I have an E 30.

[Nader393]

Since you asked, yes, it is quite awesome to race a vintage Alfa on a nice day. Especially when you've built most of the car yourself, and put it to good use by winning an occasional race. Haven't I posted the link up already?

https://www.alfabb.com/bb/forums/spider-105-115-series-1966-1994/156125-pics-duetto-racer-buildup.html

Since you brought this up, stand by for a gratuitous Alfa racing pic from the two summers ago when I won a cup race at Road America in Wisconsin (that older guy on stage right is the famous Porsche racer Vic Elford about to present me with a trophy bottle of wine):






But this is a thread about my E 30. My latest project was to paint the strut bar white to match the engine's valve cover. Along the way is a demonstration of tools. I used to join the anti tool snob bandwagon, and buy equivalent HF and various Taiwanese equivalents for cheap. Patted myself on the back for my frugality and practicality. Bragged about it to my wife, thinking she might find it attractive, and later bedded her in the night on the premise of my excellence in modern husbandry. You know, fixing shit around the house and such.

So! Here I am using a perfectly good GearWrench ratcheting combination wrench to install the brace:




Then I drank the Kool-Aid, and got a taste of Snap-on. They are unreasonably expensive. But if you use hand tools regularly (and it seems I do), then it's possible to justify the expense to own heirloom quality tools. Though it won't make you a better mechanic, you might enjoy the process a little more. Hard to explain to the wife, so I don't.

So here I am doing the exact same thing, with an equivalent wrench that inexplicably costs 10X more:




And here's the final product. Thanks, Rustoleum! Thanks, Snap-on!

[2mAn]

My dream is to have a vintage racer... How awesome is it with the Alfa on a nice day? I imagine it really sucks when it rains but that wont be my problem down here haha

[Nader393]

This is a deeper look at the Emerson brothers' journey. It's the last of the attention I'll give it in this E 30 thread, but something about their story appeals to me. Chasing one's dreams, and all that. Quixotic, in their case. For me, I'm just dicking around with tired old cars. So are you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/garden/touring-the-farm-where-the-emerson-brothers-recorded-their-1979-album.html

[Nader393]

Got the car's injector harness rewired. I used brass bullet connectors that are correctly crimped and sealed with marine grade heat shrink tubing, then encased in water-tight vinyl sleeves. Car fired right up. Whew!





As for naming the car, I'm over that. I did call it "Baby" a few times in moments of panic and darkness. Then while working on it today, I heard this song on my shop radio while tuned to KEXP:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONIJXHvoynw

Interesting story about the Emerson brothers. They grew up on a large farm outside of Spokane. As teenagers obsessed with composing their own music, their father believed in them enough to mortgage the 1600 acre farm to produce the album. This was in the recession-era mid-Seventies. Obviously, the album went nowhere, and the most of the farm acreage was lost, down to about 65 acres.

But, no, I won't be referring to the car as "Baby."

[CubbyChowder]

I hate it when people name their cars. I think it's stupid. Especially when it's a powerful, really fast sports car, and the owner names it "Bella" or some other fanciful, dainty woman's name. Does the car not have muscle? Balls?

So, I don't anthropomorphize my vehicles. Until now, and just this E 30. Here's why:

Haha this statement hits close to home, here's an excerpt from one of my past E30 build threads as I was introducing the car:

"I've never named one of my cars before, to be honest I just think it's weird. Like an E39 M5 named Tatiana is just weird to me. With that said, Golden Boy seemed fitting."

I thought the similarities were amusing :nice:

Just read through this whole build and thoroughly enjoyed it! Very informative and motivating. I'm currently refreshing an M20B25 for my '73 2002 and this thread is giving me all sorts of bad ideas but I'm doing my best to contain myself...

Looking forward to updates :up:

[2mAn]

I had the same issue with mine, huge pain in the butt.

SO what did you name the car? Buddy?

[Nader393]

I hate it when people name their cars. I think it's stupid. Especially when it's a powerful, really fast sports car, and the owner names it "Bella" or some other fanciful, dainty woman's name. Does the car not have muscle? Balls?

So, I don't anthropomorphize my vehicles. Until now, and just this E 30. Here's why:

The car seemed to do its best to impress me, even with the prior imposter engine that never really delivered. Car still felt and sounded fast. Now, after the engine transplant to a verified 2.7 stroker with a hot cam, the car definitely feels faster and entertains me even more. After sorting out the throttle position switch issue, the car seemed to be making every effort to win back my trust.
I've driven it a couple hundred fun miles without issue.

Importantly, it's taken me to work reliably, as one of my daily drivers. I have an unforgiving kind of job where I can't be late, and this car performed reliably for my week of shifts. Then the other day, after my last day of work before my extended time off, it took me a bit farther to drop off parts at the machine shop for the next engine (the 2.9).

On the way back, I was within three miles of home, when I thought this would be a good time to pick up some beer for my time off. I pulled off the highway, and the car started to stumble badly, like it wanted to stall. Had to keep the revs high to keep it from dying. Now, I drive this car hard, and had a hundred thoughts going through my mind of how I might have broken it. Like busted rockers, skipped tooth on the belt, dropped a valve, etc. All kinds of potential catastrophes.

I managed to limp the car home the remaining 3 miles on slow surface streets while it stumbled and backfired, very low on power. I kept saying, out loud, "Come on, baby, just get me home." And it did! Whew!

I've experienced this before on cars that didn't fire on all cylinders. So once I got home, I quickly popped the hood, and used an infrared temperature gun to check the headers. Cylinders 1, 3, & 5 were cooler than the rest. That tells me I lost an injector bank. Poor car struggled to get me home on 3 cylinders, and did it! Good car! My buddy! See, now it's more than a car, it's a being.

At home, the car was able to run on 3 cylinders while I futzed around the rest of the day trying to diagnose it. The next day, however, it wouldn't start at all. At this point, though bummed, I felt even a bit luckier, and grateful to the car, that it got me through work and errands far from home, and managed to conveniently die in my driveway after its final struggle. Poor thing!

I did a bunch of diagnostic testing, and ultimately discovered that there was a short in the harness between the injectors and the Motronic. I undid the injector harness plug (the one under the intake manifold) to find a bunch of dirty water in there. I had to pour it out! Cleaned the terminals, reattached it thinking that was the solution, but no go. I got mad, pulled back the rubber boot from the bottom connector, and found this:



Those happen to be the two wires for the two injector banks going back to the ECU. The #1, 3, 5 wire must have snapped on my drive, and the #2, 4, 6 broke after I fiddled with the harness while diagnosing the problem. Like I said, that plug retains water, and the wires eventually corrode from the inside out until this happens. I think that explains why the harness on the previous engine was "hacked" as I described it, and had spade terminals instead of this miserable, non-waterproof plug. So I cut off the plug, and peeled back the harness cover. I'm sure the muck and corrosion goes farther back than this:

[ahrensNW]

Love the car.

But seeing that damn buret makes me want to cry.

Now my nightmares will be filled with titrations again

[2mAn]

Im very curious to see what the block makes when you're done. What cam are you going to run with the 2.9?

[Nader393]

Wow that’s some serious reciprocating weight saving. I’m def going this route when I stoke the b25. Do you need to bother balancing the rods?

The rods are a nicely matched set, about a gram or so off between them. I might balance them down to zero if I run out of things to do while waiting on the machine shop.

Speaking of which, I've selected one and will be dropping off the block in a couple of days. When I called the shop a few days ago, and told the machinist that I wanted an M20 stroker block machined and the rotating assembly balanced, he seemed interested. When I told him that I had acquired a mishmash of parts to make it happen, he balked lightly and insisted on measurements of:

A. Piston compression height
B. Connecting rod length
C. Crankshaft stroke length
D. Block deck height

Rather than be irritated, I found that response reassuring. You want your machinist to be exacting. I took the measurements, and they were spot on within a fraction of a millimeter to fit. For the record, add A, B, and C/2, then subtract from D:

A. 29.8 mm
B. 135 mm
C. 84 mm
D. 207 mm

This whole process is a bit different from the machinist that is doing the head. He also does my Alfa race car head, and I consider him my friend. How good is he? He does heads for the private mechanics that maintain multimillion dollar car collections. He has a 1-2 year waiting list to do work. I don't mind waiting since I have another head ready to go, until "the good one" is done. His is an unassuming hole-in-the-wall shop, but he has heads stacked up from here to there, super exotic stuff including Le Mans winning Ferrari heads, and occasional vintage Formula 1 stuff. Always pulls out something crazy to show me when I stop in.

While I wait to take the block in to this other shop, I decided to clean up the threads for the head and main caps in preparation for ARP studs. The tap did a good job, but didn't go deep enough for studs that need to bottom out, so I ground down the tip of the tap to go deeper. I made it into a bottoming tap. See the pictures for comparison. Sure enough, it found more carbon and grunge down deep in the threads. Satisfying.

[Secniv]

I have an E 30.

These pictures are mildly interesting, too:



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[ATTACH]124524[/ATTACH]



[ATTACH]124525[/ATTACH]



[ATTACH]124526[/ATTACH]

Wow that’s some serious reciprocating weight saving. I’m def going this route when I stroke the b25. Do you need to bother balancing the rods?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Nader393]

This was supposed to be a 284 cam. But it says 280.

[Nader393]

Well, someone went through the care and trouble to engrave the rockers (and rods) with their respective positions (intake vs exhaust, and cylinder #), but the last person to reassemble this head put the intake rockers on the exhaust side, and vice versa. Theoretically screws up the cam break-in and wear patterning.

I went ahead and stripped it to reassemble correctly. Along the way, I notice that this is the third head I've encountered that shows evidence of rocker rod abuse. What manual describes pounding on these things as proper procedure for removal and installation? If you take a little care, you can slide the rockers off the springs a few at a time as you rotate the cam, and work your way to alleviating all tension on the rod, so it slips out by hand. Same when it goes in. Jeez.

[Nader393]

I looked a little closer at this extra head, the shaved one, and noticed something off. Can you see it? Hint: It's the rockers.




Here, have a closer look:

[Nader393]

These pictures are mildly interesting, too: