JankBox 9000

[theDELO]

Nice start, sounds like your heading in the right direction with maintenance stuff but keep in mind a perfectly running dead stock car is a lott more fun than a modded car sitting in the driveway broken (I didn't listen to my own advice in high-school)

[e30onBBSs]

Nice start, sounds like your heading in the right direction with maintenance stuff but keep in mind a perfectly running dead stock car is a lott more fun than a modded car sitting in the driveway broken (I didn't listen to my own advice in high-school)

Yes sir! I don't have the $ for anything crazy and don't plan on anything crazy either. What did you do in High school?

[theDELO]

Bought an nice big turbo Audi A4, turned up the boost an popped the motor. Took awhile to save up to repair that

[Das Delfin]

You set up bands? Where do you work??? I'd love to have random huge speaker cables in my garage! Also nice valve cover paint job. I did my valve job by pushing the car forward in 5th gear... which is how I found out it has an LSD ;)

[e30onBBSs]

Bought an nice big turbo Audi A4, turned up the boost an popped the motor. Took awhile to save up to repair that

ouch...

You set up bands? Where do you work??? I'd love to have random huge speaker cables in my garage! Also nice valve cover paint job. I did my valve job by pushing the car forward in 5th gear... which is how I found out it has an LSD ;)

Thanks Das Delfin! I love his garage too, it's so nice. He has an electrical engineering degree and a music degree from (Berklee?), so it's awesome to learn from him. He has all the tools to fix electric things like mics and speakers and what not, and all the tools for cars too. They have an old land rover and the electrics failed and when they brought it to a dealer they said it was irreparable, and he was like LOL OK and stripped the whole thing and rebuilt the engine and it runs like new with 180K on the clock. Pretty sick. I will PM you where I work

[e30onBBSs]

Today taught me lots of stuff. I took the cluster out and diagnosed the ODO but that's the only one I could find a problem with my untrained eyes, some broken green gears. Speedometer has some grime on the back, and either the temp gauge or temp sensor is or the cluster batteries. Temp stopped working randomly today after I put it in, and then I undid the whole back and cleaned off the contacts and everything. When I put the key to position 2 it shoots all the way to the right, and stays that way until I turn the car off. Only if I tap the plastic will it fall back to 0. I read that this could be the temp sensor but it seems more like the gauge because up until I took it out it was working fine.

Fuel gauge seems to be work, and the speedo works now but still is not 100%. It is accurate when I have my foot on the gas but when I let off it drops to zero, just to go back to 20 or 30 or whatever it may be at the time when I'm on the gas. Weird! I don't know really how to alleviate myself of these issues. I have read a bit on the battery swap and I think I could do that, advice wanted!

Then I redid the clamp on my exhaust, so it's a much more civilized and relaxing sound in the cabin than before.

After that I took the plunge and drained the coolant out of the three hoses connected to the thermostat housing into a drain pan and I checked the thermostat. I learned there is no housing gasket, so I'm going to order one of those and probably a new thermostat. I tested it and it opens ever so slightly but at around 83 instead of 80. Let me know if the gap is as big as it should be from the pics below!

That's it for today, it was pretty nice.
I ended up with a few questions
1. Is my thermostat gap too small
2. Can temp sensor be the reason my car overheats after some time at idle?
3. Is bentely manual worth it?
4. Are gauges probably bad because of old batteries?

I researched most of these but could find partial answers, some clarification would be sweet!




is this really unhealthy?




at about 92 degrees C

[e30onBBSs]

Okay so previously I made a mistake while putting in a new thermostat, and I broke the big part of the thermostat housing. I'm inexperienced so that's fine, so I order a new one and gaskets and what not, and just put it in. Amped!


So then I put the thermostat in and everything is nice and tight this time because I was 17x more careful than before, and then I go to drive! So excited because it's been a couple weeks since I drove it and it's dry out and I can see if the temp is more where it should be. So I'm driving and I let off the gas and the revs don't go down and I don't slow down so I get out and check the throttle body, and I put it back together. I must have hit something while working on the thermostat job. I get back in, and it's okay, then all of a sudden it just starts revving as high as it can! I get out again and this clip thing is broken!


I have no recollection of anything hitting it, and I put it back correctly. I will pay $10 for one of these clips shipped to 01770. The jankbox dies again ARRRGH!

[dishwab]

If there's a pick n pull by you, that throttle cable guide clip is pretty common across different models of that era.

[e30onBBSs]

Time for an update! We pulled the exhaust off which was horribly easy, and got rid of some old clamps and random stuff on it. Got a 2.25" flex pipe from summit, and cut some exhaust out to make room for the flex. It just barely didn't slip on so we ground down the edges of the exhaust so it slipped on about an inch on both sides, extremely tight.

Me grinding at the down pipe, looks like it's not on jacks but it is!

Gotta get huge

After a few days of rain I took the plung and it all fit good so I re-used this muffler strap thing for the rear.

Daisy chained some hose clamps to hang from the OEM hangar, very supportive. I'm surprised at how little play there is in the system compared to what it used to be. The flex holds it back and forth very well and the clamps keep it pretty straight!

There is a small coolant leak somewhere, I'm going to undo all the hoses and thermo housing and make sure everything is 100% before it goes back in again

New throttle body to thermo housing hose, and new wiper blades! The new hose made some of the leak go away, I think the rest of it is just a loose connection somewhere. Wiper blades are a bitch!
Aimed my headlights against this, low beams are trashhh with the 9006's,

] so I found a solution I'm not sure if it's ever been done before!! I have US ellips, and the lows are horrid because they are the wrong lights, so I started doing some research. Tons of info about the h4/h1 swap came up, but I don't have sealed beams. I also have HID hi-beams so I didn't just want to have to sell those because they work great, and I didn't want to have to go source and wire in sealed beams, so I was trying to think of ways to do just the h4 swap. I measured the low beam across and like online it's 5 and 3/4 inches. Some of the diameter is the circumference of the glass, if that makes sense. So I figured, if I got a smaller set of HELLAs it maybe, just maybe would sit right inside the ellip bucket. So I smashed a low beam and said screw it, this could be a horrible decision, or it could really pay off, and be something others use. So yea, I took a mallet to the low beam, and slowly got the rest of the glass pieces out of the glue.

I got 5" hellas on ebay WITH BULBS for $40! Pic with the chrome ring on, fits like a glove.

after lots of glass grinding, scraping, and breaking, along with some grinding at the plastic housing, the h4 buckets sit almost perfectly where the glass used to be connected to the housing. I got some of that really good epoxy from HF and wow did they seal up good! Now I'm just waiting to receive the connector for the three prong h4 bulbs! So amped on how they came out. They still have all the aiming parts of the ellip, just a new bulb system. I thought the 5" would be too small, but they honestly fit perfectly. I measured them and they are a little bit bigger than 5" but they were listed on ebay as such, and the seller told me they were off an "older bmw" so maybe a 2002 or something?

Can't tell a difference from stock besides the way they pop out a bit

No different from the front!

beautyyyyy

classy


I will have more pics when the connectors come, and then she should be okay for inspection... We shall see!

[Julien]

stop taking pictures of half-assed work

[e30onBBSs]

stop taking pictures of half-assed work

nah brah, one day when my car is ballin I want to look back and see when it was sketch. And you are assuming that the "half-assed work" is really low quality. It's not as good as welding, but I pulled back on my exhaust as hard as I could and it's no where close to coming off. Also I don't want to hurt anyone else on the road as much as I don't want to hurt myself so I test it for miles around my desolate neighborhood. Plus the exhaust is 5x better than when I bought it. Thanks for the comment though Julien! The h4's are going to be so baller!

[rcsoundn1]

stop taking pictures of half-assed work

Please take some good advice. 1/2 assed work is 1/2 assed. And no one wants to look back on crap brah.

[Mr. Tasty]

oh god, the exhaust hahaha.

[e30onBBSs]

Please take some good advice. 1/2 assed work is 1/2 assed. And no one wants to look back on crap brah.

Well I'm doing my best with my experience and money and I am learning all the time. It doesn't start now so I really have to learn a lot.



Sent from my iPhon

[UlrichFennec]

Seriously digging that valve cover. I was thinking about doing something similar with my seats in that pattern, but I'm just going with plaid once I have the dough to get the seats reupholstered.