Bronzit E30 - OBDII S52 shaved bay - weekend/autox toy - Journey

[Sh3rpak!ng]

I believe that was his first time out in the R8, he only just picked up the car very recently. He's certainly got some learning to do.

Next time you see that carrera, say hi! Allen's a good guy.

Thought so, else I can say my e30 is faster than an r8 challenge car yea I don't think so.... definitely looked like he was feeling out the car. I'd die to see that thing really go at it. Didn't know you could just straight up buy one like that! With a plate on it no less!!

I will definitely! Now I have an excuse to take a closer look at his car

[Sh3rpak!ng]

yup all the heat and expansion and cooling takes it toll on the welds. especially with the pressures it sees.

you mean with regards to the aluminum radiator? Aren't they made specifically to take that abuse.... I mean, that's kinda the whole point right? To take that abuse, and take it better than the original plastic end tank piece

[pandaboo911]

The koyo over the mishimoto any day. At least for the e36 rad


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[Sh3rpak!ng]

So, here is what I was up to with those LEDs. Little fun project that's been bouncing around in my head for a long long time, so i decided it was time to make it real.

Started with a little CAD and thin steel (cannibalized from the old smashed hood :D )





Took some measurements and tested a few layouts until I came up with this. Minimum spacing between LEDs for maximum output.





Prototype to prove the idea and test fitment and size





After some test fitting I was happy that it would work, so I proceeded to make the final brackets.







Installed one bank of LEDs and tested to see how it would look. I got excited here!





Here's what they look like installed int he bracket. I also painted the bracket black so when the lights are off, it is more or less invisible, just looks like it did without them.







Setting up the second bracket and LEDs ready for epoxy. Second bracket came out much smoother and easier than the first since I had some experience.







Heat shrinking the leads away nicely. I had to split them into 2 portions because it became too bulky.





Here I stuck it into the spare housing I had leftover after the accident from the side that wasn't hit. I used that housing to test everything, trimming plastic etc until I was sure it would all work so I didn't cut up my good headlights in case it didn't work out. At this point I was VERY excited. This looks more or less exactly how I imagined.





Found some connectors in my pile that matched the driving light connectors coming off the depo headlights. Decided to spare some of the oem leads to install into them since the originals were disintegrating.





Wiring in progress





Here is a projector housing all assembled.










Here it is fully installed, I think it looks kickass. Very happy :) I think I will disable the driving lights in the bumper since I now effectively have nicer ones and also the colors don't match. Or maybe I'll try to find matching turn signals... we'll see. Kinda tough to get a good photo of them because the camera gets messed up with the contrast.







Here is what it looks like with the headlight on. This is very hard to take a picture of. In person you can see it, but the headlights are pretty damn bright and kinda wash out the effect. It's also not as striking in daylight as I was hoping it would be, but it's good enough for now. I'm thinking for V2 I'll learn how to design and print PCB so I can try out some SMD LEDs like are mostly used in the brightest LED signal bulbs. That'll make it easier to package more LEDs in a smaller space.





Lastly, I caught this monster skulking around. Thought it was a mouse out of the corner of my eye. I tried to lead it out of the garage but it ran into a corner and wouldn't come out. So I had to kill it because I sure as hell am not about to let that beast out of my sight in my garage, let alone get comfortable and decide to stay

[Sh3rpak!ng]

So here is where the koyo radiator is leaking. Bottom corner of the passenger side/engine side. I sent pictures and explanation to frsport as directed, no response yet. I will be very pissed off if I have to buy another radiator.





Just playing around, I stuck a piece of tape over the center slat of the lower grill to see what it would look like, I kinda like it. Might do that when I go to paint the valence.





Here's another quick idea that I professionally photoshopped in ms paint; another idea I've been tossing around in my head. Thoughts? (used this random pic I found with google since the colors and shading made it easier to edit)





Popped the fenders off to finally finish wire wheeling the sections that were welded from the inside of the wheel wells. I just left them raw and without fender liners since I did the bay. It was getting pretty nasty. I had forgotten that one of the autoxs it rained in the morning and made a nasty mess of everything.





All wire wheeled off. I sprayed the raw metal with rustoleum rust converter since there was still a bit of light rust that didn't come off. Also this stuff is pretty tough. I've had good results with it. After that I started to spray some high build underbody rubber coating and then ran out forgetting I had used up a lot of it on some other stuff. More arriving Friday to finish it.





Also, apparently I am still a noob because I never knew this was the center belt receptacle. I always stuffed it between the upper and lower rear seat





I've had this parcel shelf kicking around for ages waiting for a set of premium speaker housings so I could properly fit the 5.25 alpine speakers into it. I've never been in a rush to do this because the RCA cable for the rear speakers went bad months ago, and I have been hardcore procrastinating pulling it out to replace it because that's a pita, also I've had some far bigger issues to deal with since... Well, now that I am finally getting caught up I can spend time on details again :D





One of the speakers. Wasn't in terrible shape.





Dyed the parcel shelf back to black with the duplicolor spray. Picture makes it look a little uneven, but in person it looks fine. The felt/fabric gets kinda stiff after you do this, so before you spray, make sure that you have it "combed" evenly because after it's done, it's a bit frozen in place. I am considering using this stuff to do my carpet. Anything will look better than the stained tan...





Painted the inside of the housings black





Painted the grills black





Mocked it up to see how it would look. Decided the speaker housings look a bit too bright.

[ak-]

Love the light setup. I feel like I've seen it before on a black E30 somewhere sometime ago? Awesomely executed.

Wtf did you do with that spider? That thing is way too big to squash :rofl:

[jpod999]

Dude those LEDs are sweet!

[JeLani]

Bronzit E30 - OBDII S52 shaved bay - weekend/autox toy - Journey

Dude those LEDs are sweet!

+1 good job on those , i'd buy a kit if you made them to sell :)


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[pandaboo911]

Bronzit E30 - OBDII S52 shaved bay - weekend/autox toy - Journey

Those lights are awesome. I think I prefer that over the stock driving lights that light up the top of the headlight.

Would be sick if you got some RGB LEDs with an infrared remote. You could run whatever color you want.

Is that a wolf spider? I'd fucking burn my garage down if I saw that in there. Did you spray it with windex? Poor thing :P


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[Sh3rpak!ng]

Love the light setup. I feel like I've seen it before on a black E30 somewhere sometime ago? Awesomely executed.

Dude those LEDs are sweet!

+1 good job on those , i'd buy a kit if you made them to sell :)

Those lights are awesome. I think I prefer that over the stock driving lights that light up the top of the headlight.

Would be sick if you got some RGB LEDs with an infrared remote. You could run whatever color you want.

Thanks guys! I am very happy with the result, though I kinda spent an absurd time on it :P I had the idea of some sort for a long time. Actually before I knew much about e30 headlights, I always assumed the driving light was in the "smiley" and was disappointed to find that it was not. I put the idea aside for a long time as I was working on other stuff, and then saw some guy post something similar, forgot the user, but he used some e30 headlights in his olddd corvette LS truck and did this which then lit the idea on fire since it looked so good and I finally got a visual :)

I did think about RGB leds to fine tune the exact color, but ehh maybe more work than I want to invest unless I could get some RGB led angel eyes from a new bimmer and cut/mod them to fit... too much.

As I mentioned before I'd still like to come back to this and do a v2 with a PCB and SMD leds which are what those bright angel eyes, and most led turn signal bulbs use. If/when I do that, I'd consider making a few extra sets assuming I can make the board relatively generic to the unmodded depo hella, retrofitted v1 bracket/v6 mini, retrofitted v2 bracket/v7 mini (which is what these are based off of)

Is that a wolf spider? I'd fucking burn my garage down if I saw that in there. Did you spray it with windex? Poor thing :P

Wtf did you do with that spider? That thing is way too big to squash :rofl:

It was a tarantula! And it was huge!!! a good 3-4" across. I really would have rather not killed it since I have to respect a creature of that size, but it refused my efforts to guide it outside and "hid" in a corner and like I said I wasn't letting it out of my sight or letting it get comfy, so I smashed it with a broom handle (staying a good 5 feet away in case it sensed the impending threat with it's superhuman intelligence and face full of eyes and tried to evade me and counterattack and drag me to its nest and feed me to its family and friends)

[Trev]

So much attention to detail. Awesome stuff

[Chilezen]

When I saw the one red LED light, I was waiting for the other side to be blue. And then you would tell us how the lights flash alternately. :(

[Sh3rpak!ng]

So much attention to detail. Awesome stuff

Thanks man!

When I saw the one red LED light, I was waiting for the other side to be blue. And then you would tell us how the lights flash alternately. :(

Hahaha nahhh I'm not into that stuff, though I have been toying with the idea of wiring them as driving lights/turn signals (they would blink when turn signal activated) which I might do if I can make a V2 of them with brighter LEDs that don't get too washed out with the headlights on.



So after I decided the speaker housings looked too bright, I picked up some sem trim paint in medium grey which matches the grey of the door handles and the shade of the houndstooth quite nicely. Painted the housings and 3rd brake light. Thinking of deleting the 3rd brake light though, it looks like such an afterthought...





Springs arrived :D 8k front 10k rear





Installed rear





Then I felt like cutting up the euro headers to see what the collectors look like. I'll be fabbing from the collector back anyway.





Not bad, looks pretty good in there for oem





I got absolutely fed up with this stupid leaking koyo radiator, so I picked up an oem Z3M s54 radiator. It's a 3 core, 42mm radiator (the koyo was 48mm). Still pretty big, and a good size larger than the original e36 radiator. At least with this guy I know the quality is top, and I'll get at least 5 years/50k miles out of it... If frsport/koyo replace the aluminum rad I'll sell it.







I also started making a proper shroud and bracket to mount the radiator. This is as much for aesthetics as function :) I have always felt the exposed top of the radiator just looks "unfinished"







And in brake related news, I forgot if I mentioned I had bled and changed pads about a week ago. Some nice bubbles popped out of every corner so that fixed my weird mushy pedal that would go firm after 2 pumps. I switched to the wilwood polymatrix E pads which looking at wilwood's data should have more cold bite than the bp-20s. They definitely do, much much more. Actually felt more like a normal brake boosted car in terms of pedal effort, however, when cold, and when using light pressure to stop (like daily driving and stop and go traffic) these pads squeal screech and scream like I have never heard before. I'm not talking a little squeak right before you stop, I'm talking full on wake the dead stab me in the ear shrieking that you can probably hear from a mile away... so I put the bp-20s back in. Still feels better than it did before, but they just don't have the cold bite that the polymatrix Es had, so I'm still on the hunt for a good daily driving cold bite pad.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Had some friends visiting over the weekend, so I took them for a drive up in the mountains. My friend took this photo and did stuff with filters :p





Finally picked up one of these, though I don't hear much difference from the one I made. But then again, my ears aren't as tuned as an audiophile's might be. Sounds great though, and looks way more "finished"





I had to pull out all of the old RCA cables because one stopped working... cheap. So I replaced them all as peace of mind. And took my time making them look nicer in the trunk. So, finally audio is finished.







Noticed this when I took the side panel off. Looks like the car was in an accident and repaired. Did a pretty good job as far as I can tell.





Picked this up to start fussing with positioning to see what fittings I'll need to make it all work.





Important that it has baffling separating the feed and return.

[MatRacer]

Each time I look here, I'm just amazed!

have you tried these spring spring yet? How is the ride with this pretty high stiffnesses?