The Project Pad

AudiSport4000 wrote:

Berserker wrote:Matt, I'll bring a bottle to Carlisle next year to share.

Chris, progress looks good. Certainly more ambitious and moving along more quickly than the engine I need to build for the UrQ. I told myself I'd have it running again before it's consistently cold outside, and the parts are off at the machine shop now. Not much time left!

Jeez, look who shows up . I should have known if there was beer posted you would chime in

Hahaha out of the woodwork for some good beer!

You definitely need to try it Matt. It really is impeccable.

Glad you guys approve of the progress. I'll tell you what, it sure make me feel better knowing the holes aren't there anymore. My mind can be at rest while I drive (mostly). It is a strange feeling having the wind blowing up at you from the foot well... my right leg felt like it was cooking off with the heat from the exhaust coming up through the holes in the trans tunnel today!

Very nice !

You won't lost your wallet or cellphone anymore

Looking great Chris !!

It's amazing how quickly it all comes together once you decide to tackle the rust. I really like this car,and I'm glad your
fixing her up.

Keep the updates a coming.

Cheers,

Craig.

Clem86 wrote:Very nice !

You won't lost your wallet or cellphone anymore

haha I really almost did lose some stuff out of the giant hole one day when driving

highlander69 wrote:Looking great Chris !!

It's amazing how quickly it all comes together once you decide to tackle the rust. I really like this car,and I'm glad your
fixing her up.

Keep the updates a coming.

Cheers,

Craig.

Thanks for the encouragement It really isn't all that bad to fix this stuff... you just have to start cutting! Once you start, I find that it's hard to stop actually. It is pretty disheartening when you find the bad stuff, but then you formulate a plan to get it out of there, shape new panels, and weld 'em in. As long as you're good with shears, a hammer or brake, and a welder, it's pretty fun.

I really feel good about making this car right again. It would have surely gone to the scrap yard if it was in 99% of other people's hands I think.


So here's the latest on the car. I found a good source for mixed gas near me (Praxair) so now I'm good to go there. I decided to break out the POR-15 to try it out on the most recent repair. It is awesome stuff! I also got the rubberized undercoating, but haven't sprayed that yet. I'm waiting until I weld the seat mount back to the repair panel I put in. That will require stripping some of the POR-15 off, but I needed to paint under the thing anyhow because I couldn't get in there with a brush after it's welded... it will make sense when I take some pictures. I'm going to focus on getting the rust in the driver's side floor fixed before I go back to the relatively simple seat mount fabrication.

It was my birthday on Friday and I received a few cool things. One was a brew-your-own-beer kit. The next was a check to partially fund getting the seats in this car re-done! It was less than enough to get one seat done, but its still a start One place has quoted $350 for one seat... I've heard of another who does full interiors for $1000. I'm going to take a look at the quality of work of all of the local places before I even think about making a move. Part of me really wants to get all of the seats done at the same time in an effort to make them all match, but I don't really want to spend that kind of money. Then again, I'm definitely not just going to do one front seat, and if I'm going to spend $350+$350, then I'd rather just do it all. We'll see...

Finally, I'm still trying to figure out why the hell this thing is vibrating so badly from 45-50 mph. I've replaced all of the important bushings in the front end. The suspension on this thing is *tight*. I mentioned it to my favorite local mechanic and he instantly asked if it was on a BMW and then if it was at 45-50 mph. He thinks the wheel/tire combo is to blame, but I already tried the stock wheels/tires and there was no difference. He wants to try to road force balance the wheels/tires. I'll try that I guess, but my initial feeling was that an alignment issue could be causing it. Too much toe in either direction can cause a shimmy...

If neither of those pan out, I'll look into rotors and wheel bearings. Those are the only other things which could be causing this unless one of the bushings somewhere is just not showing it's flex/problem when I'm under the car jostling things around.

I also made a sweet steering box reinforcement dowell on my mini-lathe. I'll post some pics later on.

Nice work Chris. I'm looking forward to a ride perhaps next year or so when you get it all sorted. I did mention to Hank and Marc together that while I was in FL over July, I came down and visited. and that we should all take some time in the near future to do a dive trip. they were both down for sure till I mentioned what you told me about Jupiter being a shark mecca. now I'm not so sure....Sissies.

Either way, I more than willing to give it another go when I get some PTO saved up again. maybe plan this next one to the Keys so the sissies won't be so skeerd. I do love me some Key West action. whatever/ wherever we go, I'm down.

scubadave wrote:Nice work Chris. I'm looking forward to a ride perhaps next year or so when you get it all sorted. I did mention to Hank and Marc together that while I was in FL over July, I came down and visited. and that we should all take some time in the near future to do a dive trip. they were both down for sure till I mentioned what you told me about Jupiter being a shark mecca. now I'm not so sure....Sissies.

Either way, I more than willing to give it another go when I get some PTO saved up again. maybe plan this next one to the Keys so the sissies won't be so skeerd. I do love me some Key West action. whatever/ wherever we go, I'm down.

Sounds like a good time. I used to do COZ once a year, before I had kids!

lol, kids are the #1 STD known to man. They are pretty awesome though.

AudiSport4000 wrote:

Berserker wrote:Matt, I'll bring a bottle to Carlisle next year to share.

Chris, progress looks good. Certainly more ambitious and moving along more quickly than the engine I need to build for the UrQ. I told myself I'd have it running again before it's consistently cold outside, and the parts are off at the machine shop now. Not much time left!

Jeez, look who shows up . I should have known if there was beer posted you would chime in

lol

scubadave wrote:Nice work Chris. I'm looking forward to a ride perhaps next year or so when you get it all sorted. I did mention to Hank and Marc together that while I was in FL over July, I came down and visited. and that we should all take some time in the near future to do a dive trip. they were both down for sure till I mentioned what you told me about Jupiter being a shark mecca. now I'm not so sure....Sissies.

Either way, I more than willing to give it another go when I get some PTO saved up again. maybe plan this next one to the Keys so the sissies won't be so skeerd. I do love me some Key West action. whatever/ wherever we go, I'm down.

You all are always welcome here for a dive trip! The shark situation isn't that bad as long as you don't think too much about it Once you are under water the sharks won't think twice about you... unless you are bleeding. Its being a swimmer or surfer at the beach that'll get ya!

I sure hope the car is all sorted by this time next year. All I really have to do is go through the power steering system and sort the shimmy after I fix the rust. I'm sure it'll be Megasquirted this time next year too even if it isn't turbo'd yet.

Damn, there wasn't much floor left in that car...lol.

What have you done to seal the underbody to be sure you don't have ongoing rust issues?

lol I know!

I haven't finished sealing yet, but I'm just slathering all of the repair spots in POR-15 and then blasting it with rubberized undercoating. I think that'll be a perfect solution. Anyone disagree? I think the only thing I could have missed would be seam sealer, but I don't think it is necessary and would probably actually be worse potential for rust.

If you are referring to the areas which I haven't had to repair, I'm not doing anything unless there is an obvious problem from underneath or from inside (I've taken all of the sound deadening off of the questionable areas to make sure the metal isn't compromised there). If there is a problem with the undercoating or anything like that, I'm resealing it with the POR-15 and undercoating. You'll see more pictures as it comes along



In other news, I think I have found the cause of my vibration problem! I was trying to find something wrong with the steering system brakes, etc. and I stumbled upon the realization that the tires are out of round... they have less than 800 miles on them and are Falkens. They are both out of round in almost exactly the same spot (close to the tire size markings). I'm not really sure if it is a wear issue or manufacturing defect, but the tread depth doesn't seem to vary at all and they've got such low mileage on them that I'm leaning toward manufacturing defect.

Either way, I'm going to have them road force balanced like my local trusted mechanic suggested when I mentioned the problem to him. My money is totally on a road force balance fixing the problem.

I also got a bonus from working a lot, so I if I don't have to throw money at random suspension parts and brakes to solve this issue, that means I can spend it on leather, fixing up the PS system, or... TURBO!

Blah, had the tires/wheels road force balanced today. The machine couldn't seem to find the recess in the radius of the tire that I could clearly see last night and feel with my hand. I KNOW that is what is causing the vibration I'm getting. I think maybe the machine wasn't actually applying force to the wheel (I didn't hear anything when it was spinning). The outcome was that the machine didn't see any problem with roundness (in the wheel or tire) but the tire was badly out of balance. They balanced it out, and I had high hopes... but then I drove it and it was the same as it has always been.

The interesting part is that I had the old tires on the car when these were off to be balanced and the car drove pretty nicely. Still a slight wobble (the tires are really old), but probably a few orders of magnitude less shake than the violent movement I get from the new tires.

My next step will be to take the tires back to where I got them from and demand a refund... especially if I see that the rears are in the same kind of shape. Then they wouldn't be able to argue anything about an alignment problem and the odometer clearly reads that the tires have very low miles on them... but not low enough that the car could have been sitting for any length of time long enough to get flat spots in the tires. I'll see what I can get out of them. The only solution to this problem is going to be going to a higher quality tire in my opinion. I never believed in the expensive tires, but I am starting to now after bad experiences with Nexxen, and Falken twice now. That said, the Hankooks on my M5 have been more than adequate for performance... I don't know.



Now that I think about it more, it seems that the vibration improves within a few miles (still far from acceptable, but not as violent). I'm thinking these tires are flat spotting over night which would explain them not being out of round on the machine. Hmm...

Bought a mystery HX40... all I know is that it is a Volvo one, 6 blade, and has a 16cm^2 exhaust housing (wastegated). There is conflicting info out there... either it has a 56mm 6 blade or a 60mm 6 blade. I'll measure first thing

Either way, I'm sure it'll make good power on the 3.5l M30. Here's a video of an M30 E30 with HX40 (wow, that's some good car speak )


**oops, here is the video**

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9xsHvrKTFA[/youtube]

Sweet! I have never felt brave enough to get the cheaper tires. Dad and I have both been using Bridgestone summer tires for a while, dad with a slightly higher budget than me never had any issues with them and I've been very impressed with the grip. We've used SO2, SO3, re01r, re760 (twice now). The 760 is a nice high treadwear summer tire that's quiet and very grippy. The so2 and 01r are ridiculous tires, so grippy even on the pig S. The so3s were the worst of the bunch, but they were still very good.

Oh, and WOOO TURBO!

loxxrider wrote:Bought a mystery HX40... all I know is that it is a Volvo one, 6 blade, and has a 16cm^2 exhaust housing (wastegated). There is conflicting info out there... either it has a 56mm 6 blade or a 60mm 6 blade. I'll measure first thing

Either way, I'm sure it'll make good power on the 3.5l M30. Here's a video of an M30 E30 with HX40 (wow, that's some good car speak )

I for one would like to know where you acquire these mystery turbos.
I look forward to this car. I love me some old BMW.

Thanks Matt, I was definitely considering the Bridgestones. We shall see. I want to try the tires from my M5 on it and make sure it rides nicely with them. First I have to weld the floor back in though. I cut way too much out this weekend without welding anything back in yet

Goldfarb and Associates. I think this is the 5th turbo I or friends have bought from them. They're awesome! I highly suggest calling though, just have the turbo you want in mind and they'll find one for ya. Tell them HX35, hx40, etc. the size of the exhaust housing you want, wastegated or not, etc. Most of them are around $150. The one I bought is supposedly in high demand, so it cost a bit more. Hopefully it is a good one lol. I got too excited and forgot to ask what flanges the hot side had on it, but it doesn't really matter anyway.

Oh my... I just worked out a deal on another BMW...

E46 330i, needs water pump, control arms, a dent repair, and a few other cosmetic things... buying it for close to triple digits. This'll be a flipper.

I couldn't help it. A friend of mine knew I'd be interested and named the right price.

lol

You. R. Crzy

hahahaha we'll see if it gets flipped....

That E30 with the HX40 is nutty.

I definitely don't want this one. E46s don't do it for me. I'm sure I'll like it, but I have no need for it at all. As it idis I'm going to have to store one of the cars somewhere else while this one is getting worked on. The neighbors will kill me otherwise. Lol

Wires problems to have than too many cars Looking foreword to the HX40 build!

Love me a turbo M30... kinda wish I kept my E34, but not really because given the shape it was in and my budget for the turbo build... my 540i is likely about as fast or a bit faster than the E34 535 would have been at 6-8 psi... maybe... It is roughly a bajillion times nice though, so that works.

Between my younger brother Chris and his 2002 and your thread Chris, I'm starting to jones for a BMW... dammit.