Econti's Lazurblau 318is twin builds

[econti]

Oof, that turbo. Would love to have one of those, twice the price of what I have though! It's getting real now.

Thankfully a friend works at a shop so I get much better prices. If I was paying retail I would have gone a Borg Warner as they are much better value

[varg]

Oof, that turbo. Would love to have one of those, twice the price of what I have though! It's getting real now.

[econti]

In more exciting news, however, this little whirler made its way to me.




It's a 2nd generation GTX2860, .72 A/R on the exhaust housing, external gate. Theoretical headroom is 300rwkw+ (500rwhp?).

It's been dropped up to the fabricator, along with gearbox, intake manifold and a few other bits.
He's making new engine arms that will sit the M42 upright enough for the G260 to be perfectly in position. This leaves more room for the turbo. He's also making a manifold to suit the turbo which should look titties.

EXCITE

[econti]

Had a bit of time today so started on the engine bay.
As we know these cars can have problems with the strut tower spot welds becoming weak, so since I was stripping it all I decided to put a couple spot welds in to try and help it out.

Stripped the seam sealer




And did some spots.




Welder wasn't particularly happy, voltage setting 2 was too hot and 1 was not hot enough. Had a good earth so not too sure what else I can do. Tried all variations of wire feed settings. Whatever.

I did measure the location of the strut tower relative to the body and took lots of time between welds to make sure it didn't move due to heat.
I sat the body on saw horses on the frame rails, and then jacked up the front on the rotisserie just enough to not let it be hanging with weight on it.
Measured exactly the same as before so it must have been ok.

79.5h so far

[mike.bmw]

Well, keep it up. Lots of good progress!

In regards to the battery tray I have a cut from a donor car that I took like 3 years ago lol

If I've learned nothing else from owning an E30 it's to collect parts even if you don't think you'll need them at the time. I kick myself for not buying certain things up a few years ago. :D

[econti]

How many more hours do you think are left on the underbody?

What's the plan for the battery box? Fab some panels, find a donor, or does someone make replacement sheet metal?

Remaining hours, I honestly don't know. I still have so much to do. The exhaust tip cutout was done by a blind person it seems, so I'm planning on cutting that, removing the sealant behind it that I can't access then welding in a replacement panel that I do not yet have.
I then need to tidy up all the hard to access parts with a paint scraper or screwdriver, remove all the rest on the other bits, strip the seam sealer off the engine bay and then weld most of the seams together to make it fresh again.

If it was another 30 hours I'd be very very happy.


In regards to the battery tray I have a cut from a donor car that I took like 3 years ago lol

[mike.bmw]

How many more hours do you think are left on the underbody?

What's the plan for the battery box? Fab some panels, find a donor, or does someone make replacement sheet metal?

[econti]

Quiet morning at the shop, so I went home at lunch to put some more hours in.

I was sick of doing the underneath of it so got the driver's rear wheel well pretty much finished. The remainder I cannot do with a grinder so it's hand scraper material from here.




I also did a bit more of the battery tray. Note that this rust, while visible before, was almost all hidden under the paint. CHECK YOUR CARS




Yet another reason of why I'm glad I'm doing it. Little patches of corrosion like this, that are unable to be seen and in odd locations. This is almost on the front corner of the rear valance.




This led into me discovering that the rocker panels are also covered in the same stuff, which meant this:




I then did a little bit of the front wheel well.




Then my grinder shit itself. That's it for today then!

77h total now, 27 of which has been on the underbody.

[econti]

Wow you have got serious with this build! Ive never gone down to a bare shell on any of my projects. Maybe one day I will do this to my M3.

Makes me homesick seeing Pittwater in your bike shots.... My Nana still lives on Prince Alfred Parade.

It was more out of necessity than me just wanting to do it. I am also not very smart

[clarkson]

Wow you have got serious with this build! Ive never gone down to a bare shell on any of my projects. Maybe one day I will do this to my M3.

Makes me homesick seeing Pittwater in your bike shots.... My Nana still lives on Prince Alfred Parade.

[econti]

More hours, more mess, more noise complaints but most importantly more progress.




Really hard to get into all the corners around the rear valance.
The car was originally hacked to fit a twin tip exit, so I might cut off the current rocker panel, get in all the cracks to remove sealant, and find a good factory twin tip rocker and weld that back on.

[econti]

Few more hours today! Got more of the under body seal removed. The floor is kind of sectioned just due to the design so it makes it easy to do a block and move on.
Did the driver's footwell and then rear passenger stripped and primed.



Would have done more but my wire wheel ran out of wire...



So the question was what to do next.
I went and bought an engine stand and put it together.



Got the good block from under the house and put that on. Looks good



Found the best head I have and mocked that up. It does have 2 bent valves but I have spares.



It came with some custom lumpies. Sent an email to cat to find out spec.





Also has good springs which is a nice find.



Got the intake manifold out of my room to see how it looks. The answer is damn good




On went a rocker cover. Won't be using that one and definitely won't be that colour.



I also have some custom engine arms. It sits the engine back close to the firewall, and also leans it upright a bit more for more turbo room and to fit a G260 with no shifter lean.
The guy who originally ran this engine had a custom sump made, but when it threw a rod that rod directly exited through the sump and obliterated it.
Tried to fit a standard E36 M42 sump on but the lower part is too fat to fit past the sway bar. It's a shame because I now have to make/have made arms instead of using these ones.






But a good view to make some motivation.

[E30Bug]

Its a fun job isn't it. Took me about that many hours as well to do the entire underside of mine last year. Many more hours after that in painting it too.

[econti]

Last weekend I got everything stripped off. Totally bare shell. Intention was to send it off to the media blaster and get it all taken care of.
It was not so.

They informed me that trying to blast the underbody seal off would take many many hours and be very expensive. Apparently because it's rubber the grit just bounces off. Same issue on old Porsches.

So, I geared up, and got dirty.

Got a thin bristle wire brush for the angle grinder. It wasn't particularly quick, but it did the job nicely.




I was aiming to take off the rubber underbody seal and leave as much of the factory primer as possible. It will be media blasted later, so leaving the factory primer until then would prevent against rust.
You can see here the greenish grey is the primer, and obviously the bright parts are where I've gone too deep back to bare metal.

It took me around an hour of solid grinding to get to this stage. This seal is tough.




And the mess left on me, and the floor. It's amazing how much crap comes out of a thin layer of seal.






And once that section was done, I just put a layer of primer to stop it rusting.
In my area of the world any bare steel gets surface rust after a few hours of being in the outside air.





Just nudging up on 60 hours to this point.


-edit-
Also note the slightly bent floor. I had no idea it was like that until I stripped it back. I'll fix that and the frame rail soon.

[econti]

Had a good half a day to put in some hours. This saw almost everything remaining on the car removed. Both subframes, steering column, brake lines, bonnet mechanism, handbrake, fuel filler and delivery/return pipes.

Having the rotisserie makes it so easy. To get the hardlines and their clips from the underneath of the car we just flipped it over. So easy I could have done it by myself, but requested the assistance of my brother as I didn't yet trust that I had the COG correct and that once the retaining pins were pulled it wouldn't turtle itself and smash the roof into the ground.
I must have got it pretty spot on however, as it did not take much effort to flip but did not feel like it wanted to run away from me.

You can clearly see how bad the underbody is even for a cared for car like this one. All those km of road grime add up.
Conversely you can see how clean it is under the fuel tank etc, that the factory coating is still OK like that.













There's really not much left now. Boot hinge mechanism, boot lock, a few more trim pieces and that's about it. Hopefully not long before it's time to media blast!