88' Zinno M3 (Progress Thread)

[econti]

Very surprised that it had an open diff to be honest
Did the PO do a dodgy on you?

[jhaurimn]

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

Thanks!

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

Maybe some day, but right now my priority is getting it running and driving as it should. Just dont have the money left over to drop on evo body parts and paint.

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?

Thanks man! I was nearly falling asleep at my desk yesterday. As far as the weights, I dont have exact measurements. I was curious of this too but it completely slipped my mind. But yes there were regular steel control arms in the car, and I replaced them with new oem aluminum arms. :)

Very surprised that it had an open diff to be honest
Did the PO do a dodgy on you?

I do not blame the previous owner who I bought it from. I DO however blame the mother fucker who owned the car before him.

The person I bought the car from was a rich guy who doesnt really work on his own cars, and had little e30 background knowledge. Theres no way he would of known of all the crap done to this car. I bought the car sight un-seen, no ppi.

[jhaurimn]

Gotta love e30s. Fix one thing, and there will be something new to fix the next day. ;)

Stepped into my garage saturday to the smell of gear oil. Hmm...lets take a peek under the car.


Thankfully, the rear cover can be removed with the diff in the car. *phew*


New oem gasket. I filled the diff with Mobil 1 75-90 gear oil.


And shout out to the parts guy at the bmw dealer for accidentally giving me the rest of their stock of diff gaskets. ;)

[bradnic]

sooner or later every wear item gets replaced..

[jhaurimn]

Alright, we finally have some solid results.

This weekend, I went ahead and pulled the intake and itb's to replace a bunch of stuff. Whats the first thing I notice? There was a intake gasket missing...


Went ahead and pulled the intake and itb's. The whole time Im thinking "It cant be this easy" but it was. Just tried to keep a good memory of how all the hoses/wires were routed. There isnt much, though.


I took this opportunity to clean the itb's. Here you can see the left side cleaned, right side still dirty.


New intake gaskets


Pulled the icv, cleaned it, and replaced all the hoses that were attached to it.


Was pretty dirty, cleaned it out with throttle body cleaner.


I replaced the original vacuum hose with some hose I still had laying around from my e46 m3. It has heat protection on the outside and is overall, a lot nicer.


The s38 uses paper gaskets with the intake gaskets which help prolong their life...or something. Anyways, I used them.


Also opted to replace all the airbox gaskets here, despite the previous owners assumption that 3/4 would do. ;) You can see here that I am missing the mount for the icv, so I had to ziptie it down for now. I will get that part and replace next time Im in there.


My oil had been reading low lately, so I replaced the oil temperature sensor in the thermostat housing while I had the room. Oil temp is reading correctly again. :)


I had a new ground cable for the alternator laying around, again taking advantage of having the airbox out.



Decided to paint the intake while I had it out. I didn't have a grinder for the letters....so I had to slowly mask it off like I did for the valve cover. Worked just fine.


Three coats, one vertical, one horizontal, then lastly diagonal. Used VHT black wrinkle paint, same as the valve cover.




Curing the paint in the oven.


New TPS. Probably didn't need this, but figured why not. Super easy to get to without removing anything.


Heres that new vacuum hose. You can see, if the old hose oriented itself against the head, it would melt. Dont have to worry about that now.


When removing the itb, these vacuum hose connections were not even sealed anymore. Used blue rtv to seal them again.




So with everything back together, the engine is running better than ever. It was so down on power before, so I'm very pleased after replacing everything. My idle is a little high now, (1k when warm) so I will need to adjust that.

Next up, radiator and water pump. Maybe a new alternator too. Need to fix my daily a bit too though ... heh :D

[2002jm]

fantastic work

Thanks for posting such good details on the work done. I bet it runs better:). Might check the timing. Mine was advanced 13 degrees to make up for vac. leaks. My car runs like a totally different car now that the timing is factory spec. and the idle is perfect.
Watching this thread for sure..........
jm

[bradnic]

nice work.. I'd get a proper oetinger clamp to replace the one in the last pic.. they're not all that expensive, and repros are available via Amazon. you should get the pliers too. If you're OEM+ obsessed the clamps from BMW aren't all that more expensive and come with logos on them :-)

[E30stan]

One day i will share in the joy of an original M3 restoration like yourself, keep up the great work man!

[Dmitry]

Nice progress and posts!
Occasionally, is busy with the same procedure with intakes these days. My comments:

- when I pulled out the intakes I saw that it was set to the head with termo sealant. The sealant was so old, that I supposed it was from factory, which I doubt.

Two thing you for sure know, but the links may be useful
- having the intake in place you have to synchronize the shutters. The procedure is described here: http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/sh...ottle-Sync-DIY. You can also watch the video here starting from 11:35 (unluckily in german): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCJRAhnQsfATo do this you will need the tool:

- after putting back the receiver you have to adjust intake vacuum to have around 300 mBar in all 4 channels. To do this you have to use tis tool or similar:


These two procedures, are extremely efficient!! The engine behaviour when idle and in low rates changed for the better dramatically in my case! Advise not to skip

Sorry for odd info if you are aware

[Dmitry]

PS: had to solve the same issues with intake gasket and alternator ground )))

[jhaurimn]

Thats probably a good idea. I replaced the anti tamper caps for visual sake, but the original ones were on there so its never been done on my car before.

[econti]

I do not blame the previous owner who I bought it from. I DO however blame the mother fucker who owned the car before him.

The person I bought the car from was a rich guy who doesnt really work on his own cars, and had little e30 background knowledge. Theres no way he would of known of all the crap done to this car. I bought the car sight un-seen, no ppi.

But still, to do that to make like $1000 on the diff or however much they go for in Russia... That's just sad.

Also how good is the VHT wrinkle paint! Super stoked with how it turns out on my stuff.

[jhaurimn]

But still, to do that to make like $1000 on the diff or however much they go for in Russia... That's just sad.

Also how good is the VHT wrinkle paint! Super stoked with how it turns out on my stuff.

It is sad. But I cant blame the person I bought the car from. He genuinely had no idea.

VHT wrinkle paint worked good! Maybe sure you lay down heavy coats and do as they say with one vertical coat, one horizontal, then one diagonal.

[jhaurimn]

So something nice came in the mail :)


Only thing needed to make it fit is a little trimming of the speaker panel.




And on the way to cars and coffee this past week. My friend took this while driving so its not perfect ;)

[2mAn]

That dead pedal is awesome! Anymore details on it?