E30 M3 minor rust repair - Thread Restauration [finished]

[Kurt66]

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

[Kurt66]

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.

 

 

[Kurt66]

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...

 



 

[Kurt66]

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....

 



 

 

[Kurt66]

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.

 

[Kurt66]

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....

 



 



 

 

Bearbeitet: 5. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

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

[Kurt66]

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

[Kurt66]

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.

Bearbeitet: 11. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

(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....

Bearbeitet: 11. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

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.

 

Bearbeitet: 11. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

(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 flange

2.  Pinion

3.Pinion nut lock ring (oe) 23 21 1 490 120

4.  Pinion nut

5.  Collapsible pinion spacer (oe) 33 12 1 744 368

6.   Pinion seal (oe) 33 10 1 214 099

7.   Pinion shim

8.   Pinion inner bearing (aftermarket)

          outer race- SKF fk-hm 89410-2-cl7a

          bearing- SKF ak-hm 89449-2-cl7a

9.   Pinion outer bearing outer race (aftermarket)

          SKF fk-h 88510-2-cl7a

10. Pinion outer bearing (aftermarket)

           SKF ck-hm 88542-2-cl7a

11. Crownwheel bearing cup shim

12. Crownwheel bearing cup O ring (x2) (oe) 33 11 1 214 144

13.  Halfshaft flange

14  Crownwheel bearing cup

15. Crownwheel bearings  (x2) (aftermarket)

outer race- SKF fk-lm 503310

bearing- SKF k-lm 503349-cl7a

16. 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 crownwheel

19. Casing

19. Casing gasket (oe)                                                                  33 11 1 210 405

20. Speedo sender locking plate

21. Speedo sendo and O ring

22. 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 jiffey

bag, but they will cost less than half the main dealer price.

 

With everything together it was time for reassembly. I've taken

the 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 can

be 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 till

it 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 to

far 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 in

first 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 in

the 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 direction

of 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 measured

by a special tool which basically bolts on to the halfshaft flange and

measures how much effort it takes to rotate the crownwheel. To little

force, remove some shims which tightens up the preload on the bearings

when 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 is

original 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 to

measure 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 shaft

and 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" or

squeeze 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 squeezed

close enough together yet and they can lift up and down off their races

because that collapsible spacer is keeping them apart. 

So, the nut is tightened down more, slowley, crushing the collapsible

spacer 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 pedal

if the bearings were just fitted loosely they'd start to lift out of their

races 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 end

up 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 teeth

of 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 need

to 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 shim

to move the pinion gear back away from the crownwheel.

If the contact patch is too far towards the inside of the crownwheel tooth

then 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 tooth

change the cup shims to move the crownwheel towards the pinion 

gear.

Again if none of the main components have changed during the overhaul

then the contact patch should be pretty close to right, but you still

gotta check. If you get the tooth contact patch badly wrong, then don't

worry to much about it, you'll be getting a chance to rebuild it all again

after 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....

 

Bearbeitet: 11. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

Evenin all,

    Bit of a gap since the last update, was so busy working on the car

I couldn't get time to write up all the work. Managed to get a lot

done since the last update.

 

And when you run that through the "Babelfish Bullsh*t Translator" it comes out

as:

     Ages since the last update cause the shed feels like the inside of a freezer

at 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 own

and 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 directions

without 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 shaft

a quick check for the original marks to help align it correctly when going

back 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 bearing

to 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 swearing

would remove the bearing. So the special bearing removing tool had

to be used, also known as an angle grinder.....

 

 

 

 

shaft gets a quick lick of sandpaper to clean up where the new

bearing 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 recessed

side facing in and the flush side facing out like so.....

 

 

then the washer and circlip go back on and if you've fitted the

bearing the wrong way around you now realise the cirlip won't

reach in to fit in it's groove anymore, which will mean the whole thing has

to come off again to be flipped around, which is nice......

 

 

 

 

then the threaded cup is slid back up on to the splines, some copper

grease on the splines and then the other half of the shaft is slid back

on with the white marks aligned....

 

 

The threaded cup isn't tightened up to lock the shaft length till it's

all 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 in

good nick as i'd only replaced it a while back. Unfortunately

shortly 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

Bearbeitet: 11. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

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)...... 

 

 

 

Bearbeitet: 24. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

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

 

Bearbeitet: 13. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

 

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

Bearbeitet: 14. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[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.....

 

 

 

Bearbeitet: 14. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

position the pipe again.....

 

 

some more oil and mushy, mushy, again......        

 

 

 

which usually gives you a nice fat flare on the end of the pipe (apart

from the times it goes arseways which I've chosen not to mention).....

 

 

 

then spends hours of enjoyment trying to replicate the original pipes

bends and kinks.....

 

 

before offering it up to the wishbone to see just how much of a balls

you've made of it....

 

 

 

when happy with the shape of it (or ran out of patience trying) it's

time to mark and cut it for the flare the other end.....

 

 

 

it's not possible to accurately describe in words the level of frustration

thats felt when you make the final flare on a pipe only to discover

you forgot to put the fitting on first. 

 

 

with the fitting on, the second flare can be done...

 

 

and before final fitment some fresh clips cause the old ones were.....

 

 

 

the other thing thats handy to have around at this stage of the build is a

little tub of grease. Everything that gets fitted to the exterior of the shell

gets a smear of grease first to stop water/dampness collecting between it 

and the shell down the line and causing rust to reoccur.....

 

 

 

with the solid pipes done some stainless braided pipes replaced the

standard rubber flexi ones....

 

 

 

before finishing with the flaring tool the rest of the brake pipes were

copied.....

 

 

and fitted.....

 

 

Pipes done, onto the rear handbrake shoes setup which is

made up of all this crap.....

 

 

the shoes themselves were only fitted a little while before the car came

off the road so they're barley used.....

 

 

a good rub of 60 grit sandpaper brings the linings up like new again.....

 

 

and then theres this little collection of stuff that likes to fall off the edge of

the workbench and never be seen again.....

 

 

starting with the row of 4 little bits on top in the last picture which

make up the manual adjuster for adjusting up the handbrake shoes.

This bit screws into that bit.....

 

 

they then pop into this bit....

 

 

 

 

and finally this bit slides on over the lot, oh and copper grease everywhere

this stuff just lives for the opportunity to seize up ......

 

 

Get it? Got it! Good.

 

When fitted in place this little setup sits between the top of the two shoes.

When everythings back together and you line up the brake disc so that

you can poke a flat screwdriver in though one of the wheel stud holes

and adjust the knurled nut (red arrow) to spread the shoes out towards the

drum.

 

 

and at the other end of the shoes is the actual handbrake mechanism,

made up of this delightful pile of stuff.....

 

 

 

fat pin drops in here.....

 

 

and that slots in to here.....

 

 

and the end of the handbrake cable.....

 

 

connects in here with the aid of the smaller pin....

 

 

like so......

 

 

so that when your out playing in the winter snow you

can pull the handbrake in the direction of the red arrow

and spread the two little levers out in the green arrow directions,

which pushes the shoes out against the drum, locking the rear wheels

and spinning the car around like a pro, right up until you wack the kerb

and f*ck up your brand new alloys.....

 

 

none of which will happen until this stuff moves from the bench onto

the wishbone.....

 

 

 

again plenty of copper grease.....

 

 

the other little collection of springs the sit on the brake shoes were

fairly rusted, so Bmw sell the whole lot under one part number

(p/n 34419064267).......

 

 

and they sit on like so......

 

 

anti rattle clips screw through the brake shoes and into the back plate.....

 

 

the return springs can be a little awkward to stretch on in place 

 

 

 

So, a little bit of twine and a spanner makes it a little easier to pull them

into their slots.....

 

 

followed by brake disc back on and grub screw greased and refitted.....

 

 

and align the disc to pop the flat screwdriver in to adjust up the shoes.....

 

 

when thats done the brake caliper anchor bracket went back on.....

 

 

 

a set of fresh oe spec Jurid 547 rear pads .....

 

 

were fitted....

 

 

 

 

along with the caliper.....

 

 

 

caliper in place, sliding pins go back in. Copper grease on the pins and

a dab of locktite on the threads.....

 

 

 

with the pins tightened up, the caps go back on the rubber bushes

to keep it weather tight.....

 

 

and finally the anti rattle clips pop on.......

 

 

The last parts needed to finish off the rear wishbones were the abs

sensors. Unfortunately the old sensors had become quite emotionally

and physically attached to the wishbones, so attached in fact that it

took a large selection of hammers and some colourful language to

separate them. Unfortunately the sensors didn't take kindly to this and

in revenge bent into shite rendering them scrap......

 

 

Not the end of the world however as the wiring on the sensors was well

past it's sell by date anyway......

 

 

 

what very nearly did bring about the end of my world, by heart attack,

was the price i got quoted for 4 new sensors. Obviously these are also

made from moon minerals. Thankfully Colm_Mc came

to the rescue with 4 sensors that looked as good as new

(thank Colm I owe you one).....

 

 

just for the record the rear sensors are interchangeable.....

 

 

while the fronts are sided left and right as denoted by the little "L" and

"R" on them.....

 

 

a good smear of grease on the sensors before fitting should mean future

hammer massages are not necessary for removal down the line.....  

 

 

 

Which brings us up neatly to the end of the first half of this 

update, join us tomorrow evening for the concluding 

episode.......... 

 

 

And now we return to the conclusion of this years 

update.

 

With the wishbones complete it was on to the rear beam....... 

 

 

As mentioned a

little earlier the car used to be fitted with eccentric wishbone bushes to

try and dial out some of the excessive camber that comes with lowering the car.

However these were a pain in the arse to get right and needed to come in

and out 3 times to get them exactly right, which is a lot of ballache. So this

time around we're going to try one of the other options, which involves

welding these little brackets on.....

 

 

and using these 5 series eccentric bolts and washers.....

 

 

I've only got two crappy phone pics of the welding on of the brackets

as it was done in work in the day job, and as this beam doesn't look remotely

like anything fitted to a double decker bus, I thought it might be better not to 

draw attention to it by doing a photo shoot . The pair of brackets welded to the outside

wishbone pickup point are placed with the original bolt hole

smack bang in the middle and the slot in the bracket is placed horizontal. 

The idea behind these two is to be

able to adjust rear toe in/out. As the rear toe isn't to greatly

affected you don't generally have to move the wishbone

forward or backward a great deal to get the ideal setting..... 

 

 

The inside pick up points are a different story though.

The main reason for doing all this is to be able to correct the

negative camber gained by lowering the suspension and as such the

brackets fitted to the inner pick up point have the slot vertical and place the original

bolt hole right at the bottom like shown which gives you maximum

scope for raising the inner pickup point and getting rid of some of that 

excessive negative camber ......

 

 

and with everything welded up and the original bolt holes filed

out to match the new elongated slots this is roughly how it all

should work (red arrows adjusting camber, blue for toe)......

 

 

which looked like this after returning from powder coating......

 

 

 

 

next up, the eccentric bolts that move the wishbone pick up points

up or down. The bolts have little indents on the top face of them

so as you rotate the bolts you can see how many indents it takes

to add/subtract a certain amount of camber/toe.......

 

 

however when all this lot is fitted back in the car you'd need a neck

like a giraffe to see these markings, so, marks are traced out to the edge

of the bolt head.....

 

 

and over the edge where they're enlarged with a hacksaw blade

which should make them a little easier to see back on the car.....

 

 

 

The other thing that can be helpful is a reference point on the actual

beam, so with the aid of the dremel.....

 

 

a few little groves are etched and filled in with white paint......

 

 

 

 

 

all of which should make adjustment down the line a little easier, or,

I've just waisted a load of time for nothing, we'll see.

Before fitting up the wishbones to the rear beam the inner faces of

the bolts and washers are given a coating of grease to help them

rotate when adjusting......

 

 

a fresh set of beam bushes are fitted and the washers fitted on top

with grease everywhere as these bit love to seize....

 

 

 

 

some fresh anti roll bar links and handbrake cable brackets are fitted

to the wishbones......

 

 

 

The other little bits needed at this stage is the spring pads, the

two arrowed are for the bottom of the springs and the other two with

the bump stops in the middle of them are for the top.

 

 

The whole lot is built up on a sheet of ply wood so it can be slid under

the car when complete and jacked up into place.....

 

 

 

before that can happen however the beam mount bolts have got to be

refitted to the shell, before they are dropped in they're plastered with

anti-seize grease.....

 

 

and then they're dropped down into place in these holes at the edges

of the floorpan under where the rear seat goes..... 

 

 

 

The other bits needing refitting before the axle can be lifted back up in to place

is the rear shocks......

 

 

Bearbeitet: 14. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

 

First up gotta assemble them. These "gigantic" bump stops slide on..... 

 

 

followed by the dust boots......

 

 

and then a fresh set of top mounts.....

 

 

followed by a bevelled washer and nut......

 

 

The other little bits that were to be fitted was the little plates fitted to Z3

rear shocks, pictured number 9 below......

 

 

When the shock is refitted to the shell the top plate on the shock mount does

a nice job of spreading out the load when the body is pushing down on

them. However when the situation is reversed and the shock is pulling

down on the shell all thats spreading the load on top of the turret is

two little m8 nuts, which sometimes can lead to stress cracks around the

nuts. These 2 little steel plates which were used on the Z3 can be fitted

under the nuts to help spread out the load better.

Which is all marvellous but I'd forgot to order them from the dealer and

was now ready to refit everything and was in no mood to have to wait

another few days for them to arrive. So, the tight arse's guide to top

mount plates...... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately the only flat steel I had lying around was 5mm thick and

took forever to cut and file to shape, on the bright side should I ever

decide to drive off a cliff the rear shock mounts should be well up to it......

 

 

and then at long last fire it all back into the shell.....

 

 

 

 

Bearbeitet: 14. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

And then there was the front end.

One nasty front subframe.....

 

 

one freshly powder coated front subframe......

 

 

done one mod to the subframe back when I first got the car and this was

down to the fact it had started to crack across the red line in the pic below

(red circle is where the engine mount bolts down to and the reason why

this bit started to crack off).......

 

 

the subframe was given a fresh weld across the red line both sides and

plates fabricated up and welded on underneath to strengthen the whole

piece. Only thing to watch out for is to cut a hole in the plate so you

can still get a socket through it to tighten the engine mounting bolt.....

 

 

First thing to go back on the subframe is the front antiroll bar, which is

bolted on by these two little lads....

 

 

I've yet to remove one of these that wasn't caked in rust on the inside

so a little smear of grease should slow down the antiroll bar bushing

rubbing the powder coating off the inside so quickly......

 

 

And then the only polybushes to get fitted to this whole car. As you've

probably seen by now I've replaced more or less every bush with standard

rubber ones and the reason is I don't want to feel every pebble on the road.

I don't want to involuntarily brace myself every time I see a pothole coming.

I had cars when I was younger that the springs and shocks were probably

just ornaments on, there was that little movement in the suspension, and

although polybushes and stiffer this and that make for a faster car around a

track, this car was a bloody good drive on the road when it left the factory on standard

bushes according to any press releases from back in the day.

I'm probably just gettin old (I'll probably be fuckin geriatric by the time this thread gets

finished).

Anywho, bushes came with the car when I bought it and there perfectly

good to go again.....

 

 

 

A heavy smear of grease where the subframe mounts up to the chassis

legs should keep the moisture(rust) out.....

 

 

 

Rear antiroll bar was back from powder coating to so it got bolted

back to the floor pan.....

 

 

 

And then the front struts which made the most dramatic transformation

of all the powder coated bits.....

 

 

 

 

 

The front spindle gets a rub of 1200 grit to polish it up.....

 

 

then the rear dust cap gets popped on.....

 

 

 

followed by the backing plate......          

 

 

 

and next up is the wheel bearing. As is well documented around the

interweb by now the E28 wheel bearings and e30 M3 bearing are the one

and the same unit, only difference being different ABS rings and a big

difference in price. So, pair of E28 bearings.......

 

 

pull the Abs rings off.....

 

 

 and then pull the rings off the old M3 bearings.......

 

 

 These were seriously tight and I had to rely on the age old

3 stage method to remove them.

Step 1......

 

 

Step 2......

 

 

Step 3.....

 

 

bingo.....

 

 

Rings get a clean up and a little loctite on the inside lip for refitment....

 

 

 

and when securely back in place a lick of silver paint to protect the

bare metal.....

 

 

And then drop the whole lot back on to the spindle. Unlike the rear bearings

the front ones aren't usually tight going back on and don't require a press.

A few gentle tips with something soft and they should slide down into place..... 

 

 

 

 

 

When there back on, the nut is screwed up and torqued with a size

46mm socket.....

 

 

after which the little rim on top of the nut is clenched into the cut out

on the spindle (which is probably the most long winded way of saying,

bend this)............

 

 

and then the the front dust caps are fitted with a little smear of grease

on the inner rim to help keep them water tight......

 

 

 

Next up the shock absorber. Threads at the top of the strut tube get a

little clean....

 

 

and then the front insert is dropped in. The shocks by the way are

Bilstein gas shocks and I remember reading somewhere that unlike

the normal procedure of filling the gap between the shock and the

inside of the strut tube with oil, with gas shocks its recommended to

leave this space empty. So I just gave it a few squirts of the oil can

to keep it from rusting in there.......

 

 

 

This little dude screws down on top of the shock into the tube

and keeps it secure. I used to have the special tool for screwing these

in, but I lent it to a person(bastard) a long time ago,

and that person(bastard) forgot to bring it back and

I've forgotten who that person(bastard) is. But one day I'll remember

who the person(bastard) was and that Bastard is in for a surprise.

 

 

 

The little item arrowed below is for securing the shock dust boot and

it's very important to remember to fit it before screwing down

the shock collar....

 

 

F*****************************k...........

 

 

 

Next on is the springs which also paid a visit to the powder coater.....

 

 

Springs by the way are Eibach and are listed by them for the 318is

I think. They're practically the same poundage as the original M3 springs

but just sit lower and I was happy with the ride and handling before the

car came off the road so there didn't seem to be much point in changing them.

Before the springs can be fitted they need to be compressed with the

aid of spring compressors and a few bits of rubber tube so as not to

scratch the powder coating back off again.......

 

 

 

on either side of the springs go these rubber seats so they don't squeak

as your driving along......

 

 

 

one goes below the spring like so........

 

 

and one sits onto the top spring platform like so......

 

 

 

 

after that the strut top mounts go on. These are offset ones (p/n 31331139484)

which as you can see in the pic the hole in the centre is offset to one

side a little. And if fitted the right way around they will move the top

of the strut in towards the engine a little (half a degree) and give you

a little more camber at the front wheels, which should improve road holding.

In reality the change (half a degree) is so little any effect they have is

going to be small but if your changing the top mounts anyway they

aren't a great deal more expensive then the standard ones......

 

 

the new mounts don't come with the three little studs needed for fitment.....

 

 

So, nuts on to protect the threads.....

 

 

pop them up loosely in the vise.....

 

 

and batter the living shite out of them......

 

 

and now the reason I said they can help "if" fitted the right way. Theres

6 holes on the mounts and you've 3 studs to fit, so which holes to use?

On the underside of the mounts 3 of the holes are marked with a +

and 3 with a - . As we're trying to subtract camber (add negative camber)

the studs are fitted to the 3 minus holes......

 

 

 

with that sorted it's on to actually fitting the mounts to the strut.

5 items in total

          Strut mount

          1) small washer

          2) large washer

          3) bevelled washer

          4) nut

 

 

on the underside of the mount you can see the strut top bearing which

comes pre greased......

 

 

the bevelled washer(3) is topped up with a little grease on the inside.....

 

 

 

and popped down on top of the bearing.....

 

 

 

 

(Leider fehlen die nachfolgenden Bilder)

 

and then the large flat washer(2) is slid onto the strut followed by the mount......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2129.jpg

 

which is then followed by the small washer(1) and nut(4)......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2130.jpg

 

after the nut is tightened down the spring compressors can be removed

and the little dust cap popped back into the centre of the mount.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2131.jpg

 

after which the ABS sensors were refitted....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2177.jpg

 

and the final bits to go back on the struts are the brakes, a fresh set of disc's......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2179.jpg

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2180.jpg

 

and then the calipers bolt back on just like the rears, which leaves them

looking like so......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2186.jpg

 

The other bits needed before the struts could be bolted back

into the car was wishbones and "lollipop" bushes.

These are M3 bushes the differences being over standard e30 bushes

the hole in the centre is off to one side and there more solidly packed

out with rubber......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2134.jpg

 

theres a little arrow on them to help you press them into the lollipops

in the right place......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_lollipop%20bush.jpg

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/lollipop.jpg

 

To go with them is a fresh set of Lemforder wishbones....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/wishbones.jpg

 

and anti roll bar drop links......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2216.jpg

 

After which, everything is rebolted back onto the car and when I could

see which bolts were needed to reconnect everything I could order

them all in stainless steel to replace all the manky rusted old ones..... 

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2202.jpg

 

Which leaves her looking like this......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2332.jpg

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2331.jpg

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2339.jpg

 

One giant leap for man, one small leap forward for this project........

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2823%29/m3_2256.jpg

 

And that brings this update to a close which is perfect

timing as tomorrows Saint Patricks day and I'm 

away to get very drunk. 

Till next time........

 

STAY TUNED

Bearbeitet: 14. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

Die hälfte der Story  haben wir durch

 

Gab es bisher Probleme mit den Bildern?

 

Das neue Forums System sammelt nacheinander gepostete Posts in einem Post, was mir eigentlich nicht gefällt. Mann müsste immer paar Minuten warten damit es separat postet. So werden die seiten zu lang. Falls mann das wie früher machen kann, lasst es mich wissen, da ich wie im original Thread jeden post separat bearbeite anstatt alles zusammen zu machen. Es ist ja auch eine Thread-Restauration; Respekt zum original 

 

Grüße Kurt

Bearbeitet: 14. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

Evenin all,

Been a while since the last update, the reason being I appear to have

well and truly busted something in my back. I'd love to give

you a more accurate diagnosis but unfortunately my doc is a foreign

lad and for the life of me I can't tell what he's saying half the time.

But judging by the serious look on his face and the size of the horse

tranquillizers he's prescribed for me, I'm guessing i'll not be doing

cartwheels any time soon. But as they say, every cloud has a silver

lining and despite the fact you need a knife and fork to take

the pain killers the effects of them are marvellous. I now wear a permanent

"stoner" grin all day long and can walk through brick walls without

so much as an itch.

Anywho, before this post starts to sound more like an bleeding heart

letter we'll move on to what I've managed to mess around with on the

car this time.

 

First up I need to put my hand up and admit to a co*k up from the last

update. For those who can't remember back that far, I had welded in some

reinforcement bars on the rear wishbone's like so...... 

 

 

Well not long after posting up the pic's and details on the web I got a

heads up from a member on S14.net to say he'd tried the same mod

and ran in to some difficulties upon refitting them. The difficulty?

When the wishbones are refitted, just above them runs the rubber

fuel filler pipe that carries fuel down from the filler flap to the fuel

tank under the car, like so......

(modified tube in purple, red arrow is where the fuel will run into

the tank, when fitted)

 

 

 

Which all looks fine and dandy, until you realise thats with the wishbones

in full droop. As soon as you lower the car back onto the ground the

wishbones go back up towards the floor plan and squash the rubber

filler pipe flat.

 

fu*k.

 

Making it impossible to fill the car with fuel.

 

double fu*k.

 

So i retired to give the matter some serious thought.......

 

 

And then, when all seemed lost, it hit me, I had a brain wave,

a perfect solution to the problem, it was so simple i couldn't

believe I hadn't thought of it earlier .....

 

 

cut them out, fu*k them away and move on.

 

 

Next up, the alternator.

 

 

Or to be more precise, pull it asunder, fiddle about with it and then

try and figure out how it goes back together again.

Starting at the rear end these bits and bobs came off first.....

 

 

Number 4, the earth lead. Responsible for earthing the alternator

to the chassis via the engine block......  

 

 

this needs to be in good condition as you can get all manner of

strange electrical faults if this lead starts to fail due to corrosion of

the terminals or the copper wire inside corroding. As this one was starting

to show its age and the outer insulation was badly cracked, a new one

was made up to replace it......

 

 

Number 3, the suppressor. This little dude just bolts on to the back

casing of the alternator and the little wire from it connects to a male

spade terminal which sticks out of the casing. It's purpose is to stop

electrical interference from the voltage being created inside the alternator

from messing with other electrical systems on the car. Like the stereo

buzzing up and down as the engine revs rise and fall. Nothing much to

be done with it, if it works it works. If it doesn't, get a new one.....

 

 

Number 2, the wire terminals plastic insulation. There's just two wires

that go to the alternator, a big fat one which is main battery power

and is connected back to the battery positive terminal via the starter

and a little wire which comes from the battery light up on the dash.

Both these wires are live and if they manage to touch off the alternator

casing, which is earthed, you'll get a nice little fireworks display right

before the fire starts. So this little plastic insulator lets the wires bolt

on to the two studs sticking out without touching the casing. To remove

it, the two nuts that hold the wires in place come off and then another

two nuts below this come off to let the insulator slide up and off....... 

 

 

And finally, number 1. The brush pack and regulator. Undo the two

little screws and it lifts out of the casing. This thing is the most common

reason for alternators failing to charge. An alternator has a shaft rotating

inside it (rotor), and for the alternator to do it's thing

and produce some voltage you've got to pass a current onto this rotor

and then give it a route to get back out again. To do this the

shaft has two brass rings on it, which we'll get to later, and two

little carbon "brushes" (red arrowed below) are pressed against the

brass rings allowing current to pass in through one, do it's job and

then pass out back up through the other. The little brushes seen below,

have little springs underneath them to keep them rubbing against the

rotor all the time as it turns. Eventually the little brushes wear out

and can't reach the slip rings any more and the alternator stops charging.

The other part of this little unit is the little black thing on the front

(blue arrow) which is the voltage regulator, and as the name suggests

it's job is to control the voltage coming out of the alternator. To much

voltage could damage other electrical systems in the car so it drops the

voltage down, to little voltage been produced (headlights, demister,

rear window defogger all on) and it raises back up the voltage. All

the time it's trying to keep the output at roughly 14 volts.

 

 

In the pic below you can see that the brushes in my brush pack were

on their last legs and hadn't to long left to go when compared to the

new brush pack next to it......

 

 

If your alternator packs in, this is one of the first things worth checking.

A new brush pack is only about 10/15euro from a motor factors.

And once you've the alternator off it's just a matter of undoing the two

little screws and lifting out the brush pack to check the height of the brushes.

There's a few different brush packs fitted to e30 alternators due to

the alternators having different power outputs, so if your going to order

one use the part numbers on the old brush pack to make sure your

new one is a perfect match.

One final little piece of advice, if your changing a brush pack, go softly, the little

carbon brushes are brittle and don't bend, so be gentle sliding it in to

place. Use the force Luke, not the hammer.

 

With all that stuff stripped from the rear end it was time to flip it over

and start on the front. The centre of the shaft has a hole to accept an

allen key so you can hold the shaft while loosening the front pulley nut.

The pic below shows the order in which the collection of washers come

off. Whats interesting if you've never stripped one before is the alternator

pulley isn't actually a solid pulley, but instead two concave washers

squeezed together......

 

 

Once that stuffs off next up is the 4 main bolts that hold the casings

together. Before splitting the casings it can help to make a little mark

or scribe a line on the 3 main bits of the alternator so they can be

bolted back in the same orientation......

 

 

Its also worth making a mental note that of the four bolts that hold the

casings together, two are longer than the others. Reason being when

in place these two stick out the back of the alternator casing a little

bit and are used to screw clips onto to secure the wires going to the

alternator. They need to go back in to the same hole on reassembly......

 

 

with them 4 bolts out of the way, next up is the 4 inner ones shown below.......

 

 

and then with some gentle persuasion (beating and cursing) the front

casing "should" just slide off......

 

 

next up, the rear casing and stator (middle bit). Sometimes these will

slide off easily, but as is always the case with this fu*king car, these

were not going to come off without a fight. Shaft gets tightened in the

vise (with soft jaws so as not to mark the shaft).......

 

 

and this little dome on top of the rear casing which houses the rear

bearing gets a little heat from the heat gun to expand it and help it

let go of the bearing inside......

 

 

and hey presto, off she comes. 

 

 

 

Once these two pieces were off they separate fairly handy. Rear casing

on the left, stator and diode pack on the right.....

 

 

First item to be changed in here is the diode pack. Old one still

attached, new one below it.....  

 

 

Without going to deep into the black magic that happens inside an

alternator, the main job of this diode pack is to convert the AC voltage

which the alternator makes, into DC voltage which the car needs.

There, thats as clear as mud isn't it.

AC voltage is the stuff that powers your house, and AC is short

for alternating current, which basically means the little volts travel

backwards and forwards like mini Duracell bunnies on coke.....

 

 

and AC voltage is no good for a cars power system which is DC

voltage (direct current), where all the little volts march along in the

one direction nice and calmly. So the diode pack has a little bunch of

diodes in it which are basically one way valves for electricity. They'll let

the voltage through but not go back again. And so convert

the AC back to DC voltage which the car can use.

(If you listen carefully you can actually hear Albert Einstein spinning

in his grave after that explanation).

In the pic below the main roundy bit (the stator) is where the black

magic takes place and the AC voltage is made. And connected to

this by four wires is the diode pack in the middle....

 

 

I don't think the diode pack has a certain service life really, theres no

wearable parts in it like the brush pack has. However over time the

diodes can fail and stop the alternator charging and as I'm changing

everything else in here Murphys law states that if I reuse the old one,

it'll fail down the road just to p i s s me off for not changing it while it

was all asunder.

So,

heat up the solder and pop the wires free....

 

 

and then solder the wires back in to the new diode pack. Best to

have the soldering gun nice and hot for this, so you can solder each

joint quickly. If too much heat soaks into the diode pack it can fu*k

it up.....

 

 

 

with that done it's on to the rotor, and changing the bearing at either

end of it. The one on the left is a straight forward, old one off, new one

on affair. While the one on the right, the larger of the two is a little more

involved. In front of the bearing theres a fat little shim and behind it

there's a little square plate. The little plate is what the 4 little screws

removed from the outer casing back in the beginning screw into.

And it's purpose is to keep this bearing snug and tight up against the

casing and not wandering up and down the shaft......

 

 

The other job that needed doing while the bearings were off was to

change the brass slip rings. As mentioned earlier the two little brushes

in the brush pack rub against these slip rings, and just like the brushes

these rings also wear down over time. You can see in the pic below

the two grooves that have worn down into them. Usually you'll get

through about 2 or 3 sets of brushes before the slips rings need to

be changed and by that stage most cars are at the end of their life.

However, as this car has 24 years under her belt it's not that unusual

that they're this worn......

 

 

they're a tricky little fu*ker to change though. In the pic below you

can see two wires coming out of the centre of the rotor and going

into the slip rings where they are soldered on. So the slip rings are

carefully sliced with a small cutting disc on the dremel, on top and

bottom like so........

 

 

and then popped apart. The wire on the right (purple) is soldered

to the inner edge of the inner ring and the wire on the left (green)

runs up the inside of the rings before soldering on to the outer edge

of the outer ring.......

 

 

With the old rings removed and the wires cleaned up and the shaft

where they sit cleaned up with some emery paper, the new rings

are slid on making sure that the green wire in the pic slides up through

the middle. With everything back in it's rightful place the wire ends

can be soldered back on. The one thing to be careful of is that the

wire insulation is in good condition when doing all this, as if either of

them 2 wires touch any part of the shaft or rotor because of a break

in the insulation then they'll just short out and blow the alternator when

it's refitted...... 

 

 

with the slip rings done the new bearing can be pushed on this end......

 

 

and then turned around and plate, new bearing and fat shim fitted to the

other end.....

 

 

With all that crap done, it was on to the alternator casing bushes.

Pull them out and check their condition....

 

 

circlip and washer off......

 

 

and then the insert can push out the opposite side......

 

 

 

(Nachfolgende Bilder stehen nicht mehr zu Verfügung)

 

and then you can pop the bushes out. To my surprise it seems a previous

owner has fitted polly bushes instead of the original bushes, and they're

still in perfect nick......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2391.jpg

 

From reading on various forums it seems this change from original

rubber bushes to harder polly bushes is to cure an inherent problem

with alternators on the M3's S14 engine. The engine likes to vibrate

a lot especially when your driving arse out of it (as all M3's should be).

And this makes the alternator with the standard bushes vibrate a lot

too, which can snap the adjuster bracket and leave you without a

working alternator. So the polly bushes stiffen things up a bit and

makes life a little easier for the adjuster bracket.

At least thats my understanding of it, no doubt I've probably got it

arseways as usual.

 

With all the bushes checked and the casings cleaned up it was time to

nail it all back together and hope for once that you don't end up with

bits left over.

First up the 2 little studs that poke through the back of the casing to

attach the power leads to, making sure the little inner plastic insulators

are in place so that the studs can't arc off the casing, spark, fire, boom,

tears....... 

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2402.jpg

 

pop it into the rear casing......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2403.jpg

 

and pop the outer insulator back on securing it with the two little nuts.

Also the little suppressor dude goes back on......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2404.jpg

 

then the stator (outer bit) and rotor (inner bit) sits down into the casing.

Rotor may need a little tap to get the small bearing the other end of

the shaft back into it's little dome in the casing......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2406.jpg

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2408.jpg

 

and then finally the front casing pops on (making sure you've aligned the

3 markings you've made on the casings before stripping). Then the 

4 main outer bolts are refitted and tightened to hold the casings together

and finally the 4 inner screws that hold that little plate behind the front bearing

tight to the casing are refitted.

When all thats done the brush pack can be slotted back in (softly, softly).....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2410.jpg

 

and the earth lead reconnected........

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2413.jpg

 

followed by all the bits that make up the front pulley section......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2425.jpg

 

and voila!.......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2433.jpg

 

After this it was hooked up to our state of the art, mobile, water cooled,

alternator test bed to check it was charging........

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2434.jpg

 

engine running and everything electrical turned on and bingo 14 volts

at the battery. Didn't even need to use the fire extinguisher, how

professional is that? 

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2824%29/m3_2435.jpg

 

And thats about it for now. Depending on how whacked I get

on pain killers this evening I hope to have the next bit up 

tomorrow. 

Till then.......

 

Next up the starter.......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2414.jpg

 

Two main bits to the starter, the big bit on the bottom is the actual

motor that turns the engine over and then the smaller bit on top which

is the solenoid. And it's the solenoid thats first to be removed.

Three screws at the front are undone.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2414b.jpg

 

and on the back end, the nut shown below is undone and the main

power lead to the motor underneath is removed.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2418.jpg

 

Which leaves the solenoid free to be removed

(don't lose the little spring left behind its important!).....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2419.jpg

 

next up, the two main bolts that hold the motor to it's nose casing......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2420.jpg

 

which allows the nose casing to be removed and reveal the starter

pinion gear (bit with the teeth) and the solenoid linkage......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2421.jpg

 

here's how I "think" it all works. The pic below shows

the terminals of the solenoid which sits on top of the motor.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2414c.jpg

 

The starter takes a fair whack of juice to get it to turn over, and as

such, it needs a fat wire to carry all that power down to it. It doesn't

make sense to run the wire through the ignition switch on it's way to

the starter because you'd need a bloody huge ignition switch on the

steering column to be able to handle that amount of power.

So,

The main feed for the starter (big fat black wire direct from the battery

positive terminal) runs directly to terminal 1 on the starter solenoid shown

above. When you turn the ignition switch to start position, power comes

down a smaller black/yellow wire to terminal 3 and travels across inside the solenoid

to terminal 4 and earths. While travelling across to terminal 4 it energises a little magnetic

coil inside the solenoid, which pulls in a set of contacts, and allows the big power

from terminal 1 to flow over to terminal 2 and start the motor turning.

 

So with all that done the starter motor is now turning over, the only problem is

the little starter gear (pinion gear) on the front of the starter that engages with the

flywheel ring gear to turn over the engine needs to be pushed forward to reach

the flywheel. (if it was in contact with the flywheel all the time the starter would

sh*t itself as the engine revs started to rise)

 

So,

 the solenoid on top of the starter has another little job to do.

In the pic below the little green metal cylinder on top of the starter

is pulled (magnetically) into the solenoid when you turn the key to the

start position.

And attached to the back of the green cylinder is a little

green linkage with a fork on the bottom end.

The blue part in the middle is fixed and acts as a hinge point for the green linkage.

As the top part is drawn into the solenoid the bottom part (pinion gear)

is pushed outwards and into contact with the flywheel ring gear.

And now the starter is turning the engine.

Thats pretty much what happens when you turn the key,

motor starts tuning and the teeth push out and engage with the flywheel

and crank up the beast.

As soon as you let go the key, the magnetism thats holding the green cylinder

in, is lost, and that little spring shown earlier pushes the cylinder back out,

which in turn pulls the starter teeth back away from the flywheel.

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2422.jpg

 

Sometimes if your trying to start a car with a flat battery the engine just

makes a clicking sound but doesn't turn over.

Theres enough power to pull the cylinder into the solenoid and shoot

the pinion gear out to the flywheel (which is the little click you hear)

but not enough power to travel down the fat wires and turn the engine over.

 

The pic below shows a starter which has been disassembled using the

"f*ck, what did I just drop, I wonder was it important" method..... 

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2424.jpg

 

and the one below shows a starter which has been reassembled using

the "it'll be a f*cking miracle if this ever works again" method......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2440.jpg

 

last thing to do upon reassembly is bench test it. A set of jump leads,

big power to terminal 1 and the earth lead clamped onto the casing.

Any finally a little piece of wire to give a dart of power to the smaller

terminal 3, which should bring the starter to life. If it doesn't, beat it

to death with and hammer, hide it under the bench, and tell anybody who

asks, "it was to far gone to repair".....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2825%29/m3_2437.jpg

 

 

Staying on the theme of motors, next up was the wiper motor and linkage.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2322.jpg

 

plastic cover pops off to reveal the motor.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2323.jpg

 

on the other side is the bolts to disconnect the motor from the linkage.

3 red arrowed bolt release the motor body and the purple arrowed nut

releases the linkage from the motor spindle.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2324.jpg

 

strip of water sealing tape removed......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2325.jpg

 

to reveal the two screws that hold the two halfs of the motor together......

(one this side in pic and one directly opposite the other side)

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2326.jpg

 

screws undone and black bit slid off.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2327.jpg

 

all i'm interested in checking in here is the motors brushes.

There's 3 of them......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2328.jpg

 

You can check the condition of the brushes with just stripping as

far as above, but since I've a mental dysfunction which makes me

want to strip everything down to the last nut and bolt, belows a clearer

picture of the brushes. Theres 3 of them, only two sticking out of their

housings below (red arrows)...... 

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2350.jpg

 

as the third one is the earth brush and is connected to the housing.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2351.jpg

 

all the brushes still had plenty of life in them so everything gets cleaned

and jumbled back together......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2360.jpg

 

remembering to put some tape around the top part again so

water can creep in and fu*k things up in there.....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2361.jpg

 

after that it was on to the linkage.......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2362.jpg

 

on top of the linkage spindles are a large nut and two washers which

secure the linkage to the scuttle panel on the car, and if yours is out

and on the bench these will already have been removed. Just in the

centre of this though is a little small circlip......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2363.jpg

 

which when undone allows the spindle shafts to slide out of their

housings. Both shaft and housing (purple and red arrows) each side get

cleaned up and greased to help prevent against noisy wipers..... 

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2364.jpg

 

after which the joints in the linkage are done. These just pry apart,

softly, with a large screwdriver (be careful not to damage the rubber booth).....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2365.jpg

 

when apart they're cleaned and inspected. In one of them the grease had

gone hard and the linkage was just starting to wear a groove in the ball.

The one on the left below is the good one, and on the right you can see

the wear grooves just starting on the ball....

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2366.jpg

 

thankfully the ball wasn't badly grooved yet and it cleaned up nice with

some fine sandpaper. When these get badly grooved the wiper linkage starts

to get annoyingly noisy and the wiper blades get sloppy on the windscreen.

With everything cleaned up, they were all reassembled with plenty of fresh

grease and the wiper motor reconnected.......

 

http://www.xworksmotorsport.com/m3%20build%20%2830%29/m3_2367.jpg

 

refitting of wiper linkage to car is an interference fit, for this reason

it is recommended that special tool part number 959sledgehamer

is locked away before undertaking said task.

 

And thats it for tonight. 

Join us again tomorrow night for more cliff hangers,

plot twists and the continuation of the worlds most 

monotonous thread   :wink:  

Till then......

 

Bearbeitet: 17. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

Apologies for the delay getting this next part up, I had half of this

waffle typed up and then the interweb broke, or something, and it

all disappeared. It took a little time after that to fetch the computer 

from the neighbours front garden and reassemble it all again.

Anywho, back to the story.......

 

Next to get refitted was the ABS motor, nothing much to do with

this. It was removed from the car in the beginning just as you see

it below. And all of the pipes that had to be disconnected from the unit

on removal had the open ports plugged to stop the fluid draining

out of the motor. These can be a bit of a pig sometimes to bleed

out upon refittal it she's been allowed to completely empty inside.....  

 

 

 

Just before fitting it, the little protective cover is popped of the rear end

to check the condition of the electrical connections for all the stuff in there.

The relays are pulled (red arrows) to check for any corrosion on the pins

beneath which may have been caused by dampness getting in.

And the pins sticking up (purple arrow) where the main ABS plug will

fit on are also checked for corrosion. All clear, she was good to go...... 

 

 

after that the brake servo and master cylinder......

 

 

two nuts undone from the servo allows the master cylinder to drop off......

 

 

servo was looking a little second hand, so she got a sand and lick of paint.....

 

 

 

On to the master cylinder, the little reservoir on top just pulls off

(gently).....

 

 

 

then the two rubber grommets pop out, and you can see the little

slotted washer in the port of the rear chamber.....

 

 

washer just lifts out and needs to be remembered upon reassembly.

The purpose of this washer is top secret. I could tell you, but then I'd

have to kill you. (yep, I haven't a clue either)......

 

 

The ABS type master cylinder isn't constructed with overhauling in mind,

hence the circlip on the front with no holes to get a circlip pliers into (marked red).

And with the main dealer listing no internal parts and the motor factors drawing a

blank as well, I decided to leave well enough alone. I've no intention of renewing

the cylinder just for the sake of it, they're fairly pricey, and this one is showing no

external signs of failing. If she does down the line, then I'll replace it.

 

A mod that seems fairly common out there, is to change the master cylinder with

one from a seven series bm, which has a larger internal bore and as such stiffens up the

brake pedal a lot. I've driven an e30 with this mod done, and it ain't for me. The

brake pedal was uncomfortably hard for everyday driving. I could see why you might

do it in a competition car, but a road car, not for me. Each to their own though.

 

The one thing I did change was the little square sectioned O ring on the snout

of the cylinder (purple arrow)..... 

 

 

after that cylinder took a clean up.....

 

 

 

and everything reassembled. Next up, clutch slave cylinder.....

 

 

this is such an easy task with the pedal box out of the car as opposed

to changing one in place. If you'd like a more realistic experience on

how to change a clutch master cylinder in place, then lay crunched up on your

back on the floor, and hold the monitor over your head and swear

repeatedly at it while reading this......

 

 

two mounting bolts and one pivot bolt secure the new cylinder in place......

 

 

and with that done the ABS unit, brake pipes and master cylinder could

be fitted back in the engine bay......

 

 

 

while the pedal box was rebolted back inside......

 

 

 

Next up, heater motor......

 

 

starting up top first with the actual fan motor......

 

 

power and earth wire's are disconnected from the motor.....

 

 

followed by undoing the four tabs on the front of the fan cowls and

another four on the rear (softly, softly, 20 odd years of living out

under the scuttle panel and they're fairly brittle)......

 

 

 

cowls removed and it's on to pulling the motor out. After 20 minutes

of beating chunks out of it I finally figured out 

the motor retaining clip (coloured blue below) is popped free at

the bottom and hinged up......

 

 

 

to allow the motor to lift out.....

 

 

first up was to check the motor shaft for any play side to side or

wibbly wobbly (technical term), if there is, dump the motor and get another,

it's not worth the grief trying to change the bearings on these.

With that done the only other thing I wanted to check while it was out

was the motor brushes, which are under these clips......

 

 

Two in total, one each side. Clips just pop off ,and the springs underneath

like to head off into the scenery, which turned this particular job into

a frustrating fu*king treasure hunt...... 

 

 

with the clips removed you can see the brushes in their little housing.....

 

 

when slid out they were found to be not even half worn yet, so they're

good to go for another long while yet.......

 

 

Next up was the little resistor pack, which resides just above the water

valve on the side of the heater unit......

 

 

and sticks out into the incoming air duct area....

 

 

it just pulls out......

 

 

 

These can give a bit of trouble now the cars are reaching this age,

and a sure sign that ones playing up is when speeds 1, 2 and 3 don't

work on the heater anymore but position 4 still works fine.

To get a look at the inner bits of the pack the 4 little tabs marked

below are bent back......

 

 

allowing the metal cover to pop off......

 

 

and then you can see the 3 little coils of wire of varying thickness's

which make up the 3 resistors...... 

 

 

When you have the heater switched to speed 1, the power leaves the

switch and comes to this resistor pack on it's way to the fan motor.

When it enter's the pack it passes through all 3 coils of wire (resistors)

before going on to the motor. As it has had to push through all 3 resistors

the power left when it reaches the motor is small, so the motor only turns

slowly. Hence number 1 speed on the fan switch equals soft blow.

Number 2 speed power only passes through 2 of these resistors,

hence a little more power left when it reaches the motor and as such

the motor turns a little faster. Number 3 speed power only passes through

the one resistor and the fan motor gets a good wack of juice.

And finally number 4 speed doesn't go near the resistor pack at all, it just

heads straight to the fan motor and gives her full 12 volt, warp speed.

And as such when the resistor pack fails your just left with full speed

position 4 or nothing.

 

In the pic below you can see the route the power takes on it's way out of

resistor pack. Regardless of which speed it is 1, 2 or 3 they all take this path

on the way out. Flowing from the red arrow on the right in the pic, towards

the left, through the set of closed contacts (purple arrow) and on down

and out the bottom to the wire that brings them to the fan motor.

 

 

the reason there's a set of contacts is a safety measure. There a fair

whack of juice flowing through these resistor coils and as such they can get

quite hot, hence the reason this bit pokes out into the incoming air, to

help cool it. But, if something happened and they were to get too hot

they could become a fire risk, so, in the pic above you can see a tiny bit

of metal I've coloured yellow (pointed out by yellow arrow).

This metal is bimetallic, meaning that when it reaches a certain temperature

it bends. And in this case, if the resistors get too hot, then it bends like in the

pic below and seperates the two contacts apart.....

 

 

now the power can't flow any more on speeds 1, 2 or 3 till the resistors

cool down and the little bimetallic strip also cools and flattens out again

allowing the contacts to touch again. Unfortunately what happens is

these contacts can get dirty over the years until eventually the power

can't cross them anymore, where upon the owner/mechanic takes them

out fu*ks them away and buys a new set, when 9 out of ten times, popping

the cover and using a little piece of sandpaper to clean the contacts up would

have left them good to go for another 10 or 20 years. 

 

Anywho,

    next up was the heater radiator and valve. To remove the rad the

3 little screws arrowed below are undone......

 

 

however the rad can only slide out so far till the air duct below (red arrow)

gets in the way, so by removing the little screw on the side (purple arrow)

and popping it's two little retainer clips the vent can be removed.......... 

 

 

allowing the rad to side all the way out......

 

 

theres two different types of heater motor's fitted to e30 heater's

and as such two different types of radiators to go into them. They

are distinguished by the pipes that fit on to them. Below you can see

mine has one plastic pipe and one aluminium pipe. So it's the aluminium

pipe type. The other type one has two plastic pipes going to it....... 

 

 

Why do i need to know this you may ask? Well, it should help

you buy the right type of rad, because the two are non interchangeable,

as I proudly display below after buying the wrong one,

fu*k......

 

 

 

Must say a quick thanks to the good folk at C3bmw.co.uk, who

without quibble took back the wrong rad I had chose and promptly

sent me the other one, even though quite a bit of time had elapsed

since the original purchace. Good people.

As you can see below I now had a perfect match......

 

 

The reason this is being changed by the way, is at this age the rad's like

to spring a leak and unfortunately the first you'll know about it is when

the interior carpet starts to resemble a swamp. The other part thats

being changed is the heater valve pipe that bolts up to the rad as these

can also fail. Your usually left in no doubt when this fails as when it bursts

it can spew out boiling water over your legs. Nice........

 

 

new rad comes with a fat and skinny piece of foam.....

 

 

fat one sticks on around the outside and skinny one around the top

like below......

 

 

then the new heater valve pipe and the other pipe get bolted back

on with some fresh o rings......

 

 

 

 

 

after which the rad slides back into place......

 

 

and the little 2 pin electrical plug is reattached to the top of the heater

valve.......

 

 

then the motor is popped back into the front section......

 

 

and it's retaining clip clipped back down........

 

 

wire's reconnected.......

 

 

and finally the fan shrouds are refitted. The fan shroud have a little

groove to sit into. Take a second or two to get this right as if you don't

there's a good chance the fan is going to rattle like hell when powered up.......

 

 

and then she's just about ready to go back in.......

 

 

 

last thing to do is fit a pair of foam gaskets. As seems to be par for the

course at this stage I ordered the wrong one. I'm still convinced I ordered

the right part number, however this is what arrived at the main dealer....

 

 

It's the gasket for the other type of heater motor. As you can see though

they're pretty much similar, and a quick chop with the stanley knife

and they were a lot more similar......

 

 

 

The other gasket was for the inside piece of the heater unit......

 

 

 

After that, the grommet gets popped back in the bulkhead.......

 

 

and the heater unit gets hammered back in, making sure the 4 mounting

bolts pop through their little hole in the scuttle area so you can refit the

4 nuts to them (red arrows), and the two pipes pop through the big

grommet in the bulkhead (purple arrow).......

 

 

all done.....

 

 

Hope to get the next final bit of this update up in the next day

or two.

Till then...........

 

 

STAY TUNED

 

Bearbeitet: 17. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

The last of the engine ancillaries to get a spit and shine was the power

steering pump. 

 

 

 

the front pulley is popped off after it's 3 bolts are undone.......

 

 

and then after you've made a mental note of which way the carrier bracket

sits on, the four main bolts that hold the 2 half's of the pump together are

undone.......

 

 

only really interested in the half on the right in the pic above as thats

where all the serviceable items live. First up the little face plate lifts

off it's two little locator dowels.....

 

 

and then the cam ring underneath lifts off. A bit of time is then spent

checking the inside wall of the cam ring (red arrows), as this surface

needs to be super smooth for the pump to do it's job. Any heavy

scoring or scratches on this surface and it's over the shoulder with

the old pump and off to the scrap yard for a "new one".......

 

 

With the cam ring out of the way the 10 little blades can be removed

from the rotor in the centre of the pump.........

 

 

and finally the little circlip at the centre of the rotor is popped off.......

 

 

allowing the rotor to be lifted off the splined driveshaft.......

 

 

once the rotor is removed from the driveshaft, the driveshaft can be

slid out of the pump housing........

 

 

and with that out of the way the little oil seal at the snout of the housing

is popped out......

 

 

With everything pulled asunder and before the enthusiasm starts to

wear off, all the bits are cleaned for reassembly. Everythings got to

be fairly spotless in here as a little bit of dirt or grit won't take long

to fu*k up your pump or steering rack........

 

 

For nailing it all back together the following service kit was bought

from the main dealer under part number 32411 135 880.

Which contains the following............

 

 

1. snout oil seal

2. hard, face plate seal

3. soft, face plate seal

4. O ring

5. circlip

 

the other item needed for reassembly is a little bit of power steering

oil to rub on the bits as they go back together........

 

 

First up is the new oil seal fitted to the housing like so......

 

 

and once thats in, the driveshaft can be refitted..........

 

 

 

then the rotor is dropped back down onto the splines on the shaft........

 

 

and the new circlip fitted...........

 

 

cam ring sat back into place.......

 

 

and next to go in are the little blades. 10 of these in total and you need

to be a little careful when dropping them back in. The reason being, one

end of these are curved smooth and the other end is flat. If I owned a

camera that didn't need a fu*king masters degree in technology to

zoom in on something I would have taken a picture of this, however,

I don't, so I drew a picture instead....... 

 

 

As above the rounded face goes to the outside, up against that smooth

wall of the cam ring, the inside flat face points towards the centre of the

rotor. Get them wrong and your pump won't pump for long....... 

 

 

All the bits in the pic's above and below are given a rub of power steering oil

as they're dropped in by the way.

With that part done the face plate is dropped back onto it's dowels.......

 

 

and then first the soft seal is dropped into the little recess on top (red arrow),

followed by the hard seal (purple arrow)........ 

 

 

a bit hard to see below but the hard seal go's around the outside of

the soft seal.......

 

 

final bit to go in is the big o ring....... 

 

 

and then after giving everything a good smear of power steering oil,

the two halfs of the pump get bolted back together making sure that

the two little ports marked below (black arrows) face each other......

 

 

Once back together everything outside gets a lick of paint........

 

 

 

Bearbeitet: 19. Februar 2015 von Kurt66

[Kurt66]

 

After that it was on to some light work......

 

 

E30's seem to be fairly prone to water leaks around the tail lights, so,

the new gaskets were given a light coating of grease on the side that

sits against the light.......... 

 

 

and the mating surface that they sit up against on the car was also given

a light smear......

 

 

before the lights were hammered home........

 

 

reg plate lights had decided to tint themselves brown somewhere along

the last 20 odd years so I changed them back to clear...........

 

 

the area around these little lights also seems to like rusting, so, some fresh

clips were fitted and suffocated in grease before the lights were screwed

back in......

 

 

 

 

With the rear end done it was on to the front lights, which looked like

they'd gone ten rounds with a sand blaster, and lost........

 

 

 

 

The headlight rims were in a bad condition, so I sent them away to

have them rechromed.....

 

 

 

and then it was on to stripping the headlights themselves. Theres two

different brands of headlights for e30's I think, and these are the Hella

variety. Bulb covers twist off first.......

 

 

and then 3 little screws are undone to remove the reflector.....

 

 

 

Then 4 little screws are undone to remove the front glass section from

the reflector in the pic above. The glass bit can be cleaned up normally, but,

the chrome "bowl" in the pic below needs a bit of caution when cleaning.

The chrome is 20 odd years old and and lived in a hot/cold environment for

that length of time (headlights on/off), and as such it needs to be treated delicately.

Squirt some glass cleaner in here and go at it with a rag and you'll just wipe

all the chrome away. So "softly" rub away any dust with some cotton wool....... 

 

 

next up replacing the lenses. Each one is held in place by 3 adjusters

(well actually 2 adjusters and 1 pivot lug)........

 

 

these are removed first from the headlight surround by twisting them

till the little white plastic rectangle lines up with the rectangle on the

housing like so......

 

 

allowing the two lights to be removed from the frame.......

 

 

then the adjusters had to be removed from the old lenses and swapped

over on to the new ones, making sure the 2 adjusters and 1 pivot lug

go in the exact same location on the new headlight, otherwise your

going to be dazzling passing airplanes......

 

 

adjusters can be a bit of a pig to remove. In the pic below you can see

the little plastic "socket" they use to sit into the light frame. All 4 corners

of this little socket need to be pushed inwards to allow the socket and

adjuster to lift out together......

 

 

Then some fresh lenses are added.....

 

 

adjusters are refitted (making sure they go back into their right holes).......

 

 

and then they're popped back into the frame......

 

 

 

and finally the reflectors and bulbs are refitted to leave them looking

a whole lot fresher......

 

 

Chrome rims for the outside of the lights still haven't returned back from

chroming yet, as, amazingly, I seem to have found someone who works

even slower than I do.

 

And thats about it for this update.

Next up, is the black magic thats required to keep the smoke inside the

wiring looms.........

 

 

Till then................ 

 

Bearbeitet: 19. Februar 2015 von Kurt66