e30 M3 minor rust repair.

[xworks]

Thats most of the main loom fitted, theres probably more, but sure if I
showed it all it would take all the fun out of you fitting your own.
Plus it's over two months since I fitted all that crap, and I've been
guessing most of what you've just read.
There's quite a few mini looms that plug into the main chassis loom once
fitted such as this one. It has the wiring for the stereo, hazard light switch,
electric window circuit breaker switch, glove box light and so on........



the ignition switch......



indicator and wiper stalks.........



a quick note on these last two by the way, took me a fu*king eternity
to figure this one out. Theres a little bracket welded onto the steering
column coloured red below.........



and when the ignition switch loom is plugged into the chassis loom
the plug clicks into this little bracket...........



and then when the wiper/indicator plug is reattached.......



it slides in and clicks in to place above the ignition plug............



and fu*k it, thats enough wiring, me head is melted.
And it's also enough for this update.
I promise the next one won't be quite as boring as we tackle the art of removing
carpet dye from bare skin, nailing on a pair of side skirts, modifying a rear parcel
shelf and loosing the will to live while fitting a roof cloth.
Should have it up in the next few days.

Till then...........

[xworks]

your going to have to use you imagination here for the next little bit, cause the loom
sits up into the panel work, and although I love you all dearly,
I'm f*cked if i'm taking them back down again just for pictures.
The loom comes through the bulkhead into the boot area
(red dots) and then has 3 branch off's (as shown in the pic) before carrying on.
Red branch off- to rear light check unit (blue arrow)
Yellow branch off- earth wires bolted to chassis
Green branch off- pair of wires that run up inside boot hinge and into
boot lid for boot light switch..........



After which the loom continues on around to deposit it's last wires, which are for
the rear tail light units, the reg plate lights, and the central locking motor for the
boot lock.......



With that done, we go back to the split in the loom at the rear bulkhead
and follow the other run on it's merry way. It travels across the bottom
of the rear bulkhead before depositing another 3 branches.
Blue- wires for rear boot secondary fuel tank sender unit
Yellow- wires for right rear ABS sender
Purple- wires for main fuel tank internal fuel pump & level sender unit and wires for speedo
sender unit on differential........



with them dropped it carries on another foot and drops another branch
which is the 3 little wires for the right hand side interior light......



just like the other side these wires run up the inside of the "B" pillar.........



before magically reappearing at the top where the light is fitted........



With that taken care of theres only one wire left in this run of the loom
and it joins the main battery cable on it's journey back towards the front
of the car...............



But before we follow that single wire to it's home, it's back over again
to the other side of the car and them two runs that branched off earlier on
(green & orange)...........



The green run carries within it the wiring for the electric window switches
amongst other things and you can see where the two plugs end up for
the switches (green arrows). The orange run carries the wiring for the
reverse light switch connector (orange arrow) which will connect to the
little two wire loom on the gearbox when fitted.........




While the green run continues on across the floorpan the orange run
heads backwards to drop it's final wires........



which are a single wire for the handbrake light switch and a pair of wires
for the rear ashtray light...........



back to the green run, it continues right over to the passenger side sill......



where upon it joins in with the big battery cable and the sole remaining red
run wire on their journey to the front...........



and eventually they reach their final destination. In through the speaker
hole and the green run provides all the wiring for the door plug and the red
single wire is for the passenger side interior light door switch...........

[xworks]

From here the various runs make their way down the "A" pillar with a few
branches off heading into the speaker hole.......



the first branch off is for the central locking relay which lives in here.......





second is for the door light switch...........



third is for the door connector plug which supplies all the wiring to
the door when fitted..........





after getting rid of that load the remaining two runs (green & red) head
back the car along the inner sill. Two branch off's just in front of where
the driver seat goes (green & orange) which we'll come back to in a while.......



the main bulk of the loom still continues back along the still.......



up on to the rear seat bench where theres another 4 branch off's.
Red vertical arrow = wires up to left hand interior light
Purple arrow = bunch of earth wires bolted to shell
Yellow arrow = rear left ABS connector
Other Red arrow = wires out to external fuel pump



after this the two main red runs split up. One runs up the rear bulkhead
and pops through a square grommet out into the boot area (blue arrow). Just before
it does, theres a small branch off (green) with some rear speaker wires that I
added into the loom earlier.........

[xworks]

the other wires it dumps here which can be a little difficult to see are a
bunch of earth wires which all bolt up to an earth point behind the ABS pump.



The other branch off at this point, is the wires and connector for powering
up the electrical cooling fan. This actually runs over under the front grills when
fully installed but I'm changing to an aftermarket fan so have only ran it this
far to make it easier to get at till the new fan is fitted later on........



the final pair of branches off the run at this point are 2 pairs of wires,
one for the front indicator and one for the left horn......



next up was to refit the little metal bar that runs under where the grills
will be.............



because the yellow run continues its journey over to the other side of
the engine bay on the inside of this bar.......



where upon it breaks up into its final branches. Again two twin core
branches for indicator and horn.......



3 twins for the headlight unit (high beam, low beam and side light).
A pair of twins (green) for windscreen washer pump and level sensor.
The connector for the right front ABS sensor and a twin core
for the right front wing indicator(out of pic)..........



And the final item is a 3 wire branch for the fan control switch on the
thermostat (when it's fitted)............



The final run to leave the fusebox is the red one from underneath the box....



which travels through a large rubber grommet on the bulkhead and into
the inside of the car.........



if your a religious type person it's usually at this stage you start to pray,
another common option is alcohol.......



before we go any further I'd just like to say if your thinking of following these
pics to lay in your loom, then it's probably worth pointing out that this is
where I "think" the wires went. The important word there being "think".
I haven't a fu*king clue where half this stuff originally ran and it mightn't be
a bad idea to hang on and see if this car goes up in a puff of smoke the
first time I turn the key.

Two little brackets to connect to the bulkhead first. The one below
which supports the loom after it comes through the bulkhead and makes
a left tun..........



and this one that holds a load of the connectors and plugs.......



(red arrow shows where the loom holder bracket will be fitted).........

[xworks]

All of which meant the exhilarating job of re wrapping the looms could commence.......





Which along with removing the unused wiring tidied up the 20 year old
looms a great deal.........



With all that done the loom could be refitted to the car. The first "loom"
to go back in was the battery relocation loom. Which consists of the
heavy gauge wire pictured below and another smaller gauge wire that
runs along side it...........



Any they run from the battery cradle in the boot..........



through the rear bulkhead and along the inner passenger sill...........



before turning up the A pillar and out through a bulkhead grommet.......



to arrive at the original battery tray........



Not being able to avoid it any longer, the chassis loom was next up.
A little tip for you if your doing this job is to place the loom in a hot press
or beside a radiator for a while before you go to fit it, as the heat will soften
up the loom a lot and makes it far easier to thread in to place.
Everything in the chassis loom more or less starts or finishes in the fusebox
so thats the first picture.
As you can see in the pics below I got a bit carried away with the crayons
again.......



In the pic above you can just about see the 5 different "runs" of wiring that
leave the fuse box. (theres usually 6 but i've done away with the little twin wire
run that comes out and goes to the level sensor on the brake fluid reservoir).

Of the 3 "runs" of wire that exit the fuse box from the left in the pic above
the two shortest ones are the green and purple "runs".
The purple one only travels a few inches and ends in the C101 plug. This is
where the chassis loom and the engine loom join together.
The green run only travels about a foot more and supplies power in to the
wiper motor under the scuttle panel.
And the blue run travels across the bulkhead and connects up to the terminals on the
end of the main battery lead fitted earlier (red arrow below). Two decent gauge cables here and
there job is to supply all the power to the fusebox. The other pair of wires in this run
(yellow arrow) are to the level sensor on the coolant reservoir........



Next up is the yellow run that exits the fusebox on the right in the main pic.
This carries the wires to power up most of the items on the front of the
car. It leaves the fusebox and travels up the inside of the wing, with the
first branches off for the front left ABS sensor and left wing indicator (out of pic).......



before carrying on down the wing and dumping some more wires off to
connect up the ABS pump and the front left headlight unit.......

[xworks]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to the worlds fastest
car restoration. Here's a brief word or two and a couple of pictures of the
magnificent progress thats been made since the last update 13 years ago.
As you may have seen at the end of the last update, next on the "shit to do"
list was the task of firing in the wiring loom and beating it down flat
enough so that the carpet doesn't look like it's concealing dead bodies
underneath it.
Back at the start during the disassembly stage the plan was
to carefully remove the loom from the car and pack it away neatly rolled up into
it's individual runs so as to make refitting a straight forward simple task.
That plan lasted a good ten minutes, which if i'm honest is
longer than most plans tend to last, in the end everything just got tossed
into a large crate........



Studies have shown that if you leaves large bundles of wires together for
long enough they will actually, slowly, when your not looking, tie themselves
into knots making them a complete bas*ard to unravel again.
I believe the same phenomena has been found in christmas tree lights
aswell. Anywho, a couple of hours, a bag of nails and a hammer had
the loom strung up on the wall like so.........





There's basically two main looms in an e30. The chassis loom and
the engine loom. What you see in the pics above is the chassis loom,
I'll be waiting till the engine is refitted before tackling the engine loom.
One of the largest items in the chassis loom is the fuse board and to
get full access to all it's wires you need to undo the two screws and
pop the fuse/relay panel upwards, which reveals all this lot below.......



Although it looks a bit hectic a lot of the wires are simply passing
through the fusebox on their way from the engine bay through to the
inside of the car or vise versa.
The main reason for nailing up the loom like this, apart from trying to
untangle it, was to inspect the condition of the various connectors, the
insulation and of coarse the wires themselves. And as with just about
everything else on this car the loom was also going to need some tender
loving care. Some of the more notable things found were:
the ABS over voltage relay looking rather suicidal......





That relay lives on top of the ABS ecu which is right under the dash beside
the steering column, not at the bottom of the deep blue sea, which those
pictures would suggest. I've no idea how it got so corroded.

I also found some modifications to the loom which I have a sneaking suspicion
might not have been done at the factory. The use of speaker cable tee'd into the
front indicator circuit to power the front wing indicators.......



and an alarm installation which may well have been carried out by
Stevie Wonder. It was a tough choice to choose which picture would
truly sum up the magnificence of this gifted persons work, but in the
end there could only be one winner. The red arrow below points out
where he bared back the blue wire and joined in the black wire by
wrapping it around. And then the blue arrow shows where he decided
to add some solder..........



Gifted.

The other thing I wanted to do with the loom up on the wall was go through it all
and pull out all the unused wiring. I think the main loom comes fitted with
all the wiring included for things on the options list, such as heated seats,
font fogs and so on, and since I'm not using most of these there seemed
little point in carrying around all the wiring for them. So the pile below
was extracted.........



The other thing that needed attention was the loom insulation. The stuff
in the engine bay by now had the cohesion of wet tissue paper......



and in places had already started to unravel.......



So I began the expensive search for the correct matching loom tape off the
main dealer. I probably bought enough different rolls of f*cking tape to wrap
the empire state building before learning the correct part number from
Conrod over on S14power.com. So, 1 roll of correct tape under part number
61136902588 at 30euro a roll.........



and then some internet research to find the manufacturers
website, "Certoplast" http://www.certoplast.com/frameset_eng.htm
and a little more research showed the tape to be "Certoplast 525se".
And a quick search on e-bay found a German seller auctioning them
for 3.45euro a roll.......

[Denny]

NEVER seen anything like this in my life..... Damn your a Automobile restoration Genius....god damn amazing work. If I was rich I would still own an E30, I would send you my E30 with a blank cheque!!

[///M42 sport]

Thanks for the details!!! I finally can picture how to replace the heater hoses!!

[genocide98]

Dude.. you are my hero. (lol I see that someone else said the same thing)

Its great to see such attention to detail.

Ever since I realized that I'd need to learn to drive I've known the E30 m3 is the car for me.. I've been eyeballing my uncle's 88 for the past few years as it sits around wasting away. Someday if I'm lucky I'll manage to drag it from his cold, dead hands and then comes the ground up restoration.

I once had a dream about it. It looked something like this thread.

I'll go back to dreaming... or drooling... Thanks for the inspiration. Guys like you and I will be putting these things back on the road one at a time. Hopefully I get my hands on a couple before they're ALL gone.

[xworks]

and then it was on to stripping the headlights themselves. Theres two
different brands of headlights for e30's I think, and these are the Hella
variety. Bulb covers twist off first.......



and then 3 little screws are undone to remove the reflector.....




Then 4 little screws are undone to remove the front glass section from
the reflector in the pic above. The glass bit can be cleaned up normally, but,
the chrome "bowl" in the pic below needs a bit of caution when cleaning.
The chrome is 20 odd years old and and lived in a hot/cold environment for
that length of time (headlights on/off), and as such it needs to be treated delicately.
Squirt some glass cleaner in here and go at it with a rag and you'll just wipe
all the chrome away. So "softly" rub away any dust with some cotton wool.......



next up replacing the lenses. Each one is held in place by 3 adjusters
(well actually 2 adjusters and 1 pivot lug)........



these are removed first from the headlight surround by twisting them
till the little white plastic rectangle lines up with the rectangle on the
housing like so......



allowing the two lights to be removed from the frame.......



then the adjusters had to be removed from the old lenses and swapped
over on to the new ones, making sure the 2 adjusters and 1 pivot lug
go in the exact same location on the new headlight, otherwise your
going to be dazzling passing airplanes......



adjusters can be a bit of a pig to remove. In the pic below you can see
the little plastic "socket" they use to sit into the light frame. All 4 corners
of this little socket need to be pushed inwards to allow the socket and
adjuster to lift out together......



Then some fresh lenses are added.....



adjusters are refitted (making sure they go back into their right holes).......



and then they're popped back into the frame......





and finally the reflectors and bulbs are refitted to leave them looking
a whole lot fresher......



Chrome rims for the outside of the lights still haven't returned back from
chroming yet, as, amazingly, I seem to have found someone who works
even slower than I do.

And thats about it for this update.
Next up, is the black magic thats required to keep the smoke inside the
wiring looms.........



Till then................

[xworks]

After that it was on to some light work......



E30's seem to be fairly prone to water leaks around the tail lights, so,
the new gaskets were given a light coating of grease on the side that
sits against the light..........



and the mating surface that they sit up against on the car was also given
a light smear......



before the lights were hammered home........



reg plate lights had decided to tint themselves brown somewhere along
the last 20 odd years so I changed them back to clear...........



the area around these little lights also seems to like rusting, so, some fresh
clips were fitted and suffocated in grease before the lights were screwed
back in......







With the rear end done it was on to the front lights, which looked like
they'd gone ten rounds with a sand blaster, and lost........







The headlight rims were in a bad condition, so I sent them away to
have them rechromed.....

[xworks]

then the rotor is dropped back down onto the splines on the shaft........



and the new circlip fitted...........



cam ring sat back into place.......



and next to go in are the little blades. 10 of these in total and you need
to be a little careful when dropping them back in. The reason being, one
end of these are curved smooth and the other end is flat. If I owned a
camera that didn't need a fu*king masters degree in technology to
zoom in on something I would have taken a picture of this, however,
I don't, so I drew a picture instead.......



As above the rounded face goes to the outside, up against that smooth
wall of the cam ring, the inside flat face points towards the centre of the
rotor. Get them wrong and your pump won't pump for long.......



All the bits in the pic's above and below are given a rub of power steering oil
as they're dropped in by the way.
With that part done the face plate is dropped back onto it's dowels.......



and then first the soft seal is dropped into the little recess on top (red arrow),
followed by the hard seal (purple arrow)........



a bit hard to see below but the hard seal go's around the outside of
the soft seal.......



final bit to go in is the big o ring.......



and then after giving everything a good smear of power steering oil,
the two halfs of the pump get bolted back together making sure that
the two little ports marked below (black arrows) face each other......



Once back together everything outside gets a lick of paint........

[xworks]

The last of the engine ancillaries to get a spit and shine was the power
steering pump.





the front pulley is popped off after it's 3 bolts are undone.......



and then after you've made a mental note of which way the carrier bracket
sits on, the four main bolts that hold the 2 half's of the pump together are
undone.......



only really interested in the half on the right in the pic above as thats
where all the serviceable items live. First up the little face plate lifts
off it's two little locator dowels.....



and then the cam ring underneath lifts off. A bit of time is then spent
checking the inside wall of the cam ring (red arrows), as this surface
needs to be super smooth for the pump to do it's job. Any heavy
scoring or scratches on this surface and it's over the shoulder with
the old pump and off to the scrap yard for a "new one".......



With the cam ring out of the way the 10 little blades can be removed
from the rotor in the centre of the pump.........



and finally the little circlip at the centre of the rotor is popped off.......



allowing the rotor to be lifted off the splined driveshaft.......



once the rotor is removed from the driveshaft, the driveshaft can be
slid out of the pump housing........



and with that out of the way the little oil seal at the snout of the housing
is popped out......



With everything pulled asunder and before the enthusiasm starts to
wear off, all the bits are cleaned for reassembly. Everythings got to
be fairly spotless in here as a little bit of dirt or grit won't take long
to fu*k up your pump or steering rack........



For nailing it all back together the following service kit was bought
from the main dealer under part number 32411 135 880.
Which contains the following............



1. snout oil seal
2. hard, face plate seal
3. soft, face plate seal
4. O ring
5. circlip

the other item needed for reassembly is a little bit of power steering
oil to rub on the bits as they go back together........



First up is the new oil seal fitted to the housing like so......



and once thats in, the driveshaft can be refitted..........

[Conrad311]

seriously, or if you could put it all onto a cd or something, that would sell like crazy, make it the new, and actually useful, 101 projects for your e30

[beyondcr]

o_O

I was so close to throwing up, made it to the end! SO INSANE!!!! :) Thank You!