88' Zinno M3 (Progress Thread)

[JCarp90]

That "storage" place is awesome. They're building one like it in South Kansas City. It's been in progress for a while, but should be pretty badass when it's done.

[jhaurimn]

I was missing some of the trim underneath the rear bumper. I replaced the missing pieces and cleaned the ones that were still there


Washing the hood insulation was not the best idea. You don't want to soak it with water. It was becoming very faded.


I had a non m insulation piece to experiment on....and I tried duplicolor trim paint on it. Worked good, so I went ahead and put two light coats on.


I pulled the valve cover. Insides are stained a bit but everything looks normal.


I pulled it because I was sick of seeing this


I bought a single can of VHT wrinkle black paint, and did 3 coats in a crosshatch pattern. I think it came out great for $8 total spent. I put it in the oven for an hour at 200 degrees to cure the paint as the can directs.


Now the engine bay is presentable. I replaced the hood ground and the battery tray to valve cover ground wires as well. Expansion tank will be getting replaced with other cooling stuff next week.


Replaced the strut nut caps too.


And a shot from a meet this past week.


Tint is coming off soon...

[ser1992]

You are doing an amazing job. I wish all M3 owners were like you =P

[jhaurimn]

You are doing an amazing job. I wish all M3 owners were like you =P

Thanks! What am I doing different then other m3 owners?

My buddy just picked up an e30 m3! So he stopped by on his way back from texas. This is easily the highlight of my garages career.

[YAN-3]

i would crash into something if I was driving through a neighborhood and saw a garage with two same color e30 M3s parked inside!

[jhaurimn]

i would crash into something if I was driving through a neighborhood and saw a garage with two same color e30 M3s parked inside!

Hard to tell from the lighting, but the one on the left is brillantrot, and the one on the right with no license plate is zinno.

But yeah...I know what you mean. This was a pretty surreal moment having two of them in my garage. I am still getting used to having one in there!

[jhaurimn]

I got a new oil cooler in the mail today. I was free all day after work and decided I wanted to put it in. Its easy to replace, plus when I changed the oil on this car initially, I couldn't get the oil up to temp beforehand -- so I was able to properly change the oil this time. I changed the m1 0w-40 out for m1 15-50.

As you can see, it was beat to hell


I also got lucky and managed to find this piece that directs air into the oil cooler. You can't buy it from BMW, as it comes with the front bumper. A new bumper costs $1000. So yeah...not doing that lol
*edit* after looking at the picture i used to have here, i realized i put this piece on upside down initially. i fixed it


Had to stop and grab some pictures...

[jhaurimn]

Thanks to some help from my buddy erik, the stromung muffler is now installed.

[Bimmer_man]

That new muffler looks way better than the old one and I bet it sounds even better than before.

[jhaurimn]

That new muffler looks way better than the old one and I bet it sounds even better than before.

It sounds a little better, but the s14 sound still overpowers the exhaust sound. The center section is pretty restrictive, so to make dramatic sound changes, the center section needs to be changed. Will be something I do for the future, but not on my priority list as of now

[Bimmer_man]

Nice what's next that car looks amazing I can't imagen what you would do next.

[e30m3s54turbo]

The Stromung muffler looks much better. I am glad you found your oil cool trim piece.

[reelizmpro]

Nice work. All the little stuff adds up. The VHT job came out nice.

[jhaurimn]

Thanks guys. The muffler still needs some tweaking to sit perfectly level, but I'm just glad the old muffler is off.

[jhaurimn]

Got some stuff to report. My wiper arms had seen better days


I decided to fix them with some duplicolor trim paint. Came out great.




Didn't take a before picture, but I cleaned the spare area. It was pretty dirty before. I cleaned up the spare. Just has some surface rust. I also took the rusted wingnut and spare holder out, and put in my clean ones from my 325i. I hope it doesn't get mad at me


Woah, got a huge box. What could it be? It's not pizza...


Ah


The reason for the big box is the new passenger side inside window seal, and to prevent bending it. I love blunttech, but bmwmercedsparts is the shit when it comes to shipping huge boxes for $11 flat.

So here's what I replaced. You can see overspray on the thermostat...


The coolant was green, and very old and nasty. Bleeding was a breeze as my driveway has a hill at the end. Just went up and down with the expansion tank cap off, and bled itself. Revving the motor a bit helps too. The hardest part about the install however was taking the thermostat plug out for the the sensor. I nearly broke the thermostat taking it out, you can see the area around the hole is deformed for the force it took to get the nut off. I will watch it for leaks.


I replaced the expansion tank and all the hoses connected to it, both radiator hoses, and the thermostat to heater pipe hose. I also took this opportunity to install the remaining wire harness cover, and the distributor cover.

This is how the engine bay looked back in December when I got the car


And here's how it looks now :)


Reason for the new window seal


And I got my plate. Purple Tint is coming off Tuesday. Yay