The complete repair, rebuild, repaint, and v8 swap of my early model sedan

[JGood]

It's been a little while. If you've participated in this thread from the beginning, you know what that means. Bad shit/stupid shit happened, because that's what happens in this thread.

Driving home last Thursday at 10pm or so, doing about 65 on the highway, when all of a sudden it felt as though I was being launched in the air. That's because I was. I hit an 18 wheeler tire retread which I did not see. Son of a bitch. I don't have time for this shit at the moment.

Ripped my lip off, which I ran over, and bent/scratched the valance up. I believe that is all. That's actually not bad. Onto the repair, which was completed in about 48 hours. Like I said, I don't have time for this shit. Quick/cheap repair it is....

The damage: Lots of paint missing, and 2 bad cracks. Not bad, considering what it just went through.









Sanded the thing down, feathering out the edges:





Applied plastic bond to the cracks. I let this dry overnight with the lip on the car, so it would dry in it's home position:






Sanded down the plastic bond, sprayed and sanded some high build, then hit it with a spray can of single stage acrylic enamel I had the local body shop supply place mix up. The color matches great, the finish of a rattle can of single stage compared to the rest of the car, not so much. Oh well. It's a lip, and it cost me $40 to repair.







So I get this all finished, and decide to go for a drive. Out of nowhere, I hear a whine. Get it home, start doing some investigating. Remember the last time I posted in this thread? My alternator failed? Guess where that whine is coming from? Sure enough, check voltage, barely holding 12.1v at idle, and now the battery light is on. Son of a bitch.

[wworm]

i just sank into this wormhole of a thread so deep that i ended up running out of time to go mount my new tires on my new wheels. Totally worth it. You're an inspiration haha.

[JGood]

Dude, any thoughts on what happened with the alternator ? Internal failure ?

Bearings. I knew something in the accessory drive system was on it's way out, as I had a slight hum for a while. Then as I was leaving work, it started really grinding. Limped it 15 miles home, figured the worst that would happen is it would seize and I'd throw the belt. Popped the hood in my garage with the car running, and it's literally shooting sparks and flames from the vents in a spiral fashion. Lol

FYI, Rockauto has m60 Remy reman alternators for $83. I wouldn't be surprised if the Bosch reman units were rebuilt by Remy anyway, but the Bosch labeled units are $200+. I actually found several companies that sell all of the internal components for this alternator really cheap, and the rebuild process doesn't look hard at all. But I figured mine had been through hell so I might as well start fresh.

[Jean]

Dude, any thoughts on what happened with the alternator ? Internal failure ?

[Shock(/\)ave]

My alternator died in a flaming, spark throwing, growling, spectacular fashion. I had to remove half of the car to replace it.

Of course it did. ;D

Happy to see an update on the car man! It's been ages...

[JGood]

Couple updates:

My alternator died in a flaming, spark throwing, growling, spectacular fashion. I had to remove half of the car to replace it.

I also got a DUDMD tune that he made for the m60b44. It is based off of the e34 530i manual trans 404 DME tune (modified, obviously). This completely took away the hesitation and insanely loud exhaust cracking/popping coming off of decel fuel cut, and throttle hanging when lifting off the throttle. The power feels great, pretty sure it picked up a few HP from idle to redline. It also shoots flames when shifting above 6k, which is fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNT1glQG24w

[JGood]

Quite a project with that S10. My first car ever was an '84 S10 with a woefully underpowered 2.8L V6. I would have killed for the kind of power your friend's car is putting out now.

Haha, yeah that's the motor we pulled out of it. This was his first vehicle too, bought it 16 years ago.

[MR E30 325is]

Excellent Stuff!!

[kts]

Quite a project with that S10. My first car ever was an '84 S10 with a woefully underpowered 2.8L V6. I would have killed for the kind of power your friend's car is putting out now.

[JGood]

So I put about 30 miles on the car and rechecked the suspension. I'm at exactly -1 degrees of camber on both sides, and the tires don't rub at all. I'm stoked. I wish I would have done this a long time ago.

Night and day difference as far as traction. It hooks up in every gear. Even 1st, I can punch it and it just goes. The tires still make some noise and I can feel them slipping a bit, but it's 99% acceleration. Need to get back to the drag strip and finally hit the 12's that I've been 1/10 of a second away from.


Oh, and while I've got some free time, this is mainly what I spent the past year working on, and why there weren't any updates on my car. My buddy brought his 87 s10 over to my garage, and we swapped in a 525hp LS3 crate engine, T56 magnum, and a shortened Ford 8.8 rear.

[Shock(/\)ave]

Likewise, I can't even fathom putting years of blood, sweat, and tears into building a powerful car, and leaving it sit it the garage, or cruise around at part throttle, scared of what will happen if you use all of the torque you paid for.

I agree completely.

My goal was a car I can drive hard, reliably. I might not have gotten it right the first time around, but as things break, I learn, fix, modify, make stronger. It's fun (most of the time!)

You're a madman. ;D

[kts]

It absolutely would. It's on my to-do/to-buy list. There are many things on that list, far more than my car budget allows at the moment haha.

I feel you. I'm hoping to save up for an M60 swap in my car but at this point that's ~4 years out since I have to many other things to pay for first.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Why not put the camber adjustment at the outer points and toe adjustment at the inners?

BMW built a toe-adjustable subframe for the E34 M5 and put the toe adjusters at the inner pivots.

Having the toe adjustment on the outer pivots means that the wheel will swing fore/aft by twice the amount of adjustment... this could cause problems if you're really tight on tire clearance... as you are.

[JGood]

Emphasis mine:



You might be surprised to learn this, but your throttle pedal has an entire linear range of motion which allows you to input infinitely variable amounts of power, thereby giving you the ability to accelerate at a reasonable pace that won't keep breaking your damned car. :p

I've never seen a more involved restoration project that resulted in more breakages than this one, especially given that it's a street car. It's enough to make any sane reader want to avoid huge increases in power. ;)

Likewise, I can't even fathom putting years of blood, sweat, and tears into building a powerful car, and leaving it sit it the garage, or cruise around at part throttle, scared of what will happen if you use all of the torque you paid for.

My goal was a car I can drive hard, reliably. I might not have gotten it right the first time around, but as things break, I learn, fix, modify, make stronger. It's fun (most of the time!)

[JGood]

With the amount of power your car is making I wonder if adding a second diff mount would help prevent more cracking in various places.

Like this one: https://store.garagistic.com/e30-per...ary-diff-mount

It absolutely would. It's on my to-do/to-buy list. There are many things on that list, far more than my car budget allows at the moment haha.