Project Overly Ambitious

[Zacm829]

Great looking removable core support. Best mod to date that we did with our swap, the rivet-nuts came in handy for us as well. You are making steady progress, keep it up!

[jpod999]

Got the core support mostly finished up today. I only need to do a couple more welds and then paint all the bare metal. When all the bolts are tight this thing is strong! I'm really happy with the way this came out and think it was fabrication time well spent.

Here is the other side of what I posted above:


Poor picture of the upper bracket:


The reinforcement plate I welded in to make the upper mounts stronger:


With this part of the project mostly wrapped up, next up comes pulling the suspension front and rear including the subframes. Suspension rebuild and subframe modification time!

[jpod999]

This weekend I got the bottom brackets for the core support finished up. This week during my lunch breaks I am going to get the upper brackets welded in and finished up. This is my first time ever using rivet nuts, they are awesome, made getting the threads in super easy!



Last week my wife and I picked up a 2012 Beetle Turbo with a 6spd manual as she wasn't thrilled with the idea of driving me around until my car was back up. This thing is a ton of fun! We picked it up as a CPO car from the local VW dealer, came with a four year warranty so I'm not too worried about that legendary VW reliability. Now I just have to resist the urge to start throwing parts at this thing lol.

[E30Whore]

Bump for updates, looking forward to this one..

[jpod999]

Hah thanks dude! I've read through your thread probably three times by now, thanks for the help!

[ncrmtrsprtsE30]

HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN THIS?!?!? NICE WORK!!! and you are from the sf bay also???? where??? Let me know if you need help! I'll bring by the Red Dragon! ;)

[jpod999]

looking forward to see your progress ! keep it up man!:)

Thanks! I took a break from cars for a few years and have really been enjoying working on this thing.

[Reyhan335]

looking forward to see your progress ! keep it up man!:)

[jpod999]

Here is the drivers side manifold:

[jpod999]

manifolds look purdy! i assume those are garagistic? did they do the ceramic coat or did you send them out locally? what is the cost of that if i can ask?

shoot a pic of the left side too if you can.

Yes I did get them from Garagistic but they didn't coat it. Back in 2009-2010 I used to work at a powdercoating shop that also does ceramic coating (interesting side note, we did a lot of stuff for Dinan back then). Price for the two is about $265 I think. I'll get a shot of the drivers side manifold for you today.

The powdercoating shop is West Coast Specialty Coatings in Concord, CA if anyone is interested.

[flyboyx]

manifolds look purdy! i assume those are garagistic? did they do the ceramic coat or did you send them out locally? what is the cost of that if i can ask?

shoot a pic of the left side too if you can.

[jpod999]

We didn't get much done to the car this weekend as I finally got fed up with the garage being in such a sorry state. After we ripped the M42 out we just threw everything back into the garage haphazardly- stuff everywhere, the motor still attached to the hoist, etc. I was really tired of it so I decided it was time to clean it up.

Started by getting the M42 on the engine stand so that it could go neatly in the corner of the garage. This would have been easy except for the pressure plate allen bolt that stripped out requiring me to MIG an allen key to it so I could get it off. This was an ordeal and slowed us down bigtime. Got it torn down and on the stand eventually.

Took the opportunity to bolt up my newly ceramic coated exhaust manifolds under the pretense that I wanted to get the box they were in outta there ;)



I work about 10 minutes away from my Dad's house where the car is so I've started taking my lunch breaks over there and getting a little bit of work done while I'm at it. I'm hoping this weekend we can finish up the removable core support so that we can move along to the subframes. I took advantage of Garagistic's St Patricks Day sale to get their poly suspension kit- rear subframe bushings, trailing arm bushings, offset control arm bushings, and diff mount.

Seriously can't wait to drive this thing again!

[jpod999]

Good catch on the subframe, that likely would have failed with the extra V8 weight/torque

You are not joking! I really was surprised that they were so messed up having only had an M42 in there for 25 years. I guess that's what over 260k miles will do though?

[CorvallisBMW]

Good catch on the subframe, that likely would have failed with the extra V8 weight/torque

[jpod999]

Not many updates from this weekend. Last weekend we got the radiator support cut out, this weekend will be the bolt in conversion.

I picked up new FEBI control arms and Karlyle sway bar end links for a good deal from someone up in Sonoma who wasn't going to be using them. Now I just need to pick up some bushings and drop the subframes so I can move on to the brakes and steering.