cameras ready prepare to flash

[JZM3]

this is great, nice work. Keep it coming!

[CorvallisBMW]

That hose looks kind of pinched, you could shorten it where it meets the radiator neck by ~1" and still have lots of engagement on the neck.

[s14brent]

Small update, but unfortunately the car will have to be put on hold, work has been crazy busy, and there was a death in the family so I'll have to put most of my free time toward making accommodations.

I wanted to button up everything I sort of left undone. Last thing i did was wire up the gauges, but the water temp didn't work because it didn't have a ground. I changed out adapters to a nice billet piece I had from 42 draft design. (i purchased some things twice on accident due to this being done in such a lengthy amount of time)



I also swapped out the hvac control panel - mine had a few tiny cracks between the buttons up top and I finally have buttons with the actual symbols on them now!!



Ordered a pack of vdo amber bulb sleeves then realized I could have just replaced with amber bulbs.....



I ended up ordering an e36 ps reservoir mount since my work schedule hasn't really given me any time to go out to any of the junkyards. Turns out I had a bracket on the other side of the garage in the e36 parts pile. My m3 needs a new pump, and i pulled the everything from a m3 being parted out locally - somehow spaced it.



To add to the list of mistakes I made, I cut the ps line (reservoir to pump) too short, almost 1/2" so I had to go find a straight brass coupler to fix my mistake.



installed. le sigh....



made a small bracket for the oil psi sending unit. wasn't a huge fan of the e36 mount it came with.



and I finally got the skid plate mounted up, it wasn't lining up. I just needed to loosen everything up (which was pretty hard - lots of pb blaster and whacks to the loop from a deadblow). Once loose, everything lined up and bolted together just fine.

I think I want to get longer bolts for the front of the skid plate and space it down maybe 5-7mm further.

I got this circle shaped sunroof trim piece for the sunroof crank. I never actually had a cover so the handle would sort of just flop around. I actually want to replace the whole front liner. Not sure how much of a bitch that's going to be.



meanwhile I think a break would be good, I'm trying to rush things and making more mistakes

[Anthony B]

Solid progress on this, I may have to liberate some of your ideas with the manual fan switch & gauge cluster.

Good to see the work all coming together

[s14brent]

update: so I talked to John the other day, told me there's a way to use my old pan. Super nice guy, I totally recommend http://hikfabrication.com/ for your skid plate needs!!!

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Not sure why I spent so much time priming/sanding and rattle canning this thing only to last minute decided to wrap it in gold foil.



Got bored and shaved down a 1/8 hose connector for the power steering cap for both my e36 m3 and my e30. Figured I'd better do that before I forget. I'm also waiting for a stock e36 ps reservoir mount. I'm not super happy with its current location currently.



I was going through boxes and I stumbled across this vert rear view mirror I picked up a few months ago. Decided to wire it up/install it, but had a helluva time with the removal of my old mirror.



A few things happened when I ended up pulling off the mirror. The rotating ball cup ended up breaking, -old mirror is now useless, and instead of it popping out of the mount, the mount came off with it. 2/3 of the pop rivet or had broken off, and deformed the mounting holes up top. I test fitted some speed clips and found some that fit perfect. Drilled out the 2 broken tabs and used sheet metal screws for mounting. I'm not a huge fan after all that of the map light mirror. It seems very focused and dim. I guess a little light is better than none.



my check panel surround is pretty much non existent, and I already know the check panel is going to fall out during spirited driving. I guess I'll be replacing the front part of the headliner when I find one in good condition. :ugh: Also, I ordered the missing cap for the sunroof crank (in reflection)



I started to finish up the wiring inside the car (fan over-ride switch, digital volt meter, and the oil temp, oil psi, and water temp gauges). I also took this time to rewire my stereo correctly. The damn gauge panel that I used 3M 77 self spray adhesive basically came apart while being stored in the trunk of the car (you can kind of see it in the photo above).



I got as much wiring done as I could before running out of wires and connectors and I decided it was time to do a parts & hardware store run. At this point the electric fan "manual override" switch worked, and the digital volt meter worked (I threw a battery tender on after this).



Longer bolts for the rear skid plate mount. Picked up some of this contact adhesive that sounded like it'd do the job.



Applied later and letting set overnight. If there are further issues I'm thinking of just running it bare metal.



Ran the sensor wires through the firewall. this looked like a cluster f**k so i used some heat shrink



While running the sensor wires I tried to tidy up the harness to see if I can mount the cover soon. I'm going to trim the cover and testfit it soon. Almost there!



Not bad for a day and a half of progress!!