e30 M3 minor rust repair.

[Massimo]

^
lol

[acolella76]

omfg! You are my hero! Holy shit sooo much to comprehend.

ლ(ಠ益ಠლ) y u bump thread?!?

[e30shmobberr]

OMFG! YOU ARE MY HERO! holy shit sooo much to comprehend.

[Simon S]

Glorious will be the day when that car is complete.

[kcoelhoe30]

XWORKS this is just amazing you eserve a hug! cheers mate good luck on your project. check out my project thread if you like

[yanal]

Just read the entire thread ! Speechless :o

[mnc2fan]

theres no simple answer I'm afraid :-(
The large majority of tolerances and almost
all the torque values used are available here

http://www.bmwtechinfo.com/repair/main/941en/index.htm

(i'm not sure if this is the shop manual that you are referring to
and were already aware of)

Ah, the manual I was checking was the e30 repair manual. That's the info I was looking for, saved.

As far as all the tips and tricks you go over, that's one of the main reason this thread has so much win to it.

[xworks]

theres no simple answer I'm afraid :-(
The large majority of tolerances and almost
all the torque values used are available here

http://www.bmwtechinfo.com/repair/main/941en/index.htm

(i'm not sure if this is the shop manual that you are referring to
and were already aware of)
Any of the other stuff is just picked up over the years of
messing with engines I guess.
I've tried to list all the main type's of tolerance checks you
might do during an average engine build so that should somebody
want to rebuild an engine other than an S14 it may make it a little
easier to Google the information for the engine that was being built.

The only thing I might add about using search engines for finding
important tolerances or measurements is to use the
"bullsh*t calculator". By this I mean if your searching for an important
tolerance and only find 1 piece of info listing the measurement your
after I'd be a little wary of taking this as gospel. Whereas if you find
3 or 4 different web links all listing the same measurement
the chances of the information being bullsh*t are reduced.

[mnc2fan]

Where have you been getting all the tolerances, sizes, and torque specs from? I thought it was from the shop manual, but the shop manual doesn't seem to be this thorough.

I'm going to be building an m20 some time in the future and it would be nice to have this wealth of info for the m20.

[e30trooper]

fuck!

[///M Powered]

amazing work, thanks for the continuous updates!

[xworks]

The final pictures on the hard drive are for a little port matching.
After having the inlet ports enlarged during the head work we wanted to be
sure there would be no slight "bottlenecks" for the incoming air
before it reached the cylinder head..........



This task is made a slight bit easier on the S14 engine as the throttle bodies
and the rubber insulator blocks that fit between the cylinder head and the
throttle bodies are all dowelled. The advantage here is that when you get each
piece of the induction system matching it's neighbour they all line up perfect
each time things are reassembled thanks to the locating dowels........



first to go on was the rubber insulator blocks. Even though these were
the larger 48mm style blocks they still needed opening up a little to match
the exact shape of the ports..........





Once they were a good match for the head side they were removed, flipped
over and bolted down to the throttle bodies.......



the throttle body side was a very close match and needed only a very slight rub....



next up was the airbox and we had to induce a little smoke from the ears
to figure out this one. The problem being it was all but impossible to see
how the ports on the airbox were matching up with the ports on the throttle
bodies. So a devilishly cunning plan was hatched. The airbox is sealed to the
throttle bodies by 4 large o rings.........



each of these o rings were given a smear of engineers blue ink and the
sealing face of the airbox was covered with a little masking tape........



nail the two together.........



and then remove to see from the transferred blue markings how well
things were aligning............



as you can see above the outer two ports needed a little material removed
to get them a better match for the throttle body ports.
Which when all assembled should now leave a nice smooth obstruction free
path for that incoming wind.......



And that, you'll be delighted to hear, is the last of the engine prep photos
I have for you, which unfortunately for me, means I now have to extract
my thumb from my lazy ass and actually nail this engine together.

Till next time...........

[xworks]

which was cut up and the individual letters were stuck to some aluminium.........





and then we used our state of the art, computer guided, CNC controlled,
water cooled, 3d, 5 axis..........hacksaw to cut the letters out and then
file them down.......





after about the 3rd letter I realised this was going to take an eternity, after the
fifth letter I tried introducing alcohol to the procedure, the rest is a kind of blur
funnily enough.
Eventually the lettering was done and after detoxing the task of bonding them
on straight could begin............



the curvy nature of the airbox very nearly seen alcohol been reintroduced
to this step...........



the letters were bonded on with this stuff, which if you ever get the chance to use
it you'll find is good gear, i'd say there's a fair chance you could glue an elephant
to the blades of a windmill with this, should you need to...........



with the letters bonded on and me having recovered from very near disastrous
experience of a quick toilet break while using industrial strength glue, everything
was taped up for a final coat of satin black to match the rocker cover........



The end results of which were..........






Thats gotta be worth 20 horse power, no?

[xworks]

With that done, it was time to take a break from the measuring part of preparation
for a while and concentrate on some "blinging", because if e-bay has thought us
nothing else it's that bling adds at least 100hp to any car.

The rocker cover was looking reasonably well upon engine dismantling as she had
taken a lick of paint not long after I bought the car.........



so it didn't need to be stripped back to the bone again. A little wire
wooling to scuff the surface and give a fresh coat of paint something to cling on to........



and a little block sanding of the raised aluminium pieces just to brighten
them back up again..........



bit of masking tape, splatter of satin black and bob's your uncle......



the other thing getting painted at this stage was the airbox I had purchased
a long while back in a group buy. We'll probably get into how it works and whats
involved fitting the airbox down the line at a later date, should any of us live that long,
for now all we are interested in is how it looks.
As mentioned, I purchased this airbox a good while back and it's a little different
from most airbox's people may have seen as it's constructed from fibreglass rather
than the usual carbon fibre. The upside of this was it cost a fair deal less than a
similar carbon one.............



Although the airbox is an exact replica of the motorsport derived units there
was no escaping the fact it didn't quite have the same bling factor of the
carbon version. So, I decided to try brighten it up a little (and in the process
waste some more f*cking time which would have been better spent getting
this car finished and on the road).
The airbox came with a sticker of the same logo that adorned the rocker
cover............

[xworks]

While up the top of the engine it's probably worth
mentioning another two small jobs that were carried out in the valve train area
during the engine prep. The first of which is camshaft clearance.
The cams being used are a higher lift than the standard items and as such the
lobes on them are naturally a little taller than the standard ones, hence the higher lift.
The standard cams are a rather "snug" fit in the cam box and when your fitting larger
ones this "snug" can become "tight" or "interference" depending on the size of the cams.........





and while the cams I'm using didn't actually hit the cam box while being rotated
they came a little close for comfort and it was a fair bet that if larger cams were
being fitted down the line things could get funky.
So, mark up the areas where the cam lobes and surrounding metal are trying
there hardest to become intimate (which is usually only on the inlet cam)..........



whip out the belt sander........



and mow chunks out of it........



The other little task needing doing was to check the oil clearance on the
camshaft bearings. The cam box is bolted down tight to the cylinder head........



and each bearing journal on the camshaft gets a little piece of the plasti-gauge
stuff we used earlier fitted before the cam caps are torqued down on top of it...........



removed the caps and checked how squashed the plasti-gauge was......



and thankfully they were all within the listed tolerances of
0.0011"-0.0021" (0.027-0.053mm).