Stinky: The New DD: Is now the Weekend Car

[McGyver]

Thanks, JasonWilson48! It really has been a long road since my first e30 around 2007-ish to now.

Yeah, I'm down next to Pennsport in South Philly. The non-negotiable in the house hunt was to buy a garage - Either a house with a garage, a house + a garage somewhere, or a warehouse that we turn into a house. I can't tell you how nice it is to have a clean and organized space to work where I can lock the door and walk away until I have time to wrench again. I used to spend at least 30 minutes setting up / breaking down every time I worked on my car. It was such a hassle to put everything away any time I needed to run to the store for something. Get that door fixed and rekey the locks! Even a small space to store tools and working under an easy-up makes it so much easier. Just having a single 110v outlet on a 15A breaker is plenty to charge some battery powered tools, plug in a shop light or a fan, or power a small air compressor for filling tires or blowing off parts.

I'm excited to see your new e30 once you get the clutch figured out!

[McGyver]

Time for a brief interlude to fix an avoidable problem!

My wife and I took the car out two weeks ago to go to a different part of Philly, but only made it about 4 miles. The intersection of Broad and Girard has a SEPTA track that crosses Broad. It doesn’t look like much in the pictures, but it dips down before coming back up. I hit the brakes but it was too late, we slammed into the track and there was immediate smoke. I pulled over and shut off the car, then watched oil pour out onto the street.





I sent my wife home in an Uber and waited about an hour and half for a tow home, which was plenty of time to order a new oil pan and gasket from RockAuto. All the spare pans I have are fractured, so it’s time to get another TIG so I can start repairing them.



I started pulling the car apart before the parts arrived to make sure I didn’t need anything else. The skid plate was scraped and a little bent, but didn’t look too bad. The welds from CA looked pretty decent. Then I saw the crack. Yeah, that was the issue. I’m actually pretty impressed and plan to hang the pan on the garage wall.





Side note, it’s REALLY nice to have a clean place to lock up the car and tools at night. I love being able to walk away from the project for the night, or a few days, and having everything secure by just closing the garage door. It feels like such a luxury.



The parts from RockAuto arrived on a Wednesday. They only had cork gaskets, so I chose a close-out $5 FEL-PRO, which arrived as a tangled mess. I used it anyway with a light coat of RTV to help it stick to the pan. I only need a few months out of this engine, so it should be good enough. The oil pan is from URO for $174, which is the cheapest I could find online. It looks good enough, but the mating surface has a few spots where the flycut didn’t go deep enough to remove all the casting/machining marks. I figured the RTV was good enough to seal it.




I put a light coat of RTV on the oil pan to help the gasket stick, then a light bead of RTV on top of the new gasket to stick to the block. I scraped the block with a razor blade, then scrubbed it with scotch bright, then wiped it with acetone. The bottom end looked decent, but there was some RTV in the oil pickup and other spots from the last oil pan replacement. I guess I went a little too hard with the RTV that time. Oops.





The last thing was to mess with the exhaust connection to the cat. The tips on the Stromung were rubbing against the passenger side of the cutout on the valence. I tried loosening the connection to realign it, which helped a little, but it still rubs. I’m missing the brace between the cat and the transmission, which is probably allowing it to be off center. This is a problem for another day.



I’ve put about 80 miles on the new oil pan, no leaks! It’s been a little over 300 miles on the new head and it still drives great. No more coolant leaks. I tried putting another 15-45 degrees of torque on the head bolts, but I’m still getting oil weeping out of passenger rear corner. I guess I’ll just live with it.