The Black Widow <> Project Log ~Now with 100% more S50!~

[Nick_S]

Wow you really went all out on that! In for the finished product!

[drutt23]

Dam man....you do work!! Keep it up. Coming along very nicely!!

[lbreevesii]

Small update.

As of last week the car is back at my house. I'm doing some wiring and dropping in my near perfect dash and doing some wiring, cleanup, and sound dampener installation before it goes back out to the upholstery shop.

Its going to be getting matching microsuede headliner and parcel shelf.

So far the dash is sitting back in(but not bolted down) and I had put in about 3/4 of the vibration dampening. The product I am using is CLD tiles from sounddeadenershowdown. So far i'm pretty impressed. They've cut a lot of latent vibration out of the parcel shelf and rear seat area and just 3 of them have made a huge difference on the roof(adding 4 more before i'm done).

Pix to come, but i've been lazy!

[codrum]

Excellent build, very detailed. Excited to watch this thing progress as much as it has already.

[lbreevesii]

^ Thanks! But this is a years worth of progress..Granted it did spend like 3 months at the paint shop(I was cool with letting them take their time)


As we put the dash in it was catching on the ignition switch and it had popped it off of the front catch tab, so I reached up to try to pop it off of the other tab to get it out of the way. Rather than coming loose, the rear section of the switch came apart and sent its innards flying! DOH! Oh well new one is on the way thanks to a fellow forum member.


Despite having cleaned the crap out of it with a carpet cleaner, my carpet was still filthy. It had already been cut, so it took me all of five minutes to take it out. I pressure washed it and let it dry. It was amazing how much buildup of cleaners and dirt there was left in there. Some stains still didn't come out, but who cares, I'm dying it black with duplicolor vinyl dye.

I have worked out what I think is the best method of doing this. First i'm using a fabric shaver to remove the fuzz. Then I'm using a fairly heavy first coat of dye and using a brush to work it into the nap as deeply as possible. I will likely go back with a second coat that I also lightly work in, then a third that I will just brush over once it has dried to loosen the fibers. I tested this on the rear section and honestly two coats works just fine, but i'll go a bit heavier on the main carpet.




^ still stained :-(







I'm using a vibration dampener similar to dynamat from www.sounddeadenershowdown.com. It comes in tiles that are easy to work with. It only requires 25% coverage to properly dampen vibrations so its pretty cost effective and won't add much weight.




I picked up a german flag style plate from our forum sponsor euro plates. Since this is not a standard current plate, the flag is a decal over a standard EU german plate. There was a bit of trash under the sticker that was bugging me(I can get a little ocd...). I PM'd Tyler and he fixed me up with a couple of replacement decals. Peeling this sucker off was no easy task. I had to soak it for a couple of days with goo gone to get it to let loose. Really high quality stuff! I haven't replaced the decal yet, but i'll do it soon. I really prefer the flag style.



Just a thought. I've seen a lot of people do this so I'm going to mention it. A lot of people don't seem to get how the date/smog stickers work. You don't notch or hole punch them, it should be rotated so that the correct month is facing up. Also, the state seal always goes on the bottom.

[lbreevesii]

Small update, pix to come.

I drove the car(first time in forever) down to the upholstery shop sans all glass friday morning. He will be putting in a suede headliner and parcel shelf as well as do the A and B pillars in suede. Felt good to actually drive it!


I also finished the majority of the work on the S50. I THINK the vanos is in right. I'm going to get an air fitting so I can actually measure the travel to know for sure. Due to the lack of axial play after the rattle install it was a little difficult to get in, I had to help it out a little with a screwdriver. Now I just need to finish blasting and painting the valve cover and install a new rear main seal. The plunger can still go in just a bit, but it isn't wanting to go by hand. After some testing I realized that its because of the total lack of axial play after the vanos rebuild and anti rattle modifications. The changes have made it so tight that its natural imperfections are exacerbated making it tight.



Got a care package from ECS tuning today. Euro trim!


Some say I get a little anal. These are my nut and bolt storage. Everything in there is just off of the car. Big one is all engine related, middle one is from various places, and the small one is interior.

[LuckyHenriksen]

This is an awesome project, I hope to attain the same level of attention to detail as you have. Great job

[walktheboard]

what wheels are those?

[lbreevesii]

what wheels are those?

I have no idea of the model, but its an enkei 16x7. They came on my old S13 240sx. Great looking wheel. I may sell them down the road, but for now they'll make great street wheels.

[lbreevesii]

Took the car to the upholstery shop to get the headliner done and the glass back in. Picking it up friday! w00t!

I never cease to be amazed by the caliber of car guys around here. Rhoades upholstery in North Wilkesboro, NC is doing the work. He has worked on more museum showpieces than I can count. From one of Erwin Rommel's staff cars to Mary Kay's first pink caddy. needless to say its in good hands. Another local upholster stopped by while I was there one day. Found out this guy did a pebble beach concourse winning duesenberg!


I went by the shop saturday to do some minor stuff. Put the green grommets back in the valence, put on the clips for the lip, euro trim, just some little stuff like that. I'll really get to work on it when I get it home.



new goodies! Front subframe reinforcements, hoveringuy's obc correction board, new dome light, led's for the city lights(that I don't have yet).

I spent like an hour the other night hitting every bit of rubber I could get my hands on with gummi phledge.

Cleaned up the plate lights a bit as well as finished up cleaning and 303'n the wheel well liners, brake duct panels, and under tray.










Amazing what a little 303 will do.




Bonus pic from the upholstery shop. This is the owners son with Sebastian Vettel...at Leguna Seca...Where he WORKS! Color me jealous.

[lbreevesii]

Picked the car up from the upholstery shop on Friday night. I've been working on putting things back together ever since.

One of my first goals was acomplished saturday morning...Took it to the muffler shop to get something welded on to make it quieter. $50 later, mission accomplished.


I haven't shown off my seats at all yet. Heres a couple of quick shots. Microsuede/alcantara inserts, vinyl bolster and red french stitching. The rear seats are done the same way.



Hard to take pictures of it without flash , but the headliner and parcel shelf are matching microsuede. B pillars and A pillars are also wrapped. I've left off all the oh shit handles and coat hooks. I may add the handles later, but i like this look.




Rot/rust wise this car is very very clean, but the floorpans were still filthy and needed to be cleaned before throwing the dyed carpet in.




Annd a few gratuitous paint shots. Still needs some final polishing and it needs to cure som emore before sealant and wax.

[kingston]

The Shrick Cams may have been timed that way on purpose. There are several guys running Schricks in their M/S5x engines who say that you don't get good results timing the cams 'straight up'.

[lbreevesii]

I was wondering about exactly thtat, but couldn't seem to turn up any good info on it. Do you have any threads on it that you could send me?

[lbreevesii]

For the past 10 days or so i've been driving the E30 as my daily.

I ran into a couple of minor issues. One was that the car wouldn't want to start when it was cold and it was giving a 1223 code. After some fiddling i realized that the oil pressure and temp sender wires got switched. easy fix.

On the highway the ABS light comes on. I have yet to bother diagnosing it. No biggie.

The bigger issue was that the alternator was kaput. I pulled the alternator and voltage reg, I think this might be the issue;). I sent an e-mail over to Dave at Smith Co. Electric and ordered up new voltage regs for the M42, S50, and a new tolerance ring for the S50 alt. Total with 2 day shipping, just over $50 bucks. I highly recommend these guys!



I've been trying to work on getting the interior back together. I got the rear interior panels and rear seats in. I love the detail of the double stitching on the seams of the parcel shelf. Looks awesome!




I'll have to take more pix of the rear seat. You totally miss out on the french stitching on the bottom of the seat in this pic.


Finally got around to installing a drivers side door brake. I could have snagged one from my spare door, but i just bought a new one instead. I also put in the locks. I ran into one minor lock issue. For some reason I can't get the key out when I use the double lock function! Oh well, I don't intend to use it anyway!




Brown Santa came to visit this week with a box-o-goodies from UUC. Picked up a ltw fly, OE M5 clutch, DSSR, delrin carrier bushings and some various replacement parts for the clutch install.



Unfortunately the central locking still wasn't working, so I pulled apart the computer to have a looksee... yikkes. Gonna need a new one.


Things are lookin good! The only thing I can't decide is what scheme to go with for the lights and grille. What do you guys think? smoked or clear? chrome or shadowline?




On a final note, your wish is my command. Bigger pix from here on out(and MUCH better quality). I finally broke down and bought a Canon 300 HS camera. Works quite well for video as well as all my general picture needs, and the price was right at <200 bucks.

Speaking of video, I took a short vid of one of my favorite local mountain roads. 4.5 miles of twisty goodness.

[lbreevesii]

I pulled the trigger on the H&R race springs(tire rack sale ftw), Billstein Sports(elephant motorsports, hat tip to these guys), and the rear shock mounts from rogue engineering. I'm still trying to decide which camber plates to go with.

Once again, out with the old bustedness..in with the new hawtness.








LUL short springs are short.





rear done, fronts still ridin high.



Fully dropped pix soon. I ran into a small snag. I had replaced my uprights with replacements. my right one was bent. Since it was easier, I just replaced both with used replacements. Once i got it all together, it turned out that there was an issue with the left replacement. I had to pull it back out and put the new strut and spring onto my old housing.

I"m really quite impressed with the spring/shock setup. The whole thing feels very tight, but it won't crush your spine either.

My soldering skills are a bit rusty so I had a buddy wire up some led's to replace the burned out incandescents in my 13 button obc backlight. We're going to have to go back and change the resistor to make it a bit brighter, but as is its about as bright as stock.