SLC: 1989 Zinno coupe. Superlight, Super Functional *6spd swap inside*

[mitchlikesbikes]

Welcome to the forum. I see your like me. If there's no blood, your not doing it right. Lol.

that's the truth

I dream every night of starting a build like this. Down to the bare., Wire tuck, re sealing everything. Sub'd

i dreamt of it for almost 2 years before i finally had an opportunity to get it rolling. thanks for the sub!


so against my better judgement i decided to buy some wheels yesterday. they were for sale locally and i just couldn't pass them up since there's hardly ever anything i like for sale locally. the wheels are Borbet Rs. 16x7.5, +35. right now they are a god awful teal color. i am thinking i want to remove the stupid fake bolt heads and fill the holes, then just paint them a nice satin black. i'm also probably going to get some 10mm or 15mm spacers to run all around, which will put me at or near the same fitment as the other 7.5 wide borbets (+20). and i'm probably going to go with dunlop ZII in 225/50/16 (i like me some meat)

[torreira]

I dream every night of starting a build like this. Down to the bare., Wire tuck, re sealing everything. Sub'd

[Dakotademon7]

Welcome to the forum. I see your like me. If there's no blood, your not doing it right. Lol.

[mitchlikesbikes]

Nice work and all the pics are helpful. What was your thinking on the heater box mods?

well i am replacing the center dash vent with a gauge pod. so i figured i would delete the dash vents altogether. then i realized if i got rid of the foot vents i could entirely remove all the stuff that actuates all the vents open and closed. so just for the sake of weight savings and one more thing to have deleted from the hvac panel i went for it. plus with the carpet out the main floor vent things had to go anyway.

[Bearmw]

Nice work and all the pics are helpful. What was your thinking on the heater box mods?

[mitchlikesbikes]

this mirrors my e24 build, good stuff. what did you uses to get the tar from the floor? I was thinking dry ice and a hammer. I was already able to scrape everything else off but the floor

i got the majority of it off with dry ice, a hammer, and a putty knife. then i used the goof off to clean up what was left

[JFarhanbod]

this mirrors my e24 build, good stuff. what did you uses to get the tar from the floor? I was thinking dry ice and a hammer. I was already able to scrape everything else off but the floor

[mitchlikesbikes]

bought some goof off aerosol cans to get rid of the last of the sound deadening residue. sprayed on, let it soak for a few minutes, then hit it with a wire cup before wiping clean. worked pretty well. there are a few spots that i didn't get off completely, i wanted to do a little more but i ran out of goof off and didn't wanna run back to home depot. i used 2 whole cans in under an hour. i'm going to blast the whole interior with crushed walnut shells to prep for paint so that should take care of the last of it. my roommate has a blaster that i will be using and i bought some walnut shells at harbor freight so that will be the next step. still waiting on my roll bar, i have no idea if its even finished yet. hopefully they email me soon. anyway, here are some pics. first one is while the stuff is soaking, the rest are all from after i finished.

[mitchlikesbikes]

little progress on the car over the last few days. i decided to strip the foam off my firewall/heater core cover thing and paint it. came out pretty good i think.



pretty much finished putting my heater box back together too. old heater core didn't leak so i'm re using it. not hard to get to if i need to in the future anyway. i did have to source a new blower motor at the junkyard, but i tested it and it works perfectly. it was only 20 bucks and has a warranty too.




after a lot of thought i decided to delete the heater core valve and make a little delete plate. i recycled a piece of my sunroof for the plate and just replaced the original weird rivet things with some stainless hardware.





the redneck rust repair is done on my fenders. unfortunately i'm probably going to have to run them like this til i respray the car sometime down the road.



glamor shot.

[mitchlikesbikes]

more small stuff done today

fuel:





random interior shot:



did some more cutting around the sunroof to get it smoother. roasted a cutting disk on it, new one on the right for comparison



on the heater box i sealed all vents beside defrost and removed any unnecessary brackets as well as the AC evaporator. for the foot and recirculating vents i left the stock ones in place and simple epoxied them shut:



for the dash vents i covered the hole with a piece of plastic i salvaged from the long rear foot vents that i was throwing away:



removing the AC evaporator core left a big hole and the original cover had holes in it for the lines and wouldn't look good, and also release fan pressure so i cut the stock cover down to its rim, and once again used a scrap of floor vent epoxied to the trimmed down original cover to plug the hole.




i'm in the process of doing a temporary rust fix on my fenders, but it looks terrible so i haven't bothered with any pictures.

[mitchlikesbikes]

working on the car more here and there. i built a new driver side door lock with the kit from bmw (i bought it on amazon), matching up the tumblers to my key took a while but other than that it was pretty easy. i had help from a writeup on e30tech though. installed the lock and everything works, so my door, trunk, and ignition all share the same key now. probably gonna do some more interior work and order my roll bar tomorrow.

[mitchlikesbikes]

a couple days ago i snagged an extra trunk lock from the junkyard so i could rekey mine since the ignition key doesn't match the doors or the trunk. pretty crazy process but the write up i found on e30 tech helped a lot. i kinda fucked up the chrome trim piece putting it back together but it's not really that noticeable and the lock functions now so i'm happy with it overall. i have a kit coming for the driver side lock to rebuild it from scratch. i figured that was a better way to go since it will be getting used a lot more than the trunk and BMW updated the design due to a shitty bearing setup on the original. only 30 bucks anyway so no biggie.


got some stuff done on the car today as well. i pulled the front, rear and side glass to make it easier to pull the rest of the headliner crap and prep the inside. i drilled out the spot welds and removed the bulkhead things that the rear speaker deck was mounted to. also, the previous owner HACKED up the sheet metal on the rear speaker deck to half ass a 6x9 speaker install. so i broke out the cutting wheel and cut a new, clean hole on each side to eliminate the nasty hacked up edges from before. also got a new thermostat housing at the junkyard so i cleaned that up and put it on. i'm just waiting on my last radiator hose and i can put the front of the engine back together entirely. no pics of any of this unfortunately, just a pic with no glass. i need to get better at taking pics along the way haha.

[eduTechnic]

Bummer on the housing. I wondered if that was you on FB, I almost posted but I didnt' have time to pull one of mine. I've got a spare m20 at home if you need parts. That looks great. I checked out Alacrity Machine yesterday as well and thought they looked better than any stock/weighted knob.

I have the H&R springs at my office in SLC now if you're still interested.

[mitchlikesbikes]

still in the process of refreshing the engine. i broke the damn thermostat housing thing when i was putting in the new thermostat so i had to go get one at the junkyard today. came off of an older m20 so it's a bit different but should work fine.

also picked up my new shift knob today. the knob is a custom delrin one from some local guys just getting started in the business. i was having a hard time finding a good delrin knob online other than the expensive condor and jaffster ones so it was awesome that these guys showed up on my facebook when they did. they can make knobs in any length for almost any application. they also do colors as well as hydrodipping so if you need something look them up on facebook/instagram/online. they are called "alacrity machine". my particular knob is 4.5" in length, about 1.5" in diameter and only cost me 55 bucks.

[mitchlikesbikes]

Looking good man! I'm in Layton. I'm interested to see how the wheel re-wrap turns out. I saw that wheel on KSL and told myself "probably not" after hearing quotes my brother got on getting it redone. If you can do it yourself that's awesome. I'd be really interested to help you out with the sunroof delete so I can copy you...

i grew up in kasyville but i live in millcreek for now. the new wheel wrap is about 60 bucks so i'm debating it. i think i might try the wheel without it first before i spend the money. when i get around to the sunroof delete i will let you know. could probably use a hand anyway.

I like your style, keep up the good work...

thank you!


i'm putting the front of the engine back together today so hopefully i got the timing right