88' Zinno M3 (Progress Thread)

[pilotskillse30]

Awesome work

[jhaurimn]

Priorities have changed a bit...

I got my injectors back from mepeh. They apparently were in great working condition already.

Before


After




I also bought a new walbro fuel pump to replace my in tank pump (I believe its dead), and a new fuel pressure regulator.




I went to Tim's Custom exhaust, 20ish minutes north of downtown Minneapolis to get my muffler properly installed. The exhaust clamps I used leaked pretty bad, and the muffler kinda hung down a little low.




Unfortunately, my transmission has been sounding a little loud lately. Ive heard some people say its normal getrag rattle, and some that say it needs a rebuild. I plan to first swap mt90 fluid into it to see if that has any effect. Then I will pull the trans and replace all clutch/shifter related parts. If the noise still seems excessive, I will look into replacing the bearings in the transmission.

New pressure plate, clutch


Release bearing, pilot bearing, pressure plate bolts, bell housing spring, pivot pin.


I also noted that the pilot bearing doesnt have any casings around the actual bearing...I thought that was odd. I bought this one through blunttech but ordered a new oem one in the hopes that it has casings on the bearing.

The one I got


The picture from ecs for the genuine bmw part


And the procedures to install it, nice to have. Figured it might help someone


So because of the transmission stuff, all my suspension stuff is getting delayed a bit. But when the transmission is out, I plan to replace all the shifter components. I also bought a z3 1.9 shift lever, we will see if I like it. ;)

And just a quick two pictures to show how shes looking currently

[2002jm]

such a nice car

Enjoying this thread, wishing I had kept mine:).
jm

[bradnic]

Great pics. You've got your priorities straight I think :-)
If you're doing bearings I assume synchros too..
Nothing like a rebuilt shift linkage.

[CurrusDei]

Looking good man. Can't wait to get mine looking more like a car and less like a pile of parts


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[jhaurimn]

Enjoying this thread, wishing I had kept mine:).
jm

Thank you!

Great pics. You've got your priorities straight I think :-)
If you're doing bearings I assume synchros too..
Nothing like a rebuilt shift linkage.

There are no issues with the synchros right now, so I would probably leave those be.

Looking good man. Can't wait to get mine looking more like a car and less like a pile of parts


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Thanks! At least youll have everything covered. Im discovering something new every week ;)

[Bimmer_man]

Dude I love your build. Imo one of the cleanest e30 m3s on r3v. Keep it up man. Beautiful work.

[CorvallisBMW]

Awesome work! I agree the pilot bearing should have dust seals, I've never seen one without them.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I've read about Metric Mechanic Getrag 265 overhauls replacing some stamped components of the shift linkage inside the transmission with billet versions, making the transmission much more tolerant of hard shifting abuse.

[jhaurimn]

Replaced fluid with mt90 today. No difference. Hope to have all parts in by next weekend to pull the transmission.

[TimeMachinE30]

OEM floor mats or where did you get those?

[jhaurimn]

OEM floor mats or where did you get those?

Yes, oem floor mats.




Made some good progress this week. :)

Earlier this week I started swapping out ignition parts to try and get my engine running well again. I started with a lightly used spare set I had laying around.


No change. So I called up a friend ;)


Thankfully I knew someone with an s14, so I swapped his spark plug wires to see if that made a difference. Which it didn't. At this point I'm starting to think possibly low fuel pressure or a vacuum leak was to blame for the poor running. So I replaced the fpr and the fuel hose attached to it.


You can see the fuel line was in rough shape.


This didn't make a noticeable difference either, but I got a good deal on it and it was easy enough to replace.


Fast forward to yesterday. Now, a huge thank you to my friend Erik, who makes a lot of the more trickier stuff possible. I went over to his shop expecting to just replace a steering knuckle and fuel pump. However, plans changed a bit.

The first thing we did was pull the rear seat and inspect the fuel pump. When we pulled the cover on it, we saw a very nice looking pump. When we plugged some power into it, it ran and sounded healthy. To make sure, we measured fuel pressure, which came out correct.


So then we started decided to try and swap the coil as thats the last ignition part I haven't changed out yet. Again no difference. So Erik starts poking around when he pulls out a vacuum cap from the throttle bodies. And to our confusion, the engine ran better. So at this point we are thinking vacuum leak and or dirty icv. I have intake gaskets and icv hoses on order, so hopefully I can get those replaced next week.

Next on the list was the steering knuckle. Why did I have to replace it? Well take a look at this piece of work.


The knuckle had to be shortened to fit the z3 rack I replaced last year. Someone thought it would be a good idea to just stack a bunch of washers on top of each other....So, I had to order one of these.


Thats better. The steering feels much more solid as the knuckle fits over the steering rack and column splines properly now.


Because the knuckle job went smoothly, and I brought all my parts with me, we decided to swap the new aluminum control arms, ca bushings, and sway end links out. Everything went smoothly with that as well, but for the life of us we couldn't get the new ca bushings onto the control arms. Lazy solution? Install treehouse control arm bushings that happened to be laying around.


So, we are about to be done for the night when Erik went to the back of the car and turned the rear wheel. Guess what happened....the other rear wheel didnt turn.....




So yeah....more pleasant surprises. But whats nice about working in a bmw recyling shop is that there just happened to be a 104k mile, 4.10 lsd available to save the day. :D


The diff did not go quietly into the night however, and we ended up working until 1am that night. I had work at 7am, but priority goes to the m3 ;)

[CorvallisBMW]

Awesome, good to see she's coming back to life :)

[Bimmer_man]

I'm a little curious are you planning on keeping it the stock base m3 or are you going to get the Evo styling?

[2mAn]

I had work at 7am, but priority goes to the m3 ;)

and that statement right there is why you are a winner :ST1G:

edit: Did you replace the regular E30 control arms with the M3 aluminum ones? Do you know how much of a weight difference it was?