The Adventures of Golden Boy, my Rebound E30

[TheWipprSnappr]

X5 shifter. You may want to straighten the upper bend in it depending on how long your arms are.

Im in the process of doing a manual swap atm. This is the setup im going with. I don't have it in the car but its all mounted up to the gearbox with front and rear poly arm bushings. Already feels great! Short throw with little effort. Im also using the IE dssr for reference.

[tito12121]

Great thread, great build, I am in love with how your M20 looks in the engine bay, hope to have mine looking like that some day! enjoy

[laidback93]

New guy here. This is a super cool and detailed build thread. Great work and great Bronzit!

[LJ851]

Thanks guys!



I think I'm going to change my shifter setup soon too, I'm not too happy with it to be honest. It's not very smooth, pretty loud and clunky and takes too much effort to change gears haha I hope that doesn't make me sound lazy, it's just not a satisfying feeling. Kind of takes away from the driving experience, so I'm going to explore other options (recommendations are encouraged).

X5 shifter. You may want to straighten the upper bend in it depending on how long your arms are.

[CubbyChowder]

Thanks guys!

No updates to report because I've been crazy busy with my shop and my girlfriend's new shop, however I have been driving Golden Boy quite a bit lately and have some new parts to install whenever I get a free day or two.

I think I'm going to change my shifter setup soon too, I'm not too happy with it to be honest. It's not very smooth, pretty loud and clunky and takes too much effort to change gears haha I hope that doesn't make me sound lazy, it's just not a satisfying feeling. Kind of takes away from the driving experience, so I'm going to explore other options (recommendations are encouraged).

[TheWipprSnappr]

that m20 is absolutely gorgeous!

[spiDmang]

ughhhhh. i havent checked this thread in so long. soooooooo good! congrats on getting GB up and running :up:

Still soooo jealous of your shop!

[AWDBOB]

Bump cuz I've been in your thread all day while deleting the TB heater and cleaning up the TB vacuum lines :)

Hope the car is treating you well man!

[stonea]

Do you have a part number for that check valve?

[CubbyChowder]

Jeebus I need to do this with my car.... Haha. I KNOW I'm having vac leaks out of those same two tb ports, so this is a brilliant idea. PM incoming with further questions on what you did.

Also, glad to see you swamped out that gear. You saw what happened to mine... Be glad you saved yourself. :razz:

PM replied!

[car_gal_jenni]

Still plugging away little by little. My new intermediate shaft gear showed up so I swapped that out and installed a new timing belt:



I thought I'd show a few of the steps I've taken to simplify this setup a bit. I've been researching ways to eliminate some of the not-so-necessary bits that over complicate things and create additional points of potential problems/leaks on these motors.

My first endeavor is deleting the throttle body heater and secondary thermostat near the heater core. Getting rid of these will significantly simplify the cooling system and eliminate several hoses and a clunky valve, it's quite the mess of hoses and hard to reach hose clamps with all that stuff installed. I consider them both unnecessary for my application so out they go.

I don't have any pics of this yet, but deleting the secondary thermostat is easy. You just order 2 new hoses, one leading from the thermostat housing to the heater core and the other leading from the outlet on the back of the cylinder head to the heater core. It makes a difference whether you have the early/late cooling system. I won't go into too much detail about this, but I'm running an early model setup. I'll post more pictures on this subject later when I install everything.

Deleting the throttle body heater is a little more involved. The thermostat housing has an outlet on the bottom that needs to be plugged somehow. In my case, I cut off the "snout" for the hose and tapped a thread into that hole so that I could plug it with a bolt. Unfortunately I didn't take any pics of this process, but here is the finished product. I put sealant on the threads and installed the plug:



With that done, I moved on to the throttle body and created a simple "delete plate" to take the place of the coolant inlet/outlet plate thingy:



And then I plugged the port on the block under the intake manifold. Throttle body heater is officially eliminated.

With the cooling system simplified, up next was to tackle the vacuum system. It seems vacuum leaks are a very common problem with M20's, and I want to avoid that. The ports on the side of the throttle body that lead to the brake booster and intake boot are known to work their way loose and cause all sorts of problems so that's what I'll be taking care of. Every M20 I've ever seen has the two hose setup with elaborate three way check valve thing, but apparently some late model cars got a single hose setup, and that's what I want to mimic.

I tapped both of the holes on the side of the throttle body to 7/16-20:



Then I went to miners and got these fittings:



I plugged the top hole with a set screw and used the fittings to create a vacuum port for the bottom hole. Thread sealant was applied liberally to ensure no leaks from here on out:



I ordered an intake boot that doesn't have the extra outlet (which normally leads to the now-plugged top port on the side of the throttle body):



I also ordered this check valve, which takes the place of the elbow fitting on the brake booster:



From there I'll be able to just connect a vacuum hose from the check valve on the brake booster to the bottom port on the throttle body and that will be that. No more elaborate two hose system and leaky ports!

Thanks for looking, more to come next week!

Jeebus I need to do this with my car.... Haha. I KNOW I'm having vac leaks out of those same two tb ports, so this is a brilliant idea. PM incoming with further questions on what you did.

Also, glad to see you swamped out that gear. You saw what happened to mine... Be glad you saved yourself. :razz:

[CubbyChowder]

Awesome!!! Nice to see it running and driving.

Your car looks sweet

Thanks dudes!

I've been driving the car every chance I get over the past few days and enjoying every minute of it. Feels so good to have it on the road! I've put probably 100 miles on it so far with no real alarming issues. Just a few little things:

I noticed the bitch tube is leaking some oil even though it has brand new seals. That doesn't require any type of sealant right?

I'm experiencing a weird whining at lower speeds coming from the front end. It sounds like it could possibly be coming from the trans but it seems to be related to the speed of the car and isn't dependent on being in a specific gear or anything. It happens if I coast in neutral or decelerate in 3rd gear for example, so that leads to me believe it's not trans related. I was thinking possibly wheel bearing but don't those normally make noise at high speeds and around turns and stuff?

In other news, rebuilt E46 purple tag steering rack showed up from RackDoctor yesterday and new lemforder E36 outer tie rods came earlier this week. Excited to get those installed when I get back in January :up:

[efficient]

Your car looks sweet

[LJ851]

How many hipsters does it take to install a clutch?

[iwantspeed]

Awesome!!! Nice to see it running and driving.