Kurt66

Evenin all, Some big news to start off this update, you won't believe this! I still can't believe my luck myself. I've sold the car!! Its not even finished yet and I've had an offer I just can't refuse. A prince, no less, has seen the build thread and contacted me by e-mail to say he wants to buy the car immediately. I know, I know, unreal isn't it? And best of all is the price he's offered, two hundred and fifty thousand Ugandan Dollars. All I have to do is send him my bank account details, credit card details, full name and address so he can forward the cash and have his staff call to collect it. F*cking spam mail scamming vermin, if there was any justice in the world they'd all be rounded up and shot with a ball of their own shite! Anywho, back at the ranch, the worlds longest car restoration was continuing at it's usual hectic pace and next on the list of things to do was brakes, starting with the beautifully aged rear calipers..... pads out, sliding brackets slid off.... circlip off the dust boot.... and then pop the boot off the piston... and then I use a special method to remove the piston from the caliper. A burst of compressed air is pumped into the brake fluid inlet port on the caliper and the procedure goes like this. Little burst of air, piston comes out a tiny bit and springs back in, little bit more air, piston comes out a little further and springs straight back in again. You get pissed off with the lack of progress and give it a proper wack of air, piston hurtles out at warp speed and mashes your fingers between it and the caliper..... when the pain subsides, the piston and caliper bore are inspected. What you see below is the reason why bake fluid is recommended to be changed every couple of years. Brake fluid you see is hygroscopic, yep I've no idea either, however Wikipedia reckons that means "a substance which attracts and absorbs moisture". So brake fluid absorbs water and if it hasn't been changed in donkeys years the water content builds up enough to the level where it starts to rust the inside of the brake system, like so..... the last thing to come out of the caliper is the bleed nipple.... front calipers although being a bit bigger come appart exactly the same.... with everything asunder, the first port of call was to check and clean up the pistons..... the two smaller rear caliper pistons on the left and front pistons on the right. The area marked red is checked for any heavy scratches, pitting, scoring blah, blah, blah.... They were reasonably smooth so they were given a polishing up with 1500 grit wet and dry sandpaper. The condition of the area above the red mark doesn't really matter as much, all it has to do is press against the pad whereas the bit marked red has to slide in and out through the caliper seal. Any marks on it and it's probably going to make shite of the seal sooner or later and leak fluid..... after that, threads in the bleed nipple hole take a clean up (M7x1)..... and then the threads where the brake pipe screws in (M10 x 1)........ then the inside of the caliper bore is checked for markings and then also given a polish up with 1500 wet and dry..... next up for a clean is the sliding pins, with the aid of a 7mm allen key they screw out of the bracket..... The last thing to clean up was the calipers and brackets themselves and give them a coat of this stuff.... With everything clean, the rebuild could begin with the help of some oe seal kits, 2 for the front (p/n 34111153202) and two for the rear (p/n 34211157042).... A front kit consists of a square sectioned O ring and a dust boot, like so.... the O ring sits into it's recess in the caliper (red arrow) and then the inside lip of the dust boot sits into the narrower recess (green arrow)..... which ends up looking like this..... then the tricky bit, the seal and the caliper bore (NOT THE DUST BOOT) are given a smear of brake fluid to get them slippery before offering the piston back up for re-entry. The tricky part here is trying to get the piston through the front of the dust boot and started into the caliper bore. The new boot is very tight around the piston and easy to rip while trying to stretch on. So. A bit of compressed air again while the piston is held against the dust boot and "hey presto" the boot inflates and pops up onto the piston allowing it to be slid back in easily..... You can use your fingers to hold the piston instead of the piece of steel used above if you wish, everybody should build up a good tolerance of pain, it's good for you. The rear pistons are no where near as dramatic. Dust boot on piston..... new O ring in caliper bore, piston slid in, and when in, dust boot is popped over its lip (blue arrow).... and then the circlip is popped on to secure the boot..... bleed nipples are cleaned up and refitted with a tiny dab of anti-seize grease on the threads..... And finally the caliper bushes. The original ones had little hard nylon inserts inside them..... whereas the newer ones haven't. I guess the rubber is just a little harder now and they're not needed..... anywho, they push into the caliper like so..... Brakes done, onto the driveshafts. The inner and outer joints on both shafts felt slightly knotchy, so....... with most of the grease cleaned off you could see the circlip that holds the joint onto the shaft. If your taking these apart for inspection it's recommended that you mark the 3 pieces like shown below so they can go back together in exactly the same place..... when cleaned up you could see where 22 years of hard driving had led to the balls wearing a groove into the outer piece of the joint, which explained the slight knotchiness. But of more concern was the pitting that was found, the surface of the outer joint where the balls run on was starting to give way...... The outer joint (the one that slips into the hub) can't be dismantled like the inner one because the cap is crimped onto the cv joint. (red arrow) To get if off you have to burst it off, damaging it in the process.... after seeing the condition of the inside joints and deciding I wasn't going to reuse these shafts I had nothing to loose bursting off the caps and having a look at the condition of the outer joints..... and they were a hell of a lot worse than the inside ones the balls themselves were also fairly pitted, but your going to have to use your imagination cause I'm still to thick to figure out how the f*cking zoom works on this camera..... The shafts were replaced with a pair of GKN Lobro one's which are exactly what the original one's are and what you'll buy at the main dealer. Only they're half the price at the motor factors.... Up next was the rear beam and trailing arms. Over the years I'd been reading various methods used by some people to re-enforce the trailing arms and also seen pictures of the Z3 rear trailing arms and had decided I'd give it a go. This is probably way overkill on whats going to be a road car but sure the metal and welder are just sitting there, all it costs is a little time and effort. So, piece of tubing..... knotched out..... hammered on (making sure distance X 120mm is the maximum, otherwise the tube hits off the exhaust bracket on the beam whilst the arm is rotating on the car, tack them on and dummy build to check before fully welding)..... and then the next modification, which I think is to stop camber changes by re-enforcing the hub carrier part of the arm. Cardboard template first.... bit of 3mm angle iron.... chop, chop, file, file, measure, measure, offer up, f*ck, f*ck, chop, cho..... the one thing to be careful of with these is to make sure they won't foul the driveshafts when fitted. Even though the hubs aren't fitted you can hold the driveshaft up roughly in place and check the clearance before final welding..... Then the old bushes had to come out with the aid of a few sockets and some threaded bar.... and with the arms totally bare, off they went for sand blasting and powder coat, which left them looking like this upon return..... mmmmmmm, shiny parts........ first job on the re-coated arms was to re-insert some bushes. Originally they were fitted with oe offset bushes, which were a disaster to fit last time around. They pop in just as easily as normal ones but trying to get the offset right so you end up with the desired geometry changes can be a real pig. This time around we're going to try a different approach to altering the rear geometry. So, old offset bushes get binned (2 on top) to be replaced by standard bushes (4 in bottom)..... the bushes are again pushed in with the help of some sockets and threaded bar. Looking at the bush in the pic below, they are pushed in tapered end first (right hand side in pic)...... and they push in from the outer side inwards as this side of each eye on the wishbone is slightly tapered at the edge to help start them on their way..... as is always the case when trying to push something into a tight hole lubrication helps greatly..... with them all back in you should end up with the fat bits of the bushes sticking out towards the outside...... Next up, wheel bearings. A little of the powder coating had found it's way onto the inside of the hub so this took a little sanding up first.... then the new wheel bearings (aftermarket SKF) get battered into their hole until you feel them butt up solid against the back lip in the hub..... followed by fresh circlips..... and then the brake backing plate, secured by two little m6 bolts.... and finally the handbrakes shoes anchor bracket, which is secured by two little m8 bolts.... then with all that crap fitted the hub can be pressed back in..... remembering to support the inner race of the wheel bearing whilst doing so or else it shit's itself. Which is nice..... [/center] After that we moved on to the brake pipes while waiting for other parts to arrive (or more accurately waiting for the cash to pay for them to magically appear from somewhere). To no ones surprise the "rust jihad" had also launched an attack on the rear steel brake pipes and fittings at some stage and they weren't looking in their first flush of youth.... So, a roll of 1/4 inch copper brake pipe and some fittings..... mark out and cut the length needed to make each pipe (www.realoem.com really helps here, they list the length of each pipe, although it helps to always add 30mm to be safe).... after rolling the pipe off the roll and cutting it, it can look a little crap with kinks all over the place so a large hardback book or piece of timber rolled on top of it a few times usually gets it nice and flat..... next up is making a flare on one end of it. The end of the pipe needs a little filing or sanding to round it off, from this..... to this..... then we break out the brake flaring tool..... pop the clamp in the vise and pop the pipe through the correct size hole...... then using one of the....one of the.....f*ck, what are they called again, I think i'm getting alzheimer's, I'm going to have to start writing me name and address on the inside of me jocks soon. PIPE FLARES. using one of the pipe flares you pop the pipe through the clamp till it's level with the shoulder on the matching size flare, like so...... tighten up the screws on the clamp to grip the pipe tightly and drop some oil on the top of the pipe and on the inside face of the flare before dropping it on to the pipe..... apply the press and mushy, mushy..... and this is the result, the top face is good to go but underneath is tapered because the clamp hole was tapered this side...... and for the fitting being used the underneath needs to be flat, so, turn the clamp over to the non countersunk holes side.....

Bilder stehen leider nicht zur verfügung and ta-daaaaa..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2816%29/100_1851.jpg With the box overhauled it was time to turn the attention to the outside bit's and pieces. First up, gearlinkage. When I got this car the gear change resembled stirring a bowl of porridge with a large wooden spoon, it was vague to say the least. I changed one little bit of the linkage at the time, which helped, but I knew there was more to fix at some stage. So now the day has come. Theres 4 places where the linkage can get worn, and my car proving as helpful as ever was w*nked in all 4 places...... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2816%29/100_1799.jpg position 1 This bit is probably familiar to most e30 owners as it's the bit that wears most. It's cheap enough from the main dealer (p/n 25117503525) and it's handy enough to change....... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1813.jpg Position 2 Was a bit surprised to find so much wear here. The bolt had started to chew it's way through the bracket. Elongating the hole and wearing down the bolt.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2816%29/100_1810.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2816%29/100_1811.jpg Position 4 http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1802.jpg This is the little ball the the gearlever rotates on. As the ball is metal it doesn't wear, but the plastic bushing it sits in does. New bushing main dealer p/n 25111220600...... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2816%29/100_1803.jpg Position 3 The little bush just under the ball on the gearlever..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2816%29/100_1805.jpg as you can see in the exploded part of the pic theres only a small bit of wear here, but it doesn't take much to make the lever feel sloppy. Theres no bush to change here, the only remedy is a new gear lever. Thankfully I had a spare Z3 one which was good to go.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1806.jpg So, rob the post office on the way to the main dealer's...... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1814.jpg Z3 lever fitted..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1807.jpg new rubber bush in the end of the stabilizer bar as it was worn too.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1812.jpg fresh bracket and bolt fitted onto the new bush.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1808.jpg and then time to fit back the lower link. Two new plastic washers fitted on the inside (p/n 25111220439 they're important and they're also the cheapest part you'll ever buy from a main dealer)...... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1815.jpg pop the link bar back in one end, with another plastic washer on the outside before refitting the circlip........ http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1816.jpg slide in the other end of the link........ http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1853.jpg pop another fresh washer on...... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1854.jpg and then the circlip...... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1855.jpg If them circlips are loose sliding on, then replace them, there should be a tight "click" as they pop on. If they fall off down the line, you'll loose the ability to change gear, and it won't happen close to home, it'll be in the middle of nowhere, it'll be dark and raining and you'll be the tight arse fool walking back up the road, in pitch black darkness looking for a lost clip that you were to tight to change. (yes, I wore that t-shirt). And then finally, rebolt the stabilizer bracket to the box with the two long bolts that are a pig to get to when the box is fitted in the car.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1856.jpg after that, reverse light switch goes back in with a new washer.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1848.jpg wires attached..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1859.jpg and clipped on here..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1860.jpg and here.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1861.jpg before magically reappearing inside the rubber boot..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1862.jpg (the wires in the above picture were the old ones and since fitting them and posting this up I've had a very helpful pm from a member over on E30zone to say that the old wires can short out due to age and in his case actually cause a fire. The wires are now being renewed tomorrow.) There was something not quite right about the geabox rubber mountings, but I just couldn't put my finger on it..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1672.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1673.jpg so I replaced them to be on the safe side.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1852.jpg bellhousing bolted back on along with the little bracket to support the exhaust downpipe...... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1857.jpg clutch fork, retaining spring and clutch release bearing back on..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1858.jpg a lick of silver paint..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2817%29/100_1863.jpg and thats a brief description of how we overhauled my gearbox. If you've made it this far, congratulations, most of what you've just read is probably wrong. But sure there was nothing better on tv anyway. Till next time STAY TUNED

And then measuring the stuff thats sliding on here. First of which is a syncro hub. Theres 3 of these in total in the box and while the other 2 are identical to each other, the one that fits here has 2 small important differences. The centre's of both the other syncro hubs are smooth on both sides, like the bit marked red below..... The one that fits here however has a small step in it on one side, arrowed below..... The second difference from the other two hubs is this little groove on one side of the outside ring, which doesn't concern us right now.... right, back to what we need to measure, one of the little needle roller bearing collars that fits inside each gear is held up against the smooth side of the syncro hub like so..... and using a micrometer we're measuring to the inside ledge of the step on this side of the syncro hub, like so...... which when measured came to 53.3mm ("B"). So the height of the stuff we're fitting to the shaft is 53.3mm and the length of shaft we need to fill is 53.5mm to bring them flush with the end of the splines. So taking "B" from "A" (53.5mm - 53.3mm) gives us the gap we need to fill with a shim = 0.2mm. That shim ain't been fitted yet though, we have a bit of assembly to do first. The input/output shafts and the layshaft are placed together like so..... the middle casing is popped up into the vise and the metal around the centre holes where the bearings fit into are heated up with the heat gun to expand them..... and then while it's nice and hot the shafts are offered up and slid through like so..... and now that the shafts are fitted to the casing we can pop on that little 0.2mm shim we measured.... followed by the bearing collar (which was heated cause it's a tight fit on the shaft)..... and then the bearing..... and then 1st gear is slid on meshing with 1st gear on the layshaft beside it..... next up was that shiny new syncro ring..... and finally that odd ball syncro hub, making sure that the recess cut out of the outer ring is facing in towards the casing.... the only snag is, when fitting this last syncro hub you've got to fit it's shift fork and rod at the same time..... like so...... because if you don't, you'll never get the fork on afterwards, and even if you did manage it, theres no access to knock in the roll pin that secures the fork to the rod...... There's two other things thats probably worth noting at this stage. The first is, theres a few little notches machined out of the end of the shift fork rod, circled below..... theres two ways you can roll pin that shift fork onto the rod, 1) like above with the notches facing downward which is correct, or, 2) the rod rotated 180degrees from above pic,which leaves the notches facing upwards, which you only find out much later is the wrong way around and means dissembling the lot to switch it around again. (the urge to take out a hammer and chisel and beat some new notches into it out of frustration will take a lot of effort to subdue at this point). The other point worth noting is although the 3 shift forks will only go together in the box the right way (they won't physically fit any other way) it still helps a lot, if upon disassembly, you scribe onto the side of each fork, an arrow showing which way it faces (towards front of box) and which syncro hub it came off (ie. 5th/4th, 3rd/2nd or 1st/rev). It just saves a lot of head scratching while you try to figure it out upon reassembly. Which when all assembled ends up looking like this..... once happy that all notches and forks look like they are where they should be, then it's time to hammer in the remaining roll pins.... With all that crap done it's back to building up the end of the output shaft again. Remember that last odd ball syncro hub that was fitted with the little ridge in the centre?.... well now we get to see why it was important the ridge faced out this way. These two little thrust type washers...... pop into that ridge..... which is then followed by the last syncro ring and reverse gear..... and the little bearing for inside the gear..... and finally heat up the bearing cone and slip it in between the bearing and the shaft..... next to go on is a 0.5mm shim, no measuring or calculating for this one, every box just gets a 0.5mm shim here..... One of the final things to go on the shaft is the last of the bigger main bearings. But before it can go on we needed to do a bit of measuring with it first. The bearing will be fitted on the shaft and when the rear casing is offered up and pushed on it will sit inside this recess in the casing..... and this support ring will bolt it tight into that recess inside the box.... if you just dropped the bearing into the casing recess and bolted on the cover above what you'll find is that it doesn't clamp the bearing real tight in there. The bearing will actually be able to move back and forth a little. So what you've got to do is measure how much "slack" is in there and pack it up with shims so that the support ring clamps the bearing tight when bolted up. To do this first we measured the depth of the recess in the casing (13.1mm)..... and then fitted the bearing into the support ring..... and measured how much stuck out (12.9mm)...... 13.1mm of a hole minus 12.9mm of a bearing to stick into it is going to leave you with 0.2mm of a gap in there, so, a 0.2mm shim is fitted under the bearing before it's sat into the support ring like so..... Now when all that is bolted together, that bearing is going to be clamped nice and secure between the ring and the casing. With the shims figured out and fitted between the bearing and the ring, the bearing could now be slid onto the shaft. The heads are cut off two long m6 bolts and these are screwed in to two of the five threaded holes of the support ring, for reasons you'll see in a while..... centre of the bearing is heated with the heat gun and slid onto the shaft..... and finally this little spacer is slid on..... After that it's time to get the rear casing ready for going on. Output flange seal is changed (available after market for buttons, size: 40x55x8mm)...... and then the selector shaft seal (size:15x21x5mm)..... and then refit the reverse idler shaft stuff..... the shaft sticks up out of the rear casing and onto it is dropped, bearing, spacer,bearing..... followed by the idler geared shaft..... and then a fat little spacer with a corner cut out..... As usual the cut out piece has to be in a specific location when the rear casing is offered up to the box and the chances of it staying as pictured when you lift the whole lot up is zero to none. So, fat blob of grease on the back of the spacer and stick it in place in the box instead.... The 2nd last thing needed in the rear casing before it can go on, is this.... There's five of these balls and three springs in total for the rear casing, only one spring is needed at the moment, and it slides in through a little drilling in the casing marked by the green arrow. (you can just about see the spring in place, red arrow)..... And finally just before the rear casing is offered up, bit of gasket poo and gasket is stuck to centre casing side.... And then just as your ready to offer the rear casing up, these 4 little roller/spacer thingies (*may not be correct technical name) are stuck into place on the selector shaft with the aid of four blobs of grease.... don't be shy with the grease on those, the little fu*kers love to drop off and head off for a wander while your shoving the rear casing on. And then at long last the rear casing can be offered up, but, it can only go on this far (because that'd be far to simple)..... quick check to make sure them 2 little m6 bolts that were screwed into the bearing ring have come through the casing in the right place..... and then the reason why the casing can't slide all the way home yet. That little spring is in the way of the selector fork rod sitting into it's final resting place..... So, one of the little balls like pictured below is placed on top of the spring in the casing and is pushed back into it's hole to let the rod by...... that sounds so simple when written, but in reality can provided hours of entertainment for all the family. And when you've mastered that one, it's on to the one next door, same idea, spring drops down from the top into place, ball on top and squeeze down to allow the next rod to push through, and, as if that wasn't challenging enough you've also got to place a ball directly between the two selector shafts aswell (that ball is hidden in this pic, the final pic in this sequence makes it a little easier to see where they all end up!)...... and then finally the last one's, again a ball between the two shafts and the final one sits on top of its spring and is depressed in it's recess to let the shaft by (at this stage you'll either be a pro at this or have set fire to the garage out of rage, if you look carefully you might just notice the fire extinguisher fumes in the background of this pic)..... when you've finally succumbed to the rage and decided to beat them all into place with the sledgehammer this is where all the balls should end up (red circles = the balls, blue circles = the end of the selector shafts)........ when they're all in place and all the rods are covering them, the casing can be tapped the final half inch home. Then the collection of 5 little plugs can be tapped back in, to cover all them drilling's in the casing..... Then it's on to the bearing support ring and them two long m6 bolts sticking out the back. The five bolts get a wee dab of thread lock.... The 2 long m6 studs sticking out the back should have kept all the holes aligned allowing you to fit 3 of them into the 3 empty holes ,finger tight, and then the two long bolts are taken out and replaced by the other 2 proper bolts...... When they're all in then tighten them up evenly. Front casing is nowhere near as dramatic. Stick the gasket on with some gasket goo either side, heat the centre of it up so it sides on easily over the bearings and then just batter it on..... When it's on this little collection of crap..... is battered into this hole, professionally...... After that the rear output flange goes on. A little gasket goo rubbed on the inside of the splines helps keep it oil tight..... special tool p/n 959rustybar makes a return to hold the flange while the nut in the centre is torqued up..... The nut no longer needs that brass type lock ring placed over it next, as the factory revised the procedure to just use loctite on the nut instead. After that and it's back to the front end to do the final bit of measuring and shimming. The spacer ring is first slipped onto the bit of the input shaft bearing thats sticking out..... followed by the circlip that snaps into the recess cut in the outside of the bearing..... when all thats fitted, a few soft taps inwards on the end of the input shaft to make sure it's fully home. (that circlip should be tight up against the spacer ring, which in turn should be tight up against the housing. With that done the little cover thats going to go over these bearings is preped. The cone/tube "thingy" that the clutch release bearing rides on (black yoke below) fits into the cover.... a tiny smear of gasket goo on the cover where the cone sits into to keep it oil tight. The cone also has a notch on it so it'll only sit in fully in one position.... with that in, the input shaft seal is fitted in to it (30x42x7mm, big money from main dealer for some reason, available for buttons aftermarket)...... and then the measuring. The idea of this cover is that the 2 bearings will sit into the two recesses in the cover. The recesses have to be shimed so that when the cover is bolted on tight theres no wiggle room left for the bearings. So to figure out what size shims are needed first up we measured the depth from the face of the cover to the bottom of the hole (the face of the cone/tube thingy)...... and that came out at 7.1mm, and then measured how much bearing was sticking out of the box...... and that came out at 6.8mm. So, from the hole depth..........................7.1mm take away the bearing height...................6.8mm and you get the size of shim needed ........0.3mm Only theres one other thing to take into account, that cover may have a gasket (some do, some don't) and when you fit a gasket it brings the cover back another tiny bit away from the bearing. So the manual says add another 0.2mm for the thickness of the gasket. So now the hole is..........7.3mm minus bearing height.......6.8mm equals shim thickness.....0.5mm Same sort of deal for the bottom hole/bearing. Measure the recess....... That came to 5.2mm, and then measure how much the bearing protrudes...... which came out at 4.7mm So once again, hole depth............................................. .....5.2mm plus the bit for the gasket..........................0.2mm equals............................................ .............5.4mm minus the amount the bearing sticks out....4.7mm leaves you with the shim size needed........0.7mm Only it doesn't, because the manual says this bottom shaft needs 0.1/0.2mm endfloat. Which means it needs a little space to move around and stretch it's feet. So from the shim size of 0.7mm (which would have packed it tight) you subtract 0.1mm to leave the true shim needed at 0.6mm (now the shaft has 0.1mm of space to move around in as speced). And if you understood all that, fair play to you, cause i'm writing it and it's making fu*k all sense to me as I read it back. Anywho, gasket goo'ed on, shims greased in place, it's time to throw the cover on.... 7 little bolts, 3 long for the top, 4 short for the bottom, get them the wrong way around and the long ones will screw in the bottom and right through the casing and burst your bearing inside, which is nice..... STAY TUNED

With the driveshaft out of the way, there was no avoiding it any longer, next up was going to be the big aluminium box full of gears. First thing to note is, the following waffle is all about the Getrag 265/5 dogleg gearbox. The bit thats worth noting about that, is, the 265/5 gearbox is the dog leg gearbox, meaning that 1st is all the way over to the left and down (under reverse). The Getrag 265/6 which was also fitted to M3's (mostly American versions I think) is the non dog leg 5 speed overdrive gearbox. It pays to make a mental note of the difference between a 265/5 and a 265/6 cause when your looking up parts on real.oem or looking up the manual for torques or proceedures theres a difference between the two internally. And its frustrating ordering in parts for your box only to find upon collection that the bits you've ordered are for the wrong one and are non refundable. (And despite trying, no amount of hammering will make them fit) On to the actual disassembly of the box. This is a very complicated proceedure, and I'm now going to attempt to explain the highly skilled, meticulous, disassembly of my gearbox. Measure in exactly 253 mm from the rear output flange and up 176mm from the bottom of the casing on the left hand side and mark this spot with a large red x..... Then hit this spot an unmercyfull wallop with special tool part no. 959sledgehammer..... and ta-daaaa...... For anyone who's not comfortable using the sledge hammer method of disassembly, the the full strip down procedure is given here in the Bmw workshop manual.... http://www.bmwtechinfo.com/repair/main/421en/index.htm click the link, click on the "contents" box, click on "23 manual transmission" and then make sure you click on the right gearbox 265/5 or 265/6. With the gearbox assunder it can help a little to know how all this crap in here is supposed to work. If for no other resason just so you can easily identify what part of the rebuild has gone t*ts up. WARNING: You will most likely know less about the workings of a gearbox after reading my explanation than before reading it. Inside the gearbox casing theres 3 main shafts..... [imghttp://e30-talk.com/uploads/images/minor_rust/image835.jpg[/img] Theres one or two cogs missing from the above picture but its enough to get the idea. Pictured are the 3 shafts, the input, output and layshaft. The first thing thats makes fuck all sense, at first, is how is the top shaft in the picture is in fact two shafts (input shaft & output shaft)? The input shaft as seen below is short and only has one gear and one bearing on it, and in the end of the input shaft is a hole with a small roller bearing in it which allows the other shaft, the output shaft, to sit into it and be supported...... new bearing in the hole, old one out on the bench.... The whole idea behind this setup is that the two shafts can move at different speeds to each other. The input shaft at the front of the box is connected through your clutch to the engine flywheel. So, with the clutch let out this shaft is always spinning at engine speed. The whole aim of the game is to pass this drive through a series of gears to reduce the revs coming out the back of the box. 1st gear reducing it the most, working right up to 5th gear which in this box is 1:1 ie one turn in = one turn out. And heres the selection of gears it uses to do this...... (1st and reverse are missing from right of pic) With the input shaft spinning the one gear thats solidly connected to this (5th gear) is also spinning.... and because 5th gear on the input shaft is also connected to 5th gear on the layshaft (underneath it) then the whole layshaft is also spinning too. And because basically the layshaft is one big solid lump of metal, then all the other gears it's in contact with are spinning too. So, gearbox in neutral, engine turning over, all thats marked red is spinning at engine speed.... So how the fu*k is the output shaft coming out the back of the box not spinning if all the gears on it are spinning?...... The answer is all the gears on the output shaft (top shaft), while sitting on it, are not actually connected to it. Between the centre of the gears and and the shaft are little roller bearings, so no matter how fast you turn the gears you wont turn the shaft..... So to get the output shaft to turn you have to "lock" one of these gears to the shaft and to do this you use the syncro hubs..... The syncro hubs sit in between the gears and have two main pieces. The centre of the syncro hub is connected solidly to the output shaft by splines (red bit in pic below) and the outside part (blue bit) is also splined onto the red bit, the only difference being the blue piece can slide over and back on the red piece..... The reason it can slide over and back is so it can lock on to these little teeth on the side's of the main gears (red piece below) while also staying connected to the centre of the syncro hub......... So when the blue piece of the syncro hub slides over to grab these red teeth in the pic below it's also still connected to the centre piece of the syncro hub, and bingo, you've just locked one of the gears to the output shaft. Now the output shaft is being driven...... In the pic below the red syncro hub is slid to the left and the gear to the left of it (3rd gear) is "engaged" and locked to the output shaft, hence the output shaft (To Differential) is now been driven by the engine..... The other bit in here thats important is the syncro ring..... It sits in between the gear and the syncrohub and it has the shittiest job of the lot. When the syncro hub moves over to grab them little teeth on the side of the gear and lock it on to the shaft it runs into a little problem. The hub and the gear are rotating at different speeds. So if one tries to mesh with the other like this then theres going to be a horrible sound in the gearbox and a whole lot of new little bits stuck to that drain bung magnet. What needs to happen is the two need to be rotating at the same speed so they can lock together. This is where the syncro ring comes in. The inside of the syncro ring is cone shaped..... and the bit of the gear it slides on to is also cone shaped..... so as the syncro hub sleeve moves across it grabs the brass syncro ring first and then squeezes this up against the gear to get it rotating at the same speed and then as they synchronize it can then slide fully across and lock onto the gear...... And then at last, the final bit, for anyone left that hasn't got bored and logged out to go look for porn sites. How does moving one simple gear lever from up in the drivers seat move all these syncro hubs down in the gearbox? The box has 6 gears, 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th and reverse that can be selected. Each syncro hub can slide forward or back to select the gear in front of it or behind it, so thats 3 syncro hubs that need to moved. A brass "selector fork" sits on to each one of these syncro hubs.... and these 3 selector forks are solidly connected to 3 rods.... (only 2 forks in picture) Theres also another rod in there too, its the "selector rod" and its the only one thats connected to your gearlever. When you move your gearlever right it rotates right, move your gearlever left it rotates left..... attached to this "selector rod" (the funky green one) is a finger (also funky green). And as mentioned when you move the gearlever left and right when in neutral the green rod rotates left and right moving this green finger up and down between the 3 selector fork rods (funky purple, blue and yellow)......... move the gearlever all the way to the right, the selector rod rotates all the way to the right and the finger moves all the way up to engauge with a cut out in the purple rod. Now when you move the gear lever back or forward in to 4th or 5th gear position the green finger moves the purple rod backwards or forwards, which in turn moves the purple fork which moves the syncro hub forward to engage 5th gear or backwards to engauge 4th..... Leave the gear lever in the middle position and move it backwards or forwards between 2nd and 3rd gear position and the green finger hooks up with the blue shaft and fork moving the 2nd/3rd syncro hub locking in either 2nd or 3rd gear..... and finally move the lever all the way to the left over for reverse and first, the green finger gets rotated all the way down to hook up with the yellow shaft and either select 1st or reverse down the back of the box...... And thats roughly how it all works, I think, maybe. The main reason for pulling the box asunder was I wanted to replace the bearings in there. A couple of months before pulling the car off the road a nasty clicking sound came into the front end of the gearbox, so we pulled the box and stripped off the front casing to try and find the culprit before the clicking progressed to a knocking and finally the big "boom". The front input shaft bearing looked ok, a little bit gritty when spun but not the cause of the noise.... and then we went on to the one under it, the front layshaft bearing. We had a sneaky feeling this could have been the cause of the noise. Call it a sixth sense if you will but there was something bugging us about this bearing. Here's the two of them side by side, it takes a sharp eye to spot the difference, but if you look close enough you should be able to see the tiny defect..... Yeah, the bearing cage had completely shit itself, allowing the balls to move around as they pleased, which had resulted in the clicking sound. The cage that holds the balls spaced out is made out of a hard plastic type stuff (*might not be correct technical term). And the reason it had broken up was the inner race of the bearing had started to pit, and got worse over time, which meant the little balls were bouncing over the pothole created...... Eventually it got to hard for the plastic cage to hold on to the balls as they bounced and it broke up. Next up had the box been kept driven would probably have been one of the balls getting jammed or popping out of the bearing, either of which would probably have resulted in a nice little explosion of bits inside the box. Thankfully due to that clicking sound we got a little warning that the end was coming. At the time we only replaced the front end bearings because the car is my everyday car and I needed it back on the road as soon as possible. So now it's all coming asunder and all the 5 main bearing in the box are getting changed..... Number 4 and 5 in the pic above are on either ends of the layshaft (bottom shaft) and are just normal bearings available aftermarket. The front layshaft bearing (on left in pic) 25x62x17mm was replaced with a Timken bearing p/n 6305/C3. The rear one (on right) 72x30x19mm was replaced with a SKF bearing p/n 6306/C3.... Number 3, the rear bearing on the output shaft is identical to the number 5 the layshaft rear bearing, and again was replaced with a SKF bearing p/n 6306/C3..... So that just left us with number 1 and 2 to source. I could only get these from the main dealer as they're a bit odd ball bearings. The first one (number 1 bmw p/n 23121204580 ) the input shaft bearing is special because it has a groove cut into the outside race to take a circlip as seen below...... This must be made from rare minerals as thats the only reason I can see why it cost 80 something euro! But if that one was made from rare minerals then they must have to travel all the way to the moon to get the stuff to make bearing number 2 (bmw p/n 23231205191). This is a 2 piece needle roller bearing and it weighs in at 208 euro. That hurt..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2813%29/m3_1949.jpg With all the main bearings done it was time to move on to the smaller ones. The red arrowed one below was changed because it has one of them hard plastic races holding it together and these get brittle over time.... bmw p/n 23221207784....... all the blue arrowed ones are the little double row needle roller bearings that fit inside the gears. These were available after market but had a 4 week order in time so I just got them from the main dealer instead (bmw p/n 23221228279)...... Only 2 of them little needle roller bearings ride on the shaft, the rest of them ride on their own little separate inner race's pictured below. None of these needed replacing as there was no marks on them and they showed no signs of wear..... The other thing that I wanted to pay special attention to while in here was the syncro rings. 1st gear had a habit of being awkward to select in this box in stop go traffic, especially when warm. So all the syncro's got checked while assunder..... to check them the syncro ring is placed on top of it's gear, lightly pressed down and the gap (arrowed below) measured with feeler blades..... for a new syncro ring sitting on a gear the gap is 1.0 to 1.3mm if the gap on the old one is below 0.8mm she kaput. The only difference is reverse gear, 0.5-0.6 new less than 0.4mm replace. Given I couldn't fit a fly's pubic hair bewteen my 1st gear syncro ring and the gear I could safely say it was fu*ked... One of the other things that got checked was the shift forks. These sit into the groove on the syncro hubs and push them backwards and forwards. As the syncro hubs are allways spinning and the fork are allways held still, the side faces of the forks can tend to wear, giving a slopply gear change (you have to move the gear lever move before a worn fork actually starts to move the syncro hub)...... minimum fork thickness is 4.8mm, thankfully mine were all good to go..... With everything cleaned, checked and replaced if worn, it was time to try and figure out how it all went back together. Starting with the rear casing...... and this little collection of bits whose job it is to spring load the gear lever when your moving it from side to side in neutral.... smaller of the two springs dropped in like so..... flat washer and circlip on top, to stop it wandering.... and then this little tube whose job it is to grab the selector rod.... as you can see the tube has a specially cut internal section which allows the selector rod to side back and forth inside it undisturbed, but when the selector rod is rotated left or right (when you move the gear lever left or right) it rotates the whole tube left or right...... the selector rod is kept free during all this movement thanks to 4 little rollers stuck on the shaft (one hidden underneath).... the tube sits into the casing like so..... making sure the leg attached to the tube is the right side of that first spring that was fitted..... the second bigger spring goes on next, the legs of which sit like below...... followed by a washer and circlip..... next up is the method of stopping the gear lever from being pushed to far to the left or right. The little tube just fitted has an elongated notch cut into it like so...... and when in place this notch lines up inside with this hole on the casing..... into which is screwed this little locater bolt.... before screwing it in, its given a dab of loctite to lock it in place but also to seal it so gearbox oil can't weep out..... when it's in theres the head of the bolt and the casing has been drilled for lockwire..... so some lockwire is fitted.... when all that crap is fitted this next little selection of stuff is hammered in, in this order.... into this hole.... this little plunger gives you that extra bit of spring force to overcome when your pushing the gearlever all the way over for reverse. A little bit of gasket sealer on the sides of the black plug below on fitment helps keep it oil tight..... After that it's onto the centre casing and the fitment of the worlds most expensive gearbox bearing. Only fitting the outside piece of this at the moment, the inner ring will be used later.... the aluminium casing around the bearing hole in the centre of the casing is given a nice heating with the heat gun, to ever so slightly expand it, which allows the colder bearing to slide easily into place. The bearing only fits in from one side as theres a ridge to stop it sliding through.... then the two little countersunk allen key head bolts are fitted through the casing and screwed into the 2 little retainer tabs which stops the bearing falling out the other side. Bit of loctite on these two bolts does no harm.... After that it's on to the replacing the 2 layshaft bearings...... the front old one is pulled off.... new bearing is heated up with the heat gun and popped on.... the bearing the other end is only a small bit more involved. The bearing is behind the last gear on the shaft, so the bolt and fat washer that holds this gear on is first removed, and then the gear is pulled off its splines on the shaft..... with the gear out of the way, the old bearing is pulled off and new one heated and slid on...... and then it's time for the first bit of shimming. When the gear is pushed back on the shaft on top of the new bearing, its up to the fat washer and bolt to hold them all secure and tight. If the gear was pushed back on the shaft and wasn't level with the top of the shaft, then when the fat washer and bolt were tightened down the gear and bearing would still be free to wobble around a little underneath it. So, with a depth gauge, the length of exposed shaft on top of the bearing (marked X below) is measured.... "X" was measured at 34.8mm. Then the length of the gear is measured (Y).... and as you can see it was 34.7mm So a 0.1mm shim is needed to bring the gear flush with the end of the shaft..... shim fitted, gear heated up and slipped on, fat washer refitted and bolt loctited and tightened back in place. Layshaft finished..... After that it's on to short the input shaft, replacing the front bearing first (making sure the recess in the outer race for the circlip is facing away from the gears as pictured)..... and then the little bearing in the end of the shaft. (new one fitted, old on on bench)..... After that it's on to the output shaft which holds the majority of removable pieces.There's a collar at one end of the shaft which means the shaft is built up in two steps as arrowed.... first up the long side is built up. The shaft is placed into special tool p/n 959axlestand to hold it secure...... first up one of those little double row needle bearings (like the one shown below) is slid on..... then 3rd gear and a syncro ring is slid on.... followed by a syncro hub. The syncro hub is a tight fit on the shafts splines so it's heated with the heat gun first to expand it and allow it to push on by hand (soon to be burnt hand)..... after that its another syncro ring (they're all identical to each other), followed by 2nd gear.... another of those needle bearing slides inside the gear (like the one pictured below)..... this bearing however isn't a snug fit on the shaft, instead it runs on a removable collar like below, so the collar is slid down in between the bearing and shaft..... After that, next on is the centre piece of the worlds most expensive gearbox bearing (yeah that price really got to me).... And thats as far as can be built up this end of the shaft at the moment, so, the shaft is rotated in the stand and we start building up the other end..... first on this end is another of those double row bearings.... followed by 4th gear and it's syncro ring..... and then a syncro hub (again heated in the centre to slide on easy).... and with the syncro hub in place, last to go on this end of the shaft is a fat spacer and a circlip to hold everything in place. Again everything has to be held on tightly this end of the shaft, there can be no play for the gears to move around. So, with that in mind, that spacer under the circlip comes in a range of different sizes, going up in small increments. Pop the circlip on without the washer under it, measure the gap below it and then use the largest size spacer that will fit to keep everything packed tight (use a new circlip going back, they only cost buttons and if the old one fails it'll cause the box to go "boom") ..... and with that done the input and output shafts are fitted together (one just slides in to the end of the other).... and then the whole lot is popped back up in to the stand again for a bit of measuring..... The measurement we're after this time is is marked "A" in the pic below. And it's the distance from the top of the expensive bearing inner race up to the next "ledge" on the shaft at the top of those splines..... same idea again as the layshaft shimming. The stuff thats going on the shaft here needs to be held tight by the stuff that comes on top of it. Only problem is the stuff coming on top of it will only fit down as far as this "ledge" in the shaft. So we've got to make sure this stuff fits on level with the top of the ledge. And this is done by measuring the piece of shaft with a depth gauge ( "A" = 52.5mm)......

Evenin all, Bit of a gap since the last update, was so busy working on the carI couldn't get time to write up all the work. Managed to get a lotdone since the last update. And when you run that through the "Babelfish Bullsh*t Translator" it comes outas: Ages since the last update cause the shed feels like the inside of a freezerat this time of year and everything you pick up brings frostbite a step closer.The heater heats itself and nothing else and the camera took on a life of its ownand decided to mix up all the photos for the crack. So heres what actually got done.The driveshaft.... despite looking their age both joints on the shaft still rotate in all directionswithout any sticking or tightness, so a clean up and they're good to go..... what is getting changed is the centre bearing. Before splitting the shafta quick check for the original marks to help align it correctly when goingback together. If they're gone, two small dabs of tipex will do..... collar screwed back off the shaft and splines slid apart..... a slice around the rubber allows the outer piece of carrier bearingto be cut away (along with tops of fingers)..... pop the circlip and the large washer behind it off.... and then simply pull the bearing off the shaft with the pullers.... which is how it goes in the fantasy world of "workshop manual land".However in the real world no amount of pulling, beating or swearingwould remove the bearing. So the special bearing removing tool hadto be used, also known as an angle grinder..... shaft gets a quick lick of sandpaper to clean up where the newbearing is going to sit.... the new carrier bearing has the bearing recessed on one side like so...... and flush on the other side like so..... the bearing in the centre is heated up using the heat gun.... which allows it to slide up on to the shaft easily, with the recessedside facing in and the flush side facing out like so..... then the washer and circlip go back on and if you've fitted thebearing the wrong way around you now realise the cirlip won'treach in to fit in it's groove anymore, which will mean the whole thing hasto come off again to be flipped around, which is nice...... then the threaded cup is slid back up on to the splines, some coppergrease on the splines and then the other half of the shaft is slid backon with the white marks aligned.... The threaded cup isn't tightened up to lock the shaft length till it'sall refitted back on the car and extended to the correct length.... The last thing to do then was rebolt the rubber "guibo"or donut onto the gearbox end of the shaft. Mine was ingood nick as i'd only replaced it a while back. Unfortunatelyshortly after replacing it I read about the E34 M5 one(p/n 26 11 2 226 527) being a straight forward replacement,only its alot thicker and as such most probably longer lasting,(f*ck it anyway)...... STAY TUNED

(Dieser Bilder dieses Posts sind ebenfalls nicht vorhanden) With that done it's on to setting up a clean area to place the parts on once their washed..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1611.jpg Below is a picture of everything and a list of what we've chosen to replace..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1610.jpg (blue font is the changed parts)1. Pinion flange2. Pinion3.Pinion nut lock ring (oe) 23 21 1 490 1204. Pinion nut5. Collapsible pinion spacer (oe) 33 12 1 744 3686. Pinion seal (oe) 33 10 1 214 0997. Pinion shim8. Pinion inner bearing (aftermarket) outer race- SKF fk-hm 89410-2-cl7a bearing- SKF ak-hm 89449-2-cl7a9. Pinion outer bearing outer race (aftermarket) SKF fk-h 88510-2-cl7a10. Pinion outer bearing (aftermarket) SKF ck-hm 88542-2-cl7a11. Crownwheel bearing cup shim12. Crownwheel bearing cup O ring (x2) (oe) 33 11 1 214 14413. Halfshaft flange14 Crownwheel bearing cup15. Crownwheel bearings (x2) (aftermarket)outer race- SKF fk-lm 503310bearing- SKF k-lm 503349-cl7a16. Halfshaft flange seals (x2) (oe) 33 10 7 505 602 (comes with part 17's included)17. Halfshaft lock rings (x2) (oe) (comes with above)18. Limited slip differential and crownwheel19. Casing19. Casing gasket (oe) 33 11 1 210 40520. Speedo sender locking plate21. Speedo sendo and O ring22. Z3 rear cover In the list above the renewed parts listed in blue are marked(oe) for bought off BMW, and (aftermarket) were sourced at a local bearing supplier. The bearings sourced "aftermarket"are either SKF or KLM bearings which is exactly what you'll get from Bmw, only they won't come in a nice little Bmw jiffeybag, but they will cost less than half the main dealer price. With everything together it was time for reassembly. I've takenthe decission not to open up the limited slip diff unit as before the car came off the road it was working perfect, and I know if I open it I'll start replacing things, and, well, that money canbe better spent elsewhere. Beer. First up on the list of reassembly is to press on the crownwheel bearings..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1612.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1613.jpg then fit the races for these bearing into the crownwheel cups.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1614.jpg flip the cup over and pop in the halfshaft seals. The seal goes in tillit butt's up against the back of the bearing race(arrowed).... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1615.jpg One thing to be careful of is when driving in the seal up against the back of the bearing race, is, if you go a little tofar you can possibly knock the bearing race back out a bit. So, when done the cup is flipped over again and the race is tapped back in again to make sure it's home. http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1616.jpg Then on to the pinion bearing races. First up the inner bearing race.This was the one that had the shim under it, so, shim dropped infirst and then bearing race popped in on top of it.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1617.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1621.jpg then flipped over and the outer race fitted.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1620.jpg With all the races refitted the next thing to be done is pop back inthe diff unit and refit the cups and shims(arrowed) remembering to keep them to the sides they originally came out of.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1623.jpg with the cups bolted back in tight both sides it's time for the first setup check. The cups should now be holding the diff unit tightly,it should be able to rotate but have no noticeable play in the directionof the arrows below.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_1622.jpg and aswell as having no play the cups should also be slightly squeezing the diff bearings which is known as preload. This preload is measuredby a special tool which basically bolts on to the halfshaft flange andmeasures how much effort it takes to rotate the crownwheel. To littleforce, remove some shims which tightens up the preload on the bearingswhen the cups are refitted. To much force required to turn it and you pop in the next size up shim to ease off the preload.There is figures given for it in the workshop manual.If all you've changed in the overhaul is bearings and everything else isoriginal to that casing going back together then odds are the shims that were there already will be fairly spot on.If you've built a lot of diff's there's another special tool you can use tomeasure the preload.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2811%29/m3_hand.jpg (Ab hier fängt ein neuer Post an) (continued from previous page)With all that done, we pop the crownwheel and cups back off again,and start fitting up the pinion. First up drop in the outer pinion bearing..... followed by the seal..... and then the inner pinion bearing is pressed on to the pinion shaftand then the colapsable spacer(arrowed) is dropped on as well..... this lot is then pressed into the casing and up through the outer bearing. The pinion flange is popped back on and special tool reattached..... and the pinion nut is retightened..... Theres no torque for this nut as again your using it to "preload" orsqueeze the two bearings below it just the right amount.When retightening it you can feel the nut first tighten a little bit as the outer bearing gets squashed up against the collapseable spacer,but the pinion still is able to slap up and down in the direction below.... What has happened here is the both bearings have not been squeezedclose enough together yet and they can lift up and down off their racesbecause that collapsible spacer is keeping them apart. So, the nut is tightened down more, slowley, crushing the collapsiblespacer till theres no up and down play and the bearings are sitting snugly in their seats and then ever so slightly tightened again in little steps till the right preload is got on the bearings. This extra bit of squash (preload)on the bearings is done because when you nail the accelerator pedalif the bearings were just fitted loosely they'd start to lift out of theirraces and the pinion would start it's break for glory out through the diff casing. Instead of leaving two nice big black tyre marks you endup leaving one nice big trail of diff oil and gears.Again there is a special tool for measuring the correct preload and the figures for it are in the manual. With everything tightened up correctly and a quick splash of holy water, the lock washer is bent in to place.... casing is flipped over and crownwheel unit and cups refitted.... and halfshaft flanges refitted.... And then finally on to the most important check of the lot, tooth contact. Some engineers blue.... spread evenly on 3 crownwheel teeth..... and then rotate the diff gears by turning the front pinion flange while putting a bit of loading on it by holding one of the output flanges loosely.... and what your left with should be a marking on the crownwheel teethof where the pinion teeth are contacting it. What your looking for is a nice fat contact patch in the middle of the tooth, something like below.... If the contact patch is too high up towards the tip off the tooth you'll needto move the pinion gear closer to the crownwheel by putting a fatter shim under the inner pinion bearing.And if it's too low to the base of the tooth you'll need to fit a thinner shimto move the pinion gear back away from the crownwheel.If the contact patch is too far towards the inside of the crownwheel tooththen you've got to change the crownwheel bearing cup shims to move the crownwheel away from the pinion gear.And likewise if the contact patch is towards the outside of the toothchange the cup shims to move the crownwheel towards the pinion gear.Again if none of the main components have changed during the overhaulthen the contact patch should be pretty close to right, but you stillgotta check. If you get the tooth contact patch badly wrong, then don'tworry to much about it, you'll be getting a chance to rebuild it all againafter a few miles, when it sh*ts itself. After all that mind numbing crap is done, a bit of gasket sealer.... under the gasket and a little smear above.... bolt the rear cover back on.... pop the speedo sender back in with a fresh o ring.... bungs back in and fill with oil and thats it.... and all that waffle was for a case with 2 gears and 4 bearings,I'm buying a new keyboard for whats coming next..... till next time....

Evenin all, Thanks again for the kind words, much appreciated. As mentioned in the last post we're taking a break from the shell for a while and moving on to the drive train overhaul, and, starting at the back and moving forward, first up we have the differential. That magical lump of metal that sits in the back axle and lets you move in a sideways fashion when the opportunity arises. First and foremost, as usual, we'll just take a second to say the obvious, this isn't a guide on how to build a diff, for that, go here http://bmw.ctcms.net/BMW/Software/E3...0Bmw%20e30.rar (password to unzip the files is bmwfaq ) download the full workshop manual and follow the smart people at Bmw's guide, The section on the diff starts at 33-101. Unfortunately they don't use a large selection of hammers to do their overhaul, so I have trouble relating to it. Anywho, back to my diff. This is a medium case diff as identified by the 8 bolts that hold on the back cover, the small case diff has 6 bolts holding on the rear cover and the large case diff is easily identified by snapping your spine while trying to lift it as it weighs 14 ton. First up pop the 8 bolts off the rear cover and remove, spilling the remaining horrible smelling diff oil over your clean bench..... then using special tool no. 959bigbar, we popped out the halfshaft flanges.... in the middle of the diff that big gear you can see is the crownwheel and to the right of it is the limited slip differential....... and next up was the crownwheel bearing cups. One on each side of the diff and these house the crownwheel bearing outer races which hold the diff unit in place. Theres a ring of six bolts that hold each one in place, and before you undo them it pays to take a second to notice that each cup has a square notch on top of them (as arrowed) which alligns with a corresponding notch on the diff casing (as arrowed).... When you undo the ring of bolts and pull out the cups the diff unit will drop inside, so you can either let it drop and damage it or put your hand under it and damage it instead. If your lucky enough to have an assistant helping you then you'll not need me to tell you who's hand to use. When you pull the cups you'll notice a shim (arrowed), this will either be still stuck to the casing or the cup. Keep these shims matched with the cup they were fitted with and mark which side they came off, they'll need to go back on the same side or things will start to get funky. When the cup's off you can see why it has a notch to show you why it needs to be fitted this way up. In the pic bellow you can see the cup has an oil drilling (arrowed) which lets oil splash in the top of the cup and drip down on to the crownwheel bearings, and obviously if you fit the cup any other way the oil aint going to drip anywhere.... With the crownwheel/diff unit carefully lifted out all thats left in the casing is the pinion...... to remove this you gotta take the pinion flange off the front of the pinion.... first up bend back in the little piece of the locking washer from the recess to let the nut loosen..... and then use special tool part no.959rustypieceofbar.... which is basically a piece of bar with holes drilled into it to allow 2 M8 bolts to fit through it and bolt up to the pinion flange and hold it from turning while loosening the nut.... once the nut's off, the flange should lift off, if it doesn't smack it repeatedly with a large hammer while searing at it loudly..... pop the nut back on to protect the threads from stray hammer blows, it turns out fine threads and large hammers do not mix, I know, it suprised me too.... pry out the pinion seal..... and then strap on a pullers and push out the pinion..... (I know the pullers is crooked, if it really bothers you, tilt your head to the side) and bingo, one pinion and a front and rear pinion bearing and although its hard to make out in this pic, also a collapsible spacer .... If your diff has started to whine, rumble or make strange noises then usually it's these bearings that have started to sh*t themselves. Everytime you drop the hammer in your car and unleash all that horsepower it's this pinion gear that try's to burst it's way out of the differential casing and these two bearings that have to persuade it to stay. next up is to strip out the bearing outer races starting with the pinion pair in the diff casing. The inner pinion bearing race drives out down into the casing and flip it over and the outer race drives out through the top... the two races out and the next thing to make a mental note of, is the inside race has a shim between it and it's seat in the casing(arrowed). This has to go back in to the same spot upon reassembly or again things will get funky.... next up the crownwheel cups, drive the oil seals outwards..... and flip it over and drive the bearing races out.... With everything stripped down it's time for clean up. As you can see below the casing was covered in a fine blend of crap and rust..... So we break out the "de-scaler", as usual I've no idea what the rest of the world calls this tool. It's air operated and when you pull the trigger all them little needles plunge up and down pounding the crap out of whatever you happen to be holding it against. It does a fine job of removing all the loose crap and rust from the casing and then proceeds to evenly spread it around the rest of the garage while deafening you in the process..... casing cleaned, it gets a coating of red oxide, before a final coating of satin black.... the rear cover (which I think is a Z3 item with the extra cooling fins) gets a steam clean. One bit that gets a little special attention is the little breather hole. Gotta make sure this ain't clogged up, as if it is, when inside the diff gets hot theres no where for the expanding warm air to get out and it ends up pushing oil out past your lovely new seals... after that it's on to pulling off the crownwheel bearings, these little fu*kers were tight and needed the use of the bigger pullers.... the other little thing to be careful of is the thin trigger wheel shown below pressed on to the diff unit. Its the trigger wheel that the speedo sender reads to tell the speedo gauge up on the dash how far over the speed limit your going. As it's thin, it'll bend easily and if your unlucky you'll reassemble everything only to find out your speedo no longer works, which will mean stripping everything back down again and repairing or replacing it, which is nice..... after that, it was on to pulling the pinion inner bearing. To say this was tight really doesn't convey it accurately, b*stard tight would be a better discription. One of those one's where you strap the pullers on and start winding, and winding, and winding, and then stop, and rap rags around the bearing in the misguided thought that if the bearing explodes they'll save you from harm, while the truth being that if it does go you'll now have bits of dirty rag stuck in you along with bits of bearing.... and eventually theres a large crack and after you check for shrapnel wounds you realise the bearing has started to come. (mental note, must look into health insurance.) Then with everything stripped down it's on to the "decontamination unit".... Two basins of paraffin, one to wash the heavy crap off and the second to rinse the smaller stuff off and then finally aerosol cans of parts cleaner to give them the final rinse.

(Die Bilder dieses Posts sind nicht vorhanden, vollständigkeitshalber poste ichs trotzdem) After all that, it's on to the next job on the list, cavity waxing. All the box sections and cavities need a coating of wax as the acid dipping had removed all the original stuff. This can be a bit of a messy job and if you get this wax on the outside paintwork you'll need to use white spirits to remove it. A situation thats worth trying to avoid you'll agree. So, some soft sheets and some masking tape.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1489.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1487.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1488.jpg The experienced one's among you will figure out why it's far less grief just to go out and buy some new sheets rather than borrowing what you were sure was "old and no longer needed sheets". Anywho, with the shell rapped up, first up was to glue on the new roof insulation.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1491.jpg again the spit helps greatly with this job..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1492.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1493.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1494.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1495.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1497.jpg Then we have the cavity wax, I went with Dinitrol..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1498.jpg it comes in 1 litre "shultz" type tins and you need a "shultz" style gun to screw on to the top of the can for spraying it.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1499.jpg the gun itself comes with a normal type spay nozzle which is useful for spraying open areas, also need though is a "wand". This is a 2 foot piece of plastic tubing that screws into the gun one end, and the other end has a jet with multiple holes to spray it out in all directions, which is perfect for inside the box sections..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1500.jpg all rigged up and ready to go, the tin of wax is dipped in a bucket of hot water for a while first. This thin's out the wax and makes it spray out in a finer mist giving better coverage.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1504.jpg For the actual application itself I just picked one area at a time, picked out a few holes along that section that would allow the wand to fit in and spray the full length and then taped off every other hole on that section. The tape is used for two reasons, the first and obvious one is you don't end up looking like a wax candle at the end of the day from overspray leaking out, and the second is after you've sprayed that section you can peal off the bits of tape to see if they've a good coating of wax on the underside, so you know you've got 100% coverage along the whole length inside..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1505.jpg No wax on any of the bits of tape and you've missed a bit..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1506.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1508.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1509.jpg probably the trickiest piece to do was this section.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1525.jpg it has more bloody holes in it than a fishing net.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1527.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1528.jpg took a lot longer to tape up than actually wax.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1529.jpg bit hard to tell from the pic, but this is actually the area under the scuttle panel out where the wiper motor lives. Everybody knows how these cars like to rust in here so it got a heavy coating of wax.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1538.jpg inside the roof pillars and skeleton got a good coating.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1541.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1540.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1547.jpg Out of the whole car I only had to drill two holes to get access to an area to coat it and it was this little box section. Bit hard to picture it, but its part of the rear chassis leg box section. The hole at the front is where the rear subframe mounts up to and at the rear of the pic is the back spring platform. The last decent hole to get the wand into was off nearer the back of the car and the wand just wouldn't reach all the way up to this bit..... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1518.jpg on the inside of the box section there was no joy either, there were holes but they were too small for the wand to fit. So picked a hole in the middle of the section each side.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1517.jpg and drilled it out large enough to fit the wand.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1519.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1520.jpg With most of the box sections done we could move on to some of the larger open areas needing wax. This is the area under the rear side window, bit hard to figure from the pic I know, but the metal in the top in the pic is the inside of the rear quarter panel.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1511.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1515.jpg and the back half, thats the front of the rear inner wheel arch on the right.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1510.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1514.jpg There's quite a bit to wax overall in the shell and it took two full days till I was happy I'd got everywhere. The other thing thats handy to know is that if you are leaving the gun for a few hours or over night the wax will dry out and clog it up. So, a little aerosol lid full of thinners or white spirits run through the gun cleans it out spotless... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1559.jpg after the shell waxing was finished the last of the internal sound insulation could be fitted.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1549.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1607.jpg and then the final bits, the two front doors.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1550.jpg sound deadening first.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1552.jpg and then wax.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1555.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1554.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1556.jpg http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1558.jpg All in all we got through just about five tins of the stuff.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1562.jpg and then the fun really started, where the hell do all these go again.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1563.jpg And thats about where we're up to at the moment. Next up, taking a break from the shell for a while and starting on the driveline. First up for overhaul will be a differential thats looks like it went down with the Titanic.... http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2810%29/m3-1572.jpg till next time....

Evening all, After stripping the removable panels back off the car again and packing them away safely it was on to the next task. Sound deadening. That sticky black crap thats a ball breaker to get off when your stripping a car down. Still, going back on should be a walk in the park, he said, stupidly. Back at the start of the rebuild I'd thought a bit about this and had looked into the price and availability of aftermarket products, i.e. Fatmat and Dynamat, and had considered covering the whole floor pan to make the inside as quiet as possible. Then I got a chance to see a sheet of Dynamat in person, and it struck me, this stuff's heavy. If I cover the whole floorpan with this I'm going to be adding a fair bit of weight to the car. And on further reflection I don't actually remember thinking at any stage "sweet jesus this car's a bit noisey in here." So I decided I'd replicate the original sound proofing instead, as someone who almost certainly knows a lot more about this than me, had sat down in the beginning when this car was being designed and decided exactly how much was needed and where it should go. Plus, a part number search shows the e30's sound proofing material is still used in all the modern bmw fleet, so it must be half decent? With that decided next thing to do was search through the pictures I'd taken on disassembly and any other pic's I could find online to make paper templates of the original shapes. Which came out like this.... I added in a couple of small extra bits, one either side on the rear inner wheel arches to help keep down any extra drone from running wider than standard rear tyres.... and a little bit at the bottom of each speaker pot.... then I ordered up some soundproofing from Bmw. Originally I'd intended to get 12 of the 50cm X 50cm sheets to do it all, but upon making the order I was informed that that part number had been superseded with another part number (pn.51488165271), and the new one was twice the price. So, I assumed the sheets were probably twice the size and to be on the safe side went ahead and ordered 7. Imagine my suprise when I went to collect it and found I now had enough to sound proof the starship f*cking enterprise! The sheets are a little over 3 times the size of the original part number. On the bright side I could now cut all the sheets out fully without having to join bit's together.... I've seen other pic's on the net of sound proofing and it looked soft and easy to trim, god only knows what I've ended up with, cause this stuff's as ridgid as a plank and brittle too. So, templates marked out.... ruler and stanley knife to cut out the straight pieces... and for curved bits a little heat from a heat gun softens it just nicely for cutting with a scissors.... With all the bits cut out, next up was to get the body work ready for them, a quick clean with thinners gets the surface clean of the little spots of buffing compound scattered throughout the inside of the shell.... and then lay the sheet in place, see what I mean about rigid.... So, a little help from the heat gun.... and the stuff falls down neatly in to place, but it isn't stuck on yet.... For that it needs to be heated up a little more. Which brings out the gas blow lamp.... and a little hardware store roller to press it down evenly..... a little practice shows that just enough heat at the surface of the sheet to turn it a wet shade of dark black allows the underside to get a good solid bond.... heat gunned.... blow lamped.... Next up was another small job to tick off the "things to do encyclopaedia". The roof band that covers the join at the rear roof extension.... first up was to fit the 2 little sealing strips to the little recesses on the underside of the band.... I spent 20 minutes poking in the first one. before realising on the second one that they could slide straight in from the end, in 5 seconds. I know, i know, it's a miracle I've made it this far..... new clips popped in to the roof.... and sledge hammer the roof band down on to them... There's one large rivet to go in either side of the band to finish it off which I've yet to do.

Die e28 kenn ich auch schon aber im e30 sehe ich das zum ersten mal. Mich überrascht das es platzmäßig passt. Man bedenke da hängen noch zwei Turbos dran!!!. Somit wäre der e30 eine univesal Karosserie für jegliche Motorisierung Soll ein Schaltgetriebe drangeschraubt sein. Welches könnte den passen? @passat32bfan: deine frage mit dem Holz verstehe ich nicht. Holzmotorlager??? Und zuletzt: wenn ich diese maschine im e30 zum laufen bekommen könnte wäre es mir sche*ß egal ob er frontlastig ist, wenn extrem unfahrbar packste paar sandsäcke in koffer gut so:-D Ich habe mal vor längerer zeit ein thread im motor talk gelesen, wo sich ein damaliger mitarbeiter gemeldet hat, der bei dieser maschine mitentwickelt hat oder sowas. Der meinte das die maschine von werk aus gedrosselt wäre, weil der antriebsstrang nicht halten würde. Soll dauernd kardanwellen gewickelt haben:freak: Vielleicht ein bisschen Overkill im e30 aber ich finds geil:meinung: Grüße Kurt

Hallo, Zwar weiß man nicht was daraus wurde aber den bmw v8 diesel haben die typen in einen e30 gepackt:eek: http://i55.tinypic.com/28hip9c.jpg http://i55.tinypic.com/a32vsz.jpg http://i54.tinypic.com/rrpd7c.jpg Hier der link zuM thread: http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=106845&highlight=diesel Grüße Kurt

Evening all, No big load of verbal diaorea this post, will let the pic's do the talking. All the bits are back from paint and although it makes no sense what so ever to assemble it now, as theres still a load of work to do on the bare shell, I'm not waiting another 5 months to get a look at this thing together. It's been about 13/14 months of body preperation getting this thing to paint and the big question was always going to be, was it worth it? . . . . In a word, Yes Next up is to get it all assunder again without scratching it and start the cavity waxing and sound proofing. STAY TUNED

with that little episode over it was time to move on to the final preparation of the exterior and remaining panels for top coat. The reason this wasn't sanded along with the interior is if any overspray crept through the masking you could end up 15 pictures back up again and in serious need of sedation. Quick mask up to stop the nice black paintwork getting messed up by the coming wet sanding.... and then head to toe every last square inch of bodywork left in primer gets powder guide coated and wet sanded with 600grit wet and dry paper.... no scratches or blemishes to worry about this time just the need to get the primer as mirror flat as possible, any top coat can only be as flat as whats underneath it.... bit of washing up liquid in the water helps the sanding go a little easier and cleans any stray contaminants off the panels as you go... this.... took... forever.... and... a day... or 3 weeks to be precise.... but there is a small reward, with everything sanded so smooth you could now catch the light and see reflections on the panels and see how flat it'll look when black.... and then with nothing left to do, the time had finally come for the top coat to go on. How was the black going to look? Would it come out ok? Was all this effort going to pay off?..... And i'd dearly love to be able to tell you all, but the simple truth is, we just delivered the shell to the bodyshop this morning and it'll be an agonising few weeks before we get to see the finished article. But at least now you know how I feel..... STAY TUNED

We had decided right from the start of this project that the car would be going out to have it's top coat applied by a professional. The reasons for this were: a) i wanted the top coat and lacquer to be baked in an oven to get the finish as hard as possible. b) i wanted the finish to be fly free, ie. nothing stuck to the outside of the shell but paint, no dust, no flies, no stray pigeons. c) perhaps most importantly of all I wanted it painted by a professional. We've sprayed quite a bit so far on this car and quite a few rally cars in the past and in a moment we'll also be spraying some black to the interior and underneath of this one. But, there's a world of difference between spraying primer and spraying top coat. Spraying primer is fairly straight forward and your always going to be sanding it before the next coating anyway so the finish doesn't have to be mint. But top coat can go t*ts up in the blink of an eye if you haven't got enough experience to spot the signs that all is not well. After this much effort to prep it, I want the top coat to be as good as it can be and for that to happen it needs to be painted by someone with a lot more experience than me. That said, I'll be f**ked if i'm going to let someone else have all the fun, we were going to paint as much black as we could first. With the whole car now primered the bits we were going to paint black next would need to be sanded/ flattened. For the interior and boot we used these..... above is a 180 grit soft sanding block and below is a 220 grit sanding pad. They're much quicker to use than normal sheets of wet and dry paper and they'd do just fine to give a quick lick to the interior.... the engine bay was a different story though. I'd spent a lot of time already sanding parts of the engine bay smooth and sanding down the seam sealer flat as I wanted the bay to look as good as the outside of the car. So now the primer in here was going to have to be guide coated and wet sanded with 600grit to get it mirror flat. Only the turrets, wheel tubs, chassis legs and front slam panel got this treatment. Not bothering going this far on the bulkhead as it'll be covered by the oem soundproofing..... and with that eventually finished it was time to shoot a couple of coats of blackness.... very happy with how it came out, interior took it very well... the boot, as always,was a pure pig to do but came out well too. For anyone who's curious as to why a boot's a pig to spray, get yourself an empty kellogs conflakes box, stick your head inside it and then shove an aerosol can in there aswell and try to spray the inside of the box. You'll get the idea pretty quick. underside came out pretty sweet to.... and then the engine bay, would all that extra sanding pay off??? it looked like all that extra effort was worth while, the majority of the bay was silky smooth... all except that is, the f**king turret's and wheel tubs which was the main part I wanted to get right.... I'd like to say I took this discovery in a cool and collective manner, but the truth is passers by outside had to cover there young children's ears for quite some time. What had happened was we had sprayed the underside of the car first and some overspray had blew up in to the engine bay and settled on the turrets. Unawares of this we then flipped the shell over and started spraying the engine bay. You could see it showing through as we were spraying but there wasn't a lot we could do then, so we finished and let it dry to see what it would look like.... It's not terrible, but it's not what I wanted either. And the irony of it is it's only on the turrets and wheels tubs, the only part thats really noticable when everything refitted to the bay. So, what to do? well if you've read this far you've probably a good idea. After leaving the paint to fully cure the effected areas were wet sanded back down again with 600grit. Didn't have to go right back to the primer to get it flat although the areas do look grey in the pictures... each side was sanded back to a line or crease in the bodywork as it was going to have to be taped off to be resprayed and you don't want nasty tape/paint lines standing out..... So to also help blend in the resprayed parts, instead of just normally taping off the area, the masking tape was rolled like so.... and then placed snug up against the seam.... and another strip of tape softly over it to stop the roll unfurling.... and repeat until all the area is done.... the thinking behind this is that if you just taped it normally you'd get a noticeable line where the paint builds up against the edge of the tape, whereas this way some of the paint will fade in under the roll and if all goes well, make the line unnoticeable. With that done the rest of the shell needed to be taped up.... and then mix a small bit of paint, spray it on, say 3 decades of the rosary and slowly open one eye to see if it's come up good.... yipidy f u c k i n g doda....

with all that done the final thing was to hang some paper down from the sills of the car. This is not to avoid overspray on the underneath of the car, thankfully we're not quite that anal, but instead to stop and spray travelling under the car and landing on freshly painted panels the far side.... a wipe, tac, mix and splatter later.... with the shell now fully primered we could move attention to the other bits, bumpers, doors, spoilers etc. However to do this the shell would have to go outside to make room, and we were worried that extreme temperatures of the Irish summer season might literally warp the metalwork! Yeah, as usuall it had been pissing rain solid for a week now.... alas, just as we were about to abandon work on the M and start building an ark, the clouds broke and the sun shone through long enough to allow us to get this done. a few lengths of steel.... spit dismantled.... one short length of steel bolted to each spit stand... and some pimp daddy chain... allows us to hang the panels up for spraying like so.... and some string from the rafters hangs the spoiler and mirrors. (spoiler worked out grand like this, mirrors were a disaster, imagine trying to spray an old grandfather clock pendulum, whilst moving, and you'll get the picture, you live and you learn).... the rest of the stuff went on what ever we could find to prop them up... started to run out of suitable props at this stage so had to borrow the neighbours wheelie bin..... had to be careful with that and tape it up good and proper as he's already fairly suspicious as to why the grass in his back garden has turned a funny shade of primer grey. bumper plugs are removed and done separately so as to allow the primer under where they shall sit.... and thats it, the last of the stuff to be primered..... wipe, tac, mix, splatter and ta-daaaa.... join us tomorrow evening to find out how things turn out as we take a turn to the darker side and start applying the Jet black.

carrying on from where we left off last night, and it's on to the final of our 3 types of fillers. With the heavy fillers on and filler primer done and rubbed down it's time to break out the stoppers. After rubbing down the black guide coat on the shell and separate panels it's not uncommon to find some little tiny holes in the surface of the filled area. These are tiny little air bubbles that sometimes get trapped in the fillers as your spreading it on, and will show through the final top coat if not dealt with. Kinda hard to see them they're so small but since I can't figure out how to use the zoom on the camera your just going to have to shove your face up close to the monitor... along with these tiny holes, block sanding the guide coat also showed up a few larger blemishes that would also have to be dealt with.... The last few larger one's shown above can be filled with a thin covering of fillers, but theres no point trying to fill the tiny pin holes with fillers, it just won't fit. So, we use this stuff.... as you can see by the label 3M have decided to call it "Acryl Red Putty" probably cause they couldn't charge you enough if they just called it "stoppers". Basically it's just a very fine, runny, light form of normal fillers that has the advantage that it'll fit into any little scratch or pin hole. You can buy it in a tin or a tube like above. The tube seems to be handier for the simple reason that this stuff already has the hardner premixed in it, so the minute it's exposed to the air it starts to go off. With the tube you can take a little out at a time but the tin version seems to go hard after only opening it a few times. Then again I'm not exactly the fastest worker. So, squirt a little out to use... and apply it to the one or two pins holes on the car along with the thin coat of fillers for the bigger blemishes.... well maybe a little more than one or two holes... if you ware spectacles it helps to clean them before this job or you may use half the tube before realising it's dirt on your glasses not pin holes on the car... the stoppers goes off fairly quickly and can be sanded away usually within 10 minutes. As it's so fine and light it sands much the same as the primer, so just gently rubbing it with some 320grit takes away the excess.... to leave just the little bit filling the pin holes...(you'll have to take my word on it) the larger bits of normal filler take another small covering of guide coat and a light block sanding again to get them down flat.... and with all that done around the shell and separate panels the bodywork is finally as flat as we can get it..... it's then time to clean up the.... and start taping up for final coating of primer.... as everything now needs to be coated fully in primer it's decided to break it down in to three sessions. First the underneath, inside, engine bay and boot and then later the outside and finally the doors and bumpers and other stuff. We decided to do it like this because theres just so much square footage of bodywork to be sprayed on the car it would be hard not to get overspray on panels that were starting to dry while your just getting around to spraying the area next to it. Plus with our magnificent, money no object, extraction system there was a good chance one of us would probably die from toxic fumigation. Got to spend a little time being precise taping the car up before hand as any paint that gets under it and on to the other half will show up when you spray over it later.... 1 inch tape around all the edges first.... and then with that done, roll out the paper and fill in the gaps.... quick once over with pre-cleaner, a swift wipe of the tac-rag, slop some paint together, fire it into the gun, and splatter it out on to the shell, leaves it looking like this.... again handy having it on the spit for this part as you can turn it to any angle to help getting all the nooks and crevices inside and underneath.... and when that was finished and dried the paper is whipped of and everything that was sprayed is now taped off ready for the second half to start.... the window and door jams are all taped from the inside so as to allow full coverage right out to the edges.... there is however one danger to watch out for when taping a car up from the inside....

After the paint has had time to dry and settle it's on to the application of this stuff... It's a powder guide coat as opposed to the aerosol type one used earlier. The main difference being that the spray on one will help show up dips and bumps in the panel work while sanding, while this stuff will show up everything till the surface is sanded completely flat. The bottom part contains the coating which is like lead pencil dust, while the top half is the sponge you use to apply it.... pick a panel.... and start rubbing it on.... and if you look closely you'll see just how far from perfect the nice coating of primer is.... what you can notice is that paint doesn't go on silky smooth but rather builds up like a coating of millions of minuscule little snow flakes leaving a sort of orange peal effect. The other thing you can notice is the remaining scratches from the 80 and 120 grit sanding. So, with the whole panel covered in guide coat.... it's out with the long sanding blocks again and together with some 320 grit sand paper it's back to everybody's favourite pastime. More f**king sanding.... the 320 grit is fairly fine grit paper and blocks are being used fairly lightly compared to earlier but there's still a bit of scope to flatten out any small imperfections as you can see there's a nice thickness of paint to work with... to illustrate this, the rear quarter panel was showing up a lot of scratch marks left over from the earlier 80 and 120 grit paper.... and as this is blocked down you can see the marks slowly starting to go..... first the lighter 120 marks go, just leaving the deeper 80 grit.... and after some more rubbing they go too, and if you've applied enough coatings of the filler primer you'll get them out before breaking through to the metalwork underneath. (we used 2 heavy coats).... at this stage it's probably worth pointing out that if your planning on having a go at something like this then buy, build or rob yourself a spit. Being able to turn the car to any angle you want to make yourself more comfortable while sanding is priceless. Sanding is a horrible enough job without adding a broken back into the equation. with the shell done the doors and bonnet get the same treatment.... the other thing that gets a little attention is the edges of the panels. The more paint you have on the edge of a panel the greater the chance that when you whack it off something a large chip will come off it. You might notice that with a door or bonnet that has been resprayed over the original paint work that when it gets stone chipped the flakes are usually fairly large as opposed to an edge that only has the normal amount of paint on it, which when chipped usually flakes a much smaller chip. So, all filler primer is removed from the edges...

managed to get a small bit done again since the last post, so, roll a fat one or crack open a beer cause here comes the boring details. As it finished up in the last post the car was taped up and ready for filler primer. As you may have noticed from the previous pic's only the large surface area's were getting a coating of the filler primer, and the reason for that is as follows. From my limited understanding of bodywork there's 3 main types of filler or to put it another way 3 different layers of crap you can plaster on the outside of your car in an attempt to get it as smooth as possible. Taking them in order of thickness they are, first, isopon, filler, bondo, call it what you will, it's the stuff you've seen me shovel on to the car already. Then there's stoppers which we'll get to in a while and finally theres filler primer, which we're about to spray on now. Filler primer is much the same as normal primer it's just applied alot heavier to build up a thicker coat. The reason for using filler primer? Although the fillers was block sanded down smooth the shell is still not smooth enough for the top coat yet, the spraying and sanding of the filler primer will get it the last step. Plus, unlike metal, filler is porous and will absorb some paint, if the shell was just given a quick coat of primer and then top coat the paints can sometimes sink down on the filler spots leaving your beautiful pride and joy looking like it was sprayed by a blind man with aerosol cans in a force 9 hurricane. (may be a slight exaggeration). And this is how it went, after the car is taped up all the panels are given a quick rub down with this stuff. It's called panel wipe or pre-cleaner and is a weak version of standard thinners. It should clean off any crap that could react with the paint going on... with the car now clean and ready to go theres one small job to do before painting and thats set up somewhere to clean the gun and mixing pots after your finished. The items used are, 1 gallon can of standard thinners to clean with, tools for dismantling the gun, some rags, a scotch pad and an empty can for the dirty thinners. The professional work bench pictured below should be available from your local snap-on dealer. the reason for setting up the cleaning area before hand is, from past experience, once you are finished spraying, the paint in and on the various tools you've used tends to dry and harden quite quickly. Should you wish to take a more laid back approach to cleaning up afterwards then these are the only tools you will require.... then back in to the "spray booth" itself. While spraying in a confined space the paint fumes and overspray will start to build up and the need will arise to extract these somehow. This will require the use of a highly expensive, state of the art, high volume air extraction and filtration unit. Unfortunately on the day I visited the local hardware store to purchase this they had just sold out, so, instead I've ended up with a 6 inch fan which would struggle to suck a fart from a fly's arse. This coupled to the length of flexible hosing you see below would be our state of the art extraction system.... on a clear starry night, if you look just right at the correct angle, you can just about make out the little hole in the ozone above my house. Once suited, booted and masked up the last preparation before mixing the paint can be done and it's the application of this stuff.... you've no idea where i'm going with this one have you? Let me explain. A long while ago after spraying the interior on an orange rally car I became acutely aware that the piece of your face not covered by the gas mask can become covered in a light coating of the paint your using as it blows back off the area your spraying. When that colour is orange and you spend the next several days looking like an Umpa-lumpa from Willy wonka's chocolate factory it focuses the mind on finding a solution. Hence, the Vaseline, spread a little on exposed face to avoid this.... the compressor is placed outside so the noise of it doesn't drive you insane... and the shell is given a final wipe over with a "tac rag". (Lint free rag with some sticky gue coated on them so all the tiny dust crap sticks to it rather than your car)... Then on to the paint itself, I know nothing about paint, but as this is the internet and 50% of what you read on it is lies and the other 50% bullshit, I will attempt to maintain the high standard. The stuff below is what makes up 2 pack paint, on the left 4 litres of filler primer, in the middle 5 litres of 2 pack thinners (which is different to standard thinners) and on the right 1 litre of 2 pack hardner.... which shall be mixed in to this old paint pot.... with the aid of this.... it's a paint stick. Basically a graduated ruler which lets you mix 4 parts of this with 1 part of that without having to guess... one side is for top coat which is usually 2 parts colour to 1 part hardner with 10% thinners. And the other side is for primer's as most primers are mixed 4 parts primers to 1 part hardner and up to 1 part thinners depending on how thick/thin you want it, like so..... paint... hardner.... and then thinners, by which stage you should have messed enough all over your hands to make using a camera impossible. When stirred up and mixed well, it's poured in to the spray gun.... through these paper filters to catch any little crap that'll clog the gun... then hook it up to the air line and spray like the clappers. It can be helpful to have an old panel in the booth so you can practice the technique of getting runs in your paint so that you have it mastered when you turn your attention to the shell... the results of which came out looking like this.... after spending the guts of a year working on a mutli coloured shell it's actually nice to see it all one colour again, even if it is grey.

then on to the splitter. It's made up of two skins which are hollow in between. I didn't want to use a large headed bolt to tighten it and end up squeezeing the two skins together, which would probably cause it to crack over time, so, two little holes either side of the main one on just the bottom surface.... ream all 3 of them into one... and cut up a little reinforcing plate... slip it in to hole (large hammer kept nicely out of picture).... bolt the plate down tight to straighten it out once in place.... remove bolt, tape up top side of hole.... and pour in some resin to keep everything from moving around.... when the resin dries, redrill the hole, insert the bolts and bolt it all up, which leaves it looking like so.... after that was done it was on to sanding all the little bits and bobs.... and then, finally, just one panel left to finish the prep work. The bonnet... this had been dipped along with the shell and because of this the bonder that bonds the skeleton to the bonnet skin was long since dissolved which left the bonnet feeling fairly flexible and weak' You could feel some new dents on the surface courtesy of SPL, the most noticeable of which was this one.... Still, how bad could they be, few hours and all this would be finished.... It looked like the whole bloody circus had just marched over it! I couldn't fill all them dents, the front tyres would burst under the weight of the filler. So, dial tone, "hello, that BMW?, can I have the parts department please" "hello parts, can you give me a price for an e30 bonnet please" . . . "no you must have misheard me I only need the price for one please" . . "HOW MUCH" . . . dial tone one secondhand bonnet later... nice and clean, no rust, very little stone chipping, and most importantly no evidence of previous circus marching.... quick block sand with 320 grit revealed only some small dents... and some nudge marks across the front from some over zealous closing of the bonnet.... an hour had them filled and sanded.... and then on to underneath. As this bonnet was from a 325 it had the sound proofing glued on as opposed to the m3's clipped on mat. A steam cleaning took care of the heavy sound proofing but this still left the glue residue... an hour with thinners and a scotch pad got the bonnet clean and me stoned from the fumes.... which was convenient as it helped block out the pain from having to sand every inch of the underneath.... after that, a quick sand of the boot, interior and the engine bay. Spent a little more time in the engine bay getting all the seam sealer sanded smooth, I don't like the factory finish brush marks look. and then finally it was time to get ready for some primer. Only problem was the garage was an inch thick in dust and someone had filled it with various crap over the last 12 months a quick wipe of a rag later.... and the expert installation of the "Spray booth 3000" complete with NASA spec airlock.... car was put back on wheeled dolly during cleaning and wheeled outside to have the dust blown out of all the cracks and crevices (neighbours really love me now, and I even offered to do their washing again for them, no pleasing some people). With the place now clean and the car back in we could start taping up the shell.... the first coating of filler primer is only going on the large panel surfaces, so everything else gets taped up...... STAY TUNED

with the rear end panels done it was time to move closer to the front. And first up was the front bumper. I wasn't looking forward to this as I had a feeling there was going to be a good deal of effort (read ballache) involved in getting the bumper fit for paint. The problem was that the front bumper was originally off a red car and had been resprayed diamond swartz when fitted to this car, that in itself is not usually a problem if done right, however, this bumper looks as if it wasn't fully preped before the black was put on.... the bumper had the usual stone chips you'd expect from a car of it's age, but in the corners and along the crease lines you could see where the black paint was lifting to reveal the red underneath because the bumper wasn't fully sanded before painting. So, a choice had to be made. It wasn't possible to know where the black was stuck well and where it wasn't, meaning that if I chose just to give everything a quick sanding over and sprayed on top of this, then even if my paint job stuck well the paint underneath could still lift down the line and end up looking crap again. I thought about it for a while and decided if that happened after this much effort there was a good chance I'd set fire to the car, so, no other option really, all the black had to come off. but as with most other things I tend to do, it wasn't that simple. The red underneath was the original factory red and was really well stuck on, so I wanted to leave as much of that as possible on, as my paint job stands a better job of sticking to it as opposed to a bare plastic bumper. Yeah, I know, I could probably make boiling an egg into a four hour mammoth task. 80 grit paper and elbow set to full power.... only block sanded the top part as it's really the only large flat surface on the bumper, hand sanded the rest. Block showed up a dent right in the middle of the bumper, should've hand sanded it too.... bit more of the pealing paint in the indicator recesses..... these channels were a pig to get into.... no need to totally do the bottom couple of inches as there will be a spoiler covering it..... this... drove... me.... f*cking ga ga.... finished, well actually no, while the 80 grit is good at getting the paint off it's to coarse a finish to paint over and you'll see the sanding scratches through the paint, so, a complete coat of guide coat everywhere.... and then do it all again with 180 grit untill you see the scratches fade away.... next up was the evo two chin spoiler, which was also multi layered red and black, unfortunately she'd experienced some heavy landings during her time and all the layers of paint had cracked quite badly, so she got sanded back to the bone... bolt it all together for the next part.... which was to size up the next carbon addition. This part was actually fitted to the sport evolution and wasn't fitted along with the chin spoiler above. But I've decided to fit both, not technically correct I know, but if you don't tell anyone and I don't, then maybe they won't notice, it can be our little secret. (yep, sanding is starting to get to me). sat it up against the chin spoiler and decided on how much I wanted it to stick out.... then traced a line on the chin spoiler.... removed it.... and removed the chin spoiler before clamping the carbon piece to it again to check all is still square.... then take out the drill and mow a few holes through the pair of them.... the plan was to sink a few threaded rivets into the chin spoiler so the the carbon piece could be easily bolted on and off in the event of it breaking down the line during a hard re-entry.... but the rivets were going to sit a little proud of the surface and as such not let the carbon splitter mount up flush... so recessed the hole a little while preying the drill didn't slip all the way through and render the hole useless.... whip out the rivet nut squeezers (i'm fairly sure thats not it's proper name)... screw on a rivet nut.... cut out a little aluminium reinforcing place... pop the rivet through the spoiler and plate.... and give it a wee squeeze.... which leaves a nice tight secure nut... which is flush with the bottom of the spoiler.... 8 of them in total....

As mentioned earlier theres been a little bit of a gap since the last update, reason being the budget had started to run low for this project so I decided I would win the national lottery, for some reason I can't yet fathom I haven't been contacted by the Lottery people to arrange how much I'd like to win. Still I'm sure it's only a matter of time. The next plan to rob a bank has come to no end as it would appear the banks have even less money than I do, bad timing, I know. So after a month working the spanners for other people I could now return to my own project. Where more sanding awaited. With the exterior of the shell wrapped up last time it was now on to the individual panels. First up, the doors.... looks nice and flat doesn't it, and in fairness it actually felt reasonably flat aswell, but we all know a car doesn't make to through 20 years without getting the few odd belts of the supermarket trolley, so, a coat of guide coat.... and some 320 grit on the sanding block.... and volla, instant dents, I can also make rabbits appear from hats but they too would probably be dented or missing an ear or something... dents weren't actually too bad, these group of 3 below the crease line being the most noticeable... while those above the line couldn't really be called dents, more depressions really, what you might get as a result of a fat kamikaze bumble bee ... so a little filler to all and let it dry while moving on to the next door.... which also looked pretty smooth.... apart from 2 quite obvious high spots at the base of the door skin... a little hard to see in the picture I know, but you could feel them fairly obvious when you rub your hand over the panel, and after guide coating and sanding the panel down you can see where the high spots has rubbed through to the bare metal.... the high spots would need to be taken down level with the rest of the skin and to do this we break out a hammer and dolly... place the dolly under the high spot.... and then beat the sh*t out of the raised section, well actually no, if your like me you have to use all your self restraint and ever so gently tap the metal down.... when done another little coat of guide coat just to confirm that the raised spots have gone down enough.... and thankfully they have.... a talented panel beater could get that section flat enough that no filler would be needed and someday I hope to be able to..... hire one to do it for me. So, all the dents identified.... shovel on the filler... sand most of it back off again and take a little step closer to insanity in the process... when that was done, flip the door over and sand every inch to complete the task of going insane... [/color] with the doors done it was on to the bootlid, as you can see it's still in the original colour because M3 bootlids are made from GRP and dipping it in a vat of acid would have resulted in an expensive pool of gue. So, a quick lick of 320 to break the lacquer... and then a guide coat, white guide coat this time as the mensa members among you will have guessed black guide coat on a black panel would be as useful an under water hairdryer.... had to take a minute to admire the quality of the panel when sanded, no filler needed in a 20 year old fibreglass moulded panel. Thats pretty neat... then as you may have noticed from the picture above it was on to the after market spoiler i'd bought to replace the original. It's a fiberglass replica of the sport evolution item with the adjustable flap. I had considered buying the genuine item from BMW right up till I phoned them for the price, after the cardiopulmonary resuscitation I started searching for a cheaper alternative. The item was sold as a race quality part and having done some work on fiberglass parts before I knew it would probably take some work to get totally flat, but given the price difference it was worth the extra effort. First up some guide coat to the main flap.... well maybe quite a bit of work.... was a bit awkward to hold the spoiler for sanding so ended up bolting it to the bootlid backwards and forwards to get at it all. It only needed some filler here.... and here... and here.... tiny bit here.... here... and here... and there.... like I said just a little bit of extra effort and a weeks sanding. next up was the flap that bolts on to the wing using these bolt holes underneath..... the fibreglass spoiler did come with a fibreglass flap as seen in the pic below, but, I'd also bough a carbon fibre flap to replace this with..... only snag being that while the fibre glass flap was predrilled with the correct spacing holes.... the carbon fibre one wasn't drilled at all.... so how to transfer the holes to the new flap and get them in the right place without making a balls of it? Sheet of paper the size of the flap taped to the spoiler, punch the holes in it and... place a few bits of double sided tape on top of the paper... place the new flap down on top of the spoiler and hope the paper sticks to the new spoiler showing you where to drill the holes. I know, I can't believe it worked either... tape up the marks for drilling.... and bolt it up with the new bolts.... to be honest the new bolts that came with the carbon flap were handy, instead of needing the flap to be drilled precisely for the countersunk heads, these came with a nice little cupped washer which meant you could elongate the holes underneath to get everything lined up right....

And finally, Just before I leave the rear quarter panel theres another little thing that can help sometimes. The joint on the quarter panel runs from top to bottom and as mentioned the whole join was left slightly low so as to be covered be fillers. The part I found trickiest to fill and sand was the crease line's along the wing. With a couple of coats of guide coat and a few thin layers of filler of slightly differing colours depending on the amount of red hardner that was used, it can become visually hard to tell if you've gotten the crease lines straight.... so when I thought I was close I gave it a light coat of primer on it and the surrounding area and while it is still wet you can look down along the panel and try and catch the light reflecting on it and check to see if your lines are straight.... not rocket science I suppose but it all helps. After that it was on to the front wings. The drivers side first. The wings looked reasonably clean and straight with only one or two small dents, but when you ran your hands along them you could feel very slight little dips. So.... this was the only one I could actually see before sanding.... now I can't say for sure but I'm fairly certain that that last dent would be the only one that that would have showed up if I were hand sanding this instead of block sanding it. Will the final finish be any the better for filling all these imperfections? Time will tell, but I've gotta believe it will otherwise it's an awful lot of sanding for nowt. 8O next up a little sanding to everywhere gettin filled.... and apply a very thin skim of filler..... followed by guide coat.... and then softly rub most of it back off again till theres no more guide coat left.... when done and you run you hand back over the panel it certainly feels smoother, but that could be because I've worn away most of my fingers with all the sanding. There are some areas of the panelwork that are too small to use the sanding blocks on such as this bit at the bottom of the front wings, it's got a sharp curve to it and no matter how flexible the sanding block is, it's just to big to use.... so for these areas I use these these.... they're small sanding pads, which are used with normal sheets of wet/dry sand paper.... the black side is soft sponge like, where as the red side is harder rubber like.... I use the red harder side to shape the filler first.... and then when it feels reasonably flat, use the black sponge side to fade the filler in to the surroundings.... STAY TUNED

next up is the most challenging panel on the car the rear quarter which was previously straightened and repaired and had a section joined in it years ago. On first glance it looks nice and straight doesn't it..... a little closer reveals the joint of the rear section. The stuff you can see either side is lead or solder which is what they used years ago to fill joints which has melted and ran out after the shell was baked after being primer dipped. We knew this would happen but decided to deal with it now rather than trying to tease it out before the shell went for dipping..... The dark stains that show in the pictures are not rust stains by the way it's where some of the primer ran down the panels after the dipping. First up was to sand away the solder residue..... then coat the whole panel in guide coat.... then very lightly rub it down with the sanding block and 240grit paper..... weren't expecting that were you! The camera makes it look much worse than it actually is, I tried to take the pic from different angles to show a true reflection but they all come out like this. If you run your hand across the panel you can feel slight rises and falls but the picture makes it look like you might loose a finger or two. The panel was obviously dollyed out back when the original repair was done and what you see is as flat as it was got with a hammer and dolly. So now that we know theres no awkward high spots that need further flattening the whole panel is roughed up for filler.... a light coat is applied to the whole panel.... and some guide coat.... first block sand reveals some small spots that need a second coat.... you can see from the remaining guide coat where the section of quarter panel was added, that the joint was left low so it could be hidden with filler.... so a lighter second coat..... some more guide coat..... and after the final sanding..... the panel is then given a light coat of primer to protect the bare metal form any dampness that might seep in before the spraying begins..... for any of you who may be concerned that the car will need stiffer springs to carry the extra weight of filler when its finished, then rest assured, this is the "least straight" panel on the car requiring the most amount of filler. The total amount of filler left on the panel after sanding would be equal to about the size of a tennis ball. And the rest, well, it's just dust....

With the underside sealed it was time to move on to preping the bodywork for paint. Before I type any more I'd like to take a second to point out, I'm not nor ever have I been a panel beater/ spray painter. The reason I say that is the following is how I've chosen to prep my car for paint, it might turn out nice, it might turn out horrifically crap, but if you've never made a balls of something then odds are, you'll never make anything at all. Moral of the story is if it comes up nice after paint then exellent, I must have done something right, if it goes t*ts up, then at least you'll have a detailed guide of what not to do! First up was to refit the front wings, these will be sprayed on the car. Thought this would be a 5 minute job until we realised that to fit the wings on straight we'd also have to fit both doors, the bonnet, front grill bar and the front bumper. Once happy with all the panel gaps everything was removed again and the wings screwed down tight.... the keen eye'd amongst you might have noticed from earlier pic's that we've eventually decided upon the final color. The rear of both wings and the parts of the chassis legs covered by the wings were hand painted Jet black before fitment.... also we ran a little bead of sealer along the top of the chassis leg where the wing bolts down on to, it stops any stray water sprayed up from the wheels creeping into the engine bay. after that we masked off the interior and boot of the car. It's not 100% tight like you might do if you were about to spray but it's just to stop the majority of the sanding dust finding it's way into every nook and cranny inside.... this is some of the stuff we'll be using over the next while. First up is filler, some decent spreaders and a perspex mixing board. It appears there's different types of fillers, some easier to use (apply/sand) than other. I don't know enough to say which are good and which are not, if your going to use some your local paint suppliers should be able to advice. If they say they're all the same please pm me and I'll return to my supplier and beat a refund from him. The metal spreaders in the pic are handy as I find them a lot easier to keep clean over the plastic ones. And the bit of clear perspex is handy as a mixing board as you can see any dirt on it rather than finding it as a dirty big plough mark down the middle of that nice smooth run of filler you just applied..... next up are sanding blocks. Bought these a while back and love them. As you can see there's 3 different sizes.... basically they're just block's of rubber with a sheet of spring steel bonded on to one side..... the steel can flex but should always remains consistent against the panel your sanding. How much it flexes/curves can be controlled by inserting 1 to 3 of the little steel rods into the rubber block.... the sandpaper for them comes in rolls and the back peals off so it can stick to the steel.... next up is an aerosol of paint called guide coat. Its a little different from normal paint in that it's very thin, as in thinned out a lot. This gives it 2 advantages, it dries out instantly on contact with the panel and it gives a very light coating which can be sanded off with a light rub.... and last thing is a decent can of grey primer. Like most people I've used loads of cans of primer over the years and recently made a discovery. Cheap motor factor cans of primer is cheap for a reason, they splutter out the paint and take loads of coats to get a decent covering. Whereas a decent aerosol from a paint suppliers, sprays out in a nice mist and gives a much better covering. If you get a chance try one.... Before the body prep starts I'll just take a second to explain why the choice of final colour took so long. We've decided to spray the car Jet black and as I've found out a cars bodywork really needs to be super flat to show off black paint. I struggled to get my head around this first till it was explained to me. Lighter colour cars don't throw up the same level of reflections that a dark colour car does. That is to say a dent will be easily spotted in any colour car if it's clean but if going for a mirror type finish then a dark colour will make the imperfection much easier to see. Heres a few pictures of some Subaru's i found on the net, which hopefully show how much more reflections black throws up...... and then a white one.... both cars are spotless, but you can see how a black one will show everything underneath whereas the white can hide a little. So, no pressure then. The next sequence of pictures are taken a little out of sink, just to show what we're going to do to the whole car. This is a flat piece of bodywork at the base of the rear windscreen. It has never been damaged or dented from what I can tell so it's as it left the factory.... first up is to give it a light sprinkling of guide coat.... then some 120 grit sand paper on the block.... after a light sanding this is how flat it is.... now that we know the section can be gotten a little flatter, it's preped for filler. I learnt this next lesson the hard way years ago. Filler sticks to a panel by gripping the surface, if the surface is silky smooth it don't grip that well, so, a light sanding all over with 80 grit gives it something to grip to... next up a little filler and some hardener, well a lot of hardner actually, it's still f**king freezing out here and the filler is taking for ever to go off. It took me quite a while to learn how much hardner to put in the fillers and I guess it just takes practice to get the amounts right. Rough guide though is if your wrist breaks while mixing it on the board ease up a little. If you can still draw happy faces in it on the car 3 days later might be time to try a little more. And before anyone has a heart attack not all this filler is for that tiny panel, most is going elsewhere. The car needs to fit out the garage doors when finished.... some more guide coat.... and then sand most of it back off again.... sanding is stopped when the highest parts of the metal just start to show through. As you can see theres still a few patches of guide coat, so another little bit required. However this time its only a slight smear of filler required so we thin out the filler a little to make it easier to apply thin. This is done by using some of this..... it's fiberglass resin, the stuff you use on the tissue type fiberglass. A little of this is mixed with the filler before adding the hardener..... and then when the whole lot is slopped together the end result is a mix which is runnier and easier to put on in thin smears.... more guide coat.... more sanding and volla, a perfectly flat panel.... which reflects light straight....