An early Delphin convertible

[Das Delfin]

replace boot's emblem with a Z4 side marker one.

THAT'S what people mean by the Z4 emblem... Looks pretty awesome. I will have to do that!

[Das Delfin]

:hitler: Gah. I'm jealous of all these guys with tops that don't have holes in their plastic window. I have to take mine to an upholsterer and get a new one sewn in.

The zip-in window was half the reason I bought this car and not a newer 318 cab I was looking at... but if you buy the window itself, labor to install shouldn't be too much. Or you could try to learn how to sew it in yourself!

[UlrichFennec]

The zip-in window was half the reason I bought this car and not a newer 318 cab I was looking at... but if you buy the window itself, labor to install shouldn't be too much. Or you could try to learn how to sew it in yourself!

I'd love to learn sewing, but I've got big fumbly hands. I can live with the window for now, as I kinda wanna replace the navy top with a beige or black top.

[N2MYE30]

A bit OT but whats this talk of Z4 side marker on trunk lid? Swappable I assume but why change?

[Das Delfin]

The idea is to keep a 3rd brake light after shaving off the trunk mounted one. I can't imagine it being as bright as the one on the trunk, but maybe there are ways to work with it. I'm okay with my trunk brake light for now but in the future may want to do the Z4 light. But I just like lighting mods

[DirtDog15]

Thats a nice vert you got there. Looks like you started with one in about the same condition mine was when I got it. It's looking great. :)

[Das Delfin]

^ Thanks! I've thrown the A/C on the wayyyyy back burner though! If I can get the car's suspension sorted, I'll be happy. I'm still not excited about shelling out the dough for a new interior. The car came with cardinal red leather but now it's this cracked ugly painted black interior. I've been thinking about getting a kit to do cardinal red cloth. Because cloth is 100% better. But one thing at a time!

[Das Delfin]

Got my gas gauge to work. Just had to take the cluster apart, remove the gauge, and sand down the two contacts. I took it out so many times I can now take my cluster out in a matter of 5 mins.



Also replaced the clutch slave cylinder in 35 degree weather because it was leaking all over everywhere! I bought the bavauto bleeder but didn't get as much use out of it as I'd thought





& I swapped out the check module for an e34 dome light. My check module never worked right and I know how to check my own fluids so away it went!

[DirtDog15]

Got my gas gauge to work. Just had to take the cluster apart, remove the gauge, and sand down the two contacts. I took it out so many times I can now take my cluster out in a matter of 5 mins.

WOW! only 88 thousand miles, I'm jealous!! My odometer stopped working at 197,xxx miles. The car has (guessing) somewhere around 200,xxx miles on it now. I'm going to fix my odometer soon and rebuild the entire cluster. I'm not complaining though, the car runs perfect, no leaks or noises.

[Das Delfin]

meh it's really that plus 100k. But if it hadn't been clocked back, the PO wouldn't have bought it, it wouldn't have sat in a garage for years, and I wouldn't have it now. It is but a number.

My e36 had 163k when I bought it. This thing had 168k. But the odo still works, obc is still accurate, econo gauge, everything still reads correctly. I want to crack open the odo to make it accurate but I don't want to break it in the process :P

[Das Delfin]

It's been way hot out and I skip the pics, but since March I redid the front shocks & springs w/H&R sports and KYB because... they're cheap! I'd heard not to use an impact gun on spring compressors so I did every turn by hand, then afterward learned the compressors I had were okay to use with an impact gun. Fml. But at least it's done.

A couple weeks ago I did my timing belt. Turns out the tensioner spring was missing so the car had to stay disassembled until a new spring came in the mail and I got time off from work to put everything back in...


The old belt... pretty standard


I'd picked up a set of basketweaves with decent tires so I sold the bottle caps and grabbed some center caps from the board and here's how the car looks now:


I'm on the fence about the yellow high beams. I wired it so the high beams are really hella H4's with their low beam filaments coming on with the fog light switch, which is then wired independent of the white low beams. So when it's foggy I can use pure yellow light to see stuff. But I don't know if I like how they look...

My convertible top has always been crooked where it attaches to the windshield. The passenger side fits perfectly but on the drivers side there's a big gap. A couple years ago I'd "fixed" it with a strip of home depot weatherstripping, but today I did it right and took out some of the shims aligning the top to the body. No pics, of course, but this video shows how I did it:

https://youtu.be/trHP1oI1R38

Next project is finally dealing with the interior. This is the most expensive project on my car and I've waited to do it last but I have something nice planned and can't wait to get started!

[UlrichFennec]

Looking great so far! I love the high beams, and I'm rather jealous of your working tach.

Tried replacing mine and it still didn't work, so I'm assuming I just need a completely new cluster.

[Das Delfin]

^ Thanks! About the cluster... you sure it's not a fuse? I haven't had to deal with the tach but every once in a while I read about the tach and ecometer being governed by a fuse.. I mean when I bought my car I replaced all the blown fuses and somehow got working power mirrors, headlights, and heater blower...

if not, taking the cluster out isn't hard. I had to sand down the contacts for my gas and temp gauges. Just remember how it went out because there's a certain trick to getting it back in!

[Das Delfin]

To go along with the convertible top alignment, I sprayed this season's coating of the infamous Raggtopp stuff. This stuff protects your top from UV rays and also gets water to bead and run off the top, rather than soak in and leak into the car. Last year I bought the whole cleaning kit, complete with horsehair brush, but you really don't need all that. Just wash the top with a normal sponge and car wash. Or don't! Like I did here... The spray bottle of protectant gets you about 5 coats, so I'll be needing to order another for this fall. Anyway, be sure to newspaper your windows, because this sucks to get off. My rear window is faded, so I didn't bother wasting time with that since I did this on my lunch break at work..!

[Das Delfin]

So a while ago I put yellow lamin-x on my high beams but lately I've been on the fence about how the yellow lenses look on my grey car. So I bought a set of yellow bulbs to see what the car would look like. These are the initial pics. I will have to take more tonight of the actual beam color.

The bulbs I bought:

http://www.amazon.com/Optilux-H71070682-Series-Yellow-Halogen/dp/B001BM0H8G

I have H4's in both my lows and high beams so I can do an easy side by side comparison. With both on the Hellas are a bit brighter


But when the lights are off the bulbs leave an ugle greenish hue to the lights when viewed at a certain angle


But from another angle they look just like normal clear headlights



So later on I got an idea of how they'd look at night. The Hella yellow bulbs are definitely yellower than the white bulbs with yellow lamin-x, so much so that the pictures make the lamin-x bulbs look white. Be assured, they are not white. I definitely like the hellas more than the lamin-x, but keep in mind I'm going for light output alone. The "look" of yellow high beams plays a different role. Hopefully I can remove my lamin-x and hang on to it just in case.

Both lights on (keep in mind the camera makes the inner headlights look whiter than they are... though they are noticeably white in person, too)


Light output of the Hella Optilux XY Yellows:


And of the white bulbs with Lamin-x yellow film:


I swear that last one is with yellow film.. if I had a white bulb set up, I would have snapped a pic of that too for comparison, but I was a few beers in and wasn't going to muddle around with halogen light bulbs just for a picture.

The next day I pulled off my lamin-x films, moved the Hellas to the centers and put the old white bulbs in the outer housings.

This is with normal white bulbs:


And this is the white mixed with the Hella yellows:


The camera doesn't capture the lighting perfectly, but you can still tell how the white light output is much better than the Hella yellows. The lamin-x was also a brighter output than the Hellas are. Since I'm using these mainly as fog lights, I think the dimmer bulb will actually be better, but we'll see. My turn signals and side markers are clear and I like the monochromatic look of the front end so I'll keep it like this for a bit and probably get bored later on and polish up my ambers and run those. Who knows.