Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Skarpa]

A while ago I replaced the frame beam where the rear seat belt brackets are but I didn't do the brackets. The beam was very rusty but the seat belt brackets were actually not too bad so yesterday I hacked them off from the remains of the old beam and gave them a good cleaning.

There are three brackets because earlier I was planning on doing a two-seater M3 rear seat which would require an extra bracket in the center. Then I went with the E36 rear seat way and now I'm contemplating if I should still do the third bracket anyway just in case. However, I've realized that I cannot use same kind of bracket in the middle. It needs to be much slimmer than the other two to clear the diff and the drive shaft so if I was to make one, I'd do it from the scratch.

Then I put the brackets in phosphoric acid bath while drilling holes for them in the body and doing other stuff.

You can see that the body has actually picked up some rust during all this time despite the epoxy primer. It was probably due to too thin layer of paint and the fact that I transported the shell to current garage in winter time when there is road salt. I should have washed and dried the shell immediately after transporting. When I'm finished with the body I need to sand it well before painting.

After a lengthy soak in acid I gave the brackets a good washing, cleaning and three coats of weld-through primer. Same treatment for the body, where they are mounted. Then I tightened the parts in place with screws and plug welded them in.




I feel like doing more brackets so I think I'll do the rest of the rear seat area next. Gas tank brackets will need some attention.

[Skarpa]

And I thought I had a project car. Dang this is amazing work to follow, and such fantastic well documented work! I love to see project cars with CAD drawings for parts to suite.

Thanks!

Not much happened during the weekend. More studying and planning than actual progress. M52 breather and oil separator system will not work easily with S50 itb's and plenum so I bought S50 oil separator for practically nothing. Racers often discard them so S50 plenums and accessories are fairly cheap.



Oil separator needed some cleaning.

And don't worry about my dishwasher or the water treatment. This was just the last step to remove any traces of grease from the parts.

Routing of the different hoses in the breather and vacuum system wasn't quite clear to me so I did some studying and drew myself a diagram.

Between the ICV and the vacuum rail there is a T-branch in the hose and a hardline. I think this goes to emission control air pump and the fuel tank breather. I won't be using either so I can discard this line if it does nothing else.

Then I test-mounted the itb's on the block to see how the stuff goes together. The M52 plastic intake manifold has a very thick flange to connect to the head and the stud bolts in the head are too long for my aluminum adapter plate so I unscrewed them and shortened a few to correct length for the itbs.


I need to make a custom support for the plenum. With the adapter plate it's too short and there is nothing in the block where it would attach.


I will also need to make a bracket for the oil separator. It wants to be mounted above the block deck height so I will make an arm that bolts to the block and reaches where the oil separator need to be. Also, I think I need to move it forward quite a lot because I'm using an E34 M50 oil pan where the sump is in the front.

I also check to see that the ITBs fit okay. The nozzles pose no problem but the vanos solenoid, TPS and the breather connection are a different story.




In these pics the ITBs still need to go in another 10 mm. The intake manifold stud bolts are too long for the adapter. When in correct position the TPS will fit but the cable will not and there's no room for the breather hose. It seems that I can flip the syncing shaft and the sensor 180 degrees to point the cable upwards. I know that the valve cover is not weldable so I cannot modify the direction of the breather connection. I was thinking of cutting it off and tapping the hole to fit an elbow there. After some googling I noticed that other people have come to same conclusions. I guess the solutions are fairly obvious:

http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/sh...3#post24564133

I cut off the original hose barb, redrilled the hole into bigger diameter and tapped it with 1/2 inch parallel pipe thread.





Now I just need to come up with hose connector with sharp elbow to clear the throttle position sensor. (the double nipple is just to check the thread)

I think I found a suitable connector. I need to verify it, though when I get the painted valve cover. The connector is a crush-style O-ring fitting but the crush sleeve can also work as a hose barb and is roughly the same diameter as the oil separator inlet. The connector is pretty bulky so I'm questioning if the throttle lever will pass it without problems.

[PerryJ]

And I thought I had a project car. Dang this is amazing work to follow, and such fantastic well documented work! I love to see project cars with CAD drawings for parts to suite.

[Skarpa]

One of my favorite builds on here. Excellent work from top to bottom.:bow:

This is epic builds topic..Awesome details, story ideas, info etc..
:bow::bow:

Thanks a lot!

[litu]

This is epic builds topic..Awesome details, story ideas, info etc..
:bow::bow:

[TheWipprSnappr]

One of my favorite builds on here. Excellent work from top to bottom.:bow:

[Skarpa]

The protection pipe for gas tank breather hoses was pretty well rusted through and it's not available from the dealer anymore so I tried to make one. Pipe size is 32x1,0 mm and I happened to have correct size in a scrapped bicycle frame.


However, the pipe bender we have at work is only meant for small pipe sizes and didn't have big enough lasts for the pipe so I had to improvise. I filled the pipe with sand to keep it from collapsing and taped the pipe ends to keep the sand in.




I wasn't quite success though. Lacking suitable tools, I ended up with pretty awful result. It would likely work but I would not be happy with it.


So the next step was to make a drawing of the pipe and have my brother bend it for me with more professional tools.


That worked actually very well. I just need to make new section for the floor where the pipe goes through.


Onto a second thing: When I made brackets for the M52 air filter box I had to cut a corner off the box to have it sit the way I wanted. Then later I bought the S50 Euro itb's and the rest of intake assembly. S50 uses a 3,5" maf that doesn't fit the M52 filter box so I had to cut a matching hole in the M3 filter box and fill both the holes with straight plastic plate. I used some side mirror plastic triangles with broken tabs for raw material.




I also picked up a pair of barely used 252 degree reground cams. I have a ton of stuff to buy so it was nice the get the cams on a budget even though S52 cam would be better for sure.

[Skarpa]

I cleaned the surroundings of the beam with a grinder and wire wheel and made a


Then I primered everything with weld-through primer and fabricated a new beam from RHS


New beam welded in place. I still need to plug the holes.


That was the final major body part I need to replace. I still have quite a few brackets to make and some minor rust repairs left but I'm on the winning side with the body work.

[Skarpa]

I put a head on top of a scrap block I have and did some test fitting for the S50 headers.


The previous owner has made a pretty substantial dent in the #6 header to clear the bell housing. I think if he had heated the pipe he would have been able to bend it to clear the tranny and keep it quite a lot nicer. This section will have to go.


Although I may need to do a small ding of my own in the #2. The material thickness in the alu block is greater than in the cast iron block so the pipe touches the hump in the block but I already knew that. If I end up squeezing the tube there it will still bit a lot less than in the pic above.


To get rid of any second guessing about cutting up the headers I took a grinder and cut the #6 pipe in a few pieces.


I have roughly something like this in mind for the pipe routing but before I do anything more about that I will see if I need to modify the orientation of the collectors to clear the subframe and the sway bar. Custom made sway bar is also a possibility.

[Skarpa]

The frame crossmember with the differential rear bracket and the sway bar brackets is rusty. I will replace it with 50x30x3 RHS and make new brackets for the E36 diff rear cover. Before lobbing of the crossmember I had to mark the diff alignment and measure the positions of the sway bar brackets so I get them right when I make new ones. For marking the diff alignment I used a method I copied from Petrolhead. I attached a magnetic stand to the drive shaft flange and fixed a laser pointer in that. It's just a cheap pocket laser and not meant for this kind of stuff so aligning it was a bit annoying. It wasn't possible to get a perfect aligment so I just marked the circle the laser drew when rotating the pinion shaft

https://youtu.be/u9xOfVcod9s
PS. Enjoy the earworm. If I'm at the garage on a friday night I usually listen to a nineties-themed radio show called Parasta Ennen. The guy doing the show has a weird sense of humour and sometimes ecclectic music choices.



When I had the diff alignment marked I measured the position of the sway bar brackets and then dropped the rear axle and lobbed off the cross member

I should really get a bigger angle grinder and a reciprocating saw. They would make many jobs quite a lot easier. But never mind about that. Next time at the garage I'll clean up the surroundings of the cross member and start making a new one.

[Skarpa]

This is what happened today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yc--kBfmbE&feature=youtu.be

Sorry for the lousy time lapse. I wanted to make a better one but the camera I had today has a maximum limit of 60 frames in time lapse which is pretty annoying and useless so here it is in words and pics:

Originally wanted to do all the floor and rocker repairs and such in rotisserie but then I screwed it up. First thing I cut off from the body was the rear face and after that the rear of the car no longer had structural integrity to fix it in rotisserie. Also I couldn't reinstall the rear face before replacing the rear arches and I couldn't replace the rear arches before doing the rockers and floor was easier to do when the rocker panels were cut off and so forth. But now I have the rear face back in the car and I still need to do a few repairs under the car plus sealing and painting the underside so I decided to make a quick and dirty rotisserie from two cheap engine stands. I already had one laying around so I bought another one. Then I made forks in each end of the car to support it from the stands. The forks are made of 50x30x3 rectangular section and 42.4x3.2 round tube.











Then it was a matter of tedious fiddling with the engine hoist to lift the body high enough to slide the forks into the frame beams. I also ended up moving to forks to the upper holes in the engine mounts to get more clearance.







The balance is fairly okay. The center of gravity is slightly above the axis of engine mounts but it's pretty easy to turn the body where you want it. I think I'll remove the trunk lid. That should help with the balance. In the pics there is still about ten centimeters of clearance under the rocker panel. The front control arm hits the beam of the engine stand. If I remove the control arms, I should be able to turn the body maybe ten degrees more which would make it quite comfortable to work on it. I declare today a success.

[Skarpa]

I sold the ebay headers I had and bought slightly abused Euro S50 headers instead. The rear ends have been hacked off before the flexible bellow and the lambda bungs. That's not a big problem for me becauseI need to modify them anyway to fit them in E30. Now I can freely shape the headers to clear the subframe and swaybar without guilt. The header from the cylinder six comes very close to firewall in E30. I'll see if I'll modify the firewall or the header. The pipe has a bit strange curves to leave space for steering column in case of right hand steering. I have no use for that so I'd be able to use the space to re-route the pipe while keeping it the same length.

[Skarpa]

The bronze-tinted windshield is a NLA from BMW as well as from major aftermarket manufacturers. I managed to find a smaller shop that was willing to make one and actually for a very reasonable price. The shade is ever so slightly lighter than in original glasses and there is a tiny greenish tint to it. Reason for the difference is that original glasses are made of actually brown glass whereas this one has a brown film laminated between clear layers of glass. But I'm very happy with it and it will surely not stand out once installed.

[Skarpa]

I have always a hundred projects going at the same time and unfinished stuff is laying around everywhere. From time to time I try to finish something. In the beginning of the summer I took apart a set of hydraulic lifters and left the parts soaking in mineral spirit.

I already had the sealings for valve cover and vanos and now I bought the rest of the sealing kit for head. I bought the cam tray for exhaust cam as well as a set of hydraulic lifters that are supposed to be silent. The guy I bought the head from also found the lifters so now I have an ample supply. I took apart the lifters and put them turpentine (mineral spirit) bath to soak any grime. Getting the lifter cylinders out of the tappets is supposed to be hard but they actually came off easily. I had much more trouble getting the lifter pistons out of the cylinders. In the instruction videos they come off simply pulling by fingers but that certainly was not the case with my lifters. Eventually I was able to take apart 24 lifters and only managed to lose one tiny check valve spring.



Here's a good video about taking apart the lifters:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ySf0r8GGMOY

I thought it was due time to finish that So I cleaned the parts using a brush and compressed air. I assembled the lifters and prefilled them with oil. The parts didn't end up quite as shiny as on the video above but I got rid of all the built-up gunk and all the functional surfaces are clean and shiny so I judged them good. I think I should have used some stronger stuff than mineral spirit to get rid of the discoloration.


The lifters are ready to go in the refurbished head that I have for the engine. I think I'll swap that in with the new cams for next summer.

[Skarpa]

I'm hoping to get through the engine and tranny swap without a custom drive shaft. I've read from US projects that people use US M3 automatic drive shafts in 6-speed swaps. The Euro E36 automatic drive shaft is the same length even though it has a different part number for some reason. I got a drive shaft from a 325iA. On the pic there's the E30 316 shaft on the fore ground. Middle one is the E36 328i and the shortest is the automatic drive shaft.

The length difference between the 328i and 325iA drive shafts is 140 mm. I'm doubting if the splines will go in far enough because the trannys have only 100 mm difference in length but I'll test and see. Whatever the ds, I'll use a new E30 center bearing. Or at least unused one. It says made in West Germany so it might not be exactly new :


Then I tackled some rust spots again. On the surface panels there were three repair points left; Rust holes in the base of A and C pillars and a strange area of corrosion int the bottom corner of the driver's door frame. Yesterday I finished the door frame and C pillar.






A pillar was still left to do. It's a nasty spot to repair because there is no access to the backside.