cameras ready prepare to flash

[s14brent]

not a real car update but figured i'd just do a garage update dump. I spent maybe 3hrs in the garage this past week due to work schedule. Not a lot of progress, hoping to finish up the subframe(s) and trailing arms this week though. I got my 12lb spool of L-56 .30 wire.
While at work I ended up talking welders with a friend and we both came to the conclusion that the primeweld mig180 and tig225x are a helluva bang for the buck esp since that tig already comes with a badass CK torch. I end up scouring marketplace/offerup for them but apparently there was a fathers day sale going so he already placed his order for new machines, and meanwhile I found myself a really good deal I couldn't pass up on SMH!! I'm really just trying considering down-sizing maybe end of this year so I will see if this can replace my lincoln, if it doesn't work out, I can make my money back for sure! - I really like how the primeweld machine has post-flow so the weld just doesn't suck in contaminates. This will also give me a chance to un-f*ck my e39 exhaust with er309l and helium trimix.


this led to the whole "why am i still running drier plug receptacales, and made me swap out a few plugs to make life easier (without extension plug adapters 10-30p to 6-50p) and most importantly I'll be able to take advantage of the 50a breaker its on!

My CK torch finally showed up mid week.

Fast forward to Harbor freights parking lot sale this weekend. I wanted a designated table to tig on.....I need to kind of figure out garage layout still, but this works for now, the table does have legs, but I set it up in desktop config.

I picked up my e39 spare diff between work gigs on Thursday. Didn't crack it open until Saturday though.

I also found out that none of my c-clip pliers would work for the e39 (or e46) diffs that use that chonky 90mm c-clip. I actually found this one off amazon and the reviews were pretty bad, but they showed up and worked perfectly.

After talking with a buddy of mine, he gave me the class on welding diffs at his place. I'm pretty stoked, i used rise fab shops locking differential plates and I think it came out great!!


Hopefully more car updates soon, but I do feel every once in a while i get into these tool/garage mod posts.

[s14brent]

I am not a welder but like you I weld stuff. I cannot weld in Vegas 110*, Phoenix 110 + or Inland Empire 105* summer heat. My concentration falls off. I wear all the protective gear mostly because of skin cancer concerns so I am impressed with your welds in those conditions. In talks with certified welders, I asked how they deal with a mistake or ugly weld. Answer, grind out and reweld.

thanks man! it's honestly pretty brutal. I drank maybe 6 bottles of water doing those parts.....i'm pretty ecstatic with results shown, i know theres still room for improvement, but the last few times I tried to use my mig they came out TERRIBLY probably due to being windy days and being under the car on jackstands, but theres maybe 2-3 welds that i want to grind down and rehit (mostly the first set of welds done). And yeah, its really crazy how fast you can feel dizzy behind the welding mask respirator & sleeves. (not fully geared up) Most of this was done at night at about 95°, I can't imagine 110°, kind of why i'm trying to get this step done now. I still don't know how i'm going to line up the secondary caliper mounts without the wheel bearing/rotor/calipers mocked up like last time....I might have to mock something up to bolt down all 4 bolts in place while I weld it. I'm also a little bit worried about how it's gonna go with er309L doing the mild to stainless bits on the exhaust (o2 bungs/can lambda) as I really need to practice when my new tig torch arrives - i haven't touched the tig in like 3 years unfortunately. Also is it crazy I kind of want a 2nd mig machine just to use this bottle of helium tri-mix I have sitting. I definitely know that I won't be getting a refill of the stuff since i have the tig but it could definitely help out doing the under the car exhaust stuff. I don't want to just zap it with er70s like a muffler shop would. All this garage equipment takes up so much space and money, but I really enjoy doing everything myself.

[OSAH racing]

I am not a welder but like you I weld stuff. I cannot weld in Vegas 110*, Phoenix 110 + or Inland Empire 105* summer heat. My concentration falls off. I wear all the protective gear mostly because of skin cancer concerns so I am impressed with your welds in those conditions. In talks with certified welders, I asked how they deal with a mistake or ugly weld. Answer, grind out and reweld.

[s14brent]

well i finally started to do some welding on the e30's new rear subframe+trailing arms. it's been quite the journey just to get here I'd say LOL. Last post I had just purchased a new tank of 75/25 which was much needed. I didn't mention how I tried to start practice tig welding when I found out my chinesium torch had bit the dust. It actually split in two places. Lucky me.




Well, a new US made CK 17 torch/hose/dinse plug combo set me back right under $300, and i'm still waiting for it, so that's fun. I decided I should fit up and tack all the reinforcement plates sooner than later.



Most of the inner plates (nearest to the diff) had to be bent or trimmed to for a nicer fit.

the gusset by the abs sensor was a pretty poor design, so I had to cut the 90 degree corner out and give it a little bend so it could fit up nicely.



The rear sway bar mount went on nicely (i've tried to fix this photo link, not sure why it won't show the update)



Garagistic boomerangs are always a pain in the ass to bend to fit....(its even worse because i'm actually mounting them a bit higher than normal due to DTM adjusters...) I will have to work on that slowly whenever I have more time.



Stim-tech rear shock reinforcement looks lovely. I'll have to finish this one up as well but it does definitely weld better once its heated up.





rear diff mount







and that's when this happened:


just ordered another $70 worth in consumables to continue next weekend. Overall happy I finally started doing this, but its very HOT here and I'm going to have to split this between day and nights. Even though there are some areas that aren't the cleanest, i'm pretty proud as I'm definitely not a a welder, but i'm happy with these results.

I think Thursday (next week) i'll be picking up the spare e39 diff. So on Saturday I might plan to clean that out and prep for welding as well as finishing up the rest of this job.

[s14brent]

Be easy to make that fitting in a lathe, brass is so wonderful to work with

i'm gonna have to ask around....my local buddy who usually makes stuff for me is out of the country for like 3 more weeks BUT I have kind of a bad taste in my mouth from the lack of support i'm getting from that company already, i'd rather not run any of their products and just maybe do a tank swap and call it a day.....I just gotta make sure I start each event with a full tank and i'm fine. I'd still like to relocate the fuel filter and make some of those lines -AN in the rear if I can.


I had this baffled REMUS 3.5" exhaust tip from a beat to shit exhaust. I already talked to a friend about some welding so I had him try to salvage this piece for exhaust 3.0 on the car.

I got lucky and got a chopped up early production syncro-design mid pipe. I didn't know the early production units were just mild steel, however it made it a lot easier (cheaper) to get back to a usable state.



all welded up


------

I've been ordering different consumables and even ordered another angle grinder (air) just because prep has been so excruciating in the las vegas 100°F+ weather. I'm weird and didnt want to run the garagistic RTA reinforcements again so I ordered the SRS kit and Stim-tech rear shock reinforcement. Turns out the SRS kit won't work with how my trailing arms were shortened to run the MRT DTM kit so i'll be running the garagistic boomerang afterall.







I actually ran out of 75/25 gas for my mig, so I had to drive 40min away to go swap a bottle out. There are closer places but the one 40 min away charges like 55% less (kind of insane and totally worth it). I also bought myself new tig torch (furick) gas lens kit to start practicing again. Clearly I have a lot of welding projects in my future, and I would love for everything to have wayyy nicer welds this time around.

So the problem with running 318ti rear TA/hubs is that the hubs are +20mm more than stock e30 hubs and +17.5mm more than z4 hubs on e30 TA's. That means if I wanted to keep all 4x e46 325i rear calipers (and functioning parking brake) i'd have to upgrade to a rear rotor that has the same 294mm rotor but with the hat to match the increased hub offset. Luckily this was easy to find by just searching for "318ti rear brake upgrade" and all the info was on SRS-concepts site. So I ordered up some zimmerman rotors from FCP. I could not find if my caliper adapters will be the same, but I can always add a couple washers and longer bolts if I need to order new adapters after I mock it up.




------

e39 touring update:

turns out 525/530i tie rod assy is the same thread/pitch as e30/36/46 which means i can add a little cheap angle to it since I have some old tie-rod spacers for the e30.



I also sourced a 530i 3.46 188k open differential out in socal that already has the MT input shaft flange swapped out on it. (e39's are annoying like that, AT/MT have different length input shaft flanges on the diff and 2 different sized drive shafts of course) So it's kind of a pain trying to find this combo in a face-lift e39 right out of the box basically. The plan is, he'll actually be bringing it out to vegas in 2 weeks, and I'll just pick it from whatever hotel he's staying at on the strip. I already bought the weld-in plates for the diff, and another pair of SLG axle spacers. I'm sorry I can't help myself, I have to slide it.



What's brilliant about all this is I'll be able to swap it back if I hate it or am planning a longer road trip with it but I do want to try and have some fun with this thing while the e30 is down, so this is kind of a high priority suddenly and then I'll start actually working on the e30 slowly again.

[econti]

Be easy to make that fitting in a lathe, brass is so wonderful to work with

[s14brent]

I finally registered the e39 touring at the dmv this week. I just have to wait for the plate in the mail finally, I didn't realize they don't keep the non personalized 1982 rep blue plates on hand anymore. Basically left with another moving permit LOL!
I haven't been doing much work in the garage recently, but I did replace both VL2020 batteries in the keyfobs and now keyless entry is working again.



oh and I also got euro corner lamps and replaced some crusty bulbs. I also did something ghetto and noticed the new OEM diffuser wasnt clicking in really well into the bumper. I actually dabbed some silicone and propped it up to set after noticing that after this picture.



-------e30 content?!?!-------

I started to clean up/prep the trailing arms and rear subframe for reinforcements. It made me realize I wanted to run different designed TA reinforcements this time around. Since the MRT/DTM style mods make the outer arm shorter, the garagistic gusset style doesn't really fit without chopping it up. I wanted to run a bar style that welds on top and below the pinch this time around so I ordered the SRS reinforcement kit JUST for the bar. Since I don't like the garagistic or SRS shock mount reinforcements, I ordered the stim-tech version which imho is the best available. It's quite ridiculous, but I really want this set to be the last set I do for this chassis.



I think* this is a mix of garagistic & condor reinforcements.



Meanwhile I have put any turbo plans on the back burner AGAIN. I would rather have a better sorted version of my current car. I'll be reposting some old pics here for a refresh, but there are some new things in the mix. I have part of a chopped up syncrodesign midpipe that should be arriving next week. I'll be hopefully practicing tig soon, but I'll be making sure to extend that piece and add 2x o2 bungs for the stock o2 and can-lambda. I am thinking about adding a vibrant super-quiet resonator after the o2's on a flange or v-band and just running straight ss pipe out the back.







hm....I couldn't find a picture of my spare front subframe that i've had laying around for at least 4 years now OR the stimtech rear strut tower reinforcements. I'll probably pull it out of storage this weekend. The front subframe already has the normal reinforcement kit components welded on there (swaybar endlink mount, motor mounts, & the gusset under the mount), I will be adding the ball joint reinforcement from condor "while i'm there". I've got quite the laundry list of things to do this next step. I plan on getting a new bottle of 75/25 and a second bottle of argon for a purge setup. I want to drop the gas tank finally to inspect and at least at minimum relocate the fuel filter up into the trunk and have that rear section -AN and maybe 1 or 2 bulkheads in place..

I tried to setup a 034 motorsport FP34 fuel surge tank with a bosch 200 fuel pump. Turns out they don't support the 044 replacement (bosch 200) and really just expect you to find a used 044 or china rep to use with it. I have to figure out if i can use the bosch 200 in a different setup now. I ordered 3 different fittings already and unfortunately none of them are the answer I needed. I basically need a longer M12x1.5 F to M10x1.0 M. I reached back out to them and its just crazy to me that they have 0 interest in making the newer pump work with their product. whatever....i should have gone with a radium or nuke setup from the start. The fitting i'm having issues with is the brass fitting in the photo below. The check valve (silver) fitting shown on the pump would be removed. I've gotten close but the distance is wrong still.



I may take this to a friend to see if can machine something one-off for me.



Oh, and here's some pics from a local meet i dropped by last week. I'm feeling sad that i know car will be down for a while and I'll most likely miss the next 2 events. I still need to consider in costs for dyno time/tuning and getting a tow to my alignment guy at the end of this next big step.

[s14brent]

--more e39 content--

I was missing this right rear trim, thankfully they are cheap and still available unlike a lot of the other wagon interior bits. I'm mainly missing a touring rear bench seat and LR door panel in black, but at least the door panel should be easy to find.



I wanted to add something to change up the look of the car to be a bit more aggressive. I am actually not super familiar with whats available for the e39 m5 bumpers and ended up ordering a cheap ebay lip that was shipped from socal (so i got it in 1 day).
Fitment was actually decent, but the finish was horrid. I had to fix the bumper bracket anyways so it was a good reason to have the whole bumper off again.


time to do my favorite thing, sanding (sarcasm). Luckily it didn't take long with some 320 and 400 grit. I probably should have done a pass with 600 at the end tbh



Unfortunately I'm not going to wait a week+ to get a bottle of SEM trim black, so I used a bottle of rustoleum satin black that was laying around.



and finally mounted up.





Next up is getting the rear windows working...really hoping it's nothing too expensive since both sides can definitely add up! TBH it might be a while before I tackle that..i'm just patiently waiting for my appointment at the DMV to register this already! Once I can get it registered I can park it on the driveway while the e30 is being worked on - which is the huge part.

-----05/03 edit-------

I ended up ordering a new metra radio harness, there were some issues with the old one (multiple loose pins). I also ended up thinking it was a speaker issue (which it kinda was).....PO had installed some audiobahn speakers in super chopped up housings.....decided i'd rather have paper stock speakers for now (pulled an uncracked set from the junkyard - first time going in what seems like forever) and eventually i'll upgrade to some bavsound door speakers. Also, the audiobahns were just lightly twisted and e-taped of course. I left the tweeters in for now.



I got the window regulators in. I actually was planning to go with bremmen parts via fcp euro for lifetime warranty, but the RR side was not in stock and $50 more than the lemforeder version that was in stock at ECS, so i ordered one from each place.
Tell me why the lemforeder was a different design regulator and had me confused for a bit.



^ This was the L rear with bremmen parts replacement.
v this was the R rear. safe to say they were both proper f****d


While all the door panels were off, I added some glue to the pockets in the door cards and had them clamped in place overnight. They are often loose and rattle unfortunately, pretty much a perfect opportunity to do 3/4. Meanwhile my 30 day temp-tag has officially expired, and my DMV appointment isn't until the 15th. I'm pretty happy with the progress made within the 30 days.

[s14brent]

We'll hopefully be there for a speccy if the holiday timeline matches up, if you see two aussies with freshly grown beer guts come say hi. Rabid for it, they seem like great events.

hell yeah. have a great time out there!!

-------

had a bit more time to work on the e39 this week. the rear sway bar refresh came in. Right Rear end link was separated.



They are not super fun to change, 1/4 turn at a time with 2 wrenches - hands were hurting the next day from something that should be a lot easier to just swap imho. Also on the LR I screwed up and with the ultra thin 16mm wrench I somehow knocked the blue retaining clip off the bushing.....I spent like 45 min trying to get it back on until it basically deformed and was unusable. To just get things moving forward I used some safety wire and will just keep an eye on it.




I got the Turner metal sway bar bushing brackets and tossed the factory aluminum ones away. These are a bit overpriced imho, but I didn't want to take my chances modding up a 7 series RSB bushing bracket in case I end up going poly (i guess there are some fitment issues with that combo). I just got some febi bushings to pair along with it for now.




I really wanted to put the mtech rear bumper diffuser on, and i kind of hated the muffler that was on there. I ordered a flat black vibrant single tip muffler, but ended up ordering the wrong part # on accident and got the 3" vibrant exhaust vs 2.5" (1147 vs 1146) and due to just time constraints decided to make it work with a reducer. Turns out the APR muffler that was on there had some cracks in the muffler so it was time to ditch it. Unfortunately my welder decided to fight me all day long with the wind, welds look horrible but its on there and no leaks afaik. I will need to buy another bottle of 75/25. I think I may still replace the little bottle resonator with an ultra quiet vibrant resonator in the future so I will redo the whole rear section again in the future, but for now i'll try and drive it more - so far its been much better!





I decided to get the car smogged finally the next morning. It passed with no issues! My DMV appointment isn't until May 15th, looking forward to getting this thing plated already!



I have been complaining that the e39 steering feeling a bit heavier than i recall, i thought maybe it was because of the smaller 350mm wheel on there, however a larger wheel wouldn't make it feel THAT much better imho. I then remembered the e36 m3 had a restrictor built in the high pressure hose, and that the e46 restrictor is in the banjo bolt. Super common for the drift dudes to delete the restrictor with no issues. Confirmed the banjo part # is the same between e39/e46 on realoem and decided to give it a go!




I took it for a quick drive and it feels SOOO much better. I guess its more sensitive to steering inputs and not as sleepy - I wouldn't describe it as "too light" either. I'm glad I did this because I got to dump a lot of the mystery PS fluid and help flush out the system little by little. I really do think the PO put the wrong PS fluid type in. I definitely want to drive it a bit more spiritedly now!.Unfortunately I did not go to the 04/20 auto cross. There is a bit more testing/dialing in needed. I didn't think a half day was worth the prep/drive/money and will go when the car is a bit more dialed in. Truth is, I need to do a trans fluid service on it - i don't know if i mentioned it but the detents are starting to go and the 5th gear lean is sometimes present. I won't be pulling the trans to do that now, but in hopes to feel cleaner shifts I'll put in an order for some Redline MTL and I'll do that before I start changing focus back to the E30 which is basically after this is plated.

[econti]

no, i have a few local buds going out there though that will be drifting. I am curious to see the track layout in Barstow though! If they have events there more often that is a quick drive! I honestly haven't had time to even think about the e30 lately, and I need to get back to finishing up the the welding on the 318ti rear trailing arm setup and reinforce the spare rear subframe and get finally get an alignment before I drift the car again. Probably won't be doing any drifting until night events start. I'm planning to hit the local scca/auto-x on the 20th hopefully! I'm actually thinking about tackling a few other things "while i'm there" but its already super hot in my garage. Its been over 100°F a few times this month already!

We'll hopefully be there for a speccy if the holiday timeline matches up, if you see two aussies with freshly grown beer guts come say hi. Rabid for it, they seem like great events.

[s14brent]

Are you driving at the hotpit event in July?

no, i have a few local buds going out there though that will be drifting. I am curious to see the track layout in Barstow though! If they have events there more often that is a quick drive! I honestly haven't had time to even think about the e30 lately, and I need to get back to finishing up the the welding on the 318ti rear trailing arm setup and reinforce the spare rear subframe and get finally get an alignment before I drift the car again. Probably won't be doing any drifting until night events start. I'm planning to hit the local scca/auto-x on the 20th hopefully! I'm actually thinking about tackling a few other things "while i'm there" but its already super hot in my garage. Its been over 100°F a few times this month already!

I have a box full of reinforcements to weld on to the trailing arms and rear subframe, also another pair of secondary caliper mounts. Probably do the rear strut reinforcments while I'm doing all that welding! I honestly am really not looking forward to doing all that in the heat tbh! It's doesn't seem like a fun time. Oh...and I also ordered a new muffler for the wagon since there's a bit of drone at 3k with the current setup.

[econti]

Are you driving at the hotpit event in July?

[s14brent]

got about half my order delivered this week so I got to work.



Meyle HD front sway bar endlinks since these were blown/shot



I got impatient and tried to buy an ac belt from oreillys, but they gave me a 4 rib belt that I had to return. continental 5 rib in the back is the correct one for what I needed. Even after correct belt was replaced, ac was not kicking on, checked the 2 fuses in the fuse box (glove box) and checked the aux giant fuse from underneath. I really hate that location, my hands are not small enough to contort for that.



I pulled off the front bumper and started to remove some broken panels that will eventually get replaced. I found the aux plug hanging and found that the switch was corroded inside. Because one of the prongs broke off - I had to just cut the plugs off and do some male/female spade connectors for now - I really just wanted to see if the aux fan was dead or not.



got it wired up temporarily for now, turned the car on and turned AC ON, fan kicked on and I had cold air again!!




I also threw on another pair of 15mm spacers (up front) that I purchased, tried my best to match camber angle with one of those magnetic gauges mounted on the rotor. Overall happy with this ride-height and fitment. Overall, I think it's been a great success so far! I am waiting for rear sway bar bushing/endlink/brackets to show up and I'm ready to put some miles on it.

[s14brent]

Weekly wagon update! i got these 30mm fortune auto spring perch spacers. Basically to take up some space running 7" springs vs 8"!







did some wire clean up this week, got rid of all the leftover auto-trans harness stuff that was left behind. also ripped out the HID 9006 fog light bulbs and stuck in some generic 9006's i had in a box. Getting rid of the warning lights one-by-one LOL!!



Finally washed the wagon, i actually pressure washed off the plasti-dip on the window trim. It wasn't Terrible like 10 years ago, but it was showing its wear and needed to go! I actually got a moving permit for it, and insurance. I need to drive it around and get the car ready for smog!



245/40/18 kenda kr20a's all around - might want to drop the rear another 1/4" again.....won't have time until maybe Thursday this week to mess with it though! I also have a few things on the way like windshield wipers, front sway bar endlinks, and refreshing the whole rear sway setup (turner metal swaybar brackets, new bushings and endlinks). I'm going to try and aim to take this to autocross on the 20th, but there's a lot I still need to do before then! I also have to download the PAsoft software and try to code out the SLS error message since I couldn't get it to access on INPA





-- edit: 04/09--
I did manage to get the rear ride height to my liking. I was worried about 245/40 being too small of a square setup but I think this will work out fine. I do think 265 is too wide for such an underpowered pig.



Getting PAsoft to work on an old windows 10 laptop took way longer than I'd like to admit, but I did successfully code out the "SLS INACTIVE" warning that was living on gauge cluster. Down to two warning lights (airbag and DCT - both caused by removal of steering wheel/clock spring unfortunately). A better condition stock wheel is not out of the question here, however I do like the setup I have in there currently



Also, good news, car is officially ready to smog!! However smog checks here are only valid here for 30 days, and I could only get an appointment at the nearest DMV on May 15th, so I will wait until after the 15th of this month to get it done (pre-auto-x if i can make it!!). I actually do remember suffering trying to get these monitor checks in the green when I first did the swap on this!

[s14brent]

I love the lines of the E34 and E39 tourings. I keep coming back to the idea of owning one as a long term car because I want a wagon and besides an E9x, some kind of AMG C/E (which look good but I know nothing about, or a SPA V60/V90 Volvo (also hard to find, too new to tinker too hard, no manual), there's not much else out there. But they're really hard to find around here in reasonable shape.

Low boost setup on stock ECU to give it a bit of oomph, maybe slap a 6 speed in it eventually but try to keep it relatively cheap/simple otherwise.

Thanks, i thought i responded to you, my bad! I think the perfect touring is the cadillac cts-v manual/supercharged v8. I'd really love to have one of those, but used prices were basically near my brand new (at the time) tacoma which makes it not a responsible daily choice LOL! The e39 touring is in a pretty rough state. i think my friend/PO's kids added a ton of dents into this thing (i'm guessing this because most of the dents are all the same height, and probably my guess - caused by bicycle bar ends), and the paint/clearcoat is faded in a more areas now including the door handles/rear 1/4 top of hatch.... I've never had a easy time keeping cars looking perfect unfortunately. So I'm not sure what the plan is exterior wise yet, probably leave it for a while tbh....But I've actually already had the thought - after the e30's boosted finally, if i end up liking this platform i may want to do some power adders but not enough to have to do a rear end swap esp if i plan to put a fancy diff in this.... However, I don't necessarily like the idea of having to recode anything as i'm currently having issues already just trying to access the dme/lcm in INPA to get rid of the "SLS INACTIVE" display. I had a local buddy who has the whole e39 inpa bundle come over and was booted out over and over again.....I've had this problem in the past as well with this car so I ended up sending out my LCM/DME to a bimmerforums user almost 8 years ago and had him do the coding for me.

It is very blue but I don't hate it

its growing on me, and i'm not going to swap it out anytime soon because I need to really stick to a tight budget on this car! its a pretty firm seat and will do the job just fine! seating position/height was easy to dial in and its on sliders so it checks all the boxes- its just terribly ricey looking. I still need to figure out how to get the horn to work on this thing. The steering wheel tilt feature is currently not hooked up because it is held in by the factory clock spring setup which i believe completed the horn contacts. I did adjust the wheel prior to removal so ergo feels just-right which is exciting!