Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Skarpa]

Where did you get that reservoir and the 90 degree fittings for the master cylinder? I've got an e32 booster and master cylinder I'd like to use but need a better remote setup.

EDIT: Ah, looks like those master cylinder fittings are the oem ones with the hoses cut off.

The reservoir is from a local speed shop but it's some generic international manufacturer's product. Find your local speed shop and see their selection or google "remote brake fluid reservoir". If you want to stay OEM, the 02's have a nice remote reservoir. It's just too tall for where I want to mount it. Yes, my elbow connectors are OEM (brand is Lucas) but you can also buy similar pieces from several manufacturers. I've cut off the original hoses and I need to trim off any remaining bits of hoses from them. I'll use PTFE brake hose between the reservoir and the MC.

[Skarpa]

Nice work so far. Question for you - how did you go about replacing the reservoir filter? I'm doing hydroboost as well, and it doesn't seem intuitively obvious when I open up the reservoir.

There are a few different models of reservoir but the basic principle is the same. When you open the lid you can see an M8 nut on the center column. Open this and the strainer, filter and other parts will come out by lifting. Remember their order. I think the most common reservoir model has a round dome shaped strainer and under it a kind of a cup which contains the filter. Filter itself is a porous ring made of phenol resin. The ring is about 30 or 40 mm tall. My reservoir however had a cylinder-shaped strainer and a lower, about 15-20 mm tall filter ring plus a paper filter. Paper filter is no longer available from BMW but you can see the manufacturer's type number on it. I ordered the resin ring filter from BMW but either I had looked up a wrong part number or they sold me a wrong part because I got the tall ring. I ended up sawing it in half to get it to fit.

On the left you can see the parts inside of the reservoir


And here they are stacked minus the strainer that will be on top. The resin filter ring is at the bottom.

[butters]

I also replaced all the sealings and the filter.

Nice work so far. Question for you - how did you go about replacing the reservoir filter? I'm doing hydroboost as well, and it doesn't seem intuitively obvious when I open up the reservoir.

[Skarpa]

Minor updates continue. I wasn't quite happy with the unnecessarily two-partitioned large dirty windshield washer container so I got much smaller replacement unit.






But I wasn't happy with that either. Rectangular container looks out of place behind the headlight and on the battery shelf it is potentially conflicting with the M3 plastic cover or the M52 diagnostics plug that I plan to mount there. Then I realized I already have a compact container that fits the engine bay perfectly. I just need to get rid of the main washer fluid container and leave only the intensive cleaning one. It holds about one liter of fluid which is plenty for a summer car. So I split the containers with saw, trimmed the edges and did some cleaning until I was left with this:


I left a tab and drilled a hole in it for a second mounting point to keep it fixed firmly. I'm happy with the result. I'll just replace the beat up and broken cap and it will be golden. For brake fluid I got this remote reservoir which will sit out of the way atop the left wheel well or right next to it. I guess I'll use a T-branch to rob the fluid for the clutch from the hose for rear brakes. It's very hard to find a low remote reservoir with three hose connectors.


While I was in the mood for tinkering I went through the engine wiring harness, marked all the necessary wires for the C101 connector and removed all the needless ones. I'll use the E30 four cylinder cover for the wiring harness.


All the removed wires on top. I believe I will shorten the wires going to the main connector when converting to E30 plug but not before test fitting the harness. I will also shorten the needlessly long wires for the relays when I see where they fit.


I have some more wiring harness work waiting for me. One box contains the original very limited body wiring of 316 while the other one contains the wiring harness of a facelift four door 325i with all the bells and whistles.


I guess I'll use the 325i harness, remove the rear door wiring and make the necessary changes to accommodate to pre-facelift tail lights etc. I haven't quite made up my mind on the check control yet. It would be easier to just install one than to hack the wiring harness to delete it even though I've heard it's not that complicated. In my opinion the check control isn't that necessary piece of equipment and doesn't look great. I have a couple options when it comes to the head liner: Dark or beige head liner either without the front panel, with the front panel and check control or with blank front panel and no check control.

[Skarpa]

Been there... One thing that someone local recommended me that was very helpfull was to grind the old pinion bearing outer ring so you can fine tune you pinion depth without messing with press fitting and removing outer ring over and over...

Have fun ! :p

I will, thanks for the tip :up:

[MatRacer]

it's time to explore the fascinating world of bearing pre-tension and tooth contacts.

Been there... One thing that someone local recommended me that was very helpfull was to grind the old pinion bearing outer ring so you can fine tune you pinion depth without messing with press fitting and removing outer ring over and over...

Have fun ! :p

[Skarpa]

Some minor progress. I haven't found time to go to garage but I have prepared some parts as evening pastime. The hydroboost hydraulic reservoir was pretty rough-looking.


I tought about having it re-plated but then I came conclusion that such a big yellow zinc chromated pot wouldn't visually fit next to an M52 "plastic motor" as it's called in Finnish. (well, the original "plastic motor" is the M50) So instead I sanded the reservoir and gave it a coat of primer and a couple coats of satin black rattle can. I also replaced all the sealings and the filter.




As my second project I replaced the 2.65 ring gear in my lsd with a 2.93 one and assembled the lsd unit with an extra plate pair.






Here's a good video to help getting all the parts in correct order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVG-RUfXo4Q

After I paint the diff housing and the bearing covers it's time to explore the fascinating world of bearing pre-tension and tooth contacts.

[Skarpa]

In case anyone is interested, this is how I plan to locate stuff in the engine bay:


Brake fluid reservoir will be a remote one. Brake fluid and hydraulic fluid reservoirs may need switch places since hydraulic fluid reservoir is so tall. Hydroboost pressure regulator and bomb will go under the main cylinder next to the fuel filter. Yellow circle marks where I plan to have a fitment issue. I haven't mocked up anything yet but after studying pictures online I don't think there's any chance the master cylinder and intake rubber boot will fit. Any good ideas are received with much gratitude. Here's a couple possibilities I've come up with so far:

- Tilting the engine towards the exhaust side - Since I'm already short on space with the exhaust manifold, I'd like to avoid that.

- Fiber airbox - I'd prefer using stock box for now since that's what I already have. If I go with fiber box I'd still like to use the stock air filter and the MAF.

- Shorter main cylinder - People have used shorter master cylinders with the vacuum boosters, for example Mk3 Golf one. I need to check if the hydroboost booster will accept a different master cylinder. It might help a little, the hydroboost one is long.

- Modifying the airbox - I could replace the rubber boot with a welded aluminum cone that's shaped to clear the main cylinder and leave just a short bellow or a piece of hose between the cone and the MAF.

- Offsetting or tilting the booster and the master cylinder to left - Almost forgot this one. By modifying the pedal frame and the brake pedal, it should be possible to move the master cylinder to left to give at least a couple centimeters of space. Tilting would be even easier.

[Skarpa]

I've been looking at the first rust repair patch I made with a critical eye and gritting my teeth. The welds are awful and there's a lot of heat warping. I tried to beat it into shape but it would rather rip the seams that I ground too thin than stretch into new shape.


I decided it was time to revisit the spare wheel well. I cut off quite a bit larger piece to get ride of all my previous failures and to cut away the paint drain hole completely. Earlier I had decided to cut it a little weirdly.


I had to shape the center recess and the stiffening ribs. When shaping sheet metal I basically beat it with a hammer long enough that it starts to resemble what I had in mind. Sheet metal brake, bead roller and a couple other tools would make the job quite a lot easier but at the moment I have no place for such. I should educate myself on handheld sheet metal tools, though.






Patch seems to fit okay:



The difference to earlier is not so evident in the pictures but in real life they are like night and day. But don't worry, I won't get into downward spiral of redoing all my previous work. I did pick up things pretty quickly and the repair I made after this is still okay in my eyes. This concludes all the rust repair work in the rear part of the car. When I get all the bare spots painted I'll start mocking things up and building exhaust and such.

[Skarpa]

There was some place (I think Zionsville?) that used to sell these pilot bearing adapters, but if I remember right, they stopped selling them because of failures where it would vibrate loose.

with a quick google search, it looks like JB racing still sell something like this.

Alright, thanks. i found the Zionsville part also myself and noticed that they don't have it available any more. I did some measurements and it seems that the clutch shaft would actually be able to enter the pilot bearing a few millimeters even in stock position. At the moment I'm contemplating on using a wider than stock bearing (13mm is the maximum width I found) and using a spacer or another bearing behind it to leave the bearing protruding a few mills. I'll use a bit of play-dough or something similar on the clutch shaft and test-fit the transmission to see how much it actually enters the bearing. Measuring it is not so accurate since you need to take several measurements and calculate from there so the measuring errors may sum up.

And then for something completely different: I just love hove nice the parts sometimes turn just by cleaning them. In this case the drive shaft tunnel heat shield.

Before:


After:


Mint! As they would say in a certain dead roadside animal themed youtube show.

[Northern]

Then I started thinking about making the extension in the end of the crankshaft instead of the clutch shaft. I could make an extension that would be temperature fit on the original pilot bearing housing and would bring the pilot bearing 20 mm outwards. Pros: no need to do any irreversible changes to clutch shaft, easier to remove with a gear puller or a slide hammer without damaging the transmission bearings. Cons: There is more vibration in the crankshaft than in the clutch shaft so the risk of the extension vibrating itself loose is greater. I think I've seen commercial pilot bearing adapters like this somewhere but I don't remember where anymore.

There was some place (I think Zionsville?) that used to sell these pilot bearing adapters, but if I remember right, they stopped selling them because of failures where it would vibrate loose.

with a quick google search, it looks like JB racing still sell something like this.

[Skarpa]

Christmas came and went and Santa was very generous this year:

[Insert huge pile of original spare parts, cant be bothered to rehost the pics]

Now that the christmas hurry is over I had time to work at the carage for change. I glued the gas tank breather protection tube in place as well as the spacers for the diff brackets.


On the previous pic you can see an opening where I cut away a rusted through body stud. I patched that and made a new stud out of a cut sheet metal screw.

[Skarpa]

Brake calipers assembled:

[Skarpa]

Yesterday I made the brackets for the diff rear cover. I checked with laser that the diff points in same direction as before and then made vertical brackets out of RHS.


The diff must of course be only supported by the bushings so I put 5mm worth of washers between the bushing and RHS. I will replace them later with steel discs.




I welded everything tightly and felt smug. Then it struck me: The sway bar - where will it sit? And the correct answer is of course: Exactly where I just spent 30 minutes welding new steel beams.


So I took a grinder and turned the top ends of my brackets into dust. I added chamfers and closed the top ends with pieces of plate.


Because I had just cut off about half of my previus welding seams I added gussets for the brackets.


I tried to finish as much of the welding as possible so I tacked all kinds of small screws and brackets in place. I also added the support for gas tank filler pipe. The original piece was surprisingly rustless.


Then I made the pass-through for the gas tank breather pipe.








[

Not a lot of welding left anymore..

[Skarpa]

This is one crazy build... You're pretty much rebuilding a BMW from scratch!

Fantastic build.

Thanks!

Today I tackled the fuel pump. I bought a used fuel pump assembly from a fuel injected car to get the tank sensor and the fuel pump mount. The pump is supposed to be in working order as well but I had already bought a 255 lph Walbro so that's what I'll use. It's an unused one so I know where I stand with it.


Walbro and the stock pump are shaped differently at the bottom and the pump mount required some filing to accommodate the filter.




I cut a piece of 5mm rubber under the pump for vibration insulation.


I also wrapped the pump in rubber and fixed it with two hose clamps.


After thinking about it for a moment I realized that it's never going to fit through the tank hole like this. I removed the rubber and the clamps and the pump still seems to sit there pretty firmly. I think that's the way the original pump is mounted as well. I soldered new wires for the connectors. I had cut the originals to remove the connectors to re-plate the pump mount.

Ready to stick into tank.