Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Skarpa]

I forgot you added tubing to the towers. I hope to do something like this into a 1/2 cage in the future.

ZK

Go for it.


Lately I've fiddled with panel gaps. I modified the bottom edges of the front fenders to line up with the rocker panels.


When that was done I got to install the fenders and adjust the panel gaps.






It's not perfect but pretty good for a first timer building a car. There are a couple spots where my inexperience in body repair shows if you look closely but I'm happy with the result. Now that I know I don't need to move the doors anymore I installed the glasses and the window bottom trim. Although I didn't seem to take a photo of that. I still need to sort out a few electrical gremlins before being able to completely assemble the interior but I need to get the car in running condition as I need to be out of the shop by the end of next week. Anyway, it's easiest to transport bigger parts when they are already installed so I started with the rear seat. I glued on a new sound deadening under the seat.



Then I washed the years of grime and dust from the seat belts.



Next I installed the parcel shelf and the rear seat. Better picture of the parcel shelf once I have it vacuumed.



The M3 rear seat is great sitting... until you fold the front seat back. Then it's basic E30 for you with no legroom. Still looks good. Today we'll continue building the car with my brother. Next up is assembling the front of the car.

[moatilliatta]

I forgot you added tubing to the towers. I hope to do something like this into a 1/2 cage in the future.

ZK

[Skarpa]

It's been a month since the last post but things have only been slow at the forum. Some time ago I got a declaration that my current shop needs to be empty by the end of May so I've been busy getting the car in driving condition. I haven't found a new shop yet so I probably need to bring the car to my driveway and finish it there. Before that I want the nose of the car assembled, panel gaps adjusted and door glasses in place. Because there's a certain order to work I needed to start by finishing the wiring in the engine bay. The body wire loom is from a late model so pretty much all the connectors for the lights needed to be changed.




I didn't want to needlessly replace the horn connector so I got a facelift horn instead.


This felt like a big symbolic step:


When I had the wiring in at the front, I checked all the electrical equipment in the car and got it working apart from two things: For some reason the mirror adjustent is skewed so moving the knob up and down moves the mirrors left and right and vice versa. I didn't find any reasonable explanation for this so I'll probably need to just change wires at the switch to get it working right. The central locking also has a problem. When locking the doors the power on the lock motors stays on for too long and blows the "fuse". I'll need to test it with another control box.

Along with the wiring I also got the windscreen washer tank finished. I didn't want to keep the bucket-sized original tank. I was planning to use just the intensive wash portion of it but came to conclusion that it looks goofy alone. Instead I opted for made-to-order aluminum tank. I designed the tank using complex PTACACAD method. (Plastic Tank Assisted Computer Assisted Cardboard Assisted Design) First I took a small aftermarket washer bottle (I couldn't find a satisfactory spot for it) I hacked away plastic until the tank fit where I wanted.




Using that mock up I made a 3D model and a preliminary drawing of the tank. Then I printed it out and made a cardboard model for test fitting. After seeing how that fit I did some final tweaks to the design.







I made a proper drawing and handed it over to a welder.





I used orbital sander and polishing wheel on the tank enough to get rid of the big scratches. I wasn't aiming for mirror finish. I'm happy with the result. The volume of the tank is 1,5 litres. The pump sits behind the headlight and can be seen in the wiring picture. It's the original pump just moved away from the tank. I did the fixings for the tank by welding screws to patches of steel plate and then glued them in place with panel adhesive.

Next I need to mske some corrections to the shape of the front fender bottom edges to make them align with the rockers. Then I can assemble the nose of the car.

[Skarpa]

Hey Skarpa, project is moving along nicely!
If you want to 5 lug and retain factory trail, for the rear you can use m54 z4 hubs. For the front, you need to machine a sleeve without a collar to make up for the difference in diameter, have a small collar pressed in where the dust shield is located and either use a custom nut or put a good strong washer to have enough surface for the stock nut to clamp the bearing down. Then it is just a matter of redrilling the rotors to fit the bolt pattern and center bore. This way you keep the stock brakes too. We have done it a couple of times, one car is also tracked with this setup and there are no issues.
One thing you need to look out for is the clearance for the RSs center up front, the stock brake caliper would probably hit it. I can probably sketch a drawing up if the explanation is not clear.
Cheers!

Yeah, that is pretty much the way I plan to go. I know what you mean with the brake caliber fouling. My 4x100 RSs have actually been machined to clear E30 brakes. (Something the previous owner did and something I'm not too happy about since they removed too much material IMO) At the front I'll most likely go with Mini Countryman discs (294x22) and E36 calibers (adapters required) and at the rear E36 discs in 272mm diameter paired with E36 compact calipers.

[gnmzl]

Hey Skarpa, project is moving along nicely!
If you want to 5 lug and retain factory trail, for the rear you can use m54 z4 hubs. For the front, you need to machine a sleeve without a collar to make up for the difference in diameter, have a small collar pressed in where the dust shield is located and either use a custom nut or put a good strong washer to have enough surface for the stock nut to clamp the bearing down. Then it is just a matter of redrilling the rotors to fit the bolt pattern and center bore. This way you keep the stock brakes too. We have done it a couple of times, one car is also tracked with this setup and there are no issues.
One thing you need to look out for is the clearance for the RSs center up front, the stock brake caliper would probably hit it. I can probably sketch a drawing up if the explanation is not clear.
Cheers!

[Skarpa]

Watched the vid, I thought your DIY ITB flow tester was pretty slick! Hopefully the hydraulic brake regular issue resolves, would be such a pain to have to drain and rebleed the system again. I think bleeding brakes is my least favorite "maintenance" task to do.

Luckily I only need to relocate the pressure regulator, not the booster so draining and bleeding the brakes is not necessary. Just the power steering/hydroboost system. But let's hope it doesn't come to that.

[Albie325]

Watched the vid, I thought your DIY ITB flow tester was pretty slick! Hopefully the hydraulic brake regular issue resolves, would be such a pain to have to drain and rebleed the system again. I think bleeding brakes is my least favorite "maintenance" task to do.

[Skarpa]

v nice ! love both of the wheels , love the Rs and love the new ones :D i wish i could get a set like them haha

Thanks!

On the previous video I did some adjusting of the idle. After rebuilding the engine the idle RPMs have been too high: around 1300-1500 so I investigated it a bit more. First I made sure once more that the throttle butterflies close fully.



I completely loosened the stopper screws for the closed position. Then I wound them in until a piece of paper stays held under each screw. This makes sure the throttle closes fully but the stopper screws carry the load when the flaps are closed. Also all the screws are in equal setting. If any of them is wound in too far the paper strips will fall off from the other ones. The problem seems to be that the idle control valve lets too much air through. I wanted to test how much I need to restrict the air flow to get the idle RPM under 1000. (max idle revs for a street legal car in Finland). I tested it using a plastic plug as a restrictor in the icv port and drilling different sizes of holes in the plug. A three millimeter hole keeps the revs under 1000. This is not the final solution however, as in a cold start I now need to keep the engine running with the throttle until it warms up. This excercise at least confirmed that basically all air the engine is getting is through the icv as the engine will not run with the icv fully blocked off and I've also made sure there are no vacuum leaks. I've since discussed the matter with various people and there are probably several reasons for the high idle revs. 1: 6 throttle flaps have more leak around them them than a single one. 2: The bypass needles to equalize the air flow to all cylinders allow some extra air through (around 200 RPM:s worth in my tests). 3: The replaced cams change how the engine breathes. All this is enough to throw off the stock idle control circuit. Most likely a solution can be found by modifying the icv map and the ignition advance at idle but for now I just left the icv restriction in and made a vacuum sync for the engine. The idle is no longer at the top of my to-do list as the revs are now acceptable for inspection.




Another problem in the car has been the sticking switch valve the hydroboost pressure regulator. Happened in previous episodes: I have a hydraulic brake booster in the car. There is a switching valve that's supposed to charge up the pressure accumulator for the brakes and then switch the flow back to the power steering. The switching valve appeared to be stuck so it was constantly charging the the pressure accumulator and the pump was running at full pressure against the pressure limit valve. This of course makes a lot of noise and heats up the PS pump quickly. (think of keeping the wheels turned at full lock with the engine running). To quickly either fix the problem of eliminate possible causes I replace the whole pressure regulator including the accumulator. The same fault continued but I noticed the when you turn the steering wheel it releases the switching valve and keeps the noise away until you touch the brakes again. My new diagnose is that because I have the pressure regulator mounted upside down because of restrictions in space, there is an air bubble in the switching that causes it to stick. When turning the wheels the bubble is released. I tried alternating with pressing the brake pedal and turning the steering wheel to bleed the system. The problem didn't fully go away but now it's so much better that I'll see how it will behave when driving. If the problem doesn't go away I will relocate the pressure regulator and mount it in correct orientation. I already found a spot for it in the frame rail in front f the engine mount.

On a lighter matter I replaced the side mirrors with new ones. They look quite a bit different.


Because of the future wheel project I plan to do a 5-lug conversion. Still I don't want to abandon the RSs so I've been on the lookout for reasonably priced 16" RSs in 5x120 bolt pattern (reasonable is a relative term). A while ago I lucked out:


This is a set of BBS RS005:s and RS006:s. A complete set but in need of refurbishing. The specs are 7x16 ET11 at the front and 8x16 ET24 at the rear. The lips and centers in front and rear wheels are identical. The only difference is that fronts have 5" barrels and the rears have 6"barrels. My 4x100 wheels are made with RS005 centers that are welded and redrilled. So if do the 5-lug conversion with minimal increase in rail width I should have pretty much unchanging wheel fitment when I combine my previous lips and barrels with the 5x120 centers. That's a project for some future winter.

[QuiqueUy]

v nice ! love both of the wheels , love the Rs and love the new ones :D i wish i could get a set like them haha

[Skarpa]

Fresh Youtube video here:

https://youtu.be/wApF1D5fJ80

Forum post in near future.

[Skarpa]

Here's a video about future wheels for project ARMO (TRX-1 3-piece conversion)

https://youtu.be/u4q2m2kZMYE

[Skarpa]

This thing has came a long way, Exciting! And loving all the tedious details that make these builds take the time they do.

I should make it out to more E30 meets event though mine isn't running yet.

Thanks! And yeah, you should definitely go to meets even though the car isn't running yet. I've been doing it for years and it's a good way to pick up inspiration and ideas.

So more about the wheels in text format: I rebuilt the BBS RS's way back. (you can find a post about it here (post #14):

Post #14

The idea was to have wheels as wide as possible without needing to use stretched tires or tucking in. The rear arches are lightly rolled. When I had the tires on the wheels I was pretty happy with the fitment especially at the rear:

(obviously at full droop)









At the front the tire fits nicely in the wheel arch but I had one issue:



The tire fitment on the wheels just looks too different. The side wall on the front tire is way more rounded. At this point the wheel widths were 7" at the front and 8,5" at the back. The tires are 205/50R16 and 225/45R16. Suitable tire sizes for 16 wheels in E30 rolling diameter are not plentiful. The issue with the tire fitment is understandable as the difference in wheel width is 38 mm and in the tire width just 20 mm. When rebuilding the wheels I skimped on the front barrels and reused the 5" barrels I had even though I could have gone 0,5" wider. Oh well, you reap what you sow so I ordered 5,5" barrels and took the front wheels apart again.



I had the barrels powder-coated black and then reassembled the wheels.





Much better:



The sidewall of the front tire still looks slightly more rounded but that's mainly because the tires are of different brands. I'm happy with the change. The wheel specs now are:

Front: 7,5x16ET21
1,5" lip and 5,5" barrel
205/50 tire

Rear: 8,5x16ET20
2,0" lip and 6" barrel
225/45 tire


I also did a couple of small details inspired by Albie325. The chrome on the button screws for the vent windows was a bit pitted and anyway the chrome buttons didn't work that great with the black window top trim in my opinion so I got new ones in black.







I also got the hood hinge stopper bushings for that little bit of extra cushioning.

[moatilliatta]

This thing has came a long way, Exciting! And loving all the tedious details that make these builds take the time they do.

I should make it out to more E30 meets event though mine isn't running yet.

[Skarpa]

No posts for the entirety of February? Damn, I need to pick up my game. Also the summer is already close ans I still have a lot to do. Lately I've mostly been busy at work, building a climbing gym for our club or being ill but it looks like I should start having more time for the car project. In celebration of that here's a short video about widening the front wheels to get a better tire fitment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-A-lPH-368

[Skarpa]

Enjoyed your video...you do such good work.
I wish I had the know how to do more on mine.

I was hoping you would of fired up the engine...I bet it sounds amazing!

The video was great, didn't even realize how far you broke the car down initially for all the rust repair. Very impressive, also would have loved to hear the engine!

Thanks! The car was indeed pretty rusty. Not worth saving, someone might say but a very good lesson in doing body work. I was planning to run the engine on the video but it turned out there was a small electrical gremlin at play. When wiring the fan I accidentally lost power in half the fuse box so the engine wouldn't start. It's fixed now and I will run the engine on a future video. There are couple of older clips of the engine running on my channel.