Hello! White late model coupe from the bay

[Toodaloo]

Hello! White late model coupe from the bay

Redoing the M20 is definitely the fastest way to go, easiest too. I have come to almost expect a 24v engine to be in E30s owned by an enthusiast these days, having the M20 almost makes your car stand out amongst the crowd lol.

Save up for a 32v swap, should be pretty easy by the time you are ready to do something with the car.

Also, why would anyone get an E46 M3 when the E39 M5 can be had for the same price?

Hmm very true! I bought the car at the end of high school with the intentions of boosting the m20. If I freshen up this baby and put her back together with some stronger parts, maybe I can keep that dream alive!

Well, to be quite honest I'm not a huge fan of the e39 m5. Great car? Hell yeah. Do I want one? Hell yeah. Do I want one more than an e46 m3? Nah. The m3 fits my style more and I've got a thing for ITB'd six pots :).
I should do more digging on the m5 though. Never really considered it.

I think keeping the M20 is a good choice. Its a solid engine, and it belongs under the hood. With doing a swap, there are always unexpected costs, and the engine should be rebuilt before installing anyway (because who knows how close it is to blowing a head gasket or something else. Great, it ran fine before the car was totalled. Big deal, yours did as well before the head gasket failed.) Rebuilding the M20 makes the most sense. You know what was done, and you will have the reassurance that all the tolerances are within spec. With the thing apart it also gives you the opportunity to make some internal upgrades should you wish to. Heck get the rotating assembly balanced at the very least, the crank and block magnafluxed and the cylinders honed. You might be able to reuse the pistons (check the clearances and go from there.) It could be as simple as new gaskets, bottom end bearings and a head gasket. Get the block hot tanked so there is no crap anywhere in it.



I'd love to lend a hand with the build, I even have an engine stand I can loan you, and an engine lift. Yes, it does suck that the HG blew, but at the same time it does give you a reason to make the engine and engine bay look great. Once its rebuilt you will also know that the odds are pretty high that you won't have to worry about it doing anything evil in the future.



Will

Thanks Will! That would be greatly appreciated. While id love to pull the engine, in my financial standpoint currently; it wouldn't be wise to dump all my cash into the motor. Do I want to? Yep. Can I? Yes potentially. Is it economically wise? Nope.

I Definitely want to be extensive with it, but I've got to map out my plan before I start digging in.


Good news everyone!
Last night I finished up the seat base upholstery for the driver side seat. It came out quite well if you ask me!!!
I'll have a more extensive process description and photos once I have finished editing and uploading the shots.
But here's a little teaser for the time being ;) (excuse shitty dining room table lighting in second pic)



Also, after work today my buddy Jeff came over with some Snap-on goodies to run the compression test.

Here are the numbers:
Cylinder 1: 175 psi
Cylinder 2: 170 psi
Cylinder 3: 175 psi
Cylinder 4: 180 psi
Cylinder 5: 175 psi
Cylinder 6: 170 psi

I was pretty astonished to see this. Needless to say it's quite higher than to be expected from a car ticking over 200k miles soon. Hell, factory states 150-160 as normal! No wonder she pulls nice and hard ;)

As I mentioned before, the head was rebuilt. But I'm not sure when exactly. It had to have been in the past 30-40k miles forsure.

I'll be making my parts list soon and doing some research on what to do! Top end rebuild here we go!

[jpod999]

Well, to be quite honest I'm not a huge fan of the e39 m5. Great car? Hell yeah. Do I want one? Hell yeah. Do I want one more than an e46 m3? Nah. The m3 fits my style more and I've got a thing for ITB'd six pots :).
I should do more digging on the m5 though. Never really considered it.

I had one for a few years, it's an amazing machine. If you get the chance to drive one jump at it. ITB'd V8s are crazy.

[rzerob]

That seat is looking amazing.

[alas]

Dude I'm heading up north in August, hopefully I can see your car in person! Everything is looking fantastic. I can't wait to see it finished.

I've only barely started to take my wheels apart, I've been so busy.

Keep it up, Andrei!


-E

[Toodaloo]

I had one for a few years, it's an amazing machine. If you get the chance to drive one jump at it. ITB'd V8s are crazy.

I'll be sure and try to get a ride!

Just helped my buddy install an exhaust on his 16' focus st. I miss boost :(...

That seat is looking amazing.

Thanks!

Dude I'm heading up north in August, hopefully I can see your car in person! Everything is looking fantastic. I can't wait to see it finished.

I've only barely started to take my wheels apart, I've been so busy.

Keep it up, Andrei!


-E

I feel you on that one! I was taking a summer course that met 4 days a week basically right after work each day. Finally that finished up and I've had some more free time. All that I have left to do is to order new nuts for the assembly bolts, powder coat the faces and strip/coat the barrels, polish the hex caps, and etc... Okay make I'm not collide to finishing them. Haha. Hopefully they'll be all ready by the time I'm done with the upper end rebuild!

Yes! If the car isn't rolling by the time you're up in the area, you're more than welcome to check it out in my garage haha. Shoot me a text a few weeks before you come up and we can plan a meet up or something!

[sam_]

the seats are amazing.

[Toodaloo]

Hello! White late model coupe from the bay

I’m back!

[Story time]

These have been a very hectic past few months. The semester has started back up and I’m back to my studies so finishing the car has been delayed. I went ahead and parked the car in preparation for the head pull. Everything went smoothly and I found the source for a few oil leaks and the potential coolant leak.





Ordered all the parts for the job including a full upper gasket set and various other replacement parts that should be taken care of at the same time (I'll link the packing list if anyone is interested, however, it was basically every gasket, O-ring, seal, etc. that's accessible when the head is removed.

Pulled the head with great success! It’s really not hard at all. My buddy Jeff, and I disassembled the head and dropped it off at TEM performance. Rich at TEM is a very stand up guy and has been working on high-end engines for years. He currently has a $40k Ferrari motor build in his shop receiving his special touch and builds stroker GTR motors and Lamborghini heads on the daily. Not only does he cater to high-end engines, but he knows his way around an m20; participating in the SPEC E30 series and building countless engines. Jeff has known Rich for over 15 years and recommended I have my machining done by no one but him.


I was welcomed into the shop warm-heartedly as Rich shared his insight on my project. He recommending that I go with a pressure test, jetwash, decked surface, and full valve job blueprint. I went ahead and moved forward with the process only to find out a few days later that after inspection, my camshaft and rockers were worn and pitted beyond the point that it would be safe to reuse. Most likely caused by the oil drip line being clogged; preventing oiling. I stopped the process after the jet wash and pressure testing.


I thought to myself… do I want to spend $500+ on a new cam and rockers? Certainly, that wasn’t what I had budgeted for. When I first met Rich, he told Jeff and I about an m20 stroker he built 4 years ago. The motor was installed in a track oriented e30 and driven around for less than a year. Resulting in an ignored fix it ticket and an impounded e30 with an expensive motor. Fortunately, the owner of the impound lot had connections to Rich; contacting him before it was sent off to the crusher. The car was sold back to Rich, then sat collecting dust for a few years. Just a few months ago, Rich came around to building a new SPEC car. Unfortunately, anything more than stock isn’t allowed, so the motor had to go.

I inquired about the motor, as he had no plans with it other than selling it to a BMW repair shop who frequently uses his shop for their machine work. I figured, what the heck, maybe I’ll get a good deal on it. For a low price, I purchased the recently fully rebuilt long block. Decked out with a Schrick Cam, 2.7 (maybe 2.8?) bottom end, and an 885 head. Unfortunately, we had an earthquake recently here in Napa, causing many businesses trouble. Rich was forced to open up shop in a new location and lost much of his documentation from previous work. He was unable to find the paperwork for the motor, so I’m attempting to contact the previous owner of the car for a full specs list. He recalled it made somewhere in the 200hp power range and had custom machining work done on the rods and head.

A couple weeks later, the motor was pulled from the old chassis and I transported it home on my dads pickup truck. I pulled the old motor and trans from my car with the help of my friend David, then spent some time cleaning the engine bay. I pulled the A/C (which had leaked and was no longer working) in hopes of some weight savings. I weighted it all to find that the lines, AC pump, condenser, and related components weighed 45lbs! Heck, I figured I might as well pull it if it doesn't work. However, I’ll hate myself next summer… Anyway… since the motor had been sitting it looked pretty ugly. improperly installed rocker shaft plugs caused a nasty oil leak, and Its accessories were painted a terrible red color (2011 e30 yuppie status). Since the accessories all had to go back to Rich for the new spec motor, I took my time to thoroughly cleaned, degreased all the accessories. Hot tanked the intake manifold, then refinished most of the visible parts in a nice VHT wrinkle black finish as I did with my valve cover way back when. Ceramic paint for the exhaust manifolds and new exhaust manifold studs from IE. I then cleaned the long block, and resprayed the engine block Ford racing blue! (come at me, purists) I assembled the motor with all the fresh parts and prepped it for install. New gaskets and seals everywhere, new oil pressure switch, rocker shaft end plugs, camshaft seal/ o ring, oil filter housing seal, rear main seal, new water pump, etc. (once again I can link the parts list if anyone is interested. I then had my flywheel resurfaced and lightened to just under 13lbs by TEM. Jeff and I bolted up the fresh flywheel, New Sachs clutch kit, installed a new tranny input shaft seal, brass clutch fork pivot, and mated the transmission.









Then we dropped it in with the new Garagistic urethane motor mounts to replace the harsh condor solid mounts. Later that night I started to worry about the trans input shaft flange. Jeff had told me I didn’t need a sealant on it. I didn’t think much of it and couldn’t find much on the topic online so I had just bolted it on. Wrong move. In an online document, 3 pages into the google search I found an early 2000’s scan of some papers saying sealant was necessary. The next day I dropped the trans and fixed the issue. One manning it took 45 minutes to drop the transmission (only parts holding it in place were a jack for support and the bolts connecting it to the motor/starter. One man installation was another story… Taking two hours, and being wrapped around a jack stand, controlling the jack with my leg and both hands on the trans aligning it in place. Not fun. On the first attempt, I ended up having to lower it back down. Thankfully for the transmission, it rested on my forearm as it lowered back down. Not so thankful for my arm… The second attempt was much healthier. I managed to get it in without too much trouble.



Installation of the rest of the components wasn’t terrible. I figured out the wiring harness positioning and routed all the coolant lines. Connected all the wires and finished it all off with the tail end of a timing belt job. Fired it up, and something wasn't right; two of the cylinders weren't firing. We chased the issue down to the rebuilt m50 fuel injectors. For some reason, two weren’t squirting. We swapped them back out for the stockies and fired her up… good to go! Filled the car up with coolant and bled the system.




I dropped it back on its wheels and fired her up… Time for a test drive! Pressed the clutch in and… wait… why is the clutch so soft? I tried to slide the shifter into gear without much success. The clutch wasn’t fully depressing. We bled the slave cylinder without any luck. I was stumped… I had double checked the transmission. At this point, I was nipple deep in studying for my first midterms and had no time, energy, or will, to work on the car. After all, all of this had been stretched over many many hours on a three-month timeline. I was tired, and “so done with this stupid car”. I spoke to Rich for shop recommendations to have it wrapped up. He recommended a shop run by a guy named AJ here in town. As it turns out, AJ not only does great repair work, but works on tons of hot rods, muscle cars, and dyno tunes as well. In fact, he was good friends with, and tuned Jeff’s s2000 swapped Toyota Corolla peanut!

I called up AAA and requested a flatbed. Within hours of dropping the car off, I was notified that it wasn’t a hydraulic issue and that the transmission needed to be dropped once more. Thankfully it was in good hands because I honestly did not want to do that again. The next day I received a call saying that the car was ready to be picked up, running, driving, and all! As it turns out… When Jeff and I had installed the clutch, we put the disk on backwards… I guess "gearbox side" doesnt mate to the flywhheel... I didn’t think to check it even though I had the transmission off twice. An issue and $600 of labor hours that could have been totally avoided… UGH!
The car is back on the road!




So far the car feels great. It certainly has quite an aggressive idle. But, it sounds VERY mean. The power feels great too, although I haven’t pushed it or done any pulls yet since I don’t have a proper tune for this specific motor. The added vibration from the low idle for the cam has basically compensated for the swap from solid to urethane motor mounts. I never noticed it before, but with the idle and lightweight flywheel; the notorious Getrag rattle has appeared when in neutral with the clutch engaged. I’m hoping the new chip will relieve this with the increased idle RPM. I’ll be ordering a new SSSquid “stage two 2.7i” chip soon to replace the TM chip I Currently have installed. Then I’ll be ready to rip up and down the mountains! I’d love to go full Mega squirt, however, it’s quite out of my price range as I’ve sunken quite a bit of money into the car these past few months. The damn old German gal really sucked my bank account dry… Ha! (Ignore the misaligned bumper. Still need to fix that...)


Anyway, I hope all of you have been well! Hopefully, this car won’t cause me any issues anytime soon with all the fresh parts I’ve installed. This has been a great learning experience in many ways and taught me many life lessons.

P.S. If you’re a full-time student, work, and have entrepreneurial projects on the side. DON’T take on a project his big… Ask me how I know! I really should have just had a shop take care of the hhead gasket. The car would have been back on the road sooner, and I would be less pooped from it all. But at least now I know everythhing was done right, and for the budget I got a fresh motor and almost everything has been replaced with new components!

Wow! This was a very brief recap of the past three months with the car, and I skipped over so much detail! But at 11:30 PM, 1700 words, and a beer later; I think I’m done with this update.

Next post will have some updates on the wheels and interior! :D

[rzerob]

Glad to see it back on the road. I have done a many of one man transmission jobs myself. After you do it a half dozen or more times you get the hang of it. I look forward to seeing updates of the interior.

[iwantspeed]

Congrats on the fresh motor in there!

[jpod999]

That was a lot of work and headache, but now that it's all done it must feel good!

[bmwtool]

Just read the whole thread, nice work! Can't wait to see the seats completed. :up:

[straight6pwr]

great work on this car, very inspiring. us midwesterners can only dream of having a car as clean as this. when you pulled the motor the engine bay still looks brand new!

[Cabriolet]

Andrei, what was wrong with the clutch?

[Trev]

Awesome stuff man. Glad you got the thing back up and running.

Andrei, what was wrong with the clutch?

I think he said they installed the disc on backwards.

[Toodaloo]

Hello! White late model coupe from the bay

Glad to see it back on the road. I have done a many of one man transmission jobs myself. After you do it a half dozen or more times you get the hang of it. I look forward to seeing updates of the interior.

It's been way too long! A little over three months to be exact. I'm excited to have my pride and joy back on the road and not stuck in the garage! I'll have the wheels in my next update, however the interior might have to wait a little bit as I'm prioritizing school.

Congrats on the fresh motor in there!

Thanks! I'm super excited to get a proper tune uploaded and see what she can do!

That was a lot of work and headache, but now that it's all done it must feel good!

It certainly was, it caused a reasonable amount of stress and I contemplated selling it once or twice. I'm happy to finally have it on the road though. It felt like nothing else to drive it for the first time after it was completed. :)

Just read the whole thread, nice work! Can't wait to see the seats completed. :up:

Thanks for taking your time to read it All! I certainly use a lot of words to describe simple tasks, so It can be very tedious. I'll work on keeping my future pints short and concise!
Thanks for your support and kind words!

great work on this car, very inspiring. us midwesterners can only dream of having a car as clean as this. when you pulled the motor the engine bay still looks brand new!

Trust me, I spent quite a bit of time cleaning the engine bay! It looked pretty dirty before the project, but thankfully no rust or any other major discrepancies! Let me remind you of what it looked like when I first got the car:


Unfortunately now a days, if you want a clean e30, you either have to; shell out a ton of money, or undergo tons of restoration. Ultimately, a lot of the time it ends up being more expensive restoring as your never ending chase for perfection just raises in standards. My car is far from perfect. That's what motivates me to keep improving it!
Clean, healthy e30's are roughly $10k cars here in the Bay Area. Pay it now, or pay it later! (I say that since for the past few months average prices for nice e30's on CL is in the $10k+ range)

Andrei, what was wrong with the clutch?

Awesome stuff man. Glad you got the thing back up and running.







I think he said they installed the disc on backwards.

Thanks man!

Yeah, my friend slapped on the disk and I compressed the pressure plate onto the flywheel without noticing it backwards. Ha, I guess the flywheel isn't "gearbox side"