Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Skarpa]

Really had to find body panels in Canada , I'm making progress on my e30 but panels from the US are not bad but the shipping is outrageous for a side quarter panel they qouted me $833 us, good lord.

If that's USD, it's pretty steep. Rear quarters shipped from Germany to Finland should be less than 450 EUR a piece equalling less than 500 USD. If I were to change one thing in my project, I'd replace the entire quarter panels instead of doing just the wheel arches. It would have been so much easier and the the result would have been better. But there's no point in weeping after a ship that's already sailed.

[Mkcustoms88]

Really had to find body panels in Canada , I'm making progress on my e30 but panels from the US are not bad but the shipping is outrageous for a side quarter panel they qouted me $833 us, good lord.

[Skarpa]

If I may ask where did you source out all you factory panels

You mean body panels for rust repair? Some I bought from other hobbyists but most of the stuff I got from a dealership as well as other stock parts. I ordered by email from a German BMW dealership called Autohaus Pielmeier because the prices are way cheaper than in Finland. Although some of the parts have since gone NLA or received major price hikes. I think we have better availability and prices in Europe than on your side of the pond.

[Mkcustoms88]

If I may ask where did you source out all you factory panels

[Skarpa]

I wouldn't be concerned about the length, 30mm should be fine unless you are doing stupid hard launches

Yeah, I dont worry about it. Just pointed it out in case someone's doing similar transmission swap. This prop shaft is the cheapest, most available stock prop shaft that'll get the job done but for boosted applications or hard driving I recommend a custom one. For example a shortened E36 328i shaft or something sturdier.

[econti]

I wouldn't be concerned about the length, 30mm should be fine unless you are doing stupid hard launches

[Skarpa]

Damn this is gonna be incredible when done. Awesome work

You're getting so close! This is exciting. It looks beautiful.

Thanks once again for encouragement. Can't wait to drive the car!


Last week I got the gas tank and propshaft in with the respective heat shields. But before that there were a couple of small things to tick off the list. The long brake line for the rear brakes was missing those white single brake pipe brackets that attach to body studs. There's something weird going on with those in the spare part catalogue because in many places they appear to be marked NLA even though you can still get them. For that reason I bought black ones that are almost the same but the hole for the stud is ever so slightly bigger and therefore they don't hold.



For anyone with the same problem: The part number for the correct brackets is 16121176767



The other thing that I had to finish before installing the gas tank was the wire loom for the fuel pump, level sensor, brake pad sensor and the speed sensor. It's NLA so I tried to find a used one in good condition but then I came by a new old stock item in eBay. Because of the corona virus the package is still on it's way but I already realized I made a mistake. Looking at the pictures I saw that several plugs were the wrong shape. I turned out that the wire loom was changed at some point in the model history. My body wire loom is actually from a facelift car and I have a newer style speed sensor and an in tank fuel pump so I should have the newer style wire loom but I ordered the older style. Luckily I was able to find to correct wire loom in new old stock from Finland and could proceed with the fuel tank installation.






There sure is a lot of hose in a tight space. Next I had to install the prop shaft before being able to install the fuel tank middle connection pipe or the heat shields. The prop shaft is from an e36 325iA and it's a tad short. The bores in the center joint overlap about 30 mm not counting the plastic sleeve. It should be enough for my puny N/A engine but it's not optimal.



After the prop shaft I could install the rest of the stuff.





I think I'll need to come up with a small piece of heat shield between the two factory heat shields near the rear end of the transmission.

[Kershaw]

You're getting so close! This is exciting. It looks beautiful.

[Albie325]

Damn this is gonna be incredible when done. Awesome work

[Skarpa]

Great job.

Awesome work!

Fucking incredible!!

Thanks a lot!

[pandaboo911]

Fucking incredible!!

[jeenyus]

Awesome work!

[rzerob]

Great job.

[Skarpa]

Great work, truly an inspiration!
You can safely glue the studs in, I had the exact same issue as you, when doing the bodywork didn't know there was supposed to be a stud. What I did was slightly beat the round piece of metal into a bowl-like shape, then make a hole for the screw, which was a countersunk one, put the screw in the hole, soak the "back side" of this product in body glue and slap it on. Alternatively you can beat a suitable big washer into a bowl shape. I did this one the battery cable cover holding stud (same location as you need one), one for the bracket that holds the connectors for the accessories (under the dash above the clutch pedal) and one for the heat shield above the rear muffler. None of them has shown any signs of failure or cracking.

Thanks, It's good to know that the system works.

Last week I did quite a lot of work on the car and the project took a big leap forward. After considering it for a while I dropped the axles from the body and gave the wheel wells a coat of black U-Pol Raptor. It sure gave the wheel arches a sharper look. I like it.





Then I bent the rear axle brake lines into shape. When I reached the end of the long line from the engine bay to the rear axle, I was left with extra 40 centimeters of pipe. The pipe turned out to not belong to an E30 but rather an E34 or some other bigger car. Impossible to say anymore as I already scraped off the the label. The guy I bought the gas tank from gave me a bunch of unused original brake pipes saying there were all the pipes for an E30 with ABS and I had no reason to question him but on closer inspection not all pipes are for E30 and there's actually more than needed. That doesn't really matter for me as the stock pipes in the engine bay don't fit my project anyway because of relocated ABS pump. A local parts shop shortened the pipe and pressed a new end into it.




The female thread studs for the brake and fuel lines in the body were rendered in-openable by rust save one. When doing bodywork I replaced them m5 screws and fixed the lines with domed nuts and an ample measure of anti-seize. Last weekend my brother came to my help and we worked on the car for the entire Saturday and Sunday. A while ago I realized that when assembling the rear axle I didn't think of removing the paint from flange surfaces so my brother went through the rear axle and removed the paint from the grooves of of camber and toe-in adjustment bolts and the flanges of the diff case and the rear subframe. Now I don't need lose sleep over the bolts coming loose because of paint. Meanwhile I installed the gas tank expansion tank and breather hoses. Then we wrestled the rear axle back in place.






I'll install the plastic wheel well cover as soon as I'll get one missing bracket from the dealer. Next I installed the hand brake cable brackets to the rear trailing arms and my brother cleaned and installed the wiper mechanism, new fresh air grilles and the hand brake lever. Also he threaded the body wire loom into place.









I still have a lot of wire loom work left but now the loom is spread out with the major branches in correct places. As a final job of the day my brother did most of the preliminary work for the engine installation. Meaning that he removed the mechanical fan, reinstalled the power steering pump with a correct length of belt to drive it and installed the shifter assembly and the transmission support. Originally I planned to use stiff solid rubber mounts from an E21 for the transmission but opted for much softer ones from an 328i instead to keep the drive line noise down. I'm not using a mechanical fan so I don't need stiff transmission mounts to keep the fan from hitting the radiator. Meanwhile I installed the front sway bar. Looking back at it, I didn't really do all that much assembly work on Saturday. My contribution was mostly having planned the work beforehand and finding and handing correct parts to be installed. In the evening we tested the seaside sauna at my garage. It's been mostly unused for a long time and turned out to have a great view but a pretty much rusted through stove with bad draft. Still the sauna felt great after a long day. The Sunday morning we started installing the engine. We lifted the engine onto the front subframe and bolted it there. The engine mounts are the box shaped green mounts from an E28 M535i. I can't remember if they are left side or right side mounts.



We brought the engine in from the bottom so we put it on rolling platforms and lifted the front of the car high enough to roll the engine under it.





When the engine was in place we lifted it up using the engine hoist on the front lift point and a floor jack at the transmission cross member. This is because the rear lift point of the engine is in a pretty tight spot once the engine is in place and it also has a heater hose connector inconveniently just above it. We had the floor jack on rolling platforms as well to make it easy to move it sideways when positioning the engine. In retrospect, it would have made it a bit easier if we had lowered the car back into original height once the engine was under it because then we wouldn't have needed to lift the engine quite as much.





But there she is. Doing it this way rather than lifting the engine in from the top means you don't need all that much height in the garage and you can do a lot more assembly work on the engine before installing it. Also, there's much less chance of scraping the freshly painted engine bay.






Lastly we reinstalled the front struts. It's looking a lot more like a car than on Saturday morning.

[gnmzl]

Great work, truly an inspiration!
You can safely glue the studs in, I had the exact same issue as you, when doing the bodywork didn't know there was supposed to be a stud. What I did was slightly beat the round piece of metal into a bowl-like shape, then make a hole for the screw, which was a countersunk one, put the screw in the hole, soak the "back side" of this product in body glue and slap it on. Alternatively you can beat a suitable big washer into a bowl shape. I did this one the battery cable cover holding stud (same location as you need one), one for the bracket that holds the connectors for the accessories (under the dash above the clutch pedal) and one for the heatshield above the rear muffler. None of them has shown any signs of failure or cracking.