Strict budget, slow restoration. *Now with moar budget*

[Wh33lhop]

Soo hit a few road blocks last night

First order of business was to relocate the brake booster. We'd have to drill new holes, shave away at some of the firewall and change the mounting position from the "arm" of the brake pedal to the pedal itself.

First we removed the booster, then we removed the pedal. We drilled the pedal, then cut off the "connecting arm" shaved it down and put it in like a spacer to give the new mounting surface more width.




Then we started drilling more for the booster. Ran into a big problem: on one hole (top passenger's side booster hole) we'd basically be drilling lengthwise into the pedal support bracket, and on the other side (top driver's side booster hole) we'd be relocating the bolt too close to the bracket.




Well, fuck. I don't really like where this is going, so I decided just to give up and get a different booster. Maybe Mike (White325is) can shed some light as to what he did to perform this. I just don't like fucking with things that need to hold in order to make my car stop.

Anyway, next order of business was loctiting the oil pump nut and just making sure it never comes loose in general. I torqued it on a little too tight, put some red loctite on it and used a chisel to fuck up the threads (can't really see in the pic) but I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon.



Then the new gasket went on



Well, turns out we were missing two bolts



Couldn't find them anywhere, they weren't in the bag with the rest of them and they're the ones you can't get to when the G260 is bolted to the motor, so no flywheel installation or anything.

As a side note, I noticed M20 and M50 flywheel bolts were identical. Exactly the same.

Basically most of the day was spent pulling my hair out trying to figure out a way around the brake booster problem and trying to find those two oil pan bolts. Then I tried to reset the control arm bushings for more frustration and got nowhere. Need to get a thread chaser for one of the bolt holes, hopefully that will make it okay because otherwise I've got to go through the floorboards, and that's no fun.



I don't know what this harness is supposed to plug into. Obviously it's something in that area of the motor, but I'm still clueless.



Another thing I'm clueless about. Found it under the car, what is it?



Going to pick n pull today, hopefully I'll find an E32 booster/MC or something.

[Simon S]

aw man - i feel you. It sucks hard when you hit roadblocks. It sucks triple-hard when your workspace is distant. Hang in there. Write down what you need as you discover you need it.. and move on to different projects when others are on hold (which you're doing already).

After x number of roadblocks.. it can get discouraging. Even taking small steps brings you closer. When in doubt/discouragement, I'll start cleaning parts or organizing the workspace. Spending the time to keep things organized is less frustrating and roughly equivalent to the time spent trying to find a misplaced screwdriver that you were using on the one thing under that other thing that you were working on an hour ago..

Good luck at the yard.

[Lof8]

harness piece looks like the o2 sensor plug. I asked this same question about 2 weeks ago. haha good luck.

[Wh33lhop]

Nice little yield from pick the part.

E32 booster and MC (equivalent to 325ix I've been told) for $50
New brake pedal $19
Uncracked dash ($30, nice deal there)
And a nice glove box for like $25

After buying a nice set of socket wrenches and a 3/8" extension set that the sales guy forgot to ring up :p

Hopefully in the next few weekends I'll have it in. Lots of tests and the GRE coming up.

No picks yet

[Jean]

Nice little yield from pick the part.

E32 booster and MC (equivalent to 325ix I've been told) for $50
New brake pedal $19
Uncracked dash ($30, nice deal there)
And a nice glove box for like $25

After buying a nice set of socket wrenches and a 3/8" extension set that the sales guy forgot to ring up :p

Hopefully in the next few weekends I'll have it in. Lots of tests and the GRE coming up.

No picks yet

What kind of e32? I pulled a few from e32/e34 b35 cars and the spacing between the two rods on the booster for MC is much wider than stock e30 booster.

[Wh33lhop]

What kind of e32? I pulled a few from e32/e34 b35 cars and the spacing between the two rods on the booster for MC is much wider than stock e30 booster.

It's a B35 car. What's wrong with the E32 MC? 25mm isn't it?

[Jean]

Not saying anything is wrong... was just wondering if the one you pulled had the same spacing as e30 or not...

[Wh33lhop]

Not saying anything is wrong... was just wondering if the one you pulled had the same spacing as e30 or not...

[IMG]http://www.briangt.com/gallery/albums/album175/IMG_7387.sized.jpg[IMG]

Didn't even separate the MC from the booster. :) The E32 booster is kind of a strange design with the little neck on the firewall side. Weird.

[Jean]

Let me know how you like the b35 booster/mc when you install it.

[Wh33lhop]

Will do. :) Will be a few weeks though.

[Jean]

It's cool... I want to pull my stock booster and install another cleaner e30 booster with new gaskets or switch to the b35 one that I pulled as well. I'll check your progress

[Wh33lhop]

So here's the yield from yesterday

Glovebox in decent condition (on top of the old one that I had sitting around in my room because it was broken as fuck)


E32 B35 booster and MC with the weird "neck" design


And the nice dash


The only real imperfection I could see


After I cleaned it up... now there are a few places that I scrubbed that seem to be discolored, maybe I need to treat the vynil or something.

[Wh33lhop]

Alright, did a lot this weekend. Here she was again, waiting for me.



I got started repairing the threads for the control arm bushing bolts, here's the tap after going through one of the holes. Shavings-a-plenty.


After re-tapping both holes I got the bushing on in 10 or 15 minutes:


Then I got working on the brake boosters. Here's the original booster:

About 5 1/4" from firewall to the center of the pin hole.
And here's the E32 (early 90s 7 series) booster, I removed the nut and backed the coupler up all the way on the threads to make it as short as possible.

5 3/8". I tried it like this, it fit with some ingenuity but it had preload (with the brake pedal in the non-depressed position it was loading the booster) and I wanted to do it right.
The E32 coupling bracket worked fine with the E30 pedal and pin, just used some washers for a tight fit.


Turns out, though, that the E30 coupler fits on the E32 shaft just fine. So here was the final setup, plenty of room for adjustment and I didn't have to worry about loctiting it so it didn't back out.


Booster's in the car, connected the brake lines to the MC, cut the little nubby for the clutch master cylinder and connected it. Now I've learned that I'm going to need to do a remote brake fluid reservoir setup, so that should be fun to set up (especially after I just topped off the reservoir that's already on there :p)


Great, I've got to use my old pilot bearing. Check out how much bigger the inner race of the one I ordered is--must be some discrepancy in part numbers or something.


So I cleaned the old one off, cleaned and heated the center of the flywheel and stuck the sucker in there.


Here's the clutch and pressure plate


Brakekleen'd em up


On goes clutch and pressure plate (centering the clutch was real fun)


It was about 1AM and the old cherry picker was gone so I finished off the night with a new tie rod.
Still can't believe these things are 6 bucks when the E30 plates are 1

There, had to use vice grips for the final tightening, used some loctite 242 for the hell of it.


Woke up the next morning at 9 when my buddy brought a ghetto cherry picker over

That thing was horrible, the legs were fixed and they didn't even extend to where the hook (the load) was, let alone past it. So the thing was buckling and bending all over the place under the weight of the M50.

Tranny's on and everything


A little argument with a grinder freshens up the mating surfaces pretty well


New clutch slave hanging out

What was wrong with the old slave cylinder? Nothing, until I pumped the clutch pedal a thousand times trying to get the brake pedal in and out and it puked its piston, plunger and DOT4 all over the ground.

Replaced a tiny fuel hose


And a bigger fuel hose, this stuff's expensive


Bending the selector rod:


Result (tried to get a cool shot getting the wisps of smoke coming out of the ends but this the best I could do)

Only needed a 10 degree twist bend, so that looks pretty good

Finally I get to put the M50 where it belongs

Yes that's taco bell, better than nothing


Haha, whoops

That's better :p


Looks pretty good in there


That was the final hour before I had to go. Glad to finally get it in, now to hook everything up and get it running, hopefully that'll happen over the next two weekends. This project has taken waaaaayy more time than I had planned for, and I miss bombing around in my damn E30.

[White325is]

This project has taken waaaaayy more time than I had planned for, and I miss bombing around in my damn E30.

Thats why I told you to make sure you had all your ducks in a row before you started your swap.

Maybe next time young grass hoppa. ;)

Good work BTW, nice to see it in there finally.

[MR 325]

Why is the exhaust still mounted in the way? lol.

Also, the brake fluid reservoir isn't going to work.