Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Albie325]

Damn this is gonna be incredible when done. Awesome work

[Kershaw]

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

[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.

[econti]

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

[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.

[Mkcustoms88]

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

[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]

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]

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]

Yeah and that's what ii have wheel arches

[Skarpa]

Lately I've done lots of small but tedious work. I added the missing pieces of sound deadening to the engine bay. The material is the best I could find from a local store of technical rubber and plastic. It's self adhering damping mat with polyurethane surface. Time will tell how it handles the engine bay environment.





The stock sound deadening looks like it's hanging loose but it actually sits quite well when it's correctly in position. Here it's turned aside because I decided to add a couple of body studs to fix it better. They were the ones that are missing from early models. I also glued the sound deadening to the fire wall with contact cement.



Here's how the glued on body studs turned out. When gluing them on I also glued and riveted the ski door opening shut.




A friend of mine pointed out that because I hadn't cut slots in the top hats of the poly bushes, It wouldn't be possible to put a box spanner there to tighten the eccentric bolts. He also recommended flipping the bolts so the nuts are towards the center of the car because that makes it a lot easier to tighten them. The bolts need to be fairly tight to hold the adjustment. Luckily I didn't need to drop the whole axle assembly. lowering the subframe a bit was enough to flip the bolts. While under the car, I fabricated a small piece of heat shield between the two factory ones out of thin aluminum plate.










The shifter received a brand new rubber boot because to be honest, I've lost the original one. I guess it's for the best. I still need to fix the back up light wires to the shifter bracket. It would have been a lot easier when the transmission was still on the floor or at least before bolting on the prop shaft but you can't remember everything.


I borrowed cable terminal crimpers from a friend and started making the main power cable.



These would go all the way up to 120 mm² but I settled for stock 50 mm² cable (from an E36, mind you). At the battery end I used a fused battery terminal out of a Renault Grand Scenic. It just fits under the E30 battery cover when you leave off the lid of the battery terminal and trim a few ribs from the battery cover. The piece is a bit flimsy compared to BMW parts but I believe it does the job.






I tried to shield he cable in all the places that are in any risk of chafing. Although the insulation on the cable is very thick and sturdy to begin with.




The stock cable supports that fix to body studs are no longer available so I used Hellerman-Tyton screw on cable tie fixings instead (model HDM19). They are robust, screw on directly to body studs and look pretty tidy.

[econti]

Nice note on the cable ties, solid work keep it up

[Skarpa]

Nice note on the cable ties, solid work keep it up

Thanks! I usually work on the project a couple nights in a week in it progresses steadily even thought there's sometimes regrettably little evidence for it. I usually like to make a post when I get something ready but here's a little post about a couple of jobs that have reached a kind of "done for now" state. The engine wire loom is 95% done. The last 5% will be completed when I have the heater in and can finally fix the blower motor cover along with the wire loom cover.



After taking this pic I trimmed off the unused diagnostic plug bracket and bent the fuel rail inlet into better direction. A while ago some idiot decided to redo the battery tray area so the M3 wiring cover end no longer fits so I had to come up with something else.








I'll need to have this 3D printed in some suitable plastic.

On a final note: Here's what I do now that I no longer have accessa to lathe and parts are NLA

[Skarpa]

For a while I've been working on small but important stuff that doesn't leave much to show. Let's make an update now that I have a bit more visible work done. I centered the rack, installed the steering column and dialed the front wheels straight.



The gap between the left side of the engine and the body is narrow and will be full of stuff so I had to start filling it from the bottom. I don't want to remove the plenum because that would be a big job. Next I installed the fuel lines and the filter. I had to drop the gas tank enough to swap the pressure and return lines. This way they are located better in the engine bay. Next I installed the pedal assembly and the brake master cylinder and the booster.



When the clutch master cylinder was in place as well I got to plumb it. The local hose store had brake fluid proof hose only in eye-aching green so put a wire loom sleeve over the hose. It actually gives kind of a stock look since the original clutch hose is a braided one.



Now that I had the brake master cylinder in place I checked that the intake rubber boot fit in place and guess what: It didn't :( I was missing a couple of centimeters of space. Honestly I don't remember if I had the engine tilted slightly to the passengers side when mocking stuff up or if it's a case of the plenum being slightly differently positioned now that it's on the official mounts. I'm leaning on the latter explanation but that doesn't really matter. Now I had to put 12 mm worth of spacers under the left engine mount to tilt the engine away from the brake master cylinder. When jacking up the engine I tried to observe if there's any visible change in how the prop shaft lines up but I almost couldn't tell the gear box was moving so I'm not too worried about that. If the prop shaft vibrates or starts chewing guibos, I'll get back to that. To find out if I have any other fitment issues, I assembled all the other major components in the engine bay at once. The AC condenser and the electric fan found their way to the nose of the car.



Then I mounted the air direction plates around the radiator. I think the plastic directly in front of the radiator is from a 318 is with AC but it had to be cut up a bit since the E36 328i AC radiator is taller.





Only the left vertical section of the plastic was used. I added soft sealing strips around the radiator to direct all the air flow through the radiator.



The plastic side plates in front of the radiator are for an early model with AC. When the radiator was in place it quickly became evident that I had to change something. The magnet clutch for the AC compressor was basically touching the radiator. The Seals I had between the radiator and the body front frame were pushing the radiator back and worsening the situation so I had to mostly remove them. Although the radiator is so close to the body that there's not much space for air to flow around it even without sealing especially after i pushed the radiator mounts forward as much as possible. With these changes I was able to create a 5 mm gap between the compressor and the radiator.



That's slightly better but still not great. Someone with more experience could tell me how much the engine tends to move backwards and forwards in the engine bay. The radiator hoses didn't line up that great either. I can make to bottom one work but the top one is pretty sharply kinked and I'm not quite happy with that.



But regardless of those issues it was very pleasing to look at the engine bay with all major components in.





Next on the list there are the hydraulic hoses for the power steering and the hydroboost and making the brake lines to the ABS pump. There are various reasons why I haven't done that yeat even though it might have made sense but I should still be able to get all of them in.

[varg]

3D printing probably isn't the right process for that piece. It being a thin and complex part there's no way to print it that will take advantage of the material's strength, and layer adhesion will always be a factor no matter which orientation it is printed in. It'll work it would just be a lot of print time due to support requirements and the part will probably be fragile and prone to warping. What's the foam tape you have between the radiator and core support? I need to get my hands on some of that.