Ruby's Thread

[Northern]

That shifter looks the same as the ebay ones, except the cup is black instead of blue/red. I haven't gotten much life out of them, but I hope your experience is different.

[mike.bmw]

Nice updates! How do you like the Garagistic brake lines?

[Levy3Poop]

Nice updates! How do you like the Garagistic brake lines?

The brake lines are great. My only complaint is I couldn't get the ones above the rear subframe. Aside from that, they were easy to install. Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[Levy3Poop]

That shifter looks the same as the ebay ones, except the cup is black instead of blue/red. I haven't gotten much life out of them, but I hope your experience is different.

We shall see! Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[Levy3Poop]

I finally got motivated enough to do the diff swap after giving Ruby a good long wash and wax. Also, the 4.27LSD juuust started making a quiet sound, so that really motivated me to swap and not break the 4.27. I gotta say, I'm not really a fan of the diff stud kit after installing the 4.1LSD. instead of just raising it up and bolting it to the driveshaft, and then doing the bolts from the top of the subframe, now you get EIGHT bolts you have to work with. I ended up angling the rear of the driveshaft as much as I could, got the diff *just barely* on the driveshaft bolts, and then raising the diff and studs into position. It took about 6 hours worth of work because I'm retarded and didn't want to restart any time I got stuck after making a hair of progress. DON'T BE AFRAID TO RESTART BECAUSE YOU WERE DOING IT WRONG ANYWAYS! But yeah, test drive to the dog park was a success, and Ruby even makes less noise when driving now!

[jeenyus]

how are those new treehouse bushings? I have mine installed, but I haven't had a chance to drive on it. Did you notice a difference?

[Levy3Poop]

how are those new treehouse bushings? I have mine installed, but I haven't had a chance to drive on it. Did you notice a difference?

I haven't done the control arms and bushings yet. I'm gonna wait until the engine is pulled during the swap to do those since it will be much easier to access things then. That said, I can't wait to see the difference! Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[Levy3Poop]

After a few days of driving it around town and getting up to highway speeds, I can say there's definitely a reason the M42s came with the higher ratio lol. It's not bad, but definitely feels a bit more chilled out when going from a start. On a couple positive notes, my RPMs at 75mph went from 4k to 3800, and I don't have to shift to second almost immediately after starting from a stop. I feel more mellow with this new diff lol. That 4.27 was just a bad influence on my driving habits.

[Levy3Poop]

I got my inspection done today, and realized it's about damn time I change the air filter. Since it always takes me a long time to do anything, I ran a stopwatch and it took a whopping minute 15 second. Could have been sub minute if I didn't forget about one of the clips. Hard day wrenching over here! Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[Levy3Poop]

Small update, I installed Hella Supertone horns today. My OEM horn was dead, and missing the passenger side one completely. That explains why my horn hardly ever worked lol.

From the one horn I DID have, i opted to keep the OEM connector that plugs into the wiring on the car, that way if I need to remove the horn for some reason I don't have to cut wires and it's just cleaner overall.
I did heat shrink over the connectors pictured and the ones on the horn as well. I just crimped the wires into the OEM connector for a secure fit.


I can't figure out how to put text between the pictures with this new editor box, but whatever.
The second pic is the passenger side horn connector with the new wires coming from them. I had to fold back about 5 of the wires to make it wide enough to fit snugly inside the connector, but both wires felt snug. I did electrical tape wraps around the wires and the connector to help in water protection, and to just generally ensure they stay on the connector.

The third pic is just showing the heat shrink on the horn connectors for the fun of it.
I'm super glad to actually have a horn that I know will be heard.

[Levy3Poop]

Blah blah boring oil change 😑 Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[Levy3Poop]

Long time no update! I hope everybody is doing well in the new year, and that all of our little old BMWs are running great! Just going to be a basic little update today for an oil change at 260,000 miles. It's getting quite oily underneath Ruby, but I at least have some good news on the m54; I was finally able to get the timing cover off which now means that I can replace the gaskets around there and progress should actually be made this year. I'm trying to decide if I want to actually go ahead and replace the head gasket while the engine is on a stand, and replace the timing chain, but honestly the timing tooth don't have too much of a shark fin at all. I think I might leave the timing gears alone and just replace the chains if I do decide to change the head gasket. Little update on the sore throat shifter I got for Christmas last year, due to the inaccuracy of how the knob fit onto the new shifter, I had been too little metal tabs in the drive shaft tunnel that hold the shifter linkage in place. I was driving around forever just listening to the bottom of the shifter rub on the drive shaft before I finally decided to fix it. I spray painted over the area of the drive shaft with the car in gear on jack stands so the shaft was rotating, and there wasn't any rust on the drive shaft which was my main concern. Everything seems to be fine now though aside from the body of the shifter sitting loosely in the shifting linkage. My terminology is probably screwed up but it's not loose enough to absolutely hate or feel like I need to immediately replace. A couple of weeks ago I also did Ruby's annual coolant top off and coolant system burp. Of course right before I did that it was super cold and my heater wasn't working at idle because there wasn't enough coolant in the system (I think). Everything works well now in my temperatures stay right in the middle. Anyways, yeah, boring update aside from the m54 stuff. Sent from my motorola edge using Tapatalk

[Levy3Poop]

Big news (indirectly) for Ruby! To celebrate, she got a wash and wax again.
It has been way too long since I washed her. Just felt like every time I spent the 2 hours to really wash her the way I wanted, it would rain within the week.
No worries any more!

Keep scrolling to find out why :)



The formatting got fucked up, but meet my new 2014 FJ Cruiser: The Green Bastard!
Green Bastard gets dirty so Ruby can be clean!
I won't post too many pics of GB cause this isn't the forum, but man I love FJs lol
Also, now that Ruby isn't my DAILY driver, I won't have to worry about what I'm gonna drive during the *alleged* M54 swap.
Haha I joke that the m54 will never happen, but now I feel more motivated to get working on it.

Anyways, Hopefully progress on Ruby will be making more headway soon.
That is all!

[Levy3Poop]

I forgot to mention in my last update that I got new tires all around recently. The front tires are only about a year old and still had plenty of tread on them, but the rear tires were bald and I failed inspection until I got new tires. No idea how that happened ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Here's the kicker though, when I went to discount tire to get new tires, they wouldn't sell me the BF Goodrich G-Force comp 2 tires I had always been getting because their computer system all of a sudden was saying it was the wrong load index. They said they would replace the front tires for free for me since they put them on and it is the wrong load index according to their computer. I ended up getting all four tires for about 300 bucks thanks to that little change in their computer system! What everyone probably wants to really know though: the new tires are Dunlop Direzzas. They handle pretty well! After the new tires got put on the steering wheel was shaking like holy hell at 60 miles an hour, so I went back to discount tire for a wheel balance and they let me know one of my wheels is bent. I'm super bummed about that because I really love these bbs's on it. If anybody knows a good wheel repair shop in the DFW area please let me know. I can't seem to find any on Google Sent from my motorola edge using Tapatalk

[rzerob]

You could always ship the wheel somewhere for the repair. It would take a while but you could run a spare. Or wait until the winter when you are not driving it as much?