Stinky: The New DD: Is now the Weekend Car

[McGyver]

'grats on the house! I'd love to see some renovation pics

As requested, here’s a brief interlude of house renovations. I have several thousand pictures from the whole renovation process, but barely any from having moved in. My focus was knowing where every beam, MEP component, and framing is located behind the walls. I also installed CAT6 and RG6 cable throughout for ethernet, POE cameras, and the antenna I installed on the roof.

We bought the place in October of 2022 and it took a while to figure out what we wanted to do with it. My wife is an architect, so she went through several design iterations before we settled on one we liked. At the time, she wasn’t licensed, so we had to hire a PE to stamp the drawing set she made. The whole process through License and Inspections took several months and was a massive headache. The engineer was terrible – He suggested all kinds of dumb/expensive ideas to solve simple/cheap problems.

As a corner property, our house was zoned for mixed commercial use and had been a general store. The owner lived upstairs and the first floor was the store. Eventually the owner built a shed to store material at the end of the back yard, then built a fence for the remaining yard, then changed that to a cinder block fence, and finally connected everything with a roof. So the max 80% lot coverage turned into 100% with a legal curb cut for the garage. Honestly, I thought the house was so ugly from the outside that the garage is the only reason I agreed to look at it.





This is what the place initially looked like. At some point the house was an upper and lower unit. Then it was combined, but still had 2 kitchens, 3.5 baths, and 3 bedrooms. The plan was some paint, flooring, move a bathroom, call it a day. (Had ripped the paneling off the walls in the last pic)





Once I took down some drywall, I found all kinds of plumbing and electrical issues. We decided to take it down to the plaster/brick walls, fix all the issues, and put it back together correctly. This let us get modern plumbing, electrical, ducted HVAC, insulation, walls, etc.






It was pretty wild to see it getting framed out. All the lines from our drawing set came to life and we were stuck with them.





Getting the walls up and paint really made it feel like a house again after months of leaks, no windows, and general chaos. Fun fact: I decided to buy appliances on Black Friday sale after we bought the place in 2022 because I expected a 6-month renovation. So they got to sit in storage for almost 2 years before getting installed. Fun!






We were pretty happy with the final product. Some of the finishes and details were a little challenging for the price-point of contractor we hired. Overall, it’s a really nice space to be and nice to finally have a place of our own where I don’t have to hide my car hobby or worry about a landlord needing access.

[McGyver]

Ok, so now the house is (basically) done, the garage floor is great, and the garage is painted. I’m still unemployed and have some free time. Do we start the building the engine? NO! WE HAVE OTHER PROJECTS FIRST!!!

Stinky was fucking disgusting from not being cleaned well in years. Leo left all kinds of slime in the back, we tracked in mud and things spilled. I was tired of driving such a crusty car. I bought a portable carpet cleaner for pet incidents, so I went to work on the carpet. I must have put 10+ gallons of water through the carpet to get it looking decent again. I pulled apart all the door cards and seats to clean them. Also took the time to replace the weather seals in all the doors. The “before” pictures are embarrassing photos. The “after” result was extremely satisfying. I also replaced the inner part of the door handles on the f30. The soft-feel plastic turns to goo over time and it was just super nasty
.








Then the Eagles won the Super Bowl, GO BIRDS!!! We all climbed our light poles and ate our horse shit.



Then I got back to the last few major garage projects. I finally reinstalled the threshold to keep garage smells out of the house. It was actually a bit of a headache to get the height correct, level, and solid. But it came out well.



I wanted to protect my fresh floors from marks when rolling things around the garage, so I began replacing all of the wheels on my tool box, cart, and storage cabinet with polyurethane wheels. Then I decided to modify my engine stand to use the same polyurethane casters. The initial attempt left the engine drooping down, so I had to make an extension to raise the front of the stand. This left the engine empty block slightly lifted up, but will be just about level when I put the whole thing together.

I covered the car with a fiberglass blanket to protect it, but didn’t cover the floor. Well, my flux core splatter made a million little burn marks in the epoxy. Yay. I’m not a welder, but I feel pretty good about how the whole thing turned out.





The final major project was getting a utility sink installed. I had the builder leave a hot and cold water line sticking out of the garage wall. He also left a drain stub.

I decided to get the biggest sink possible so I could fit big car parts. I also decided to get stainless steel for durability. The sink came with legs, but I wanted to wall mount it in the corner so it would be easier to mop under it.

So I got some angle iron and C-channel, cut it to length, welded it together, and mounted it to the walls using concrete anchor plugs. I stood on the mount and bounced a bit to test, it held me just fine, so I’m sure its solid enough! I cut the legs of the sink short to get it to the right height while sitting on the mount. Then I installed a shelf up high, then realized I should have a lower one too for soap and things.

Since the garage drain runs into the kitchen drain line, I installed an Air Admittance Valve to ensure I didn’t suck a p-trap dry or run into other drainage issues. I also made sure to install 1/4 turn ball valves in an accessible spot to shut off water to the sink. This ended up being really handy because it took several tries to stop all the leaks from the cheap hardware that came with the sink.

For some reason, I convinced myself that my house was plumbed with PEX-A (expansion). If I had looked at it, I would have noticed that they used PEX-B (with compression rings). I had bought PEX-A fittings and an expansion tool, so I had to make adapters connect the two. I suppose returning the tool and getting PEX-B was an option, but I didn’t think about it.

You can also see the storage rack I bought to hold all my power tools and batteries, freeing up a drawer in my tool box.





Another key project was getting the fire extinguisher hung. It’s in a great spot and even has room for my boots under it.



The giant drain line going around the garage collects the water from the main roof and the garage roof (soon to be a roof deck) and channels it into the sewer. It’s also in a terrible spot right in the middle of an otherwise flat wall, forcing my workbench to be 6” off the wall. So I made a little wooden shelf to cover the gap.



And now, we are finally ready to start measuring and building the engine.

[AWDBOB]

House and garage build look great! I've been following Chris Hytha's Philly row home project on youtube for a while. I think you'll really enjoy the 2.7L build- assume you'll manual swap at the same time?

[2mAn]

I gotta step up my garage setup… place looks great

[McGyver]

House and garage build look great! I've been following Chris Hytha's Philly row home project on youtube for a while. I think you'll really enjoy the 2.7L build- assume you'll manual swap at the same time?

Yeah, I've got all the manual stuff in the basement. My manual driveshaft got roughed up when the coupe got t-boned, so it needs to be rebuilt or replaced. I'm thinking the engine swap will be a winter thing when I don't want to drive the car.

I gotta step up my garage setup… place looks great

It's been a long journey to get it to this point, and I still need to get more storage on the walls.

Putting the heater in was great as a quick source of heat, but the summer heat and humidity is a killer here. Its currently 82F and 79% humidity in the garage. Spending money on a mini-split AC/Heat Pump probably would have been a better choice. My fan helps, but I'm worried about humidity growing mold, rusting metal, or damaging electronics. I just don't think $1500 for a minisplit is in the budget right now, so I may get a dehumidifier and mount it high above the sink.

[McGyver]

With the garage functional, it was finally time to get started on building the new engine. I was getting a misfire on 1 or two cylinders at startup that went away after a few minutes. I was really only using the car for short trips around Philly when I didn’t want to lose my street parking spot and spend forever trying to park. I figured I had plenty of time I was taking it easy with the build.

Then the car started getting an occasional misfire after running for a while. Then it started smelling like burnt coolant. Then the white smoke started. I decided to park the car until the new engine was ready to preserve what’s left of the factory cat. I didn’t think the build would take too long and I didn’t want to waste time/money on replacing the head gasket.

Well the engine was taking longer than expected. Plus I need the driveshaft rebuilt. And I need to pick a performance clutch. There’s probably other things that need to be pieced together. So I convinced myself that if a timing belt can be done in 2-3 hours, the head gasket is probably only another hour or two. The bolts are only $16, a head gasket is about the same, and a full gasket kit is only $67. I got the full kit so I could remove the intake and exhaust, making it easier to pick up the head. This ended up being a great idea. I also realized that my timing belt was about 5 years old, so I grabbed a new one and tensioner.

Getting the head off was pretty quick. I was cleaning everything I took off the car as I went so that reassembly would be more pleasant. The steam cleaning and excess coolant was very visible in cylinder 3. I notice that the head gasket didn’t look too bad, but I assumed that I was just missing the failure point.





I pulled apart the head so I could clean all everything in the ultrasonic tank and then scrub them. Then I noticed the crack from the valve seat to the coolant channel. I was really upset that the simple job now required a new head or welding/machine work. I was hoping to slap it together and get another 3-6 months of driving in the nice weather and do the swap over the winter. So the car just sat for a couple of weeks while I looked for a new head.




I found some local stuff, but I felt like it was a little overpriced. Then I found a head for cheap, which turned out to be free because the guy felt it was too rough to charge anything for. It was caked in grease, was rusty, and full of grass/leaves. But it didn’t look cracked!





For those counting, I now had 3 heads floating around: 1 cracked, 1 dirty, 1 built for the new engine. I also picked up a spare intake and valve cover. Plus I had the engine. The garage became a mess of parts everywhere in various states of cleanliness.



The first step was getting the cracked head back together. I installed the valves, cam, and rocker shafts, but kept the rockers in a bag so the head can be stored flat without bending a valve.



Step 2 was a full cleaning of the new head, which required stripping it. Small parts went into the ultrasonic tank, larger parts got scrubbed with purple power, aluminum got plastic scrub brushes and steel got brass to remove all the gunk. Its not pictured, but the cam and rocker pads both look ROUGH. This is a 3-6 month engine. The rockers can be tossed and the cam can be reground later (or tossed).



This left me with some ugly valves. We have buffers at work that take laser etchings off steel without removing much of the steel. For better or worse, I decided to use a buffer to get all the carbon off the valves. They look great, hopefully they didn’t have a protective coating!






Now I had pretty valves with pitted sealing surfaces and valve seats that were equally ugly. I lapped in all the valves as best as possible. There’s still some deep pits, but that’s going to take machine work to fix. The goal was good enough to putz around town.





Reassembly time. New valve stem seals. Springs, seats, retainers, and valves all lightly lubed. Cam, rocker shafts, and rockers heavily lubed. The head actually looks pretty great. Obviously it should have been machined, but I wanted to save that for a real rebuild. I kept telling myself this is a 3-6 month engine.






The block got degreased as best as possible. The blind holes for head bolts got cleaned out. Everything else in the engine bay got wiped down with Simple Green to make it all look a little better. Again, it all looks pretty good! Just don’t look at how worn and pitted the some of the cylinder walls are. This block would be great for 1.0mm overbore for a 2.9L stroker. It’ll also be good enough for 3-6 months.

[McGyver]

Hi everyone, how’s it going? In this post we’re going to start the car! (best YouTube impression)

Buttoning it up was pretty simple, except for forgetting that the bitch tube goes in BEFORE the intake manifold. I had to take the thing off twice before I got everything on in the correct order.

I wiped the head and block with acetone to clean it. Then installed the gasket dry. Head bolts and washers were lightly lubed with motor oil. The head went on smooth bolts got torqued to 33Nm (wait 15 min), 90* (wait 15 min), 90* – All while the engine was cold. (we’re coming back to this) I’m fairly certain that I didn’t miss any of the bolts during the torque sequence, but I did get interrupted mid-process. Next time I’ll mark them for each step.

New oil filter and exhaust manifolds went on next. Followed by the timing belt and tensioner (water pump wasn’t removed). I torqued the cam gear and checked that the timing marks lined up after many rotations. Then I set the valve clearance to 0.010” cold. Then the timing covers went on.
Notice how pretty the exhaust manifolds are; Someone grabbed a can of enamel paint instead of high temp paint and didn’t realize until too late.

Eventually the intake, hoses, fuel lines, radiator, pullies, and other stuff was on. I also put in new plugs, filled it with oil and coolant. It was nice to have it parked on a slope for the bleeding process!





It was at this point that I was annoyed that the engine and bay looks like crap after spending so much time cleaning all the other stuff I took off. Whatever, it’s together.




I left the coil disconnected and cranked it a few times to get oil pressure. Then realized the fuel was still connected and I was probably flooding it. No time to worry about that! I plugged in the coil and it fired the first start!

I was annoyed that I spent so much time and effort working on the car, only to have it functional again. I mean, it drove, so that was an improvement, but it was still a tired m20 with a half-assed head.

So I decided to toss the Strömung exhaust on it! It definitely louder and deeper than my stock exhaust. It sounds great at idle, but it also drones a ton around town and on the highway with the constant RPMs of an autotragic. That may be partially due to an exhaust leak from not having the 75mm seal. I just ordered one, so I’ll see if that helps.

I drove about 12 miles around town and it seemed fine, so I figured it was ready for the 30 mile drive to work (which includes highway). I can't tell if it feels down on power, or I'm just used to the tuned 335i, but it had plenty of power for the next few months. I’ve got too much rear toe-in that needs to be fixed and the tires aren’t balanced, but overall it was fine!



Now the bad news. The exhaust manifolds look terrible – whatever.

I also have oil weeping from the passenger side of the back of the head gasket, the two bolts next to cylinder #6. Can I torque those bolts more? How risky is it for them to snap?

It does NOT like to start when hot. It always started on the second turn of the key, but now it takes 3+. I have a new blue coolant temp sensor that I can toss on. Any other ideas?

[AWDBOB]

1) The head bolts are TTY, so in theory now that they’re already stretched, they would just stretch more vs getting tighter. If I recall correctly TobyB was talking about this in an old thread. Perhaps he has more insight.

2) All of the M20 head gaskets on the market I’ve used recently seem to leak oil from either the front or the back of the head where yours is leaking. There’s a thread on using a small bit of anaerobic gasket maker around the silicone oil rings between the block and the HG to keep them from leaking.

3) When you do your 2.7 if you’re shaving the deck 2mm, make sure you run a tap all the way down the head bolt threads since the bolts will now be engaging a few that weren’t used before. EDC Matt spoiled a HG and a set of bolts that way.