heater hose, I tidied up the under-bonnet wiring and relocated the p/s fluid reservoir to make room for the inlet elbow. I just need to make some sort of bracket to mount the power terminal.
There really is no shortage of stuff to do, I just needed to get the obsession with starting out my head for a little while! Other wiring jobs I needed to do were cut off the plug for the stock brake light switch and extend the loom to reach the in-line hydraulic switch I'd fitted. I also had to do something similar for the reverse light switch, seeing as it is now gearbox mounted rather than gear lever mounted. Using the wiring diagrams on the wiki, I ordered the appropriately sized and coloured wiring from Auto Electric Supplies, at the bank-breaking price of about 30p a metre. Then I set to work with strippers, clippers and a soldering iron.
The dash is now also ready to go in! Luckily, for the 2 years or so it's been in my shed, the mice havn't got to it! Sadly, the roll cage is going to interfere with the side vents so I'm going to have to cut shese short, just keeping the fronts in for show and use some ducting to direct air stealthily from under the dash. I'll be mounting the brake bias controller in the stereo blanking plate and will probably put the headlight level adjusters where the OBC once lived. I also plan to fabricate a little plate from sheet ally to make up a small console for potentially mounting VDO guages and a kill switch in the future.
This little spate of work was finished by finishing off the front-rear brake line inside the car and fitting the Oddyseey PC680 battery I'd ordered, following recommendations from guys on here. The battery relocation kit reaches the positive terminal easily enough and I'll put an earthing point on the steel inside of the nearside wheelarch. I've also insulated the cage local to the batttery because it's quite tight and I don't want any accidental short circuits!
Okay, so to resolve the heater hose issue, I checked this stuff out. 19 mm wire-reinforced silicon hose. First test was kink resistance, which it seemed to pass with flying colours:
So I set about sorting out heater hoses for hopefully the final time. It actually wasn't too difficult - the hose stretch easily enough up to the 22 mm side outlet/inlet on the engine yet was still fairly snug on the 18 mm heater matrix inlet/outlet. So here we go, heater hoses connected up, using stainless t-bolts, with no kinks
Now I could finally set about fitting the inlet manifold. I plugged the hole forthe servo vacuum takeoff with a screw and some ptfe tape and I improved the fit of the inlet-icv pipe with more ptfe tape...
This was more of a pain in the ass than I originally envisaged - I had to take off the loom carrier and cut one of my heater hoses an inch shorter to change the angle at which it came off the matrix outlet, but after some fiddling, it was on
By this time, as I'd taken a break at lunch to meet my missus in town and had dropped some tools off at a mate's and spent some time scratching our heads over his k-series Midget build, it was about time to pack up.
But...I was only 3 plugs and a battery connect-up away from a trial start. It would've been rude not to try. Right?
Video: http://www.youtube.com/v/dHL8IcOmY8o
Well - yeah. Wasn't worried at the time, didn't have any time to do any diagnosis stuff, I just disconnected the battery and shoved it back in the garage! But I didn't hear a thing from the fuel pump so that was my first port of call. Also - when I got home I realised that I might have removed the fuel pump fuse when I parked the car up 3 years ago...as a halfarsed security measure.
Next mission = get it running.
Despite my fears, this is not an NLA part from BMW and a week later I had a new one sitting around ready to fit. In the meantime, I'd begun to crack on with sorting heater matrix hoses. I wanted to get these done ASAP because that would mean I could fit the inlet manifold (without having to remove it again later) and try to start the thing! Unfortunately, this has proved quite difficult. It's the block to matrix-in hose that's the crux of the problem, due a very tight 90-degree bend with different sized outlet/inlet (22 mm to 17 mm to be precise). It wasn't helped by an attack of retarditis the first time I measured up either and I ordered an assortment of hoses and t-clips that fitted - well, nothing. To be frank.
Anyway once I had the right sized hoses and clips, I tried a 22 mm - 16 mm reducing elbow at 45-degrees and a length of flexi hose, using a plastic joiner.
This was the closest I got. But although it may have done the job, it was too bodgetastic for my liking and I wasn't convinced it would stay kink free with the engine moving around under cornering.
I also tried some 22mm flexi-hose with that wire helix reinforcement in it, but that wasn't flexible enough and kinked too readily. I did notice that some 13 mm wire reinforced stuff was easily flexible enough, so now I have my fingers crossed that the 19 mm hose I have now ordered will be too. Other than that, it's going to be a custom hose jobby - more money thrown at something that shouldn't have been a problem
Anyway, I did manage to bypass the throttle body coolant feed and plug the various redundant vacuum take-offs in the M50 manifold.
I just need to plug the take-off for the brake servo now seeing as I no longer need that, then this is pretty much ready to go on. As E30BeemerLad mentions in his M50 manifold swap guide, the hose clip that goes from the underside of the manifold to the ICV fits about as well as - well, the appendage is loose in the hole, put it that way. Was thinking some PTFE plumber's tape would solve this.
For good measure, the car has now been fuelled and a new fuel filter has been fitted, all in preparation for starting!
Still trying to put off the heater hose, I tidied up the under-bonnet wiring and relocated the p/s fluid reservoir to make room for the inlet elbow. I just need to make some sort of bracket to mount the power terminal.
There really is no shortage of stuff to do, I just needed to get the obsession with starting out my head for a little while! Other wiring jobs I needed to do were cut off the plug for the stock brake light switch and extend the loom to reach the in-line hydraulic switch I'd fitted. I also had to do something similar for the reverse light switch, seeing as it is now gearbox mounted rather than gear lever mounted. Using the wiring diagrams on the wiki, I ordered the appropriately sized and coloured wiring from Auto Electric Supplies, at the bank-breaking price of about 30p a metre. Then I set to work with strippers, clippers and a soldering iron.
The dash is now also ready to go in! Luckily, for the 2 years or so it's been in my shed, the mice havn't got to it! Sadly, the roll cage is going to interfere with the side vents so I'm going to have to cut shese short, just keeping the fronts in for show and use some ducting to direct air stealthily from under the dash. I'll be mounting the brake bias controller in the stereo blanking plate and will probably put the headlight level adjusters where the OBC once lived. I also plan to fabricate a little plate from sheet ally to make up a small console for potentially mounting VDO guages and a kill switch in the future.
This little spate of work was finished by finishing off the front-rear brake line inside the car and fitting the Oddyseey PC680 battery I'd ordered, following recommendations from guys on here. The battery relocation kit reaches the positive terminal easily enough and I'll put an earthing point on the steel inside of the nearside wheelarch. I've also insulated the cage local to the batttery because it's quite tight and I don't want any accidental short circuits!
Okay, so to resolve the heater hose issue, I checked this stuff out. 19 mm wire-reinforced silicon hose. First test was kink resistance, which it seemed to pass with flying colours:
So I set about sorting out heater hoses for hopefully the final time. It actually wasn't too difficult - the hose stretch easily enough up to the 22 mm side outlet/inlet on the engine yet was still fairly snug on the 18 mm heater matrix inlet/outlet. So here we go, heater hoses connected up, using stainless t-bolts, with no kinks
Now I could finally set about fitting the inlet manifold. I plugged the hole forthe servo vacuum takeoff with a screw and some ptfe tape and I improved the fit of the inlet-icv pipe with more ptfe tape...
This was more of a pain in the ass than I originally envisaged - I had to take off the loom carrier and cut one of my heater hoses an inch shorter to change the angle at which it came off the matrix outlet, but after some fiddling, it was on
By this time, as I'd taken a break at lunch to meet my missus in town and had dropped some tools off at a mate's and spent some time scratching our heads over his k-series Midget build, it was about time to pack up.
But...I was only 3 plugs and a battery connect-up away from a trial start. It would've been rude not to try. Right?
Video: http://www.youtube.com/v/dHL8IcOmY8o
Well - yeah. Wasn't worried at the time, didn't have any time to do any diagnosis stuff, I just disconnected the battery and shoved it back in the garage! But I didn't hear a thing from the fuel pump so that was my first port of call. Also - when I got home I realised that I might have removed the fuel pump fuse when I parked the car up 3 years ago...as a halfarsed security measure.
Next mission = get it running.
I couldn't work on the car yesterday due to gardening and BBQ'ing duties, but I did, between jobs, get to sort out my air filter. I had purchased a BMC Carbon Dynamic Airbox on Ebay, 2nd hand off a breaker, for the grand total of £14.99. With another £15 spent on a cleaning kit, this was one job I could do in little bits.
As it was recieved:
Filter element was undamagaed. So it was a bit of a bargain, given the near -£200 retail for one of these.
Instructions basically say soak in supplied detergent, rinse, leave to dry overnight, oil, drain, refit. So this is what I did. I thought the filter looked clean, until I soaked it in detergent!
Anyway, one clean filter:
One oiled filter:
And back into a well-scrubbed airbox.
This certainly beats the bodge job I had in mind of putting a cone filter inside a stock airbox. And probably cheaper.
Then today, I had some help from k-series midget dude and we set about sorting out the starting issue. Some precursory checks showed that there was no spark and the fuel pipes were dry. Some further investigation showed that there was no power to the fuel pump. This was leading us down an EWS fault path, but checking the basics quickly showed that although there was 12V live at the starter cable on the under-bonnet terminal, there was nothing at the ECU/engine loom live. Followed the battery cable back, undid a suspicious-looking large wrapping of insulation tape and found that the fusible link was gone. I assume this was gone when I purchased the battery relocation kit, but nevertheless we temporarily bridged it and tried again. Hey presto, fuel pump primed and engine coughed into life with no hesitation.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/v/dyzUac0HCmk&feature=y...
Warning: manifold only. Loud!
I now just need to source a replacement fusible link.
On a different note, after I was packing up, I went to disconnect the battery - once the earth was off, I was undoing the +ve terminal and dropped my spanner - just my luck it landed across the 2 terminals and shorted the battery! Tell you what, these Odyssey batteries generate some big sparks. Scared the F*cking sh*te out of me! Anyway, I now hope I havn't fried the battery. Will find out when I go to fit the dash on Wednesday...and I must fit something there to prevent dropped tools shorting terminals again
Right, where was I up to? Yeah - it's running. But I had lots of tidying up stuff to do.
Now, I thought fitting the dash would be easy. I'd made my cardboard templates for the cutouts, cut the dash as carefully as I could, re-assembled everything after going through the wiring and soldering/shrink wrapping bodged stereo/Clifford immobiliser b*llocks and I was looking forward to everything slotting nicely in place and connecting it all up.
Of course, I'd cut the dash to fit in it's original place, without any consideration of how to actually get it there in the first place. Could I get it past the rollcage and under the screen? Could I b*llocks. There was absolutely no way it was going in. I sat and scratched my head, briefly considered doing away with the dash completely - then settled on more cutting. This meant - because of the way I had cut it before, to sit around the cage on the A pillars, I had to cut out the original mounting tabs too. This meant a bit of jiggery-pokery to figure out exactly where it should fit and making up a few new mounts.
Trial-fitting the dash:
Before I secured anything, I plugged in all the instruments and fired it up again to make sure they all worked. Thankfully, all was good. My friend had also come to visit me with a brew and she sh*t a brick when it fired, it was awesome. So I set about making some new dashboard mounts. They're not pretty, and I mean to revisit this perhaps with a new dash, perhaps with no dash, at some point in the future. But it is really solid and it is in the right place.
Offside bolted into the standard dash mounting spot and bolted through the steel on the dash:
Nearside bracket secured to cage with t-bolt and screwed into steel on the dash:
So with everything in place, working and running, I set about re-fitting the loom carrier in the engine bay and tidying it all up for the second time - after I had to remove it to fit the inlet manifold.
Onto cooling. In another thread, I was confused about how to securely fit the electric fan from the donor car, but I figured it out through the use of more aluminium bracketry. I also modified the nearside M40 radiator mounting to bolt to the mount on the chassis and ensure the radiator fit snugly, as two offside mountings ended up too far apart.
Now everything is secure and snug-as and the electric fan is all wired up using one of DanThe's looms.
Now, I'd purchased some silicone radiator hoses - from Winner Racing on Ebay - and they seemed to be good enough quality. They also fit really well - in their stock application (E36 S50). But in this application, the bottom hose needed a little trimming to fit and the top hose was...well...f*cking miles off.
I also couldn't trim this one as the thinner part of the hose was too small to persuade onto the thermostat housing. No way in hell that was going on. Instead, I butchered the stock M52 top hose and plan to wrap that in silicone tape - purely for aesthetic reasons, so it matches the other hoses - and utilise that. That fits perfectly well.
I'd been thinking about fitting the bucket seats for a while. I'd considered modifying some stock side mounts and even drew up some mounts in solidworks - a version that would bolt to the floor and a version that would bolt to the stock sliders. However, the cost of laser cutting plus the hassle of further 'fine tuning' a prototype and then getting a better two sets cut really wasn't worth the time and money. I ended up purchasing two sets of these from Massive Brakes in Canada:
http://www.massivebrakes.com/accessories.php?p=e30...
They mount to the stock sliders and all R&D has been done. They even come with seat bolts, spacers and all the kit needed to fit. They are reasonably priced but the sting in the tail is $95 shipping. Still, even then all in at circa £220 they represented good enough value as a plug and play solution. If you're willing to wait 8 weeks, shipping costs 'just' $50. But I'm not waiting 8 weeks.
So that's about where I'm at. Not too far off and from here-on in most jobs are tidying/fixing jobs. I don't have much in the way of weekends this month though so I hope the weather stays good so I can get some quality evening time in. I'm still hoping to get it MOT'd end of June/early July and I think I'm still on schedule. Provided there are no more major hold-ups...
...and for this thread on Pistonheads, that's us up to date! Updates to follow as they happen
As it was recieved:
Filter element was undamagaed. So it was a bit of a bargain, given the near -£200 retail for one of these.
Instructions basically say soak in supplied detergent, rinse, leave to dry overnight, oil, drain, refit. So this is what I did. I thought the filter looked clean, until I soaked it in detergent!
Anyway, one clean filter:One oiled filter:
And back into a well-scrubbed airbox.
This certainly beats the bodge job I had in mind of putting a cone filter inside a stock airbox. And probably cheaper.
Then today, I had some help from k-series midget dude and we set about sorting out the starting issue. Some precursory checks showed that there was no spark and the fuel pipes were dry. Some further investigation showed that there was no power to the fuel pump. This was leading us down an EWS fault path, but checking the basics quickly showed that although there was 12V live at the starter cable on the under-bonnet terminal, there was nothing at the ECU/engine loom live. Followed the battery cable back, undid a suspicious-looking large wrapping of insulation tape and found that the fusible link was gone. I assume this was gone when I purchased the battery relocation kit, but nevertheless we temporarily bridged it and tried again. Hey presto, fuel pump primed and engine coughed into life with no hesitation.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/v/dyzUac0HCmk&feature=y...
Warning: manifold only. Loud!
I now just need to source a replacement fusible link.
On a different note, after I was packing up, I went to disconnect the battery - once the earth was off, I was undoing the +ve terminal and dropped my spanner - just my luck it landed across the 2 terminals and shorted the battery! Tell you what, these Odyssey batteries generate some big sparks. Scared the F*cking sh*te out of me! Anyway, I now hope I havn't fried the battery. Will find out when I go to fit the dash on Wednesday...and I must fit something there to prevent dropped tools shorting terminals again
Right, where was I up to? Yeah - it's running. But I had lots of tidying up stuff to do.
Now, I thought fitting the dash would be easy. I'd made my cardboard templates for the cutouts, cut the dash as carefully as I could, re-assembled everything after going through the wiring and soldering/shrink wrapping bodged stereo/Clifford immobiliser b*llocks and I was looking forward to everything slotting nicely in place and connecting it all up.
Of course, I'd cut the dash to fit in it's original place, without any consideration of how to actually get it there in the first place. Could I get it past the rollcage and under the screen? Could I b*llocks. There was absolutely no way it was going in. I sat and scratched my head, briefly considered doing away with the dash completely - then settled on more cutting. This meant - because of the way I had cut it before, to sit around the cage on the A pillars, I had to cut out the original mounting tabs too. This meant a bit of jiggery-pokery to figure out exactly where it should fit and making up a few new mounts.
Trial-fitting the dash:
Before I secured anything, I plugged in all the instruments and fired it up again to make sure they all worked. Thankfully, all was good. My friend had also come to visit me with a brew and she sh*t a brick when it fired, it was awesome. So I set about making some new dashboard mounts. They're not pretty, and I mean to revisit this perhaps with a new dash, perhaps with no dash, at some point in the future. But it is really solid and it is in the right place.
Offside bolted into the standard dash mounting spot and bolted through the steel on the dash:
Nearside bracket secured to cage with t-bolt and screwed into steel on the dash:
So with everything in place, working and running, I set about re-fitting the loom carrier in the engine bay and tidying it all up for the second time - after I had to remove it to fit the inlet manifold.
Onto cooling. In another thread, I was confused about how to securely fit the electric fan from the donor car, but I figured it out through the use of more aluminium bracketry. I also modified the nearside M40 radiator mounting to bolt to the mount on the chassis and ensure the radiator fit snugly, as two offside mountings ended up too far apart.
Now everything is secure and snug-as and the electric fan is all wired up using one of DanThe's looms.
Now, I'd purchased some silicone radiator hoses - from Winner Racing on Ebay - and they seemed to be good enough quality. They also fit really well - in their stock application (E36 S50). But in this application, the bottom hose needed a little trimming to fit and the top hose was...well...f*cking miles off.
I also couldn't trim this one as the thinner part of the hose was too small to persuade onto the thermostat housing. No way in hell that was going on. Instead, I butchered the stock M52 top hose and plan to wrap that in silicone tape - purely for aesthetic reasons, so it matches the other hoses - and utilise that. That fits perfectly well.
I'd been thinking about fitting the bucket seats for a while. I'd considered modifying some stock side mounts and even drew up some mounts in solidworks - a version that would bolt to the floor and a version that would bolt to the stock sliders. However, the cost of laser cutting plus the hassle of further 'fine tuning' a prototype and then getting a better two sets cut really wasn't worth the time and money. I ended up purchasing two sets of these from Massive Brakes in Canada:
http://www.massivebrakes.com/accessories.php?p=e30...
They mount to the stock sliders and all R&D has been done. They even come with seat bolts, spacers and all the kit needed to fit. They are reasonably priced but the sting in the tail is $95 shipping. Still, even then all in at circa £220 they represented good enough value as a plug and play solution. If you're willing to wait 8 weeks, shipping costs 'just' $50. But I'm not waiting 8 weeks.
So that's about where I'm at. Not too far off and from here-on in most jobs are tidying/fixing jobs. I don't have much in the way of weekends this month though so I hope the weather stays good so I can get some quality evening time in. I'm still hoping to get it MOT'd end of June/early July and I think I'm still on schedule. Provided there are no more major hold-ups...
...and for this thread on Pistonheads, that's us up to date! Updates to follow as they happen
Firstly, fantastic build thread. I'd love to do something similar, I'd give it a good go mechanically, but its the money that worries me!
In the video, there is a hose missing at the front of the block, is this not a coolant hose? Probably a bad idea to get it running with that missing!
Can I ask how much the spray was too? I got prices for an old E30, but it was sky high (over £3k to fix some rust and spray). Also general spend, unless you plan on doing a summary at the end? I'd love to do a similar project but restore a E30 to 'as new' rather than a track car, probably with something mental under the bonnet.
In the video, there is a hose missing at the front of the block, is this not a coolant hose? Probably a bad idea to get it running with that missing!
Can I ask how much the spray was too? I got prices for an old E30, but it was sky high (over £3k to fix some rust and spray). Also general spend, unless you plan on doing a summary at the end? I'd love to do a similar project but restore a E30 to 'as new' rather than a track car, probably with something mental under the bonnet.
illmonkey said:
Firstly, fantastic build thread. I'd love to do something similar, I'd give it a good go mechanically, but its the money that worries me!
In the video, there is a hose missing at the front of the block, is this not a coolant hose? Probably a bad idea to get it running with that missing!
Can I ask how much the spray was too? I got prices for an old E30, but it was sky high (over £3k to fix some rust and spray). Also general spend, unless you plan on doing a summary at the end? I'd love to do a similar project but restore a E30 to 'as new' rather than a track car, probably with something mental under the bonnet.
Thanks mate. Yeah, coolant wasn't plumbed in when we test started it but the engine wasn't running for any more than about 20 seconds. Probably a minute or two's grace running an engine with no coolant under no load, but didn't want to push it. In the video, there is a hose missing at the front of the block, is this not a coolant hose? Probably a bad idea to get it running with that missing!
Can I ask how much the spray was too? I got prices for an old E30, but it was sky high (over £3k to fix some rust and spray). Also general spend, unless you plan on doing a summary at the end? I'd love to do a similar project but restore a E30 to 'as new' rather than a track car, probably with something mental under the bonnet.
Spray was £800 on top of the bodywork and cage, but it was just a prep and blowover, a 'proper' job would probably be best part of £2k if you stripped the shell yourself.
I've tried to keep the project under £10k, including initial cost of the car and fluids & consumables. Over 3 years, I don't think that's too bad - call £3300 a year about £65 a week and it's not too expensive a hobby! These days people spend more than that a week going out on the p*ss and puking it up in the morning. Plus the car is probably worth at least £4k in parts now if I decided to break or sell on. Admittedly, I've probably gone a little over now and there is some more bodywork to be done, but it's not far off - and £3k of it is the initial cost of the car + rollcage, welding and paint.
Hope that helps
motorhole said:
illmonkey said:
Firstly, fantastic build thread. I'd love to do something similar, I'd give it a good go mechanically, but its the money that worries me!
In the video, there is a hose missing at the front of the block, is this not a coolant hose? Probably a bad idea to get it running with that missing!
Can I ask how much the spray was too? I got prices for an old E30, but it was sky high (over £3k to fix some rust and spray). Also general spend, unless you plan on doing a summary at the end? I'd love to do a similar project but restore a E30 to 'as new' rather than a track car, probably with something mental under the bonnet.
Thanks mate. Yeah, coolant wasn't plumbed in when we test started it but the engine wasn't running for any more than about 20 seconds. Probably a minute or two's grace running an engine with no coolant under no load, but didn't want to push it. In the video, there is a hose missing at the front of the block, is this not a coolant hose? Probably a bad idea to get it running with that missing!
Can I ask how much the spray was too? I got prices for an old E30, but it was sky high (over £3k to fix some rust and spray). Also general spend, unless you plan on doing a summary at the end? I'd love to do a similar project but restore a E30 to 'as new' rather than a track car, probably with something mental under the bonnet.
Spray was £800 on top of the bodywork and cage, but it was just a prep and blowover, a 'proper' job would probably be best part of £2k if you stripped the shell yourself.
I've tried to keep the project under £10k, including initial cost of the car and fluids & consumables. Over 3 years, I don't think that's too bad - call £3300 a year about £65 a week and it's not too expensive a hobby! These days people spend more than that a week going out on the p*ss and puking it up in the morning. Plus the car is probably worth at least £4k in parts now if I decided to break or sell on. Admittedly, I've probably gone a little over now and there is some more bodywork to be done, but it's not far off - and £3k of it is the initial cost of the car + rollcage, welding and paint.
Hope that helps
I figured so. The bit I'm referring to is the thermostat housing (right?) and with no coolant, no worries. And as you say, a few seconds won't have even got the water warm, if it had it.
Ah, so not a proper primer job. This is what I was quoted for.
Not a bad budget, that is also buying uprated parts, as its a track car, if it was just a refresh it'd be cheaper. Although saying that, you'd end up using OEM parts, which will cost a packet.
Good luck with the rest of it!
Shame that PPC Forum got hacked and destroyed by some scumbags from indonesia (looked up who'd done it 
)
Still, glad to see you were able to salvage the thread and bring it here Did enjoy coming up for the weekend and helping you drop the engine in, even if we did make that silly mistake with the 'spacer'.
Hope to see this MOT'ed and I'd like to call shotgun if you ever bring it down to Silverstone or Bedford!
)Still, glad to see you were able to salvage the thread and bring it here
Did enjoy coming up for the weekend and helping you drop the engine in, even if we did make that silly mistake with the 'spacer'.Hope to see this MOT'ed and I'd like to call shotgun if you ever bring it down to Silverstone or Bedford!
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