Steezmode's E30 Funhaus

[low_&_loud]

Update - didnt get to drive the car much since the weather has been hot as balls for most of July and August here and I sit in a lot of traffic coming home from work. The electric fan is not wired to any kind of temp switch and is just on a relay with a manual switch and I suspect it was not done correctly since the switch gets super hot when its in use. This, coupled with the hot temps and sitting in traffic actually melted the switch and really made me start worrying about it so I stopped driving it to work until I can sort that out.

With the weather now cooler and more enjoyable again Ive been getting back into it, and somewhat ironically decided to tear it apart to fix some problems Im really sick of. Same thing that happened last September when I was sick of driving it with no heat/defrost/windshield wipers. The exhaust is cobbled together from the PO, and while it works, it sounds awful, bottoms out all the time, flexes and squeaks and bangs off the floor/rear valence - so thats getting upgraded. The shifter assembly is also so blown out I miss 3rd a fair amount even having a good feel for where it is, so that is on its way out too. While its on stands Im also throwing some e90 drophats on to level its appearance out some, since that is pretty quick and painless.

[low_&_loud]

Alright well on with the updates - I took a couple baseline videos of where Im starting out to compare with the finished products when the time comes.

Here is the state of the shifter going into this whole ordeal - probably 1" slop or more side to side in every gear:


Stock ZF320 shift assembly which was never rebuilt before the swap, so this is probably to be expected at ~150k miles or more on this assembly. Throw is fairly long, and overall feel is awful. Trying to find 3rd has about as much positive engagement as a butterknife in a jelly jar. Sorely in need of an upgrade.

The offending party - oil residue indicating other new and exciting fun to be discovered:


Shift selector seal and output shaft seal both weeping oil - I will be replacing these while its torn apart


Shift lever bushing clapped out


Rear carrier bushing, about same durometer as a marshmallow


Front carrier bushing, equally trashed


Carrier fitted with UUC Evo3 Shifter Cup and delrin front bushing, as well as garagistic delrin rear carrier bushing (burned the rubber one out) - waiting on new tranny seals before I reinstall it


I wasnt counting on the seals being blown so while Im waiting on those, Iworked towards cleaning up the mess under the car with copious amounts of degreaser. Id really like to powerwash it at some point but that will be a pretty serious undertaking




Heres a clip of the exhaust Im currently running. Ebay SS headers, 2-1 merge, and I believe 2.5" piping back to a cat and dynomax muffler. Its pretty raspy and I'm not crazy about how it sounds, super raw and tinny.

Ill be fabbing my own 3" setup designed for turbo use later on, but will set it up such that I can v-band it to a larger merge collector on my current headers until then.

The exhaust before I got the car was basically a straightpipe to a glasspack muffler or something along those lines. Super loud and no shot in hell of passing inspection. The cat was spliced in to cut down the stink and noise a bit, but you can see below it was pretty hacked when the PO tried to get it to pass - didnt work which is why I put the dynomax on which he gave me. The exhaust creaks and hits the underside of the floor, as well as drags on everything so again, a ripe area for improvement.


You can see there are 4-5 clamps holding this cat section and a couple reducers together, which is where it flexes. Ill be trashing the whole thing. More updates to come.

[low_&_loud]

Got the selector shaft and output shaft seals replaced - not too bad a job, just had to wait on some Curil K-2 and a socket big enough to remove the output flange to do that seal properly.

The last couple weeks were also spent trying to find a clear answer on which shifter components I needed to make my linkage work. It's all buttoned up now but took ordering several versions of parts to physically compare and determine what was needed. The whole discussion can be read HERE, but my conclusion is the following, to sum it up in one spot:

For 24v/ZF320:
-E36 Carrier - correct length but will yield slightly off-center shifter cup within transmission tunnel cutout/console. No major harm besides rubber boot is hard to reinstall and may cause some friction. Some people use extended (modified) E30 carriers with success but I didnt have one on hand, this would have kept it all centered.
- Selector Joint: Two combinations possible, and it makes sense looking back at it now. One is "Early E36" - 189mm DSSR and selector joint P/N 25117503525. The other is "Late E36" which is the 198mm DSSR and selector joint P/N 25117580281 (with plastic flanges filed off). Mismatching either will put the shifter too far forward or backward.

I also determined my shift detent pins/bushings (specifically 5th gear) are in need of replacement, since my shifter will not return to center between 2nd and 3rd, but is jammed up against the gate for 5th to the right instead. I originally attributed this to the linkage assembly being incorrect, but in the image below you can see the hole in the selector shaft (which should be vertical) is off at an angle, since the detent pin which would be re-centering it is seized up. Pretty common issue for these transmissions from reading E36/E46 forums. I am hoping when I drive the car again and warm it up a bit maybe the pin will unseize for now, since it sounds like it can be an intermittent problem for some people.



Unfortunately this means I need to drop the transmission to get at the pins, which I cant do right now. I really hate reassembling things when theyre not fixed but I can live with it for now, and the car will be in storage again before long. Ill post a video of the new shifter when I get a second, the engagement is an incredible difference and I wish I could try it out with the shifter in the right spot.

I am anxious to get the exhaust figured out so I can drive it again, so Im working towards that for now. I need to get some tubing/hangers/bungs, a merge collector for my header, the heat shields that go under the driveshaft, and some SS MIG wire so I can tack it up, but already have the following on hand:
-Vibrant Stealth Power Muffler (3")
-Vibrant Ultraquiet Resonator (3")
-Magnaflow 3" Hi-Flow Cat
-V-band assemblies

Seems a ton of people use this setup and they sound great, so I cant wait to get mine together. I havent figured out a mounting scheme that seems solid enough yet - I want this exhaust capable of withstanding antilag and am thinking the stock rubber loop style hangers may not be up to the task. Continuing to hunt around and see what others have done - seems like everyone does things a bit different being that there is no off the shelf type option for the exhaust with this swap.