My 1988 320i Touring Project: Ambitious but Rubbish

[bangn]

Lol those are dangerous in the wrong hands!

[Roadrunner]

Yeh those bolts im afraid you need to wack in the right spot hard and true and follow through.. Prob just needed a bigger hammer Sometimes hitting them the opposite way a couple of times helps release them as well.

Yeah, I'm assuming I didn't hit them hard enough or maybe not at the right angle. Interesting that hitting them the opposite way helps release them - I was afraid that would tighten them!

down at the bottom of the column there is a couple of bolts holding it to the firewall (push the carpet out of the way), undo those and the bolt on the coupling in the engine bay.. Then you can pull the whole lot out of the way. Dont forget to take the harness off it first ;-)

Thanks for all the info! The heater core cleared the steering column just from lowering it, but the problem I ran into next was that there still wasn't enough room to get the heater core out because the pedals were in the way. I have the heater core replaced now and I'll update with all the details soon!

What's with E30 touring and trees?

Oh nooo! :sad: Sorry to see that! How bad was the damage? I don't know what the deal is with trees attacking E30 tourings, but so far there are 3 reported cases on this thread alone!

Good to see you got it off, now you can put regular hex flange bolts on it. The threads are nothing special, any metric bolt that size will fit in there.

Shouldn't be too hard to get replacements for those bolts, just take them into a hardware store and you should be able to find them.

Thanks, guys! I was going to the hardware store last night to replace them, and then I couldn't find where I put the old bolts to use for comparison. I'll have to find them this weekend. I wasn't kidding about being completely disorganized! I'm in the middle of working on something and then I get distracted by something like this...





...and forget what I was doing and where I put everything. I am hopeless.

Congrats on getting those bolts off, I find myself walking away for 5 minutes to cool down when I get pissed at my car lol

Thanks! I was so fed up with trying to get those bolts off that I had to call it a night and come back to it the next day. I was actually still pissed off the next morning because they were still there, as if I was secretly hoping that a car fairy had come along and removed them for me during the night.

If you have an air compressor you will want to use this for the steering column bolts:

I don't have an air compressor, but even if I did...

Lol those are dangerous in the wrong hands!

...Exactly. :mrgreen:

[Proctor750]

Oh nooo! :sad: Sorry to see that! How bad was the damage? I don't know what the deal is with trees attacking E30 tourings, but so far there are 3 reported cases on this thread alone!

[Roadrunner]

Aw, man, that sucks. What was the story - did the tree branch snap off in a storm or something? Looks like the paint was in beautiful shape, too (what paint colour is it, by the way?). Any word on if you can get the repair covered by insurance?

[Proctor750]

I will snag a new sunroof and have it painted. The rest PDR should be able to take care of through insurance. The good news is I have an excuse to tackle the headliner, but need to find someone who has access to OE material (or something close). Let me know if you have any leads and I'll let you know what I find after I do it if you end up doing one.

The color is MalachitGruen Metallic 205.

Also, if you ever want the exact HR springs for the touring you can get them off German Ebay. The HR spring code for them is 29684-1 (I just got a set when the stupid tree fell).

What is your next task on the touring?

[Roadrunner]

I will snag a new sunroof and have it painted. The rest PDR should be able to take care of through insurance.

Sounds like a good plan! Hopefully the insurance company doesn't give you a hard time. My car had PDR done on some spots and there are no traces of the damage in those areas now. :)

The good news is I have an excuse to tackle the headliner, but need to find someone who has access to OE material (or something close). Let me know if you have any leads and I'll let you know what I find after I do it if you end up doing one.

That's one task I won't have to tackle myself, as the previous owner had it redone before he sold it to us. I'm not sure where he sourced the material - I'll let you know if I find out. The headliner is still listed on ECS Tuning for the electric sunroof and manual sunroof versions, but since it's NLA from the dealer it's possible ECS doesn't actually have it available (that's happened more than once when I've looked into ordering parts from them ). You could also post about it in the touring section to see if anyone else knows where to source the part or similar material.

The color is MalachitGruen Metallic 205.

Nice colour! :up: I don't think I've seen that one before. Have you posted pictures of your touring?

Also, if you ever want the exact HR springs for the touring you can get them off German Ebay. The HR spring code for them is 29684-1 (I just got a set when the stupid tree fell).

Thanks, that's good to know! Hopefully I won't need to replace those for a while, either, since my touring was lowered by the PO not long before I got it. It's pretty much as low as I can get away with for the purposes of daily driving... maybe too low since I'm pushing my luck by doing things like driving it around bumpy parking lots, using it to haul heavy equipment, and driving it in the snow.

What is your next task on the touring?

I'm currently working on making patch panels for a couple of rust holes and prepping the floors for Dynamat which I'll be putting in to replace the factory tar I removed. Hoping to have my car put back together by the weekend!

[Roadrunner]

After we got the shear bolts off the steering column, I set to work on removing the old heater core. I was hoping that at this point the job would be pretty similar to the instructions I could find for the metal pipe version.

First, I loosened the hose clamps on the hoses covering the plastic pipes and drained the coolant that leaked out. The center console and floor ducting were already out (as a bonus, the carpet was already pulled as well, which saved it from more coolant spills). The air diverter was only held on by one screw - I was worried it would break when I pulled it off, but luckily it came off it one piece. So far so good.

Most of the hardware was not too hard to remove, except that this type of heater core is held on by torx screws, not Phillips head screws like in the other version.



Once I had most of the hardware removed, there was still one bolt that was a major PITA to remove:



For the life of me, I could not get a wrench to fit in that space no matter what angle I tried. Flexible sockets did not fit either. My partner had an easier solution: cutting the part of the pipe on the heater core side off with a hacksaw. Well, that worked. How you're supposed to get that bolt off if you don't want to destroy the old heater core, I do not know. Remove the whole dash I guess?

I disconnected the two-pin connector for the heater valve, pulled the pipes out of the firewall, and caught the remaining coolant that dripped out. The heater core was now loose. So, now, all I had to do was pull it out!



Errrm... as you can see, this was not going as planned at all. :sad: The heater core cleared the steering column (barely!), but now the pedals were in the way. So it was looking like the whole lowering-the-steering-column method was total BS - no wonder I couldn't find details from anyone who had actually done it! My research was going nowhere. Did you know that in right hand drive cars you can access the heater core and valve through the glove box? Not that that was helpful me at all...

It was looking like the entire pedal box was going to have to come out. The only info I could find on doing this was for the purposes of doing an auto to manual swap - more evidence that the "right" way to do this job must be to take out the dash, which I was finding out a little late. I was in way over my head and was worried that even if I could somehow get all of the pedals off, I would never be able to get everything set up properly and drive the car again any time soon.

My SO, who had been in favour of the method involving cutting the heater box from the beginning, now had a compelling case for me to stop the madness and just let him help since I was completely stuck at this point. I'll see if he would graciously post some pictures and explain what he did. :) I know some people will seriously cringe at the idea of cutting through the heater box, but I'm happy with it. I'm considering it an improvement that I now have an "access panel" to get into the heater core area if I need to down the road. It seems like a design flaw that the interior of the touring has to be nearly fully dismantled to get to the heater core because of the left hand drive, non-AC setup.

At any rate, the old heater core was out! In case you've ever wondered what a heater core looks like on the inside (who hasn't! ;-)):



My new heater core:



We also replaced the shear bolts from the steering column with hex cap bolts from the hardware store. You can kind of see them under the part of this thing that looks like creepy eye sockets (I probably should have looked up the actual part name... ):



When I get to the end of my current task list with the touring, I'm thinking of adjusting the height of the steering column since I'm short, but mostly so that removing the shear bolts was not completely pointless.

And, in more important news: I have a new car buddy!



I keep catching him hanging out around the touring while I work on it. :mrgreen:

Before finishing the heater core job, I noticed in pictures I'd taken that it looked like the heater control valve had been leaking... so probably not a good idea to reinstall as-is. Somehow I hadn't even considered this yet since I was so focused on the heater core. Before spending a ton of money on a new one (if they're even still available new?), I thought it was worth a try to clean it and rebuild it first since it appeared to be functioning otherwise. Which leads me to my next mini-project - you'll have to check my next update to see if it was successful!

[Shock(/\)ave]

How To Replace An E30 Heater Core On Cars With Left Hand Drive & No Air Conditioning

The climate control system on E30s appears to have been engineered around the presence of air conditioning, as the replacement of the heater core in a car equipped with air conditioning is a straightforward process. On cars without air conditioning, the same job is just about impossible without modifications to the heater core box and the use of new mounting hardware or removal of the entire dash.

This procedure will describe how to remove your heater core, modify your heater core box, and install a new heater core without dropping the steering column, removing the pedal box, or removing the dash.

Credit for the idea goes to a thread posted by member cyclingches on bimmerforums.com.

Before you begin this job you'll need to first order the replacement heater core that uses plastic lines from your local BMW parts guy. If you haven't made friends with a parts guy yet, now's the time figure out which guy behind the counter is an enthusiast and start being friendly. My parts guy is a friend of mine now, and I've known him for over 10 years.

You'll also need two 17 mm X 22 mm X 2 mm washers, the closest match you can find for the washer inside the heater valve (I used a spout "O" ring for a Peerless faucet), some J-B WaterWeld or J-B MarineWeld, and a strip of flat vinyl "V" weatherstripping about 2 cm total width (preferably black in colour).

The tools you'll need are a full metric socket set with extensions, a drill with an assortment of small drill bits, a Dremel with cut-off wheels, a set of screwdrivers including torx drivers, a utility knife, a hacksaw, and a small clean disposable catch container such as an empty soup can or yogurt container.

Take out the lower dash panel under the steering wheel, the emergency brake handle cover, the rear ashtray, rear centre console, front ashtray, and front centre console.

Look under the driver's side of the dash toward the centre of the car and you'll see your heater core and the lines that feed it (some fasteners were already removed in this picture):



Those are plastic feed lines you're looking at. You'll need to remove all of the torx screws in the heater core as well as the screw holding the air flow diverter flap on, then carefully rotate the flap up and off.

Taking off the black plastic coolant line with the valve on it is a straightforward process. First, loosen both of the hose clamps in the engine bay on the coolant lines going through the firewall near the brake booster and fuse box. Slide the catch container under the connection point of the lines and pull them off, allowing the coolant to drain into the container. Back inside the car in the driver's footwell, remove the two small bolts holding the black plastic line and valve to the heater core, slide the catch container under the connection point and pull off the line, first toward the firewall, then around the heater core and out of the firewall.

Cut the beige plastic coolant line off of the heater core along the red line pictured, catch container in position, being careful not to cut the plastic line itself:



Once cut, the line pulls out from the firewall and the heater core can be slid out toward the steering column if you didn't miss a torx screw. At this point you'll want to cover your carpet with newspapers and an old towel, as your catch container won't suffice. Cut your heater core as close to the heater core box as you can get comfortably (note the steering column has been dropped in this picture, but that is not a requirement for this job):



Pull out the remaining heater core, and cut it again, repeating the process until you can pull all of the heater core out of the car. With the steering column lowered it took two cuts, though it should take three cuts without lowering it.

Looking at the heater core box, you'll see that it's actually two pieces of plastic with a central seam held together with metal clips. What you're going to do is modify the box to create a removable, resealable panel allowing for relatively easy future heater core changes.

Jumping ahead a bit, when I made my cuts I was doing so blind, but I managed to close to the ideal cut lines. A small piece of the box broke off as it was attached to the panel I removed, pictured circled in yellow, with ideal cut lines shown in red:



Mark your cut lines using painter's tape. You'll want your upper cut line to start higher than mine, just below the circular protrusion on the side of the heater box, ending under the mounting bracket just as mine did:



Using a hacksaw blade (mine was just wrapped in a rag as I don't have a proper hacksaw blade handle yet), begin by carefully cutting through the box opening:



I then switched to using my Dremel to continue the cuts along the box toward the central seam - you should use whatever is most comfortable for you at each point in the cutting process:



Pull off the joining clip:



Once at the seam, switch back to the hacksaw blade, squeezing your fingers carefully through the long cut that you made in the side of the box and pulling gently on the plastic:



After the cuts are complete, pull open the outer panel, then carefully pull apart the inner mounting rail, which should separate without breaking if you make your cuts correctly:



Smooth out the cut edges of the heater core box by running a utility knife blade perpendicular to the cut edges, scraping away the worst of the plastic burrs. At this point, you can now easily clean the inside of the heater core box and slide the new heater core into the box:



You can clearly see the inner mounting rail in the picture above. The other half of the rail is attached to the now removable panel.

Fasten two strips of the weatherstripping to the inside of the heater core box along the cut lines:



To be continued...

[Roadrunner]

It seems like ages since I've updated this thread.... hmm, where to start? Well, the touring has had about a dozen projects on the go for a while that I hadn't been able to wrap up for one reason or another - it seemed like a never-ending spiral of one task leading to several more jobs that had to be completed before getting back to the original task at hand. And why am I always missing at least one critical piece of hardware for every job when I go to reassemble everything? How are they escaping their carefully labeled and sealed ziplock bags?! Even though my organization system is still far from bulletproof, I'm finally starting to enjoy the domino effect of everything falling into place one small job at a time! :)

My SO has been a huge help. If it wasn't for him encouraging me to keep working on it, I probably would have thrown in the towel by now. He even offered to take some of the projects off of my hands so that I have a hope of getting the touring back in one piece someday soon. Aww. Nothing says love like a man who will strip wires and solder for you. ;D

So, when I left off, I thought we had just about finished the heater core job at last, but realized that the heater control valve had been leaking and couldn't be reused as-is. I figured we could try rebuilding it before spending hundreds of dollars on a new one, assuming they're even available to order. I got the idea from this thread - not the same valve as the one in the touring, but close enough. Worst case, it would still leak coolant (so, it would be no different from every other day for the last two years ... sorry car!) and we'd be in the same position of needing to replace it.

Here's the state the heater control valve was in before:



Disassembled and cleaned:



Reassembled with new gaskets, new screws and lock nuts, and sealed with Automotive Goop (he cut away some of the plastic housing to allow easier access to seal it with the goop):



...and reinstalled:



We also used the screws shown here to replace the original bolts and changed the direction for better access. There was literally no room to fit a wrench in this area when the old bolts were facing the other way, especially to remove the one on the top right:



We ran the car, cranked up the heat, and glorious heat poured out of the vents! Sure, it was the height of summer and it was already uncomfortably hot, but the point is, it worked! Now I could move on to prepping the floors for Dynamat, which I'd been holding off on until the coolant leak was fixed for good.

Until the next day.... :curse: *&%$!!!



My partner took it upon himself to rebuild the heater control valve again to get to the bottom of why it was leaking.

Take two: Heater control valve disassembled even more this time, with the Goop cleaned off (the Goop did not work well in this application, as it didn't stick to anything and peeled right off):



It turns out there were two big cracks (one extending up the cylinder) that we didn't see the first time:



Soldered and ready to put back together:



Sealed up with J-B Marine Weld and reinstalled:



Since then, there have been no coolant leaks! :D

Jumping ahead to after we put the carpet back in, the cut-out panel of the heater box clicked back into place:



And, finally, with black electrical tape tacking down the weather stripping:



I have lots of catching up to do - more coming soon!

[Roadrunner]

With the coolant leak taken care of at last, it was time to replace the factory tar. Before I could get to that, though, the floors needed work. The carpet was already out, so I just needed to take the seats out again. I've taken the seats out and put them back in so many times now (since I have to keep driving the touring while I work on it) that I think I could remove them blindfolded. I was going to time how fast I could remove them and reinstall them to keep it interesting for myself after the bazillionth time, but I've been told that I'm being weird and perhaps taking this hobby too far. :p

I still had a bunch of tar to remove. I've heard of many methods to make it easier to take the factory tar off, including a great idea to use dry ice and a hammer in this Salt City Euros episode (amazing YouTube channel with an E30 touring build BTW - check out their videos if you haven't already!) which unfortunately I didn't see until after I was already done this job. Luckily, it was humid enough that most of the tar peeled right off in large sections. I suspected that the rust spot in the passenger's side footwell continued further under the tar:



Sure enough, more rust:



...and even more rust:



I poked at the big rust spot and it became a rust hole. This was not getting better. :(



I grudgingly decided that while I was at it, I might as well re-do the patch job that was done at the shop on the rust hole in the driver's side footwell, which appeared to be filled in with silicone. As tempting as it was to leave it in place, I didn't want to worry about untreated rust continuing to eat away at the car underneath the silicone once it was covered with new sound deadening tar and carpeting.



Now that I had two holes to patch, I needed to cut out the flaps of metal covering the rust holes (both spots had rusted out from underneath). But how? My partner / car adviser recommended using a Dremel to cut it out and gave me the idea for how to make patch panels. Since I'd never used a Dremel before, I practiced on one of the old rusty fenders from the touring (good thing I didn't get rid of those yet - I knew procrastination would pay off one day! :up:), and then cut into the metal in the car to clean up the edges.



The old fenders just so happened to come in handy again. I made a template out of a cereal box, but I recently saw a better idea on an episode of Wheeler Dealers to use painter's tape to form a template right on the car so you know the exact shape, size and angles needed for metal patch panels (good ol' Edd China - he's thought of everything! :) ). I cut two panels out of a scrap fender using tin snips, bent them on an angle on a wooden crate...



...and then bent them some more to fit the contours of the car:



Then it was time for some POR-15 to treat the rusty areas as well as the patch panels. My SO ordered the biggest container of it we could get in Canada a while back, which apparently was not designed to ever be resealed. Every time the container is opened, you have to practically destroy the can to pry it open because, umm, it's stuck shut with f'ing POR-15! At least this can is in no danger of rusting. We later transferred the contents to a glass jar.



I'd never worked with POR-15 before, but it spread onto the metal panels pretty easily and smoothly with a paint brush. The coffee tray that had been temporarily serving as the touring's cup holder worked surprisingly well as a drying rack.



I coated the rust holes with POR-15 after scraping them with wire brushes and giving them a through cleaning. I'd had to remove some of the seam sealer to get rid of surface rust, so I covered those spots as well just to be safe. Here's the passenger's side:



...and the driver's side:



Once the coats of POR-15 had dried, I applied some J-B Weld to the edges with a coffee stir stick, using my lap as a workbench. By some miracle, I managed to not spill any of it on myself. I'd never worked with J-B Weld before and didn't know how much time I'd have before it set, but it turned out to be more forgiving than I'd imagined. I filled in the cavities with caulking, pressed the patch panels into place and sealed up the edges.



The few remaining areas of surface rust on the floor (especially around the gas pedal, drain holes, and a couple of other spots) were wire brushed, cleaned up and sprayed with rust inhibiting paint:



Here's one of the patch panels in place, and a preview of my Dynamat job - more on that next time!



In case you're wondering, the clip-on flashlight was there to keep the driver's side door from hitting me in the face since it won't stay open and I don't know how to fix it yet.

[Roadrunner]

Next on the to-do list was replacing the factory sound-deadening tar on the floor pans. It was an obvious choice to remove most of it in the first place because it was soaked with coolant and trapping moisture, needed to be removed to treat rust, or was already peeling up on its own in sections.

While researching options for replacement sound-deadening, I found tons of (unintentionally) hilarious user reviews. For one of the 3M products that was similar to Dynamat, there was a product giveaway for reviewers on Amazon which seriously backfired and resulted in a string of whiny reviews along the lines of, "I'm not a rocket scientist or some kind of mechanical god - how could I possibly be expected to use this product?! Who would go to such insane lengths to soundproof their car? Whyyyy can't it be easier?? Wahh! 0.5 / 5 stars!!" One guy said that when he found out he was actually supposed to remove the carpet to install the sound deadening, he thought that would be way too much work, so he put a full sheet under each floor mat, and was shocked and disappointed that it didn't make much of a difference. I think George Carlin said it best: "Some people are really f**king stupid." :mrgreen:

I ordered a bulk pack of Dynamat Xtreme which had 9 18" x 32" sheets, enough to cover 36 sq. ft. Here's a guide to applying sound-deadening with some useful things to keep in mind. Before starting, I touched up a few final spots on the floor with rust converter, removed the goo left behind by the original tar, vacuumed the floor, and gave it a final wipe with isopropyl alcohol to make sure the Dynamat would adhere well. I decided to cover the entire floor pan from the firewall to the base of the back seats with no gaps (erring on the side of going a bit overboard since I've read you don't need 100% coverage).

I used a Dynamat roller and a tennis ball to roll the sheets into the contours and crevices of the floor, and a utility knife to cut the Dynamat into smaller pieces as well as to cut around holes, screws and so on. I taped up the seams with duct tape since I didn't want the tar to stick to my clothes as I worked or the carpet when I put it back in. Leatherman always comes in handy, too.



I had no idea what I was doing when I started, so I just figured out what worked best for me as I went. I cut the big sheets of Dynamat into three big sections along the crease lines from the way they were folded in the box, then cut those into smaller sections as needed. I wore gloves at first, but they constantly stuck to the tar and made it nearly impossible to place the sheets of Dynamat, so I ditched them early on. I used up all of the smaller scraps on odd-shaped gaps and saved the smaller cut-off pieces for covering the transmission tunnel. I tried laying the sheets of Dynamat out in the sun as suggested in the guide I read, but I found that the tar stuck to the backing making it much harder to peel off if the sheets got too hot.



With the amount of time I've spent fixing things in this specific area of the car, I should really fix that door to keep it from closing on me all the time ... and figure out how to reattach the trim on that door handle...



Since I'm already sidetracked, can you guess at least three more projects underway in this picture?




?

?

?

?


Answers:
1) The gauge cluster was being repaired.
2) The stock mirror was removed so that it could be replaced with a maplight mirror.
3) The English check panel was going to be replaced with the original German check panel.
4) Bonus - The sun visors, which were cracked and did not match any of the other trim, were about to be replaced with black, crack-free sun visors.

More about those all of those things coming soon!

Back to the Dynamat job, the biggest pain was having to work around the wires in on the driver's side...



...and on the passenger's side, including the amplifier and its crazy wiring that kept getting in the way:



Done at last!





I still have almost two huge sheets of Dynamat left which I'm going to use for extra sound deadening in the doors once I cut down on the list of unfinished tasks.

We put the seats back in and took it for a test drive. :)



Sure there was no carpet, center console, check panel, mirror, gauge cluster, etc., but the touring was already sounding better and quieter. One step forward, too many steps backward to count at the moment... but it will all come together eventually.

[Proctor750]

Figured I would follow up with you on the tree situation. Roof fixed, new panel and even got hood peeling clear area fixed.
as for headliner i used opal gray winchester 1/8" foam backed 4 yards. I believe it is called world uupholstery or some such place. Excellent match.
adhesive was dap weldwood high temp spray adhesive.

the screws that hold some of the metal strips and wind deflector have some kind of goop to keep water from falling into the sunroof cassette. Im struggling to find something to use besides butyl.

[Roadrunner]

Figured I would follow up with you on the tree situation. Roof fixed, new panel and even got hood peeling clear area fixed.

Nice work! :up: Feel free to post some pictures of how your touring is coming along any time. Are you going to start a project thread?

Hopefully trees worldwide will stop their senseless attacks on E30 tourings and move on to cars I wouldn't mind seeing put out of their misery, like Pontiac Sunfires or something. :devil:

as for headliner i used opal gray winchester 1/8" foam backed 4 yards. I believe it is called world uupholstery or some such place. Excellent match.
adhesive was dap weldwood high temp spray adhesive.

Thanks for the info - that's good to know. I looked through the touring's service history and found that the previous owner had the headliner reupholstered at a custom auto trim shop in Toronto 3 years ago (no info on the materials they used, though), so I'm hoping mine won't have to be redone for a while.

the screws that hold some of the metal strips and wind deflector have some kind of goop to keep water from falling into the sunroof cassette. Im struggling to find something to use besides butyl.

My car doesn't have a sunroof, but my go-to for stuff like you described is Amazing Automotive Goop - it's waterproof, sticks to just about everything, goes on clear, and can be painted over.

[Shock(/\)ave]

It's difficult to tell from looking at the pictures of the end result, but she installed the Dynamat to an exceptionally high standard without any gaps whatsoever, and only covered the seams with tape to keep butyl from oozing out onto the bottom of the carpet. Awesome job. :)

With the heater core job finally done after the second coolant valve rebuild, and the modifications to the mounting hardware and heater core box successful, I was highly motivated to tackle a few of the interior projects I thought would really finish the car off well. Since I'd talked her into getting a map light mirror as an upgrade (they should really have been standard equipment on all trim levels), I decided to install it for her. That job led me to pull out one of the interior lights to confirm wiring colours, shattering it in the process with a piece of plastic shrapnel hitting me in the face, all due to it having been insanely tightly wedged in by whoever did the recovering of the headliner. As it turned out, during the installation of the recovered headliner they must have caught the wires for the light somewhere as two of the three wires were far too short. Their solution to this problem was to shove the fragile light into the hole and hope the bulb never burned out.

After putting the seats, steering wheel, and other essentials (minus the cluster, which we found out will eventually cause the car to die as the main battery cannot charge without it) back in the car we took it to the drive-in to enjoy the work done by that point. On the way there the driver’s side sun visor locking pin decided to free itself, causing the sun visor to droop down into my field of vision as I drove the car.

The next day, I went back to our unofficial parts car, which is still awaiting being put out of its misery in the wrecking yard, and pulled both interior lights along with both of the mint condition black sun visors. The sun visors on the touring were grey, looked grimy, and the vinyl was cracking around their mounting arms. The foul cocktail of mould and rodent excrement had mercifully diminished in intensity if not foulness after I pulled both rear vent windows for a retrofit on my M3 many weeks ago, but mouse nesting material and droppings still rained down in startling amounts from the headliner as I worked. I ended up with my parts and various interior fasteners as spares, and the new sun visors went on very easily:



You can also see the new map light mirror installed in that picture.

The map light mirror install was a surprisingly big job, and I have proper wire stripping and soldering tools and some soldering skill (electrical connections on something you never intend to see again should be soldered). I had to find the correct coloured wires, then cut, strip, tin, solder, and finally wrap them in electrical tape. That was very time consuming to do correctly and neatly, but actually snapping the mirror into position felt nearly impossible. I ended up using the biggest flat head screwdriver in my toolbox pressed against the spring loaded pin along with a ton of force on the mirror itself to pry the mirror into the base.



Success! :) Those lights have already come in handy several times, too.

I also took it upon myself to attempt to repair the cluster, which had a flaky tachometer and non functioning fuel economy gauge and service interval lights.



More on that in the next post...

[Shock(/\)ave]

NiCad Battery S.I. Board Remote Battery Pack Modification

I didn't find any good pictures of the S.I. board remote battery pack modification during my research, so this should be helpful to anyone deciding to tackle this job in the future.

First you'll need to remove the steering wheel, then the cluster, then the S.I. board itself from the cluster. Excellent guides for those steps can be found with a quick search.

Here's what I started with after I carefully removed both exploded NiCad batteries from the S.I. board:





Nasty, and this is after gently brushing away most of the dried battery acid.

Before you begin your work, take a few pictures of the S.I. board with the batteries still installed.

To remove your batteries, use a utility knife to extremely carefully cut through the strips of glue on the batteries, then use a variable temperature soldering iron on a low setting to add fresh solder to each of the mounting points of the battery mounting tabs. This will ensure you've got your iron set to the lowest temperature that will actually melt your solder, and will make the ancient solder on the board easy to remove. Now use a solder sucker or soldering wick to carefully suck or draw up the solder holding in the battery mounting tabs from the back side of the circuit board. After removing the solder the tabs should pop free with a careful pull from needle nose pliers; if they don't, carefully apply heat with the iron while you very gently pull on the mounting point you're working on from behind.

Here's what you'll be left with:



Blow off the remaining dried battery acid with compressed air, then carefully and gently clean the entire area with Q-tips (don't use the cheap stuff on a job like this) and isopropyl alcohol:





The blue colour you're seeing is copper circuit traces combining with sulphuric acid to form copper sulphate, which is not something you want to see. Clean any of that off with a soft plastic or wooden scraper so you don't damage the traces, then cover any exposed copper with a good epoxy when you've finished your soldering work.

I'll let the pictures do most of the explaining, but what you need to do is mimic the entire path of the in series electrical connection flowing through the batteries with small carefully stripped, tinned, and soldered wires. If you look carefully at the circuit paths before you start soldering you'll notice that only one of the two negative mounting tabs is electrically connected, but if you simply bridge both of them with a small piece of wire you aren't going to make a mistake. Your wires should follow the path of the current flow, and when you've finished here's what you're aiming for (the epoxy was applied to cover the exposed copper traces - you might not need it):









Cut a small notch in the plastic cluster housing just big enough to fit both of the remote battery pack wires through it, and carefully reinstall the S.I. board into the cluster housing while routing the wires around and under the board so they don't get pinched. When you're done you'll have your remote battery pack neatly and securely hanging from your cluster:



Mount the battery pack after mounting the cluster with velcro tape, and enjoy the peace of mind of an easy battery replacement in your distant future. :)