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e30 M3 minor rust repair.

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    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........




    Comment


      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.....


      Comment


        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................

        Comment


          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.

          Comment


            Thanks for the details!!! I finally can picture how to replace the heater hoses!!
            Renting my rear wheel bearing tool kit. SIR
            http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c5...ps6debf0b0.jpg

            Your signature picture has been removed since it contained the Photobucket "upgrade your account" image.

            Comment


              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!!
              Denny
              ___________
              1990 BMW red 325IC M30B35 all stock Girlfriends ride
              1991 BMW black 318IC (M62b44 Megasquirt 2 ver 3.57)

              Blogs:
              http://bmw325e30.blogspot.com/ (restoration)
              http://bmw325e30turbo.blogspot.com (Twincharge M20)
              http://bmw325e30m62b44.blogspot.ca/

              Comment


                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.......


                Comment


                  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.......


                  Comment


                    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).........


                    Comment




                      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.........






                      Comment


                        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...........


                        Comment


                          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...........

                          Comment


                            Jesus.....

                            WHY HAS THIS NOT BEEN STICKIED YET?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

                            Comment


                              Wow...


                              ...that is all

                              1984 Hennarot 325e - 1990 Brillantrot M3 - 1938 Buick Special Business Coupe

                              Comment


                                you basically built yourself a brand new e30 m3.....

                                Comment

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