Plsnoread- My '89 325is - Mostly hopes, dreams, and tool hoarding

[badwella]

Sub'd for the custom stealth hitch. I've been thinking about that for a while

I may begin work on the hitch before the trailer. I can take off the bumper from the trailer shell and use that for measurements and such as well as test fitting. Hopefully my requests will be answered as I contacted a company in the UK to inquire about buying just the towbar neck and receiver portion



Building a bracket for the receiver portion will be extremely easy but I'll have to decide where I want to have the ball height.

[Kershaw]

Someone gave away an ix shell with a full front suspension? Just the axles, control arms, struts, and rack are probably worth at least $800.

[stonea]

I have an OEM Euro tow hitch if you want any up close pictures to help with ideas.

*Its currently not installed.

[badwella]

Someone gave away an ix shell with a full front suspension? Just the axles, control arms, struts, and rack are probably worth at least $800.

Yeah. I know, right? He gave it to me as he didn't want to go through the trouble of parting it out or taking it to the scrapyard

I hope someone wants the parts though. If I can't sell them on r3v or Facebook, ill post the parts up on eBay. I just want them gone at this point My wife is already getting onto me about the car in our driveway.

[badwella]

I have an OEM Euro tow hitch if you want any up close pictures to help with ideas.

*Its currently not installed.

Absolutely! Those would be greatly appreciated if you could send them to me. Let me know which method is easiest for you.

[badwella]

Powdercoated my DSSR test unit (not really a test unit as I know 100% that it's going to work as it's actually smaller in areas vs my old DSSR units).







Just need to get the 40mm bolts and she'll be ready to go in. Going to document the steps heavily so I can make a DIY and a step by step printout.

[badwella]

Just a hypothetical option for future stuff. Messing around in a CAD program. I don't have the dimensions 100% correct, but this is what I want to make in order to use a regular M50 throttle body on my M20 for when/if I go MS. It'll give me a 64mm throttle body and have the variable TPS on it already.





The large hole on the bottom is so I can route the ICV underneath like the M50 does in order to hide it. The small hole on the side is for a vacuum for the booster.

[badwella]

Well, trailer build is definitely on hold. The shell I was planning on using is way rustier than I had anticipated and I'm going to cut it up and take it to the junkyard instead.

Wasn't a complete waste though; I made back the money I spent picking it up and hauling it home so far and got some pretty good condition parts to put on my own car.

This is the shell as of Sept. 6th 2017





My dad is coming over next weekend with his truck and we'll take it and the other junk to the dump.

The popout windows and rear windshield were in great shape so I plan to have them tinted 35% and then install them on my car.




Terrible pic of the glass but great shot of one of my shop fans. lol.

Couldn't find a good picture of my car recently, but did take this one with my coworkers 335i. The tint on my car is probably 15 years old and it's delaminating. Another coworker has a tint shop on the side so I can get a good price.



So, I am still going to build the trailer but with a different shell. Luckily, I've found someone with an already stripped late model shell locally. I contacted him and told him I'd buy it once this shell was gone. My wife is going to be ecstatic





Really clean shell that I almost feel bad about cutting into, but it's been for sale for a year and I'm the only one interested. Comes with a straight hood which will be nice since mine is bowed from a slow speed front end collision I had 6 years ago.

[delamaize]

Is this new shell cleaner than the one you have now? If so, why not use this one, and cut up the other one.

[potatomash]

I like the throttle body idea

[shootnjunky]

I may begin work on the hitch before the trailer. I can take off the bumper from the trailer shell and use that for measurements and such as well as test fitting. Hopefully my requests will be answered as I contacted a company in the UK to inquire about buying just the towbar neck and receiver portion



Building a bracket for the receiver portion will be extremely easy but I'll have to decide where I want to have the ball height.

I want this as well....

[badwella]

Update:

1988 325ix shell is finally gone from my driveway, but never gone from my heart. . . .

My wife scheduled one of those 'jewelry parties' at our house last weekend so I had to get rid of the shell ASAP. My dad was supposed to come down with his truck and help me discard whatever remains I hadn't scavenged but wasn't able to. So, I contacted a local recycling company and paid them $115 to pick everything up.

Started like this on the 20th





By 12 pm on the 22nd it was like this:



and by 2 pm it was down to two large pieces and a bunch of smaller ones in that bag in the background



It was well worth my $115 to have someone else get rid of it since I was running out of time.



I did get lots of good parts off the car and have made back my money plus some so far. Of course, it didn't last long before I spent it on one of the coolest things I could ever buy....

a metal lathe ;D

It's a late 40's early 50's Wade Tool Co. Precision lathe. I got the lathe, the cabinet, and all the tooling shown for $450!









Sorry for the crappy photos, these are what the seller sent me. My dad is picking it up tomorrow (Friday, September 29th) and bringing it to my house since I don't have a truck.

Here's a drawing from the original manual. It's a cool old lathe, but it's really hard (darn near impossible) to find parts for it.



I tried and failed to get some other lathes locally such as an Atlas 618 and a coworker had a Logan 200, but the Logan was too big and the Atlas was sold right before I could get it.

I've wanted a lathe for about 10 years now and plan to get an antique benchtop milling machine (or make my own) in the future. Anyway, I plan to start out making some of the stainless fasteners for my DSSR and make myself a delrin shift knob very similar to the one Condor offers. Yeah, I spent $450 to save myself $115

Gotta buy myself a bench grinder now so I can grind HSS tooling until I finish building my belt grinder. Going to check out one of these tomorrow:



A Craftsman 'Block' grinder produced from the 60's up into the 80's. The one I'm looking at has the rounded top edges so it's an early version and comes with the cast iron pedestal. Gotta jump on that fast.

Moving on, I've been trying to sell the IX bodykit and had a guy in Taiwan really interested but shipping it there would have cost somewhere around $200 on top of my $200 pricetag, so he backed out. However, I'm sorta leaning towards keeping it and selling my oem sport sideskirts after seeing some images of the ix kit on non ix's.



(yes, I know this is an ix model)


and this one is a photoshop for a vert, but it looks great with that Reiger lip (of which I have).



Now I just need to find out if the ix sideskirts have the same plug spacing as the sport sideskirts so I don't have to drill any more holes in my rockers. I don't know if I want to drill into my fenders either but I may be able to get away with using the permanent 3M double sided tape. If the holes are the same, I can reuse all of the clips and such which would be nice for my wallet. I need that money to buy metal to cut with the lathe!

Don't worry if you wanted to see trailer stuff, I still plan on doing that. AFAIK, the seller hasn't gotten rid of that shell I was looking at. If not, I may pick it up soon. I will have to re-convince my wife to let me keep it in our driveway again.

Something something draw me like one of your French girls

[badwella]

Let a friend drive my car the other day. Promptly hit the parking curb and broke many of my lip clips off. No big deal until we were driving at 60 mph back from lunch and the lip caught the pavement and ripped off and shattered. Thank goodness it was just an ebay lip.

Anyway, I had this Rieger knockoff in my garage already so I figured I'd finally put it on.

Tried to use a spare valance to mark my holes to drill. Used zip ties rather than the supplied self-tapping screws. Also, the IS splitter I bought won't fit due to the location of the cutout/bends.









Took her out for a wash and saw an opportunity for some pics.





I bought a cheap set of kidneys with the removable square parts so I could paint them. This is Rustoleum satin nickel. Looks awesome, IMO. Definitely better than the blacked out grille.

[badwella]

My wife has been commenting to me on how bad my car interior smells upon startup each morning while she's putting our son in his carseat in my e30. I have a pretty good recurring exhaust leak due to poorly installed pipes as a result of my shop eviction back in Jan 2016. lol. Since I now have a stainless catback and stainless fleabay headers, I figure rather than fixing this I'd just finish the stainless exhaust.

Taking measurements of my cat back and headers on the ground, I came up with some lengths and placement of bends.

Following the research that Digger did on his naturally aspirated stroker build (I highly recommend everyone check it out: https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/sho...3557&p=4553557)



This is an aftermarket s54 'rasp eliminator' for the e46 m3. My car is a street car for fun so my target is max hp and torque between 2k-4k rpm which puts my x pipe placement at the 2nd harmonic. This image is just so I can measure and order mandrel bends and tubing as well as twin resonators. Going to use Jones 304 stainless 2" OD inlet, 14" OAL, 4" OAD.

From Digger's thread:




So, I need to order about 8 feet of 2" OD tubing, 2 resonators, a 2" OD u bend, and I plan to use butt joint sleeve clamps to connect everything not welded for the time being. Not decided on hangers yet.

I have a new Y splitter for my TIG setup so I can backpurge now. Going to practice on the header flanges first as like many have found out that ebay stainless m20 headers are hit or miss. Mine came with cockeyed flanges that will require straightening.

Also, found a source for a new spoiler that I really like. Found this genuine Pfeba spoiler and may pick it up. Hopefully it can be repaired as it's super wavy now. The previous owner mounted it with the studs in the outermost points, but only used silicone to stick it to the trunk at the two center mounting points so it was allowed to flex and sag. As far as I know it's pretty rare.







Not from this spoiler, but this is what it shows:



It's shorter than the non-M zender wings everyone wants and has the two center supports. Hopefully I'll pick it up this week and be able to give it a better assessment. If it's unrepairable it will be wall decoration along with my broken mtech2 wing and plastic e28 wing

You can see it with the rest of the body kit here on this 316i:







Last update, I sold the ix body kit on ebay for $240 profit so I'm sticking with the touring/sport sideskirts.

[alistairolsen]

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