e30 M3 minor rust repair.

[MattAvino]

cant wait to see more!

[xworks]

I tried using stainless sheeting a long time ago for body repairs
and just about managed to walk away from the job without burning
the garage down out of rage. As you may have sensed, it didn't go well.
I found the metal an awful lot harder to form into the shape of the patch
required and after sticking with it and eventually getting that part right
it then warped to shit as I was welding it into place.

I've since learnt that stainless steel expands and contracts a lot more than
the equivelant thickness piece of mild steel when subjected to the heat of
welding, which I guess probably explains why it was such a pig to weld the
patch in. The interweb reckons it can be difficult to get paint and filler to
bond onto stainless as well. I can't personally testify to that, as my one
and only encounter with stainless steel patch repairs ended up providing
a rust proof liner for the garage bin shortly afterwards.

[monoi]

Can't wait for the next installment!

I was wondering something: any particular reason not to use stainless steel when you did the bodywork repairs? Is it harder to fabricate/weld? Does it react with normal steel? Too expensive? All that?

[CorvallisBMW]

Dude -
I fucking love you.

Hands off! he's my e30-god-man-crush

[Simon S]

Dude -
I fucking love you.

[Korbee]

Amazingly done, you make it look so simple! Subscribed!

[airkhin]

dear gawd... cant wait to see more! every time i open this thread i realize again how much i have to learn, wow. keep it up!

[xworks]

So, happy that the fan could actually be made to fit the next thing to
sort was mounting it. The original fan was mounted to the bodywork
but I've decided to mount the new one directly to the radiator itself.......



Some templates drawn up for the pair of mounting brackets to be used
and then transferred to aluminium...........



using the usual selection of cutting edge modern technology.......



meant that it required numerous hours of ballache to transform this.......



into these.........



after which some spacers were added to the brackets to avoid
the fan munching it's way through the radiator core.........



before finally getting a splatter of black paint.........



bolt them up to the fan..........



and then with the aid of some tubular aluminium pipe spacers, bolt the
brackets to the radiator.........





which ends up looking like so............



and when fitted..........





I'm confident if this car overheats in traffic in the future it'll be because it's sucked a passing
cyclist through the grill.

more as the week goes on............

[xworks]

Theres a good few bits and pieces of stuff getting bolted on around the car at this
stage of the rebuild and a large number of them attach to the shell with the
aid of screws and spire clips.......



I'm not a huge fan of spire clips and where ever possible I try to use rivet nuts instead.......



as due to their design they they don't trap moisture against the bodywork
like spire clips can and hopefully should keep the rust at bay a little
while longer..........



The front crossmember gets a pair of them to mount the engine oil cooler............





With the cooler and hoses mounted it can be prefilled with fresh
oil before the fittings are screwed back home onto the filter housing.
This can take an age to do thanks to the smallish bore of the hose and
the stubborn thickness of cold engine oil, but your engine will thank you
for it on that first start up........



Another little puzzle that needed sorting was to do with the front wheel
arch plastic liners. The liners are held in place up under the wings with a few
screws and plastic nuts at various places. One of those places was in the little
"jacking box" at the bottom of the wheel arch.
I had a wee problem here.......



back at the start of the bodywork repairs these were consigned to the bin.
D'oh.

The solution I went with was a little pair of stainless steel brackets with
rivet nuts attached.........



one to be bonded to each side of the floor pan where the "jacking boxes"
used to be, to provide a new mounting point for the wheel arch liner bottom screw.......





Next on the agenda was the radiator fan......



A while before coming off the road for this little "freshen up" I had a fair bit of
bother with the fan on this car. Sometimes she'd work, sometimes she wouldn't.
I'd been through all the normal fixes to no avail, (fan resistor, fan switch, fan switch
wiring) which left me with the impression that something inside the fan motor itself
was starting to intermittently fail.
There's very few things in life as sure to frustrate your driving experience as always having
to keep an eye on the temperature gauge while in heavy traffic, wondering if today's the day
the fan will totally fail and transform your engine into an expensive kettle.

According to the service literature the original fan is a "non serviceable part" which
"cannot be dismantled and repaired".
Nonsense, it's a plastic bloody fan with a 12 volt motor jammed in the middle
it's not nuclear physics. So, out with the hammer.........



Very shortly after this I decided an after market fan would be a nice upgrade,
can't remember exactly why I came to this decision, but best we move on quickly.

A quick search of the interweb threw up this baby.........



A 16 inch Spal pusher fan (VA18-AP71/LL-42S) with curved blades
to keep the noise down a little.......



I couldn't find any info on how much cubic feet of air the original Bmw fan shifted
to help choose the correct size Spal fan, so, I just did what any logical thinking red blooded
male would do, ordered the biggest fan in the catalogue.
This seemed like a great idea right up until the fan arrived, I removed it from it's
packaging, marvelled briefly at it's enormity and offered it up to the front of the radiator.

Fuck, fuck, fuckidy fuck.

It wouldn't fit.

After a short recess to allow blood pressure to return to normal levels it became
clear that the fan could be made to fit if the front crossmember was trimmed down
a little (red section)........

[xworks]

there'll be cobwebs in it by the time she hits the road at this rate.

[monoi]

Is it me or do I see some dust in the engine bay!?! Are standards slipping ?!?:)

Awesome thread

[xworks]

now the tricky bit. The pinion shaft on the new rack sits a little bit
taller than the old one and the result of this is you have to slide the
splined end of the steering shaft a little further down onto it to get
everything to fit in place........



The end result of this is, when fitted, the hole in the steering shaft coupling
for the pinch bolt to slide though now doesn't line up with that groove
(it has slid down a little bit past it).........




It's not the end of the world however, as the bolt will still fit in fine and
do it's job, it just needs to be screwed in now rather than simply falling in as before.
The one thing this is mucho importante is that the splines don't protrude to much
up into the coupling and start to interfere with the free rotation of the upper part
of the joint.........



To help with this I loosened the coupling at both ends of the steering shaft
and made sure the same amount of splines were protruding both ends,
rather than trying to do it all one end.........



With everything nipped up tight the steering gets a few locks from side
to side while checking theres no fouling going on and everythings as smooth
as it was the day it left the factory. However much of a pain in the arse it is
to have to deal with problems now, there's a good chance it would be pain all over
if you start finding problems while thrashing down a country lane.

With the rack, pump and reservoir now in place all that was left was the hydraulic
pipes that join them all together........



The original M3 pipes are all good to go again with one small tweek.
The low pressure pipes are good to go as is, as being made of rubber
they easily flex to their new locations. The high pressure pipe however
needs a little bit of modifying to match up with the slightly different
angle of the new steering racks inlet port.......



The "tweek" isn't too complicated, it is however a little hard to photograph.
Basically the steel end of the pressure pipe needs to be bent a little to
open up the angle on the pipe as shown below. There's two ways to bend the
pipe, slowly and gently in the vise, or, quickly and roughly and the resulting
call to the main dealer to price a new one..........



The bend shown above is to steer the pipe clear of the engine block
and engine mounting leg when it's fitted.......



theres one other slight bend needed and thats to take the pipe away from the
steering knuckle.......



although it doesn't look it above due to the crap angle I decided to take
a photo at, theres a good half inch clearance between the pipe and the knuckle.

And thats about all that was involved in getting the steering system sorted.

More as the week goes on..........

[xworks]

The ball joints of my original inner track rods were still in perfect
nick so a quick clean up, a lick of paint and some fresh grease in on
the ball joints and they were ready to go again.........





When these inner track rods were fitted to the e30 steering rack they
had a little washer with two bendable tabs to prevent them ever unscrewing,
however these washers aren't compatible with the new rack, so instead
they're getting a dab of loctite to keep them secure........






The last things that were needed to complete the rack were the outer track rods ends.
The balljoints on the old ones were showing signs of wear so a fresh pair took
their place..........



With everything buttoned up the rack was now ready to bolt into the subframe.......



To do this requires a pair of little spacers as the mounting tabs on the new rack
come up a little short between the mounting lugs that hold it on the subframe.........



for now a little pair of spacers 13.5mm high were made up to go between the
top of the rack mounts and under the subframe lug as shown by the arrow above.
The height and number of spacers may change a little down the line when we get around
to measuring front suspension bump steer, but for today those 13.5mm one's will do fine.

Final piece of the jigsaw is the steering shaft. The original was cleaned up,
fitted with a new rubber guibo and is good to go again with no noticeable
wear in the joints........



the splines at either end get a wee dab of grease so you don't need to
swing the hammer quite as far when battering them into place.......

[xworks]

Next on the list of things needing to find a new home was the power steering reservoir.
Like all e30's it's normally bolted to the turret, however with the addition of the new
airbox this is no longer possible.
The new site was to be a little lower down on the front inner valence using these two
original studs for mounting............



the original reservoir mounting bracket needed a little modifying before it was
good to go again. With the spot welds drilled the mounting part could be removed
and tossed........



to be replaced with this instead........



once welded on the bracket was bolted up to check I hadn't welded it arseways,
which seems to happen with alarming regularity.......



all good, so a quick lick of paint........



and nail her on for good..........



There was one other slight mod done to the steering system and it was
carried out a while back when the driveline was going in and that was
to change the steering rack.
If your the kind of person that likes to let the car steer from the rear every
now and then, more than likely you'll have noticed how slow the steering
is on e30's. A fairly common "upgrade" is to fit a quicker ratio steering rack
from some of the more modern BMW's and this is what I've chosen to do.
However, sourcing the correct left hand drive rack in a country full of right
hand drive cars proved fairly challenging. Thankfully a good friend came to
the rescue with what you see below, a reconditioned E46 compact steering rack,
I think.......



the reason I say "I think" is because there's no BMW or ZF identification numbers left on
the rack after it was reconditioned. Nothing too suspicious in this, I've bought a few
reconed racks in the past from TRW and they were all the same.
However it does leave you with a little bit of a conundrum. How do you know if
this rack is going to be any faster than the one already in the car?
The answer is fairly straight forward, measure the movement.

With the rack on the bench like below one of the dust boots is removed
from either side and then by turning the input shaft lock the steering all the way to
one side.
Then, turn the input shaft exactly 1 complete turn in the opposite direction and
measure how much the rack moves.........



The standard steering rack in an e30 M3 moves the rack 38mm for one
complete turn of the input shaft. So any more than this is going to give you
a quicker steering rack. As you can see above this rack moves 50mm for
one turn which is quite a bit "quicker" than the old one.
The only other rack I've ever had the chance to measure was the rack
from a Z3 BMW which is a popular choice, and it measured 53mm,
which I think maybe the quickest BMW rack that will fit an e30.

So, happy that the rack I had was going to quicken up the steering response
the next job was to get it ready to bolt in. The first thing that needed to be done
was to swap out the inner track rod arms, as the ones that came fitted to the new
rack where the male threaded variety, whereas I wanted to retain the e30's
female threaded ones............

[///M Powered]