Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Alpina]

Hillarious job !!!!

[Northern]

Apparently I'm going through the same washer tank evolution as you... Can't fit stock because turbo, bought the ebay square one, then found the little e36 one in my shed and said "well that looks better"

[Skarpa]

Here's something that might be unrelated to project Armo but might still interest someone:

A while ago I bought a set of TRX 390 bottlecaps with an intention to slice them up and see what I could come up with them. I've always liked the design of these wheels. Today I had the valve holes welded shut and roughly cut off the front and rear lips.





The remaining centerpiece fits very well nside an RC090 barrel that I bought a while ago. The spokes line up nicely with the center hole of the barrel and the center piece fits inside the barrel with just 1 or 2 mm gap around it. On the front face the bolt circle sits on flat surface. At the rear there might be a smaal step under the nuts but I'll see when I straighten the rear face at a lathe.





The wheels can be made 2-pieces by using the same structure as in style 5's or 3-piece by buying wheel rings with the right dimensions and using just the inner portion of style 5 barrel. Quite like Pazi88 did in his 3-piece style 5 project. For project Armo these will be oversized and have the wrong pitch but I just wanted to undertake this project for joy of building. I suspect they still might slip under project Armo regardless of opposing evidence.

[Skarpa]

I have pretty long legs. With basic flat seats I still fit E30 comfortably with good driving position. Sport seats, however are shaped differently and with those I'm left with a desire to move the seat further back than possible. To correct this I made brackets out of flat bar that bolt on to standard mounting points and have tapped holes for the seat 5 centimeters back from original location. Now that I'm working on the body I decided to scrap the extra brackets and make mounting points in body where I want them.

I marked a line for the mounting points and measured 5 centimeters back from them and drilled holes for bolts. For the front mounting points I made two captive bolt plates and glued them in place with panel adhesive + pop rivets:


For the rear I used a hole saw to make space for M10 captive nuts.


Then I cut off the original bolts, test fitted the seat, tightened the rear nuts with bolts and tacked them on, removed the seat and welded the nuts securely to floor panel and the reinforcement plates at the bottom.


All that was left was to bolt the seat on once more for the most important task: Sit in and make wroom wroom noises. It was a nice feeling to sit on the driver's seat for change. It's been a while since last time. (Even though it's actually the passenger's seat)

[Skarpa]

We have a parts washing machine at work but it's only used very rarely because of the time and energy it takes to heat up. Today we fired it up so I decided to take apart the half shafts and wash them at the same time. The joints felt a bit notchy when turning by hand but the parts didn't really seem all that worn. Mainly the ball cages have slightly worn spots where the balls sit. I'll see what they feel like after new grase.

[varg]

Why not put the windshield washer bottle in the trunk? That's what I did. Muh weight distribution!

[2mAn]

Its been said several times in this thread already, but what a rebuild. There literally wont be an inch on the car that you havent gone back over. This car will be like new when its all done. Keep it up!

[Skarpa]

Why not put the windshield washer bottle in the trunk? That's what I did. Muh weight distribution!

Seems unnucessary hazzle. I'm not aiming for fully shaved engine bay. I just want to clean it up little bit, get rid of unnecessary stuff and make any modifications and installations so well that they look like they belong there. I'm happy with the hacked up reservoir.

Its been said several times in this thread already, but what a rebuild. There literally wont be an inch on the car that you havent gone back over. This car will be like new when its all done. Keep it up!

Thanks, will do!

[Skarpa]

Half shafts and the diff casing received primer


Now that the brackets for the driver's seat are ready, it was time to return the the rear seat. The seat itself is finished but it required some brackets in the body. For the top edge I fabricated hooks that grab the seat pretty much the standard E30 way. I made them scew-on with rivet nuts in the body so they don't mess with fitment of original seat if I ever want to go back to E30 seat.


At the bottom of the seat back I went with welded brackets that hold the seat back in correct orientation. They also have captive nuts for fixing the seat back. To be honest I don't know if they interfere with E30 seat because I no longer have one to check it but I decided I don't care too much about that after all. This is the seat I want to use.



The seat part fits right in the E30 brackets.


The seat turned out very good. (It had better to, with the ridiculous amount of work that has gone into it)


Next I plan to drop the body from the rotisserie and start wiggling the engine in.

[Kershaw]

What rear seats are those? Progress is looking great.

[Skarpa]

What rear seats are those? Progress is looking great.

E36 Coupe lower part and E36 sedan backrest. Lower part required a fair bit of modification:

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showpost.php?p=4589521&postcount=99

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showpost.php?p=4595417&postcount=105

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showpost.php?p=4607644&postcount=111

[Skarpa]

I had some spare time at work so I challenged myself to make a 3D model of the TRX390 center and RC090 barrel. The center was pretty interesting piece to model. It has fairly complicated shape which makes you ponder on the the features and their order. The model tells me that the specs of the wheel would be 8x17et8 with the barrel mounted in front of the center and 8x17et25-30 with the barrel mounted behind the center (depending on the depth of machining)




If the center is in front, it causes some extra thinking with the valve position. In the RC090 barrel the valve hole is where the lip meets the flange. The valve stem might just fit between the lip and the edge of the center depending on the shape of the valve. Angled valve mounted inside the center would be another option.

[Skarpa]

Yesterday I was at the garage changing summer tires for the dd. While there I mounted the pilot bearing, flywheel and the clutch on the engine.


I would have mounted the gearbox as well but it turned out that the new release bearing wasn't gonna fit. The clutch set I bought was for E46 330i / X3. It turns out the E60 and E90 6-speed boxes have 2mm larger diameter sleeve around the clutch shaft. On closer inspection it seemed that the release bearings were essentially the same. Only difference is in the plastic sliding sleeves.


I tried taking the bearings apart to swap the sleeves. The sleeve is held down by four thin steel tabs and once these are pried open, it can be slid off.


Cross breeding worked just fine. The release bearing that came with the gearbox wasn't bad either but it's nicer to use a new one.

[Skarpa]

Gearbox mounted to engine. I put the engine on the front subframe and set everything on wheeled platforms so it's easy to push around.


Bolt holes for transmission in the engine block are fine but only one of the bolt holes in the oil pan lines up. The rest need to be drilled. I'll need to check the structure of the flange to see if I'll drill the new holes in the bell housing or the oil pan.


The exhaust manifold interferes with the subframe and the sway bar which didn't come as surprise. On the other hand I was surprised that I actually managed to get them on with no spacers under the engine mounts. I will truly see what's the situation when the subframe is back in the car. Currently there's nothing keeping it in the right orientation

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Nice work. You don't need those oil pan bolts. They're not structural.

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