Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Skarpa]

Passenger's side stiffening tube welded.



I'll need to tidy up some of the seam a bit once I borrow a straight grinder from work. At the moment I'm on a summer vacation.


Insted of rushing to do the driver's side tube I decided to take care of a sore spot that sticks in my eye whenever I look that way ie. the right front corner of the engine bay and wheel well. Rust has bitten it's ugly teeth in the overlapping seams.



I cut off the rust and repaired the holes in the horizontal panel.





Then I made a patch for the vertical panel according to a paper template.




It fits as if someone made it to fit. The welding part was made a bit more complicated by the fact that there was some tension in the wheel well and it sprung to a new shape when I cut off the rust. So while welding I needed to return and tension the parts back into the original shape.






It's nice to see that I've become a bit faster in body work and was able to take care of a couple of complex welding jobs during one evening at the garage.

[Staszek]

Lately I haven't made much visible progress on the car. More preparing sort of work. I drilled the holes for the driver's side strut tower reinforcement pipe and prepared the pipe as well as the gusset piece according to the passenger side pieces. I made dimples around the holes using a piece of pipe, a hammer and a large socket.


When drilling the holes for the pipe I noticed that the underside of the ffuse box was not as pristine as I thought.


All of this was well hidden under a layer of undercoating and looked just fine. On the engine bay side you couldn't really see anything was wrong even after removing the seam sealer. I cut off the whole section. At least that should make welding the reinforcement pipe quite a lot easier.


I primered everything with weld through primer to get some protection to the places that will be hard to reach later. When I have the pipes in place, before welding the gussets I'll epoxy paint the area that the gussets will cover.

I think I'll move the engine to my work place to get it clean with a hot water pressure washer. There I can also service the engine and do everything I need to do to just be able to drop it in the car. I already bolted on the flywheel and the clutch but I think I'll need to remove them to mount the engine in an engine stand and to be able to replace the crankshaft rear seal. Earlier I also bolted on the transmission and noticed that the bolt holes in the tranny don't match with the ones in the E34 oilpan. I drilled new holes in the transmission flange. They were quite conveniently located in relation to the stiffening ribs.




I also marked and drilled the ring bolt holes in the 3-piece TRX prototype. Marking the holes was very easy when I printed the hole pitch in 1:1 scale and just punched through the paper.






The next step was self evident.

12,5" width

:D Or maybe not. Although I do follow a guy on youtube who is building a widebody E30 with such rear wheels and S52 turbo engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl44RAVWap8

Now those are a sweet idea!

[Skarpa]

Lately I haven't made much visible progress on the car. More preparing sort of work. I drilled the holes for the driver's side strut tower reinforcement pipe and prepared the pipe as well as the gusset piece according to the passenger side pieces. I made dimples around the holes using a piece of pipe, a hammer and a large socket.


When drilling the holes for the pipe I noticed that the underside of the ffuse box was not as pristine as I thought.


All of this was well hidden under a layer of undercoating and looked just fine. On the engine bay side you couldn't really see anything was wrong even after removing the seam sealer. I cut off the whole section. At least that should make welding the reinforcement pipe quite a lot easier.


I primered everything with weld through primer to get some protection to the places that will be hard to reach later. When I have the pipes in place, before welding the gussets I'll epoxy paint the area that the gussets will cover.

I think I'll move the engine to my work place to get it clean with a hot water pressure washer. There I can also service the engine and do everything I need to do to just be able to drop it in the car. I already bolted on the flywheel and the clutch but I think I'll need to remove them to mount the engine in an engine stand and to be able to replace the crankshaft rear seal. Earlier I also bolted on the transmission and noticed that the bolt holes in the tranny don't match with the ones in the E34 oilpan. I drilled new holes in the transmission flange. They were quite conveniently located in relation to the stiffening ribs.




I also marked and drilled the ring bolt holes in the 3-piece TRX prototype. Marking the holes was very easy when I printed the hole pitch in 1:1 scale and just punched through the paper.






The next step was self evident.

12,5" width

:D Or maybe not. Although I do follow a guy on youtube who is building a widebody E30 with DIY 12,5" style 5 rear wheels and an S52 turbo engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl44RAVWap8

[Skarpa]

Edit: Duplicate post

[Skarpa]

To an untrained eye these may look like a pair of headers but actually they are an elementary level lesson in TIG welding. In other words I welded on the v-band connectors, O2 sensor bungs and the flexible bellow. Towards the end it felt like I was getting the hang of it. I think I'll still cut off and fill in the original O2 sensor bungs. They are idiotically placed considering they should receive gasses equally from all cylinders.



I was going to continue practicing on the exhaust pipe but the winds of fate changed. Today at work a welding subcontractor came to do a bigger welding project but the transport company lost 400 kg of steel so he didn't have anything to do and welded together my exhaust pipe as a pastime.



I can't complain. Doing one seam a day during the lunch breaks it would have taken me a month to finish the exhaust. Lets hope that it fits the car also. I know that tacking the whole thing together and then welding it all at once is a bit risky. But at least now I has a better chance than if I had welded it myself. A professional welder has quite a lot steadier hand than me and the heat input is more even.

I have lost one of the flanges for the center connection so I made one out of stainless steel flat bar.


Otherwise it's good but one of the holes wandered a bit off when drilling.

[Skarpa]

I found this interesting... you may also want to consider the fuel pump assembly from an M40/M42 coupe/sedan (not vert). They had the old 55L tank, but a high pressure in-tank pump. Both feed and return lines are 8mm, unlike the low pressure housing. Part # 16141180233. Should be a drop in conversion.

Thanks for the tip. I'm pretty sure that's actually what I have but I need to measure the inlet and outlet. I wasn't aware that the low pressure in-tank pump had a different fuel sender. Live and learn. Here's a quote of my old post regarding the fuel pump:

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.

PS. I'm not 100 percent sure my walbro is rated for E85 but we shall see how long it lasts.

[thedivision]

Yeah, I could have used the 330i flywheel but I have a perfectly fine 328i dual mass so I'll use that for now. Later I'll most likely move on to solid flywheel. I'm shelling out quite a lot of cash for various parts and to keep the budget manageable I need to make some compromises initially. For that reason as well as to have the car running in reasonably near future, I'm not going all out with the engine yet. The first setup will be a stock B28 block and internals, new chains, belts and seals, serviced head with new valve guides and seals, cleaned and checked lifters and cams swapped for a pair of bit hotter ones. For intake I'm going with ITBs and most likely updated injectors and an E85 tune.

Later, when the car is running and driving I'll rebuild the engine with the B30 crank, high compression, solid flywheel, sprung clutch, perhaps lightweight lifters, new damper and so forth.

The tank is a 55 l one. The tank is a fuel injection type so it has a small bowl in the bottom around the fuel pump intake to avoid fuel starvation while cornering. I have a fuel sender for a 55l fuel injected car so it has a return line unlike a 62l one.

I found this interesting... you may also want to consider the fuel pump assembly from an M40/M42 coupe/sedan (not vert). They had the old 55L tank, but a high pressure in-tank pump. Both feed and return lines are 8mm, unlike the low pressure housing. Part # 16141180233. Should be a drop in conversion.

[Skarpa]

Amazing project. Thanks for documenting it so well.

I'm wondering why you couldn't just use the flywheel from an E46 330i GS6-37BZ that has the pilot bearing in it - wouldn't that solve your issue?

Also, is that a 55L fuel tank? What are you doing for the fuel return?

Yeah, I could have used the 330i flywheel but I have a perfectly fine 328i dual mass so I'll use that for now. Later I'll most likely move on to solid flywheel. I'm shelling out quite a lot of cash for various parts and to keep the budget manageable I need to make some compromises initially. For that reason as well as to have the car running in reasonably near future, I'm not going all out with the engine yet. The first setup will be a stock B28 block and internals, new chains, belts and seals, serviced head with new valve guides and seals, cleaned and checked lifters and cams swapped for a pair of bit hotter ones. For intake I'm going with ITBs and most likely updated injectors and an E85 tune.

Later, when the car is running and driving I'll rebuild the engine with the B30 crank, high compression, solid flywheel, sprung clutch, perhaps lightweight lifters, new damper and so forth.

The tank is a 55 l one. The tank is a fuel injection type so it has a small bowl in the bottom around the fuel pump intake to avoid fuel starvation while cornering. I have a fuel sender for a 55l fuel injected car so it has a return line unlike a 62l one.

[thedivision]

Amazing project. Thanks for documenting it so well.

I'm wondering why you couldn't just use the flywheel from an E46 330i GS6-37BZ that has the pilot bearing in it - wouldn't that solve your issue?

Also, is that a 55L fuel tank? What are you doing for the fuel return?

[Skarpa]

This. Is. The. Best. Build

Amazing Job.

Thanks!

[Styleprojekt]

This. Is. The. Best. Build

Amazing Job.

[Skarpa]

I think it looks good as is.

I agree and I have half a mind to leave it like it is but looking at a picture when the stripes still were silver I may like it more that way

[rzerob]

I think it looks good as is.

[Skarpa]

The stripes in the valve cover plastic required some retouching. Only the top faces of the stripes are painted. I decided that they would be impossible to mask that way. Instead I decided to paint the whole area with silver paint and then mask the stripes and paint the rest with black.





Well, that went south surprisingly fast. Cutting themasking tape for the stripes was difficult and the paint creeped under the tape jere and there. So I just painted the whole thing black.


As an afterthought I could have painted the stripes with a dryish foam roller without masking. But this is how we go now. At least I don't need to worry about the paint not matching the stainless steel. I'll just need to paint the screw covers.

PS. I got a tip to sand away the black paint from the stripes with a fine sand paper and put a coat of warnish on them. I may still do it.

[Skarpa]

For the strut tower braces I planned to use 33,7 x 2,0 or 2,6 pipe. We don't have such at work but insted we do have 33,7 x 3,5 zinc plated pipe. That's way too thick walled and heavy for this application and the zinc makes for nasty welding but luckily we have a lathe.


This didn't make much sense except that the pipe was free and I like metal turning:p I started fitting the pipe. It's a bit complicated fit with both of the pipe ends notched. As usual in this kind of cases, once I had both ends figured out the pipe was too short. I taped some cardboard in one end of the pipe and marked the shape on that.



Then I wrapped paper around the pipe and cut the ends in the shape of the pipe. Then I slid the paper cylinder off the pipe and onto a new one and it was easy to mark the shape for the ends.


I should have a ready pattern for the driver's side when I just wrap the paper inside out.


The bottom end of the pipe is slightly open allowing any condensed water to run out. At work they've told me that it's important to leave drain holes in hand rails and other closed pipe structures.



Next I had to think about how I want to join the pipe to the frame beam. to make it even sturdier. This is what I came up with:




Initially the plate went all the way to the bottom corner which provided stronger shape consisting of two triangles but then I lobbed off the bottom corner to avoid creating a pocket that collects dirt and water. It should be pretty strong even without the corner. The hole is screaming for a dimple. We'll see what I can do about that.