New member, my first E30, from the Bay Area. NEW QUESTIONS EVERY DAY!

[2mAn]

Oil pan gasket can be a mess of a job. I dont blame you for dreading it

[Navarone]

Check out the shift knob on that guy, grandma!

[Navarone]

Ugh!!! This thing is like an inch taller than the old one, it's like driving a truck!

[2mAn]

Get a short shifter. I like that shift knob

[Navarone]

New member, my first E30, from the Bay Area. NEW QUESTIONS EVERY DAY!

It's nice for $12 on ebay, good weight to it, but the plastic insert is cheap. They could have blacked out the edge. A short shifter would be nice, I need to do shifter bushings anyway, so might as well get a whole short shifter assy. Are they expensive or hard to install?

[crappycoco]

Depends on which you install. The ebay short shifters are mostly really notchy and don't really have a nice feel to them while daily driving. I was checking out Z3 shifters and all the bushings and clips and all that jazz. Went with UUC which is the expensive path to go - but its a kit and you get everything with it. The price difference is about $100 (Z3 and sourcing all the parts yourself, compared to UUC). However, don't get a high-mileage shifter since its got a plastic ball and "bottom"(?) bushings (where the rod connects) and if those are busted, you can throw the whole rod. The plastic ball can get used up through time too. Or so I was told.

I can list you the parts which are good to change while you're in there - I just did this =) And its a relatively easy job, just time consuming. You have to drop the exhaust and driveshaft. And some of the parts on the tranny are a real pita to get to (im looking at you bitch-clip).

=)

[4door30]

ecstuning.com sells a z3 1.9 shift kit for about $100 I believe. That is probably the most popular choice, although, the UUC one is amazing. (And close to $300 I believe)

By the way, this is an awesome build thread. (?) I love it. You seem like you're having fun with it and that is the best part. Well done!

[Navarone]

New member, my first E30, from the Bay Area. NEW QUESTIONS EVERY DAY!

Awesome, thanks both of you for the help and input! I was looking at pelican parts guide and the e30tuning guide and the z3 1.9 is probably what I'll be going with.

Pelican parts says dropping the drive shaft and exhaust isn't needed. Anyone else have to drop it to do shift bushings?

[crappycoco]

If you change the shifter only then no. If you want to rebuild the whole assembly (which you should if you want to eliminate play) then yes.

@4door30 I was talking about the whole thing, all the bushings, all the clips, sponges, everything along with the selector rod. I wanted to fabricate the dssr too.

[Navarone]

New member, my first E30, from the Bay Area. NEW QUESTIONS EVERY DAY!

I can only afford the bushings, and I don't even want to buy all of them. Hopefully I can blow it apart without taking off the drive shaft and just piece together a rebuild kit for only the worn parts.

[crappycoco]

The bushings aren't really that expensive, the priciest part is the shifter and the dssr if you want one. If you leave that out and get only the shifter, the rest isn't that expensive, its just a lot of small parts you could easily forget.

Maybe this will help you:



1- Shift coupler with internal bushing
2- Pin retaining clip (often destroyed or weakened when removed)
3- Ball cup sponge - typically completely disintegrated
4- Shifter arm bushing (attaches to chassis)
5- Shifter arm bushing (attaches to transmission)
6- Lower shift boot (often cracked)
7- Shifter arm pin (often damaged when removed, aka bitch-clip)
8- Shift selector rod circlips
9- Yellow plastic washers/bushings for shift selector rod
10- Shift handle ball cup bushing (almost always heavily worn)



Most of the wiggle comes from: 2, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19 (especially this one - 3 in the picture above).

[Navarone]

Finally getting the oil pan gaskets in.
Oily mess.


Nice lower gasket.


Crappy upper gasket.


Steering rack moved out of the way.


Scotch brighted mating service.

[Navarone]

OH man! Took about 6 hours, and I was shoulder deep in oil by the end of it. Got it all back together and noticed a couple things.

1) RPM doesn't shoot to 3k right as I start the engine.

2) Idle smoothed out a tiny bit. Used to be about 150-200 RPM surging, now it's barely a wiggle. Maybe 50-100 RPM.

3)The old upper gasket was probably original, it was really skinny and blown out at the front, right at the corners where they say to use a dab of sweet shit. The lower was a composite that was probably changed within the last 50-100k or something, it looked pretty new.

4) The bolts were pretty easy to remove, not finger tight, but hardly any torque. I put them back in pretty damn well. Did a middle out cross pattern but just torqued to whatever I felt was good. We'll see how long it lasts.

I was pretty tired on the drive home, so didn't notice if the performance changed, but with new oil it seemed smoother and a little less noisy. I don't know if that was the old bottom end noise venting out the blown out gasket, new slick oil being all sexy and smoothing out the top end, or all in my mind.

I didn't give it a super cleaning like I wanted, I just scraped, wiped inside and out, sprayed with a bunch of brake clean and sterilized the mating surfaces for the permatex ultra black. I'll get a couple cans of some foamy foam and clean the whole engine soon. Any recommendations?

[2mAn]

purple power and a coin-op car wash. screw teh drought! haha

nice work though, Im sure the car feels better with each and every step of maintenance.

is the matrix finally gone?

[Navarone]

Ok, thanks! I'm meeting with a guy in the morning, should be gone by lunch!