Mike's Alpine White 1991 318is

[fresh_TD]

I need to make it back up to Katie's soon. The 318is is looking minty!, Mike.

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[connorb850]

I went with Redline 75W90 and new crush washers.

Good choice. I reinstalled my diff today and man, that stud kit would have made things easier.

[mike.bmw]

I need to make it back up to Katie's soon. The 318is is looking minty!, Mike.

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Thanks, it'll be good to start meeting up there again!

[mike.bmw]

LSD Install



So I considered not even posting about this because I'm quite embarrassed and I feel like an idiot. However, this is a thread about my experiences with the car, no matter how dumb, so I'm posting this to close the loop on the LSD saga.

Today I started to install my newly acquired small case S4.10. My plan of attack was to break each bolt loose before actually removing anything. I got the car up on stands. I was through the drive shaft bolts, the diff bushing bolt, and 10 of 12 of the axel bolts. To get to the axel bolts loose I needed to rotate the rear wheels. On the second to last bolt I noticed the wheels were turning the same direction. Hmmmm, that's odd.

You may already see where this is going. I will preface this next part with the fact I have decoded my VIN multiple times on multiple sites. This car was NOT originally optioned with an LSD.

So I started furiously cleaning the diff tag. The first letter looks like an "S".



So I started furiously cleaning the bottom of the diff. This took a while, but after about 5 minutes I started seeing the outline of an "S" stamping. I spent another 5 minutes and saw this:



So, yeah, ... The car already has a small case 4.10 LSD in it. Yep, I've been looking for one for over 2 years and I already had one. Yep, I never bothered to read the diff tag. Yep, I never bothered cleaning the bottom of the diff to look for the large "S" stamping. Yep, I'm embarrassed as hell (but that didn't stop me from calling Zeemz and telling him the story).

So I loctite'd and torqued everything back to spec and left that diff in the car. I'll keep the "new" one as a spare.

On a positive note, during my search and acquisition, I have met some cool folks and was able to take a really fun and memorable road trip with my daughter. I'll chalk this up to a learning experience and move on.

Stromung exhaust update
My Stromung exhaust will be arriving in a couple weeks. Scott @ Stromung has been great and gave me a few options for tips. Looking forward to installing this soon. And, yes, I have verified I don't already have a Stromung exhaust installed on the car.

[Jokester]

should've tried a burnout to see if it was an LSD or not :devil:

[mike.bmw]

should've tried a burnout to see if it was an LSD or not :devil:

Yeah. This is still boggling my mind. I keep asking myself how I could miss something so obvious and here's what I've come up with...

Shortly after buying the car 3 years ago I remember getting under the car to inspect the diff. It was very hard to read the tag and the bottom of the diff didn't appear to have the "S" stamp. What I thought was black paint on the diff housing turned out to be a tar-like substance. Also, I think I remember spinning one wheel and seeing the other spin the opposite direction. So between the wheels spinning opposite directions and the car not being optioned with LSD from the factory, I just assumed it was the more common small case open 4.10.

The fact the car already has LSD better explains why I never spun an inside wheel at any of the track events. I was just assuming (there I go assuming again) the 318 didn't have enough power to do so. ;) This also better explains the behavior on a wet skidpad.

I'm not one for burnouts, but I may give that a try later today to test the lock up.

[dmanb2b]

So I loctite'd and torqued everything back to spec and left that diff in the car. I'll keep the "new" one as a spare.


Stromung exhaust update
My Stromung exhaust will be arriving in a couple weeks. Scott @ Stromung has been great and gave me a few options for tips. Looking forward to installing this soon. And, yes, I have verified I don't already have a Stromung exhaust installed on the car.

Any chance I could convince you to sell that spare Mine is coming out of storage in next month or two...perhaps I should wipe the diff too before I start the hunt!

Good news on exhaust...I am bummed I missed the GB. Thanks for organizing;D

[Albie325]

What a pleasant surprise on the diff! I've seen your COTM article and finally had a chance to read through this build thread, what a great car (and great owner). I wish some of the details you included were more applicable to my m20b27, great stuff. Keep it up!

[Jokester]

If that LSD ever goes bad you got another one to replace it. Keep up the work. Love how simple the build is

[econti]

:p :p That's a nice surprise to have. Oh well, at least you have a spare now

[mike.bmw]

Any chance I could convince you to sell that spare Mine is coming out of storage in next month or two...perhaps I should wipe the diff too before I start the hunt!

Good news on exhaust...I am bummed I missed the GB. Thanks for organizing;D

Going to keep this one as a spare, thanks!

What a pleasant surprise on the diff! I've seen your COTM article and finally had a chance to read through this build thread, what a great car (and great owner). I wish some of the details you included were more applicable to my m20b27, great stuff. Keep it up!

If that LSD ever goes bad you got another one to replace it. Keep up the work. Love how simple the build is

:p :p That's a nice surprise to have. Oh well, at least you have a spare now

Thanks, all!

To completely close the loop on this I found out why I remember the rear wheels spinning opposite directions during my LSD "test". At the time I was also working on the parking brake so when I spun the wheels there was a ton of resistance (due to parking brake work being performed), but they did spin opposite directions. The reason why they spun in opposite directions is because I had the car in gear, so the DRIVESHAFT WAS NOT ROTATING. If the driveshaft is fixed in place, the wheels will spin different directions, with a significant amount of resistance!

[mike.bmw]

Strömung exhaust install

Earlier this week I received my Strömung exhaust in the mail. Because I organized the group buy, Scott @ Strömung gave me some custom tip options. I opted for a 3", dual walled, straight exit tip (their normal tip is 3.5"). I'm happy I went with the smaller tip as I think it fits perfectly (see photos further down post).

It was packaged quite well!



Today I got to work installing it. First order of business was to get the car in the air and soak the nuts and bolts with PB Blaster.



After that soaked for a bit, I proceeded to snap off the rear muffler hanger studs. Go me!



Not to worry, after trying to hammer out the remains and failing, I just drilled them out and used some nice new hardware. At some point I'll replace the hangers.



Then I removed the old exhaust from the car, which had holes all over the top of it, which explains why the stock-replacement exhaust was so loud.





And then I installed the new one.



Nailed it. Perfectly center.

[fresh_TD]

Looks good. I had one on mine, they sound good.

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[ATL_E30]

Looks great Mike! Can't wait to get mine on!

[TFJR]

Looks perfect! The exhaust looks like a quality unit. We need a high quality exhaust clip now!