cameras ready prepare to flash

[s14brent]

Not the update I'd love to share, but i'll start from the end of the last post. TLDR: Don't 0 out DTM style heims (irp or mrt)




secondary calipers need to be bled again.....shouldnt take too long.



motul 2l bottles are the devil. I may switch to torco RGO 85w140 + their type F modifier moving forward per Ray @ kaazusa



i had to run out to HF and get a set of their metric line service wrenches. I should have stopped here and realized there wasnt much thread left on the adjusters. I will say adjusting toe/camber is so much nicer this way.




made it to the alignment shop......but barely.....heard a giant clunk passing over the rail road tracks nearby.....turns out i ripped out the adjuster :(



^ from here.....to there v



I will be taking it all apart again (dropping out the rear subframe) and starting over. This is just.....fantastic. I was really hoping to make it to the IFO drift event on Sunday. I'm hoping to get it all back together before end of month/year, and have another alignment setup in January. Just thankful nothing was seriously damaged. I'm annoyed, MRT has apparently revised this part and made the adjuster longer to match the outer heim.......but its the same cost for shipping as it is the part.....I'm going to see if my parts are reusable first and then decide if i should order an entire spare assembly to keep as a spare/backup or just the two revised pieces while the subframe is down/out again.

[econti]

Man that sucks. Could've been way worse though on the positive

[Northern]

brutal, but that first line had me prepared for worse haha, so I'm glad it wasn't.

[2mAn]

Yea Im glad it didnt break while you were sideways somewhere... pain in the azz for sure but could've been a LOT worse

[s14brent]

Man that sucks. Could've been way worse though on the positive

100%

brutal, but that first line had me prepared for worse haha, so I'm glad it wasn't.

Sorry about that.....nothing catastrophic, just highly inconvenient

--------------



big a** die showed up. I actually ordered a few of these to see which one would show up first LOL.....



it did cut a decent amount but its only on the maybe the top 6-8 threads. I'll place an order with MRT in january for a full set of spares to keep on hand. (they didnt have any spare parts for sale for cyber monday so i figured i could wait).



I decided to leave 6-3/4 threads on the rod side exposed with the re-threaded piece all the way in. The rod is long enough that this will cover all the adjustments needed and not run into the same issue as before.



I did take the time to clean the torringtons again.....hate doing this, one year i'll end up removing them LOL



rear subframe is back up thanks to help from a friend this time around. I also got 27mm/32/36mm wrenches so i can put some torque on the locking nuts this time around (and a bottle of the orange loctite).
I probably won't have time to work on the car until maybe thursday only this week. I need to find my rearswaybar endlinks again, somehow they got lost in the abyss. I'll also try to upgrade some more hardware "while i'm there" but theres no deadline now, might put off an alignment until January - I think the next thing to tackle is the front subframe and install the harperfab oil pan. I was thinking maybe an oil evacuator might be a good purchase since the oil in the car is relatively fresh.

[s14brent]

Finally had some time to work on the rear strut tower reinforcements. My buddy RED totally helped me out with welding tips and fitting up the reinforcement plates, mig welding thick to thin (basically everything). I'm super grateful because the fitment was pretty poor and the strut tower fits flush all around making it much easier to weld.

First off I removed the giant tacks i made holding the towers in and did a lot of clean up & prep.....this friggin m18 wire wheel angle grinder thing scares me....especially while curled up with it inside the trunk




had to cut some access holes in the rear firewall and ran some beads (free handed) on the strut tower reinforcements



mine^ vs reds v (i need a lot more practice)



did a lot more prep even after the photos above were taken, and red helped mig stitch-weld them in while i was on the wheel well side on fire extinguisher duty. It really is a two-person job. this thing would have went up in flames doing it solo.







I'll be going out of country on a vacation soon, but when I get back I want to weld in some dom tubing to tie the strut towers together. It will need to be base painted after that and possibly some new undercoating in the wheel wells to prevent any rust, so this is the best time to do that. After that I'll start to drop the front subframe and tackling the harper fab oil pan upgrade. I'll be installing the front reinforced subframe and possibly those solid akg motor & trans mounts that I got a while back. I'm pretty sure I'll want to drive the car as soon as its running with the new pan but I'll also be trying to figure out where to mount all the sensors/wiring for the LINK ecu. I'd really like to get the car on the standalone and then just enjoy it fully, so the wagon might be hitting a drift event in february or march to keep me sane.

[s14brent]

Not much to report since I got back from vacation. I've been super swamped with work, which isn't a bad thing.

Basically etch primed the bare steel that was prepped for the welding, then shot some random black paint over it, followed with 3M undercoating. I really don't want to worry about any part of the chassis rusting in the near future.




I was doing just fine, planning on the harper oil pan swap next when I had time. I even bought a few more adapters for the Link/Bosch sensors, the old VDO oil pressure & temp sensors will need to be removed when i do the oil pan job because it only makes sense. I needed a weird m10x1.0 to 1/8 NPT adapter, also got another 1/8npt to -4an fitting, and a fuel pressure gauge adapter -6AN M/F with 1/8 NPT F on the side. I just need to order up some wire and deutsch connectors and some tesa tape for the wiring harnesses I'll be adding for them. I need to mock a lot of this up to figure out how i'll be mounting the can lambda module.

Then I stumbled across the dream set of wheels......browsing marketplace I found 17x8.5 +15 5x120 Volk TE37SL's in mag blue.



I wasn't able to get them out of my mind, so I decided to pull the trigger. Literally TE's in GTR spoke spec has always been on the WTB list, kind of crazy these popped up locally!





I already have a pair of matching 215/40/17 Federal 595RS PRO's on the way so I can rock them on the e30, but I have a burning desire to throw them on the e39 wagon for a bit.

[econti]

Definitely put them on the wags. Incredible wheel