New member intro...and my new to me E30

[boy412]

Did quite a bit of wrenching yesterday...and hopefully more will happen later today. Just taking a little break. There isn't any order to these updates...just adding info as I get a chance.

I replaced almost EVERY hose I could see. No photos of that...its not terribly exciting. The kit I got from Pelican came with new hose clamps...but I ended up re-using most of the existing clamps. The original BMW clamps were in good shape, and after a little TLC they looked pretty damn good:



The T-stat housing got a good cleaning and received a new 80˚F thermostat and two new water/coolant sensors:



The car was not starting when I began this teardown so while I was working on various areas I was mindful to look for anything that might be causing this. Once I cleaned all the muck and other crap off of the CPS I saw this:



F that. I didn't feel like waiting another few days to order the part online so I sucked it up and picked it up at a local BMW dealership in NoVA. I was shocked to learn they had one in stock. The parts guy was too! Anyway...they were super nice so win win all the way around. My wallet is about $100 lighter though but whatever. That's better. Still need to adjust clearance (.040/1mm) as soon as I can find my feeler gauges.



While I was poking around in this part of the engine bay I started cleaning the front of the head. I had already done the timing belt and had everything buttoned back up, but I decided I wanted to see behind the cam gear. I'm glad I did:



I'm not effing around with this project, so I went ahead and replaced the cam gear seal. I also replaced the rocker plugs and adjusted the valves. And I got to install my fly new valve cover! New Elring gasket...all torqued down to spec. New valve cover nuts have been ordered. The ones that were on their look like shit next to all the newly painted bits:



Speaking of new hardware. Its so much nicer putting new parts on than taking old parts off. Especially the intake manifold hardware. Going on was SO much easier:



And I didn't want the lower timing cover (or the bottom half of the upper timing cover...depending on how OCD you are) getting jealous. So it got the same caliper paint treatment. I painted the timing mark black so it was easier to see:



I also put in this rubber seal. My car didn't have this when I got it...and I would not have known about it if I hadn't seen it in the RealOEM diagrams. Probably not needed but I like that it keeps that area sealed up a bit better.



I'm going out of order a bit, but when I had the intake mani (and all the other shit) off the motor I did a LOT of cleaning. My wife helped out extensively...and I'm in her debt. I don't have patience for that kind of thing so she deserves a lot of credit for how nice the engine bay looks now. Anyway, when cleaning around where the "bitch tube" goes into the block I removed the washer. Under the washer I was expecting to find an O-ring, but what I found looked more like a plastic seal. Comparison of the new O-ring and what I removed. Checkit:



Since the new O-ring fit nicely enough in the recess I decided this would be OK. So the bitch tube has a new O-ring top and bottom. Installing it was a lot easier with a second set of hands.

One of the other things I did during the week was clean the throttle body and change the gasket where the coolant barbs are.



I don't understand why coolant needs to run through the throttle body but whatever. Anyway I'm glad I ordered a new gasket...the old one was pretty FUBAR:





Cleaned up the mating surfaces and put on a new cork gasket:

[boy412]

Odometer overhaul

One of the other things I did over the week was install the new odometer gears I received from Garagistic. Not terribly exciting but it was nice to get something broken working again.

Here she is...no workie:



A quick look at the mechanism on the side reveals the (common) problem:



Off with the old. The gears were so pliable they literally disentegrated when I tried pulling them off. The little brass bushing was more trouble than I thought it would be but I was victorious in the end:



New gears on! Surprisingly the most difficult part of this job was getting the little spacers on the spindles.



So that was fun. I've got the gauge back in the cluster and am just waiting for everything else to be done (???) before putting it back in the car. I also noticed that two of the bulb sockets were empty. Is this normal? Looks like the socket for the fog light indicator and oil pressure (or oil level, can't tell...just an icon showing an oil can). I put bulbs in those empty sockets...just because I had a handful of extra bulbs on hand. We'll see what happens when I install the cluster.

That's all for now...I'll have another update in a week or so.

[RaidoM]

If its a fog light connector where does it plug in?

Thats a bit strange if you say that other end is near lights and this one is under fusebox because this kind of connector should be connected to foglights and other end of the wire should run directly to fusebox without any seperate connector between. Maybe this connector in the picture is passenger side fog light connector which is packed there to keep it not getting wet etc.
But i'm not quite sure neither. I just know that if i bought myself fogs then connectors were hanging behind healights plastic cover and i just had to pull them a bit to connect with foglights. Other end runned under fusebox somewhere.
Sorry for late response. I don't log in here often :)

[thor:it]

engine bay

Nice work on the bay! I had my ignition coil clamp pull off the engine bay, and was considering relocating the coil to a more secure and hidden spot, that thing is heavy. Only constraint being the lead ignition wire length.