Project ETHREEO

[blocke]

Got some parts in today:
Short Shift Kit with rebuild parts, Redline MTL

and some MT1 Goodness :)


Gonna finish up the tranny this weekend hopefully.

[blocke]

Fuck my life

Got the tranny back in this past Saturday. Words cannot explain what a bitch it is to remove and install a tranny with the car on ramps and jackstands. ALONE.

So all is well for a day. The new SSK from blunt feels amazing. The feeling of a hard job well done is great, glad to have the E30 back on the road.

Then the mother of all buttfucks happens...oil is dripping from my bellhousing. Not the brand new pink redline I just filled the tranny with, but oil. My rear main seal or something back there is fucked now. I just replaced all this crap less than 5k miles ago, and when I had the tranny off this last time I didn't even touch the engine side of things. No clue how it got screwed up.

So....looks like I'll be spending another weekend pulling off the transmission again...

FML

[Cinnabar325is]

Oh man, I'm really sorry to hear that. I can't believe the bad luck you're having. I did my trans both times on jackstands, but at least I had someone helping. I can't imagine trying to put the thing in alone.

[MR.LUGO]

Lookin good! Calypso ftw. Come out to some monthly meets in SD!

[blocke]

So thought I'd update this: I dropped the tranny again with the help of my brother. Replaced the rear main seal, used hylomar, put on a new clutch disk, etc. Made sure I was meticulous. Car ran without leaking a drop for 1 day. Then I left the car parked in driveway for a few hours, On an incline. Came out to find a HUGE oil slick running down my driveway. Needless to say I was pissed. So I parked the car, put it on jack stands and removed the clutch inspection plate. My best guess is the the oil pan gasket where it meets the rear main seal cover was leaking. So ordered new gasket, dropped the pan intending to replace the gasket. In the process, the brittle plastic washers on the oil pump shaft crumbled...so now awaiting the arrival of those to put things back together.
in the meantime, I threw in a fresh rebuilt set of 19lb injectors.

At this point, my car has spent the better part of 6 months inoperable. Hopefully when I'm finished, I'll be a member of the "no leak club"

[blocke]

Littlle update

So bringing this back from the dead. I've decided that I am going to sell my E46 sport seats, and pick up some OE sports so that I can get my interior back to stock.

While I have the E46 seats out and I'm in search of new seats, I plan to shampoo the carpets with a rug doctor, wait a few days for them to dry, and then dye them black. Also going to do the headlines and the rear decklid while I am at it.

Had the wrong lens on my camera today and was too lazy to swap it out, so my pics are kinda suck ass.

Seats out and ready to be vacuumed


Also made a discovery that my car may have started its life with beige carpet, and someone swapped it to grey at some point. There was a very clean and original looking patch of beige under the front center console, looks to have been cut around the heater box.




Also did some work trying to chase down a hard start issue. Car takes a while of cranking before it will turn over. Checked various things, nothing conclusive as yet. I have a spare FPR that I might swap in and see if that helps. I have a suspicion that I'm losing fuel pressure when the car sits.
I'll have plenty of time to sort this out though, car cant leave the garage till I pick up some seats.

[blocke]

Update 2/25: Carpet Cleaned

So I went and rented a Rug Doctor today from home depot. $28 bucks, plus 9.99 for the bottle of cleaning concentrate. Went to work on the carpet of my car in preparation to dye it black.

I initially started on my headliner, but because the canvas material is somewhat stiff and not very absorbent, and I was working upside down with the upholstery attachment, the cleaner and spray just kept dripping down and getting on me. I decided to skip cleaning the headliner, and just cover any stains with the dye during that process.

Here is what the carpet started like. Sorry for cell phone pics:


Passenger side had some nice spots of gum that were rock hard and had been there a few years:


Each side used the entire 4-gallon capacity to get clean.
Here is the water from just 1 side after cleaning. That's 20 years worth of dirt, grease, jizz, who knows what...



And all finished. There are still some spots that just wouldn't come clean, but I'm sure the dye will cover them up.



And for good measure because the thing was covered in crap and I'm anal, I took this thing out and threw it in the washer.


Now I've got a box fan blowing through my sunroof to air out the carpet and let it dry. Will probably pick up the supplies to dye the carpet sometime this week. Plan is to dye the carpet, headliner, and rear deck lid.

Bye Bye E46 seats....


On the lookout for a set of black or cardinal sport seats. Front for sure, possibly rear. If you are local to 92592, gimme a shout. Also need a perfect condition Center console and E-brake console.

[mechdonald]

how much are you asking for the seats?

[blocke]

how much are you asking for the seats?

$250 picked up, but there's a dude on his way to get them right now. Sorry.

[SoEm0]

Hah they are mine all mine..... sort of

[RoadWarrior]

Looking good man. I woulda pulled my hair out with all the leaks.

[blocke]

Update 3/02/2012. Carpet Dye time

So today I finally had time to play around with dying my carpet. I have read several threads here on R3v, and on other auto forums pertaining to the various methods of dying, from VHT paint, to removing the carpet and soaking in a trashcan of dye. I decided to go the cheapest route, and experiment with using RIT dye. At $1.66 a box, if it doesn't work, no big deal.

Materials used were as follows:
(2) boxes of RIT black powder Dye-$3.32
(1) Home Depot Spray bottle- $.99
(1) Hard bristle Brush -$1.99
(1) Pair Latex gloves - Free

I started by rolling out this old window shade I found in my house when we moved in. Its thick, perfect for covering my garage floor when I am painting or making a mess. I decided to experiment with the little piece of carpet that goes under the rear seat first. I figured if it looked bad, it was easy enough to replace.

Next I boiled water in a kettle. Put both packets of RIT dye into the home depot spray bottle, and poured the boiling water in via a funnel. This was somewhat of a mistake. The boiling water was too hot for the bottle, and nearly melted it, causing a huge mess. Next time around, I will only use hot. water. Shake that shit up and mix it, and then time to get spraying.

Carpet Before:


I adjusted the spray bottle to spray in a fairly broad pattern, more of a fine mist than a stream. I didn't want to create streak marks or darker spot in the carpet. Sprayed the whole thing till it was even shade of black, and then used the hard bristle brush to work the dye into the carpet. I went both against the grain and with the grain of the carpet to make sure it was worked in evenly, spraying more where needed.

Ended up with something like this:


At this point I still had a good 90% of the bottle left. The little piece of carpet looked good enough so I figured "what the hell, I'll try it on the rest of it". So I went to town on the rest of the interior carpet, following the same pattern: Spray evenly, brush it in, spray more, brush it in, spray more....

Interior before:


Interior after:




Once I was out of dye, I set up a box fan to blow downward through my open sunroof, and let the carpet dry overnight. It is already much darker than it was, but I think I am going to hit it with at least 1 more coat of dye before I'm done. Overall I am very pleased, the color is even, it's dark, doesn't smell, and did not leave the carpet feeling crusty. No clue how it will hold up to wear and tear, but I will find out. If it get's f'd up, I can always use another product down the road.

[lambo]

I can't fuckin' wait for summer so I can THOROUGHLY clean my interior...

[SoEm0]

Looking good. This will be up on my list of things to do once it warms up a bit.

[blocke]

New Interior In

Finally picked up a new set of seats. Scored a full set of Front and rear vinyl sports, along with front and rear door cards. Got everything thrown in this weekend.

Fronts:


Rears:


Also fabbed up this adapter so that I can use my Miller MAF with my stock air box. I want to keep the engine bay looking a stock as possible, and I am not a fan of running the "hot air" K&N setup.

This was just a $9.99 ebay MAF adapter. I had to trim off the corners, and also shorten one side about 3mm. This allowed it to fit on the stock air box, lined up correctly and everything. Hit it with some high-temp black paint just to keep it OEM looking.




And finally after work today had time to wash the car off and take it for a spin. My paint is so faded, it only looks good when soaking wet :(