Another for the Collection - Mtech 2 Vert S50!!

[e30rapidic]

nice work sir!

[KIRIEIW]

So a few more things got done today since I had the day off for Thanksgiving. I got super lucky, the janitor was cleaning up the shop today in the morning when I drove by and I was able to grab my tools! I would have been screwed otherwise, I'm actually shocked he was there on a holiday.

So since I had my tools I got to work disassembling the front strut housings to prepare them for ground control. My little Milwaukee gun made the job super simple, its so compact and is rated at 220ft ibs.. Check out the size of it next to my hand! Believe it or not it even took the two 36mm nuts off which hold the wheel bearings in place. The other tool which made the job just that much easier was my ball joint separator tool. Sure beats using a hammer to beat them loose.

I got everything done in under an hour, I was shocked. Now I'm bored and figured I'd update the build.










I didn't even need spring compressors, just stack up some extensions and pull the trigger

[KIRIEIW]

Alright guys so a couple exciting updates for me to bring. First off I ended up sending my SI Board to Bavrest to get rebuilt. Just replacing the battery's alone wasn't enough to fix my issue, I guess it turned out to be a bad capacitor in the motherboard.

Secondly and more exciting, I bought another e30. Salvage title, not running with rust and one of the worst body's I've ever seen. Supposedly only has 88k miles on it which I actually believe since it was a older guy in his 70's, the car has the original 6 point cylinder head bolts and the trip odometer isn't stuck at 0. It only cost me $850 bucks but you may be asking yourselves why a guy who tends to buy fairly nice condition e30's would buy such a horrible condition car. One reason, hardtop. Well two, it also has a 4.10LSD! Bad news is I have a nearly 4,000 pound paper weight in front of my house with nowhere to go. It was rather interesting getting this car out from it's near burial spot it sat in so long. On one side we had maybe 50 wooden logs stacked up, the other old remains of a fence or something that was torn down. Me and my buddy had to drive back to my house to get a jack, jack it up underneath the differential and with him pulling the jack, me pulling the bumper, we got the car swung out enough to push it out. Tons of spiders all over, not fun.

Besides the cool news, I got a few other things done on the Mtech. The car had a aftermarket tracking unit installed for some reason or another. The good news is they only spliced into two wires under the dash to get this crappy thing to work so I just soldered the wires back together, put some heat shrink over the exposed solder joint, and wrapped it up in some Genuine BMW felt electrical tape. I also decided to remove all the seats to give the carpets a good scrub which I haven't had a chance to do yet, but should this weekend.

There's one more cool update.. I decided to go all out and bought some Ground Control coilovers today.. Ya, lots of money spent this month on my little Mtech but it had to be done :D. Ground Control's having a small Black Friday sale, $150 off full suspension sets. I'll be sending out the front strut housings next week to be shortened and powdercoated.

Oh ya, I also successfully started the parts car. I took the valve cover off and poured a half quart or so of oil over the camshafts, tried cranking the car over to start and within 40 seconds or so it fired right up. Idles great AND drove great on my test drive down the block.

















Check out that body damage on the parts car.





I plan on swapping the ellipsoid headlights over to the Mtech.

[CorvallisBMW]

Love it! Reminds me exactly of my 'vert when I first bought it.

[KIRIEIW]

I'm loving all the great progress in this thread!

For what it's worth, I've taken my cluster out a number of times without removing the steering wheel (airbag) or any steering column plastic trim on my '91 318is. It takes the right rotation and can be slid out towards the head unit. I had to swap my SI board, replace some bulbs, and also PlastX'd the cluster on different occasions. Here's my post on it: https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/sho...0&postcount=87

Hmm interesting. The trouble I was having was getting the trim piece removed I was holding in my hand above. It just wouldn't clear the steering column covering. Out of the 2 or 3 airbag cars I've done I've noticed guys have trimmed the backside's of that trim piece, most likely to help clear for removal a second time around. I'm wondering if yours was trimmed down.

[mike.bmw]

I'm loving all the great progress in this thread!

For what it's worth, I've taken my cluster out a number of times without removing the steering wheel (airbag) or any steering column plastic trim on my '91 318is. It takes the right rotation and can be slid out towards the head unit. I had to swap my SI board, replace some bulbs, and also PlastX'd the cluster on different occasions. Here's my post on it: https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/sho...0&postcount=87

[KIRIEIW]

It's amazing...I did the EXACT same cluster refresh this weekend on this rescue project..right down to the batteries and PlasticX !! Only difference is that I did do the odo gears (they were toast) and the tach still doesn't work :(

What the hell are the chances! Even used PlasticX haha, I have some bad news too jeff. My "inspection" light still stays on (the reason I replaced the battery's basically). I tried numerous times and it just refuse's to reset.. I'm going to be sending it out to BavRest tomorrow along with a few other parts I have around the house for store credit, he thinks one of the capacitors went bad. I want this car done right the first time around rather than taking the gauge cluster apart 3 or 4 times to finally fix the issue like I've done in the past :D

[jeffnhiscars]

It's amazing...I did the EXACT same cluster refresh this weekend on this rescue project..right down to the batteries and PlasticX !! Only difference is that I did do the odo gears (they were toast) and the tach still doesn't work :(

[KIRIEIW]

So today I finally decided to tear into the gauge cluster and install new SI Batteries. Wow are the airbag cars much more complicated then the non airbag equipt e30's. Seriously though, you need to remove the the steering column covering to properly remove the cluster shrouds! While removing everything I have to say, everything felt tight like no one was "in there" before and sure enough I was right. While pulling out the cluster wiring I found the factory "tamper proof" tie downs used to keep away non dealer trained mechanics from messing with the gauge cluster. It kinda put a smile on my face knowing how original the car truly is.

With the cluster out of the car I started disassembling it to get the SI Board removed. Using a soldering iron I removed the old original battery's and installed brand new ones. At the same time I cleaned the back sides of the temp. gauge and fuel gauge since they always tend to form a little corrosion where the nut's hold them securely in place. Lastly I gave the gauge cluster face a quick polish with some plastic cleaner I had, came out great. I thought about replacing the odo gears as preventive maintenance but decided against it, I think one of the main reasons they fail is because people reset the trip meter while the cars moving and since I'd never do that I hope these original ones will last at least for the time I own the car.











All that work just to remove this stupid thing, which is easily removed on non airbag cars:













Installing the new batteries

[Echo30V]

Great job, looking really good.

2mAn: If I lived out west I’d help you do that swap. Get it done.

[KIRIEIW]

Do you plan on buying a hard top for this one as well?

I really hope I'll be able to find one, but yes I do. I got my last one with pure luck, I found it at a junk yard.. $120 out the door. I'm sure I'll be spending around $1000 this time around!

Ok so I finally wasn't lazy and had a chance to put my registration stickers on. Someone in the past did a real crappy job removing older registration stickers because they scratched the license plate pretty bad in the process. I ended up transferring all the new registration stickers over to my front license plate which was in much better shape. Also I found what I like to call "the ultra rare red screwdriver" in my parts collection and had to add that to the cars tool kit :D

[Cha Ching]

The soft top on this does actually work but the tension straps are so worn out that it doesn't want to fold/ crease the top by itself. I'm still not sure what route I want to but at least it works somewhat now, it didn't fold at all when I bought it!

From what I have seen, the tension straps are the key to making the top fold correctly, without the need to fold the top by hand.

Do some research for the reinforcement plate that is available for your soft top motor. Apparently, the weak link in the whole system is the flexing which occurs while operating and strips the gears. The plate keeps everything aligned.

My point is, if you have the working motor and components in place, keep it working as that truly makes your convertible a unique (and more valuable) piece.

[rzerob]

Do you plan on buying a hard top for this one as well?

[KIRIEIW]

Gotta sub to this awesome build. I've got some work to do on my Appearance Group M Tech as well! Keep the working top mechanism if you can! It will make your car that much rarer to have a working top.

The soft top on this does actually work but the tension straps are so worn out that it doesn't want to fold/ crease the top by itself. I'm still not sure what route I want to but at least it works somewhat now, it didn't fold at all when I bought it!

[Cha Ching]

Gotta sub to this awesome build. I've got some work to do on my Appearance Group M Tech as well! Keep the working top mechanism if you can! It will make your car that much rarer to have a working top.