Bought a POS, this is R3Vs fault

[2mAn]

Well... this sh!t took way too long to do. I was out of town the weekend following the removal/ destruction of the knuckle and I had Charlie help with drilling stuff out, but we underestimated garagistic's QC and after a longer-than-anticipated break I reconnected with him to drill out the additional holes for the bushing. Now its assembled and Im on a mission to get the car back together this weekend so I can only have ONE annoying project car.



If you see something wrong with my assembly, please tell me now before it gets installed!..


I wont likely take any pics of the reassembly because who cares, but once its all done I am going to have JMP do an alignment for me and maybe let them deal with some of the smaller, annoying things... or not. I just want it to be good to go for the 4/18 Buttonwillow track day.

[JasonWilson48]

I don't currently have a vice or workbench. Drilling the coupler was a pain lol. Took me a good 2 hours to get it drilled and reassembled. Holding it with my foot on the ground, or between my feet.

[2mAn]

Half-way through a project update...

After having driven a few cars with much quicker steering racks I knew I wanted to replace mine. The only challenge was that mine was going to remain un-assisted so I was advised to avoid the Z3 rack. Ended up settling on a yellow tag E46 rack.



Finally had a chance to get working on it. First thing I noticed was how much crap was collecting in the fenders. If you've ever seen an E30 with rusted out lower front fenders, this is the culprit. Free weight reduction too!!








You have to keep clearing things out until you can see daylight in the bottom of the fender where the normal drain is



With that distraction out of the way, the steering rack job is fairly straight forward. Some silly delays because I haven't done the swap in several years, but relatively quickly and easily the old rack is out and the new one is (sort-of) ready to go in.



"Sort-of" being the key word, because I had previously bought the swap kit from garagistic with the spacers, but I didnt buy the steering coupler. I was again advised to also replace that.



Luckily I begged and pleaded and Sh3rpak!ng will help to wrap up the knuckle mods because Im out of town this weekend... I also need to get the car back together soon. This is as far as I'm at before I hand off the knuckle.



Finally, all this is pointless to just drive this around in LA city streets, so I had hinted to wifey that I want to hit a few track days this year. I finally just signed up for a track day with NASA at Buttonwillow in April, but I've also got my eye on a day at Sonoma raceway in July, which will be another HUGE bucket list for me. Its another epic California race track that I will get a chance to run after having gotten a chance to run on Laguna Seca most recently (2024!...) .

Goal for track days is to try and get to 4 in a year, so this is 2 tentatively circled on the calendar and I just need to find a way to sneak at least one more in... 2 more would be magical.

[Northern]

I guess I used some variation of Jim's method (RIP) because I don't want to remove a wheel stud and try to adjust that POS through the tiny hole...
Back off the nuts under the handle.
Remove the rotor, remove any lip it has, adjust the adjuster until the rotor barely slides on/off and spins without extra drag.
Pull the brake up to take the slack, put it down and pull and tighten the nuts until there's no slack - handle not applying pressure to the nut/cable, but not a big air gap.
Make sure the rotor still spins freely.

[2mAn]

Are there OEM / aftermarket brake scoops for the cowcatcher?


IIRC the original undertray for the cowcatcher has some small brake ducting built in that grabs air from the bottom outermost slots.
On my car I never bothered to install the undertray since it just gets in the way.

You are correct, they were all functional scoops on the Cowcatcher. The IS center ducts were for the Oil Cooler, while the outer ones that were present on both versions were for the brakes. Similar to the late models which routed air to the fender liner.

If you have a 3D printer that can print large enough, you can reproduce them for a few $$ to get the file. I dont, so I have been watching this guy on ebay, he sells the scoops, the brackets and even the lower trim

[Panici]

...I want to buy the brake scoops specific to the cowcatcher...

Are there OEM / aftermarket brake scoops for the cowcatcher?


IIRC the original undertray for the cowcatcher has some small brake ducting built in that grabs air from the bottom outermost slots.
On my car I never bothered to install the undertray since it just gets in the way.

[MrBurgundy]

Simon's new free e brake

[2mAn]

Big if true. I’m always jacking while browsing R3V. No one has charged me for it… yet.

If you have a r3vlimited sticker on the new car, it will free jacking for life.

e-brake “fix” didn’t work, guessing the shoes are worn. Future problem…

I did start installing the sunroof panel finally, and also bled the brakes. No pics because, why?

I’ll take one soon when the new panel is full done

[JasonWilson48]

Quote is broken about 65% of the time.

Jacking, er, using a jack handle is free.

Big if true. I’m always jacking while browsing R3V. No one has charged me for it… yet.

[roguetoaster]

Quote is broken about 65% of the time.

Jacking, er, using a jack handle is free.

[McGyver]

First, is the quote button broken for everyone, or just me?

Second, Why u no get a new hood strut? They're like $15 and then you don't have to use a jack handle to hold the hood up?!?!

[2mAn]

One of the many things I need to do on the car includes adjusting the handbrake. This is a very useful and seemingly easy item to cross off that long laundry list. I searched around a little and when I saw the wonderful words of jlevie I figured I should C&P it here.

Twiddling the cable adjusters is the last part of adjusting the parking brake (see below). If the shoes are worn out, figure on at least two hours to replace the shoes and adjusting the parking brake.

To adjust the parking brake:

1) Lower the hand brake and loosen the cable adjusters.

2) Working through a lug bolt hole turn the star adjuster until the wheel
locks using a flat-bladded screwdriver. I just turn the adjuster until it
doesn't want to turn any more. Then back off the adjuster 12 clicks. Repeat
for the other wheel. Note that the star adjuster is at the 6 o'clock position
on later cars, but at the 10-11 o'clock position on an E30.

3) Raise and lower the hand brake several times to settle the cables. Then
raise the lever two clicks and tighten the adjusters until the wheel can just
be turned with moderate force.

Pelican Parts has a different approach, which jlevie suggests in the final step, not the first. Stay tuned to see this done, hopefully this weekend.

https://www.pelicanparts.com/BMW/tec..._brake_adj.htm


The other thing that I will be addressing the door seals (which got lost in the edit above, so might be a repost).

I had been staring at these aftermarket ones being sold from a company overseas, so that order has been placed. I will be the guinea pig for you all... the sacrificial lamb because though they might be bad, theres a chance they might be good and a very good chance they will be better than what I have (see pic above of the seal).

Stay tuned boys

[2mAn]

Drove the E30 to work and parked it amongst all the EV pigs...


Took an extended lunch break to go grab a better steering rack. Found a nice rebuilt yellow tag (E46) rack for a great price. Fit perfect in the space behind the seat.


Note the absolutely sh!t door seals... I have new aftermarket ones on the way from Europe somewhere for the blinding expensive price of $100 total for both seals. I'll make a video showing the quality and whether its worth it. I'll post here too for the boomers who dont want to watch my youtube face yakkity yak away.



DEV0 E30 I've put about 100 miles on it and the springs are firm, and the shocks are nice and taut. I have them dialed smack dab in the middle. I havent done any canyon runs yet (severely overdue!) ... I have a month to get this steering rack installed so I can get my core charge back. Once I have that $$$ back, I want to buy the brake scoops specific to the cowcatcher and to start dialing in the goodies on the car.

At that point, I will just be focusing on the interior clean-up and saving up for an eventual, some day paintjob...

In a fun side-note, I actually ran into Charlie on my way to work today (he was driving his International to work too! haha) and he said the exhaust sounded good... but needed MOAR noise so theres that too...

[DEV0 E30]

Woot.

how does it feel?

[2mAn]

Soooooo I know I said the suspension was done, but I actually never replaced the rear shocks. I found one of my Mustang rear Koni's for a great deal initially, but the Ground Control top mounts and the second Koni took a little longer to acquire. I was hoping to find another smoking deal, but after staring at the other pieces in my garage, I finally just bought one from Summit and had the second Koni the next day. Install took all of 1 hour, including stopping for my silly pics. A Bluntech relic was used in this pic as a tribute to the similar pic from the Aluminum Monster when I previously had done the same mod.


My favorite part of this mod is that the rear droop is significantly reduced so the shock can actually use the full range on a lowered car.


Also, being February and just crossing the 167k mark with a functioning odometer seemed like a good time to do an oil change. Life as a Dad meant the oil change happened at night

...and yes, I staged that pic for you guys (and the hope that it would get Penzoils attention on IG lol)