Project Weißer Regen: 91 318iS Restomod

[Jordan]

Interesting, I'd venture to guess these are about 50% full of grease. I'd also think 625rpm, or maybe 800rpm at most this car will ever see if pretty slow speed. Also keep in mind the front race is open the the nose cone of the wheel hub which has a dust cap pressed on. There is plenty of room for grease to work its way out if it needs to.

That said commercially available bearing repackers for loose taper bearings pack them 100% full and thats how they are installed, and I can't say I've ever seen one fail.


I dropped off the first load to the powdercoaters yesterday, for blasting and coating in satin black.

Front and rear subframes.
Front strut housings.
Rear trailing arms.
4x brake dust shields.
Trans crossmember.
Chassis S brace.
New Spectra fuel tank.
Subframe mount side plates.
Fuel filler neck.
Front CAB brackets.
Front upper spring hats.

Maybe something else I'm forgetting.

[keine30]

Any updates on this, or are you still scrubbing away at boxes of hardware?

[Jordan]

Indeed. Very boring and monotonous. I put about 8 hours in this weekend processing hardware. I bought a big vibratory tumbler with some ceramic material to polish the blasted hardware but its not producing the finish I'm really after. More of a stone washed light polish than a burnished finish.

It will still save me some time as there are a number of components this finish will work for, but not all. It also doesn't get in threads and other fine details.

[flyboyx]

have you thought about dropping the parts in muriatic acid? you might try a couple items to see how they turn out.

also, wd-40 is good for some things, but i don't like using it as a rust preventative because once the oil evaporates, the stuff left over seems to promote rust. i guess if you get your parts over to the plater quickly, i won't really matter.

[Jordan]

Finished parts are all in air tight storage bins, and I pop them open once or twice a week to spray with WD40 and give it all a good toss around to make sure everything gets some love. Parts are headed to the platers the week after Christmas if all goes as planned, so not long.

Muriatic acid smells awful and is some nasty stuff. It can also pit metal if left on too long, I'm almost done with the current process anyway.

[D.Martijn]

I remember when I brought my blasted parts of my 2002 to my local plater, my brake calipers had some slight rust starting to form again.
I'm pretty sure they put the parts first in some kind of rust removal bath before they plate them as my calipers turned out great with not a single spec of rust.

[AndrewBird]

As part of the plating process, the parts go into several different acid solutions, so a small amount of surface rust is a non-issue. I'd still do what Jordan is doing and oil them up to keep most of the rust away The cleaner the parts, the better they will turn out (hence all the polishing he is doing).

[Jordan]

This past Saturday I spent a half day at the shop blasting hardware. I've moved through pretty much all the hardware, leaving just bolts and screws with 10mm heads or smaller left to do. I know this looks like a lot of parts, but this is all thats left and the majority of it is behind me. I'm glad to have a light at the end of this tunnel.



Sunday I just did not feel like driving to the shop and being hunched over the blaster for hours so I decided to take a break and do some work at home on the chassis harness.

I dumped all of the wiring out of the bin onto the floor.


I then proceeded to fish the battery cable, and the engine wiring harness out of the pipe and then untangle the remaining chassis harness to lay out on the floor in its relative natural installed shape.



As with last time I did this, like uh... 2years ago on the red car... I'll start with the front most portion, behind the passenger side headlight. The engine bay portion of the harness seems to take the most punishment which is no surprise. The ABS connector is dust in the wind, and the cloth tape is largely dried out mummy wrappings, again turning to dust.



All the crumbling wire wrappings removed, and each loom individually wrapped with new tesa fabric loom tape. I replaced the front ABS connector with a used one from the spare harness that was a rear connector kept in better shape under the seat.... but I need to slice this back open and redo it again because I found that you can actually buy this as a repair kit new!



BMW OE PN 61131390540


Tire of kneeling on cold concrete I removed the dashboard sub-harnesses from the main harness and worked on them on the bench.

This clusterfuck:


Turned into this with some more tesa tape:

[iXguido]

Nice work on the wires!

Man there’s gotta be a better way to prep that hardware for plating. What a chore.

[econti]

The only thing I don't want to tackle on mine is removing the body loom. It's staying where it is.

I commend you on going ahead with it. Just thinking about getting it back where it is is giving me nightmares.

[Jordan]

Reinstalling the harness into the car isn't a big deal, done it on several cars. E30's have very simple, spartan harnesses. Try doing it on a new F chassis BMW... enough wire to reach the moon and back lol.

Seriously though on an E30 the hardest part is pushing it all through the bulkhead in the firewall. The hole is about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It really helps to have someone inside to pull it in as you feed it through from the engine bay.

Not having sticky decomposed wrapping to deal with will make that job much more pleasant. I'm going to deskin and rewrap the entire harness with the new tape.

[econti]

I got around that on the last parts car by hacksawing through the harness. It was a basket case anyway so 0 care was needed.
I'm just scared by wires. Even pulling the harness on my Ducati was a big decision.
Which makes me even more impressed by people who redo entire car looms

[Jordan]

UPS dropped off this BNIB 370mm MTech II steering wheel today.

[iXguido]

Wow thats beautiful! What are you doing for the rest of the interior?

[Jordan]

Jordan @ Stitched will be handling the rest of the interior with newly upholstered seats, headlining, door cards, boots etc.

The carpet is brand new from BMW.

The only big piece missing at this point is the dash, which new is now NLA. I'd happily buy a new dash from anyone that is holding.