Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[econti]

3 weeks! That's a lot of work to do. Good luck on it, I'm sure it'll look fantastic anyway

[Skarpa]

There's a big E30 meet in Finland in three weeks and that has been my target for getting the car to run and drive. If I want to be able to drive my car there I really need to focus on bare essentials. I won't have time to have the car inspected for legal road use so I'll have to get a temporary driving permit. I'll also have to speed up the process otherwise. I was planning to assemble the whole car and lower it on wheels to see how long sway bar links I need for the front but to get the job done, I did some mocking up with floor jack and fender to get a guestimation of ride height and ordered the links. The target is to have the links perpendicular to the sway bar at ride height. We'll see how close I got. I noticed one thing about the current link length. At full droop the sway bar touches the wishbones before the shocks come to full extension. It doesn't really matter, though. I don't plan to reach full droop at both front wheels under any normal driving conditions.



Installing windows would have required more hands so instead I assemebled and installed the rear bumper. I need to have that in place to get the rear muffler hangers right.





The rubber trim is (or at least should be) M-tech 1 specific ie. a bit longer than stock but it wouldn't hurt if it was longer still. Now it just about goes inside of the bumper end trims. Tech 1 bumper specialities also include the extra rubber strip at the top of the normal rubber trim.



When I had the bumper in I wanted to have even better look at how the rear of the car would look just for fun so I installed the trunk lid also. I already had assembled it before. My deck lid spoiler was pretty baked by the sun on top side. I used some spray on rubber paint to see if I can restore the finish.







The result looks awesome but I'm a little doubtful about how well it lasts. We'll see. I got the seals for the spoiler ends from a dealership but I guess they are a rarely bought product as one of them was already expired. When the seal gets too old the glue fuses with the backing paper making it impossible to remove. I didn't want to waste time ordering another potentially old piece from the dealership so I just used double-sided tape. The same as for the front edge of the spoiler.



The rear of the car look awesome when assembled:



I didn't remember to take a photo of the top of the spoiler, though.

[Skarpa]

That's a million bucks. Only M3 had the soft one? Guess I'll have to find one of them.

Yeah, only M3 as far as I know and ETK tells me. There are plenty of curious differences between the M3 and other models.

[econti]

That's a million bucks. Only M3 had the soft one? Guess I'll have to find one of them.

[2mAn]

Wow, that headliner turned out great. Nice work!

2nd that!

Wow. SO much better than the regular E30s headliner

[Skarpa]

Wow, that headliner turned out great. Nice work!

Thanks!

[mike.bmw]

Wow, that headliner turned out great. Nice work!

[Skarpa]

For a change I wanted to do something other than boring, purely functional hose work and leak repairs so I undertook installing the headliner. A while ago I bougth an M3 anthrazite headliner when I got it for cheap. Unlike the regular models it's made of softer fabric instead of vinyl. It comprises of two layers of fabric laminated together.



However, in this example the laminating glue has long ago dried up and was crumbling into tiny flakes. I was still interested to see if it can be rescued. I whacked the liner with carpet beater to get all the glue loose and then vacuumed it. Next I put it in washing machine. I was left with a clean tidy headliner separated into to layers. I was considering the possibility to glue the layers back together but abandoned the idea. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be able to do it and get a decent result. There are so many things that could go wrong including wrinkling, getting wrong stuff stuck together and glue penetrating the top layer. But the top layer is actually strong and doesn't stretch so it doesn't need the layer behind it for supporting. I think the cotton fabric under it is there just to give the headliner a bit thickness, to ensure it lays smoothly over the sound deadening and to protect the top layer from wear and tear where it needs to go around hard edges. So it doesn't really matter if the layers are glued together or not. I sewed the fabrics together at all edges and around all holes and openings to make sure the line up correctly. I also needed to do a little repair work for the bottom layer.



The front panel was otherwise neat, but had had a little crack at the rear edge.



I peeled off the vinyl a little, spread some glue in the crack and pressed it back together. In the end I glued the vinyl back with contact adhesive.







You almost couldn't tell it's been repaired. Before installing the headliner I had to install the wiring for the check control and the rear view mirror map lights. Of course my mirror came without the wiring set. In both ends of the mirror wiring set there's an exotic small connector that's no longer available. (the side blinker stalk for air bag cars actually has the same connector). But internet told me that Molex KK100 series two-pinned connector would fit in place when you cut off the locking tabs and so it does.



I'm sure there are better alternatives but I'll use this one as long as it works. The mirror wires are protected by shrink sleee and run inside the A-pillar and the channel at the front of the roof. Chec control wiring loom runs in the groove at the front of the A-pillar. It has special plastic clips that are no longer available so I'll need to get some secondhand. I made a few of my own for the front edge of the roof to be able to install the headliner.



Then I hanged the headliner in place with the metal bars and screwed on the handles, indoor lights and sun visors to get it correctly lined up. Next I glued all the edges with contact adhesive.


A little word of warning for those of you who might replace your c-pillar sound deadenings. The factory part doesn't seem to hold in place with just it's own adhesive. It feels very sticky and reassuring but at least for me it just fell down in a week. Masking tape didn't help to hold it in place. After a few tries the sound deadening was so beat up I just ordered a new one and installed it only after I was ready to pull the headliner over it. But man, did the headliner came out great!





I really couldn't be much happier with it. I'll install the rear view mirror and the check panel once the windshield is in.

[gnmzl]

So happy to hear that roar into life in the car and with exhaust! Congrats, this project has come a long way and you did a great job!

[Skarpa]

Congrats! Nothing more satisfying than hearing that engine fire right up after so much time and effort. Awesome that your kids are out there "helping" too.


Always enjoy your updates.


MJ

Thanks! It really felt a big moment. My daughter is very keen to go to the garage and it's nice daughter-father time. Getting actual work done with her is questionable but is improving all the time. My brother's son (also visible in the pictures) is actually very smart guy and will carefully do tasks you point at him.

[mjweimer]

Congrats! Nothing more satisfying than hearing that engine fire right up after so much time and effort. Awesome that your kids are out there "helping" too.


Always enjoy your updates.


MJ

[Skarpa]

Huge moves! Started so easily, sounds very healthy. That's awesome.
After the leaks, what's next? Interior install and that's it?

- clean up and sort out the wiring in engine bay and under dash
- interior
- glasses
- install and assemble doors
- hood and trunk
- bumpers fenders and trim
- weld exhaust hangers to rear muffler
- lights
- Windshield washer
- various small repairs and buffing up for the above parts

So still quite a bit of work to do but we're slowly getting there. I deliberately left out the A/C from the above list. I'll need to sort out the piping, hoses and wiring but will do it after the car is running and driving.

[econti]

Huge moves! Started so easily, sounds very healthy. That's awesome.
After the leaks, what's next? Interior install and that's it?

[Skarpa]

A few steps forward. The HVAC unit is in.


The heater core hoses wouldn't fit with the plenum so I had to shorten the aluminum pipes a little and move the hose clamps inside the vehicle. For that I needed to form new beads on the pipe ends. I made a suitable tool for that out of cheap needle nose pliers with a terminal crimping section. I just neede to shorten the jaws and round one of them to fit inside the pipe.




Then it was just a matter of crimping a bead in the pipe a little by little. It turned out pretty all right.




While connecting the hoses and especially installing the rubber grommet around them I tried to come up with an equally difficult task. It was like putting on a condom, in the dark, when you're already in. So it wasn't quite easy but I didn't want to uninstall the plenum either.




Once the hoses were in I poured coolant and power steering fluid in the engine and right away on floor. Both circuits had leaks. The power steering pump was wet all around. I really couldn't tell where it was leaking but I didn't spend too much time figuring it out either. I just ordered a new pump. If original LUK one was immediately available I would have gotten one but it wasn't so I got a rebuilt one instead. The culprit behind the coolant leak was the sensor block at the coolant hose. There's really not much of a flat surface for the aluminum washer to seal on:




I didn't have a mill but after some filing and sand paper it started to look better.





I put some thread locker on the sensor in addition to the aluminum washer as I didn't have any better sealant at hand. It seems to hold at the moment. The offspring was a big help. (right)




My brother swinged by and I put his vehicle electrics expertise in use and told him to switch the plug in the engine wiring loom to an E30 one. Meanwhile I polished the handling scratches and welding discolorisation from the exhaust tips and hanged the exhaust in place. I wanted to hear what the engine sounds like with the full exhaust.







New battery in trunk, some ethanol in tank and it was time to start the engine. First we rotated the engine without fuel pump relay until we had oil pressure. Then we ran the fuel pump until there was fuel in the fuel rail. The engine started beautifully at first try... right after I remembered to connect the coil wire loom as well. It was a success except for a few leaks at power steering / hydroboost banjo connections. We'll get those sorted later. Video of the start. Ignore the shitty audio especially when revving:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNJ7...ature=youtu.be

[mjweimer]

Thanks! The shifter is the E90 330i one (25117551645) so it's the stock shifter for this transmission. It's a mostly straight shifter with a slight S-bend at the base. I figured I'll use this as the base line and see if I want to make any changes once I get to drive the car.

Thank you! My lever placement is pretty good but after trying a few different shift levers (E30, E36, E46...) I could use something with a little more length below the ball to shorten up the shift action and I think the S-bend will position it even better in the chassis.


MJ