E30 Resurrection Intro

[Jshbrwr]

Well, so...

As it goes on, I'm learning a good bit about the past of this car. Evidently the timing belt had been replaced before (gawd if not it deserves a medal) and the prior mechanic decided against replacing that tensioner spring, as mine was absent.

Here's mine installed:



The timing belt job was actually pretty easy, just like I'd read. It pretty much went as well as I'd hoped. Had a few pauses to wait for parts, but overall, reassembly was not terrible. I did have to replace the tensioning arm (weird gear train bar) and nut for the power steering pump, song with some other various things. The belts gave me some fits, but I did get them on the right way and the right tension.

I did notice after filling the cooling system that one hose was leaking even before I cranked it. Turns out I had not slipped the hose all the way down onto the pump and it seeped a bit until I refit it. It was leaking just like it did before I started the job. Flashback! Whew.

Meanwhile, I took the opportunity while the front end was disassembled to take care of some interior bits. Namely the gauge cluster. There are a few items here - odo gears were probably busted, speedo is always pegged at like 120mph (see engine start vid earlier), and also the lights were super dim, just a tiny glow in the middle. So I took it out and began to remedy those. That's where simple mistakes in troubleshooting began to show. Of course without actually testing the bulbs, I just ordered all new 2w cluster bulbs, 12 of them. Upon removing and replacing, I finally got the right idea (too late) to see if I could actually test the bulbs (I'm not too comfy with my multimeter yet). I got a 9V battery and hooked the leads up and voila! All except one of them was still good [emoji52]. Good/bad news right?!

Then to the odometer. The odo gears were sure enough toast when I pulled the speedo out.

The cluster is a Motometer one, so I ordered a replacement set from garagistic. But when it came, I was so perplexed at the difference in the actual gears. No matter what, I could not get things to work. Then I saw the VDO sticker on the speedo's pcb. Argh! Evidently the speedo in the car was replaced along the way (who knows the mileage now!). So here I am with a VDO speedo in a Motometer cluster. So a quick check on eBay nets me a Motometer speedo for $32 shipped. I already have the odo gears for it, and I went ahead and got the VDO odo gears from garagistic for $17; that way I can sell this VDO speedo with at least a working odometer. I'm hoping installing the MM speedo will remedy the weird 120mph (hoping the dim lights too). I read somewhere that he actual wave form signal to the gauge differs between the MM and VDO ones. I did check the speed sensor plug back in be differential just to be safe though, and there were no frayed or broken wires and the contacts appeared good.

SO, while waiting (again) for the cluster parts, I went ahead and reassembled the front of the engine and tested her out. Cranked up great with no leaks whatsoever. I will have to test it more thoroughly (heater on, etc) when I have the cluster reinstalled. Parts should be in by next Monday. It really would be nice to have a working odometer/speedo...updates to come

[nando]

The spring isnt needed once the bolt is tightened down - its only used to set the tension.

However, you have the stamped timing gears. They are known to fail - i reccomend replacing it with the cast version. Theres also one on the intermediate shaft that should be replaced. Would be a good opportunity to replace the cam and intermediate shaft seals.

[Jshbrwr]

Hey folks so I'm in the middle of the water pump/timing belt job and I saw something a bit strange and wonder what it is/was. When the old water pump came off, there was a weird flaky partition inside the orafice. Here's a pic



You can see it at about the 7 o'clock position. It was honestly so brittle, I pretty much cleaned it out while I was sucking out all the nasty stuff. Did I screw up, was it some kind of barrier or journal that is critical to the cooling system? I feel like it's probably just crud built up over the years and just deposits that result from the direction of the coolant flow...just gimme your thoughts.

Also interesting to note, when I took off the timing belt tensioner, I noticed that there was no tension spring at all. Totally missing here's what it looked like before I removed it:



Anyway, surprised it never self destructed up to now. Another reason I'm glad I went ahead and took this on now instead of later!

Thanks for your suggestions etc.

[Jshbrwr]

E30 Resurrection Intro

Well it looks like the timing belt/water pump job will be sooner than planned. I topped up the coolant and noticed coolant leaking out the front of the belt drive near the water pump etc. So, again it will be parked for a while until I get time/$ to put toward that fix. Looks fairly simple though and I have more confidence now than I had before for sure!

Does anyone have a good link to a deal on water pump/belt/seal etc?

[JeLani]

Shit I remember my old intank pump looking like your old one too , I had fuel cuts and my car even shut off on me like 3 times in a night haha.


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[IzzY_325is]

This car made a big turn arond after some work, looks good.

[estoguy]

Looking good! Nice job bringing that old Eta back to life.

[efficient]

You should have power washed the carpet at the 1 dollar car wash, hit it with dregreaser on the tough spots and a lot of dirt will come off. It would have made a big difference, just takes a while to dry.

[Shock(/\)ave]

Nice job so far! Once you get the car running well and have more time with your welding buddy I'd pull that carpet out again and tackle that floor rust.

You didn't mention changing your fuel filter, and I would suggest that should be the next part that you replace along with your timing belt and water pump.

[Jshbrwr]

Well ladies and gents, I have an update - last we checked, I had two front seats. The next "small" thing was the carpet. It was to be the one last cosmetic task, before diving into the real troubleshooting. The carpet was purchased many months ago and I'd packed it in the car's trunk, just waiting for the right time. That right time was early September. Here it is in its cacoon:



The install would of course necessitate taking out both of those lovely seats, but after doing it once, the second time was much easier (that's what she said).

The carpet was in pretty good shape but needed a quick vacuum before installing:





The gas pedal gave me some trouble, but I persevered.

I realized while working that this meant that all the dash and random interior bits could be permanently fixed into place, not just set like a mock-up in Walmart. That was pretty satisfying.



In the end, it was just cool to see something other than rusty floor.



Again, just to remind you all of what a dump the interior looked like previously:



Fast forward to more recently. The last two weekends have been especially good for the E30 project. Great weather, no extra work outside of the house, my school coursework is coming to an end, and basically all has been leading up to a good opportunity for a re-attack on the car. Having most of the cosmetic stuff taken care of, I was ready to move into phase 2.
I took out the Bentley manual and really got into troubleshooting the starting issue.

Fuel and spark are pretty basic things a car needs to run, so my search began there with fuel. I checked the fuel pump fuses and relays (learned how to do that with this video - https://youtu.be/GtWmYffMido) , found that they were in good shape voltage-wise, and should be sending power to the in-tank pump. Now, my task was to check that pump to see if it was getting juice.

Here I am getting at the under seat access point:



And after pulling that piece out, this is what I found:



Ew. The thing looked like it had been at the bottom of a lake for forty years. Just gross. And it turned out that even though it was getting power to the connector at the top of the pump, the pump itself was inop because the ground connection was just POOF gone.



Just hangin into the nothingness.

So I searched online for a non-$150 replacement and read a few posts about the 1975 Chevy Vega pump being a near perfect fit. Except those posts were from 2011 and no parts store had the vega pump in stock. I was however able to get a generic-euro in tank pump from Oreilly for about $50, in stock. I also got a proper fuel strainer to go with it.

Swapping out the old crap piece with the new replacement wasn't too terrible. One hose connection, a fuel strainer, and two electrical connections. And there you are:



Install went pretty good. The ground connection I fashioned made re-entry a bit tough, but ya just jiggle the handle and it all went fine.



Oh yeah, before I put the thing back in, I took the opportunity to suck out as much of that crap has as possible. And some of that stuff flowing through the hose looked like it was from a septic tank. Chunks in brown water. Nasty.

So after that nice new pump was in place, I fired her up and still no start. I then tested the pump by making a clear hose connection to the output hose to see if it was moving any fuel. It was. So what's next on the way to the engine? The exterior in-line pump! Turns out it was much of the same story as the first one - getting power but no worky. This time, no one had a replacement in stock so I went with Rock Auto's cheap Uro pump. It arrived two days later (it was super tough waiting after being on a roll) and I had not much trouble with the install. Here are some pics of that:



Old pump ousted:


New one in place:



And this...this is where things get good. Around 10:30pm, it cranks for the first time in 4 years. What a feeling.

https://vimeo.com/187510839

I wanted so badly to drive it around the 'hood, but couple of problems - no exhaust at 1030pm is just not neighborly, and also the bottle caps and tires on it are so flat, it probably wouldn't have budged if I tried. So one thing remained - get the basket weaves on.

So this morning we took the BBS wheels to get aired up, and I worked on swapping the wheels this afternoon. It took longer than one would expect but I'm starting to expect that. The lugs needed a breaker bar which I didn't have. Borrowed from Autozone and got to work. The bar worked flawlessly (+1k, mechanical advantage) and I was able to get the wheels free of the hubs with a few whacks from my mallet. What was under there was pretty nasty, and not surprising given the rest of the car:



So in order to keep things from seizing up again, I smoothed out he hubs with steel wool, sprayed penetrating oil into the lug holes, and used a good amount of yamalube grease on all the contact areas where the wheel would meet the hub.





I also took the opportunity to spray a little brake cleaner on the calipers etc.

The end result just makes all the difference in the world to me:

Before (while the sun was still up):



After:


I was now ready for the ride around the hood. Not quite late enough to wake anyone, but dark nonetheless. Not ideal but hey, I needed to clinch the long day of work with a reward. Two of my kids rode in the back and had the best time. My wife took a blurry video of us pulling in after a 3 minute ride around:

https://vimeo.com/187511058

What a feeling. It really sounds good and burbly.

Still got more to do. My instrument cluster is pretty toasted as you saw in the startup video. So I think I'll be taking that cluster out to replace lights and maybe re solder the connections. Who knows. I may replace the odo gears while I'm there.

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed reading. The moral is, use the Internet and the repair manual and you can get things done. If you need more details on any part of what I've done, I've got more pics and can give more descriptions of that would help.

[Jshbrwr]

Nice progress man. Have you done anything with the hole in the trans tunnel? Any idea why that was done?

Not yet. I have a friend that is very comfortable with welding things and I'm waiting for a good time for him to help me weld that stuff shut. Then in goes the carpet.

The cuts were done I think to get to the drive shaft/guibo business. Not really sure.

[Kershaw]

Nice progress man. Have you done anything with the hole in the trans tunnel? Any idea why that was done?

[Jshbrwr]

Looking good!!!

I just emailed your parts source about some parts I'm looking for.

Yeah, both Kristen and Donnie were very helpful. I believe Donnie is the owner.

[doorman]

Looking good!!!

I just emailed your parts source about some parts I'm looking for.

[Jshbrwr]

Here's another interior update....

Got a driver's sport seat in the mail from DasGerman, a parts place up in Tennessee.

Here's what it looked like in the box:




So I was left with a few parts to put together. I was able to check out some tutorials on how exactly to piece the thing back together.

Here are both seats out of the car, while I was still assembling the sport seat:



After all is done, things look great! Actually looks like a car a normal person would drive: