An early Delphin convertible

[Das Delfin]

^ Nice! Looks pretty clean. I love the early models. If I didn't have my car I'd have a 325ix... but if I didn't have THAT, it'd be an '86 325es. Or a super eta.

Winter is coming up fast here. We're supposed to have at least a week of really good weather and then after that who knows. So I'm pretty much wrapping up on car projects for the year. Gonna try to do the fog lights today and the rest this weekend

mud flaps: I bought the rally armor universal flaps! I'll make a trip to home depot and come up a kit to make them fit a car. I was looking for OEM but it would take too long for everything to get here

euro rear fogs: Not looking forward to pulling up the carpet to run wire for these.

I have new tie rods and sway bar links waiting to go in just before I take the car to the tire shop for an alignment and winter tire change over. All when I have a day off. Timing is key

My service lights say I have two whole bars before another oil change, but it's already been like 6k miles. I'm not sure how accurate the computer is and if it's calibrated for different oils etc. I run castrol high mileage 20w50 now but it looks like I'll be switching to mobil 1 10w40 for the winter because of its higher zddp content.

The convertible top seems to be holding up pretty good in the rain. I had a slight leak along the passenger door front window seal (wtf) and some in the back window, so I siliconed the back window up. I'm probably going to be carrying some hand towels in the car throughout the season. But it won't be too bad: once it starts snowing it'll stop raining :up:

[allen_t]

Nice car man!

I bought some of that ragtop stuff as well, will be putting it on shortly.

[rcsoundn1]

Been watching the build, new thread title I see. I am considering doing the rear window in my garage this winter. I am still hesitant on it though. Good progress.

[Das Delfin]

Thanks! You might wanna do the window when it's warm out. Leaving my window out in the sun helped loosen it up and made it obvious I'd installed it off center at first. I'd try to make sure you don't glue it in until you're sure it's in straight. That being said, it was an easy install.

I still haven't done my rear sub frame bushings. I guess I'm waiting until I scoop up a second car (!!!) before I do something which might leave this car in the driveway for a week. Almost everything has been more difficult than it should be so I'm kinda hesitant to take the whole back end apart

[rcsoundn1]

It took me longer than many on here to do them, But I didnt make it a priority because its a 2nd car. That being said, IF I had worked hard and long days it could likely be done in a weekend if you started friday and did not have many hiccups. I had an issue with hacked repairs, I painted and sand blasted all the rear parts, and replaced all the rear bushings, as well as wheel bearings.

[Das Delfin]

I got some mud flaps for the car. I went with the universal rally armor 12x15 size. They are a bit over the top but I don't mind. They go well with the interior ;) I'm not sure if I'm happy with the bracketry I used. It's stable enough but not 100% symmetric. The rear threw me off a bit because what I wanted to use as a mount point didn't turn out to be the same on both sides. I may move them around a bit but for today the sun was about to set





Tomorrow I'm putting in new tie rods and sway bar links then having the winter tires mounted. I'm thinking of just getting the firestone lifetime alignment deal because next spring I wanna get 17's for the car

[aegul44]

dude.nice paint and interior combination but those mud flaps really needs to go.
Convertible with mud flaps = rice
Mud flaps = off road cars (trucks, evos, wrx)

[Das Delfin]

I don't think they're rice, and I do think they belong on an ix or something 4x4, but last year when I drove the car through the snow it always ended with the rocker panels being covered in this disgusting mass of ice and salt which sat on the car until I had time to get to a car wash. What these are is an experiment to see if I can get rid of that shit. I made sure to make everything 100% removable, just in case. I'm trying to line up a subaru for winter 2016 so maybe these will find their "rice" somewhere else in the future...

It's interesting what different people think rice is. What I think is rice is that my neighbor with a lowered scion tc has the same winter tires that I do.

[Das Delfin]

Well the weather has been on and off. Today it was balmy but last weekend it snowed. My Scion neighbor has switched back to his summer tires and we'll see what the next few weeks bring us. Last night it rained and my top leaked a bit so I parked the car with the top down at work to let the seats dry out (only con about cloth seats) and saw some white guy taking pictures of my interior. Then the guy from next door said he wants my keys. If only he knew why the top was down in the first place...

My fuel lines are starting to crack so I ordered new lines from bavauto and apparently they're special order so they'll be getting here who knows when. This will hopefully be the last project before the winter. I changed my oil last week with the normal Castrol 10w40 and a mobil 1 filter so it should last me until next spring. I thought about using mobil 1 oil but it would have been $20 more and I'm cheap so ya know. Maybe I'll get a zddp additive. I need to read more about it.

I decided instead of wiring up euro rear fogs that it would be easier for everyone involved if I just daisy chain the rear fogs with the regular tail lights. This way I still increase rear visibility but I don't have to deal with random people (cops) wondering why some lights are brighter than others etc.

My redundant H4 headlights came into their own the other day when one of the bulbs decided to work its way loose from the harness.. I'll have to figure that out later on.

My windshield wiper linkage came apart again so I addressed it with zip tie fix 3.0. Still better than doing it the right way.

Two of my dash lights have been out for like a year and I need to get serious and actually replace them. Normally I do car shit on my lunch break but work has been crazy lately but it's cool because I'm moving up. Hopefully soon I can afford dat m30 swap

Turns out my tie rods were good. I was hearing a creaking sound but that was because one of them wasn't level and was hitting against the strut. So I turned it flat it and it's all good now. I had bought new tie rods and sway bar links from bavauto but the rear sway links were the wrong size so I sent them all in for a refund and got it! My old sway links were a bit cracked but will be fine for now. I ended up getting the winter tires mounted and a lifetime alignment done at the local firestone. The guy there had a hard time driving my car up the rack because my master clutch cylinder sticks if you hold the pedal to the floor. I tried explaining to him he sucks at driving standard he had no idea what I was talking about :P

I'm excited for next year.

[Das Delfin]

Probably the last time I'll have the top down til April. I might take out the yellow bulbs and go back to lamin-x for the high beams. I'm not too fond of the green color



I fixed the bulb inside the OBC that lights up the buttons, what a pain in the ass. The swap out itself wasn't super hard but I'd forgotten that the light bar comes on only when you turn the key. I thought I'd messed up the light bar when I put a new button bulb in. I ended up soldering new LEDs I'd ordered as spares just in case. I pretty much threw in the towel and started the car out of desperation, hoping that maybe the light bar needs more juice (or something, whatever). When I realized how retarded the whole thing was I had no choice but to laugh...

But now it works and everything looks great at night

[TimeMachinE30]

Those mudflaps are ridiculous.

[Das Delfin]

I know they're crazy. They're making me want to get a light bar for the front bumper but I have to remember... must not go full retard! We'll see how well they work this winter. I have a feeling I'll be pulling them off and putting them on a dedicated winter car next year

I've been wanting to do rear fogs ever since I had an old Volvo 740 but the effort of pulling up my carpet to run wires and making a switch and figuring out where it would go is daunting and then after that not many people in the US even know what they are so half the time people would think my lights are doing weird things. So I settled on just wiring them in tandem with my taillights. I wanted to do a dual filament bulb to they'd come on with the tails and the brake lights but couldn't come up with an easy way to fab a wiring harness. Anyway I figure it's now four lights instead of two so it's already 100% safer :P

[Das Delfin]

Redid the engine bay fuel lines yesterday. What a bitch. If anyone needs to know, the hard line towards the rear of the car goes to the fpr, the middle line goes to the fuel rail, and the frontmost hard line is for the carbon canister. I ordered the fuel hose and a handful of brand new hose clamps on the web... when everything got here, the hose clamps weren't the good kind with flared edges. Thanks a lot bavauto.

Noticed my throttle body warmer gasket was leaking. Nice.

I looked at replacing the blue coolant temp sensor. The sun was setting and and a socket wouldn't fit around everything so it's back to the drawing board! My car fluctuates in idle until it's past the warm up idle stage, so I'm thinking the problem isn't even the coolant temp sensor at all.. maybe my ecu? I'm on motronic 1.1 so a 1.3 upgrade wouldn't be the worst thing. Of course it could always be an intake manifold gasket leak so who knows!

[UlrichFennec]

You've made a ton of progress and it looks great! Just to be the odd guy out, I rather like the mudflaps.

[15Michaeljoseph]

Redid the engine bay fuel lines yesterday. What a bitch. If anyone needs to know, the hard line towards the rear of the car goes to the fpr, the middle line goes to the fuel rail, and the frontmost hard line is for the carbon canister. I ordered the fuel hose and a handful of brand new hose clamps on the web... when everything got here, the hose clamps weren't the good kind with flared edges. Thanks a lot bavauto.

Noticed my throttle body warmer gasket was leaking. Nice.

I looked at replacing the blue coolant temp sensor. The sun was setting and and a socket wouldn't fit around everything so it's back to the drawing board! My car fluctuates in idle until it's past the warm up idle stage, so I'm thinking the problem isn't even the coolant temp sensor at all.. maybe my ecu? I'm on motronic 1.1 so a 1.3 upgrade wouldn't be the worst thing. Of course it could always be an intake manifold gasket leak so who knows!

That sensor takes a either a 17 or 19mm deep iirc... I actually used the duralast replacement sensor from autozone, and so far so good :) I don't remember having to remove anything extra...

Also the TB heater gasket isn't hard, just be careful when removing the torx screws so you don't snap one like I did. I ended up just JB welding the cover back on because I didn't do a good enough job drilling and retapping. Whatever. I'll be looking for a new TB soon, seeing that JB weld makes me feel OCD crazy.

Also you will not regret those mudflaps. Whether they look good or not (i think they do though, sets off the interior and delphin), they're very good in the winter, trust me. I wish I had a set for my rear end like you do instead of just fronts..... :)

--Mike