Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Skarpa]

Yesterday when I went to garage it was a bit nasty surprise when the view was this:

Power was down also in the neighbouring houses. I get to build the car rarely so I decided to not let that hinder me. After all I have a flashlight and luckily I didn't need power for the stuff I had planned.

I continued fiddling with the hydraulic hoses. I cut off the fittings from the old hoses and tried to think of ways to get around the problematic non-available fittings. (such as a M16 elbow banjo connector for ID 16mm hose) I was still left with a couple of question marks but I'm sure we'll find solutions for those once I take the parts to the hose shop. If necessary, I'll weld suitable combinations together.







Luckily I have several different hydro boost systems in various levels of completeness so I could pick the fittings that best suited my needs. Once I had the hoses figured out I still had some time left so I had a look at the battery tray in the trunk. I don't think I'll need a huge battery in a summer car and the tray didn't have fixing holes for smaller batteries.


I drilled the hole and tried to insert a nut rivet in it using a washer as a backing plate. However, it was too thick for the rivet nut and it wouldn't swell properly under the washer so I secured it with a couple of weld tacks. No it's well bonded in to the plastic as well by melting.

[bradnic]

nice work.. always wondered about the undertray mounting and tire spray seeping behind it

[Skarpa]

Last weekend we had a name giving party for our daughter with tons of friends and relatives in our house. Now that all that is over I had time to do some car building. I tried on the front plastic shield behind the valance. There are no changes there except for the ABS recess. In that area I needed to do rething the attachment.



Originally the plastic attaches behind the wheel well panel with sheet metal nuts.


I wanted to keep the structure so that any water splached by the wheel stays in the wheel well and doesn't drip between the body panel and the plastic. So I had to make a lip that comes on top of the plastic. First I got rid of some rust and extended the edge of the sheetmetal to be able to drill a fixing hole there.


Next I made a new lip and attached it with panel adhesive and weld tacks.



The outer screw will be a through bolt with a nut in the engine bay. A bit strange structure but what are you gonna do about it

Next I mocked up and measured all the power steering and brake booster hydraulic hoses and made templates and drawings for them. I asked for a quotation from a local hose company. We'll see what the price will be. EDIT: I got a reply. The connectors and dimension combinations are a bit special so the local hose shop would not be able to make new hoses. I guess I'll need to reuse the heads from the old hoses and have them pressed anew.






I did a bunch of smaller stuff as well. I drilled the holes for the side trim and the rear bumber in the new rear arches, punched the holes for the main power cable and the A/C hoses, made a few grounding points in the engine bay and noticed that my battery shelf is pretty well rusted through. Time to make a new one with a bit cleaner shape.

[Skarpa]

Not a lot has happened with the car in the past few weeks. I've mostly been busy with the baby but I did find some time to play with rendering.





That's a TRX390 center with a style 5 rear barrel and a custom made lip. I like the idea of stepped lips much more than just using the straight style 5 lips. Also, I have more control over the offset. That setup would produce something like 8x17 et 28 for the front and 8.7x17 et 22 for the rear and should propably fit the car with a 5 lug conversion. Offsets may not be accurate since I did the calculations in my sleep deprived head. Next I need to find out if it's possible to leave enough collar in the TRX center for centering both the barrel and the lip. I removed too much material from the one I did earlier. The flange will need some fill in welding to have complete mating surface. I don't know when I'll have the budget for the lips though. The price for a round of custom made stainless steel lips is about 1000 eur. But a man can dream and go forth with the project on other fronts. Here's the wheels photoshopped to a red M-tech 1 E30.

[Skarpa]

You've achieved more meaningful restoration/ customisation work in this project than I have in over a decade of owning and maintaining my coupe...

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

metal fabrication is definitely the most time consuming tasks in a restoration. there is a reason why rust repair is the most expensive job to contract out: it takes SO long. I con only take so much fabrication at a time. my floor pans, which were trashed, are a year in the making. I get tired of contorting my body to reach up under the dash. part of wishes I just took the damn thing out in the beginning. keep up the great work.

Thanks for the kind words!


This week I left the camera at the garage so pictures of bodywork will ensue later. Instead, here's a little project I've been working on on my lunch breaks. I'll mount the battery in the trunk and I wanted to do the front end of the main power cable using stock parts. I ordered all the parts of the bracket except for the top half of the cable clamp which is no longer available. That one I had to make myself. I took some measurements of the parts and took a look of some photos to figure out the dimensions of the missing part:


I cut correct size pieces of PEHD board. Then I stacked two of them together and drilled a hole in the middle. The diameter of the hole is a mil smaller than in the counterpart to ensure clamping pressure.




I drilled the other holes and then made a cut for the nuts in the milling machine. Metal cutter forms quite a lot of burr when cutting plastic but otherwise it's okay.


All thet was left was sanding small chamfers in two corners and going through all the edges with a craft knife and here's how they came out:




I made several pieces in case I got something wrong and it paid off when I attached one part upside down on the mill. In the body I drilled holes for the bracket in the stock location and inserted nutsert in the holes.

[MCreally?]

metal fabrication is definitely the most time consuming tasks in a restoration. there is a reason why rust repair is the most expensive job to contract out: it takes SO long. I con only take so much fabrication at a time. my floor pans, which were trashed, are a year in the making. I get tired of contorting my body to reach up under the dash. part of wishes I just took the damn thing out in the beginning. keep up the great work.

[NufnSus]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm somehow slow with my fabrication work when other projects seem to progress at a lightning speed compared to Armo. But what you don't see when reading a project thread or a blog is how many hours it actually takes to make something. I like it how they show it in the newest episode of Project Binky.

https://youtu.be/hR1nU9IJsoM?t=764

I guess I'm not that slow. The difference comes from how much you decide to spend time on small details and how many hours per week you spend at the garage.

You've achieved more meaningful restoration/ customisation work in this project than I have in over a decade of owning and maintaining my coupe...

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

[Skarpa]

Yesterday I welded the body screws for the abs pipe clamps.





The clamps are from VW Golf VII. BMW doesn't seem to have a suitable brake pipe bracket that attaches to body screw and has several pipes going side by side.

Then I fixed a rust hole at the base of the A-pillar.












Also I got rid of a few unnecessary brackets in the body and welded a couple of screw holes shut. To do list keeps getting shorter even though I added a couple of thing to it.

[Skarpa]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm somehow slow with my fabrication work when other projects seem to progress at a lightning speed compared to Armo. But what you don't see when reading a project thread or a blog is how many hours it actually takes to make something. I like it how they show it in the newest episode of Project Binky.

https://youtu.be/hR1nU9IJsoM?t=764

I guess I'm not that slow. The difference comes from how much you decide to spend time on small details and how many hours per week you spend at the garage.

[Skarpa]

Ticking off small jobs from my list continues. I punched the cover plate from a/c drier hole, made a square hole for the front inner fender in the passenger's side corner and made an earthing point for the battery in the trunk. Then I fabricated a mounting point for the diagnostic port and coil loom connector. I wanted to use the plastic bracket for the connectors that came from the E36. After some thinking this is what I came up with:











It was hard to avoid an overlapping seam when fixing the part so I used panel adhesive and small weld tacks. Another four down, seventeen to go.

[potatomash]

Oh right, nice, basically same as me just opposite and the same result haha. Looks good

[Skarpa]

Good time to relocate the ABS, if you wanted to...fits underneath pretty well.

Yeah, relocating the ABS is a must because I'll run the E36 filter box and it will not fit with the ABS in stock position. I made a recess under the filter box to keep the ABS inside the engine bay.

[potatomash]

Good time to relocate the ABS, if you wanted to...fits underneath pretty well

[Skarpa]

Relocating the brake booster was the last of what I consider the "big jobs" with the body before painting. Now that it's almost finished I'm just left with a bunch of smaller stuff. I sat down and gave a good thinking of all the stuff I still need to do and came up with a 25 point checklist. Then it was just a matter of getting things done and ticking them off the list.

Last time I didn't finish the brake bomb bracket because I couldn't drill one hole in the frame beam with the engine on the way. I borrowed an angle drill from work and got it done.


It's not a tool you need often but when you do, there's nothing that can beat it.


Next I drilled a hole for the clutch mc hose and put a rubber grommet there.



I need to make a slightly oversize hole in the grommet. It's undersized for the hose but it's the biggest one I can fit there.

For the exhaust rear muffler mounts I made counterparts in the boot. I'll leave the separate so It's easy to replace them if needed. I'll have them zinc plated and will put a thin rubber between the parts and the trunk floor.




Then I put some nutserts for the rear seat and started planning on how I want to run the brake lines to and from the ABS pump. I needed to know that so I know where I want to place body screws for the brake pipe brackets.


Four down and twenty one to go.

[Skarpa]

I've been using mostly genuine BMW parts but from about eight diferent models. I wonder how that affects my warranty This sticker had to go when I fabricated a bracket for a brake fluid reservoir from a 2002. At first I made a cardboard template:



Then same in sheet metal:

I made the bracket a closed one to avoid any unnecessary cavities where dirt and gunk might accrue. Also, I used captive nuts instead of nutserts because the nutserts have a collar around them and do not sit flush.


I could have placed the reservoir slightly higher. It has outlets going straight down so it's hard to avoid having the hoses twist into S-shape and have a kind of airlock in them but it should be no problem to bleed the air out of the hoses. I doubt I could have a continuous downward slope in the hoses even if I had placed the reservoir as far up as the hood allows. After the test fit I welded the bracket fully.



Next I finished the bracket for the brake bomb. I welded gussets in the ends and captive nuts for the fuel filter bracket.


I will put one nutsert in the frame beam for the bracket when I have the engine out of the way. Because the nutserts have the aforementioned collar, I welded a spacer behind the bracket to keep it straight.