:welcome:
Hey everyone, been meaning to make this for a while now. Hopefully someone finds it interesting.
I bought this car November 2017. I primarily bought this car to drive in various motorsport events, but my focus is rallycross because rally racing is my favorite motorsport. I like to keep costs down and I'm not really a great driver so I keep my car stock and compete in the stock class so that I can learn how to drive the car stock and get a feel for how each mod affects the car (that's where the "stock car" meaning in my title comes from ;)
)
To start off I'm just summarizing my ownership so far since I didn't do a good job of taking pictures of all the work that I did (just bits and pieces here and there). So hopefully it's not too boring due to the lack of pictures.
Here's the original craigslist ad:
I flew from SoCal to Sacramento, bought the car, and drove it back. The car was owned by somebody, it got towed for some reason, owner didn't want to pay the bill, tow shop sold the car to someone else, and then I bought the car from that someone else. Anyways 7 hours later I was home. I was sweating the entire time because the PO didn't know when the timing belt was last done but it worked out.
The main things I found out that first day were:
- the car was repainted
- VIN plate on dashboard was missing
- car wasn't registered/titled, but had a temp operating permit because PO was going through the VIN inspection process
- 3rd gear synchro was shot (well I knew that from reading the ad already)
- Coolant temp gauge doesn't work (PO said "I think it's the sensor")
- Fuel level gauge was inaccurate (the needle was way past full when the tank was full, I drove about 150 miles at a time then stopped for gas to be sure)
- The heads of MANY fasteners are strangely very corroded. I'm talking about, the black screws that hold the gauges in the instrument cluster, the screws that hold the sunvisor in, etc. It's really strange.
- The shifter is suuuuper sloppy
and as I got closer to LA, I discovered that when I turned the headlights on, all 4 lights turned on. I was flashed many times during the last leg of my journey, and I have no tinted windows to shield me
.
Also when I got back home I realized the tires were about 10 years old. And a few lug bolts were missing from the wheels :curse:
So my first priorities were to get the car titled/registered, and change the timing belt/water pump before the engine moves again. This was my first time doing such a job (timing belt) but I took my time and everything went well except I forgot to torque the torx bolt for the camshaft sprocket and my car had a horrible rattling noise until I figured out that was the problem. So now great, my car is driveable for the time being, but still needs loads of TLC and I could tell the car was heavily neglected.
Now onto getting the car titled/registered. This was a HUGE PITA but I'm writing this after the fact so it all worked out in the end. I had to go to the DMV several times, set up an appointment with CHP, etc. And my work schedule is pretty much the same time the DMV is open so it was very stressful. Anyways I finally got my car to CHP for inspection and he looked on the door jamb and saw a second VIN sticker added by the Arizona DMV (the car was in that state for a time), so the officer said "The car was already inspected, we don't need to do this again" :hitler::hitler::hitler: So I spent all this time going to the DMV and CHP (you have to go there in person to schedule the appointment, can't do it over the phone) when the car already had a VIN inspection and was cleared. I'm writing this many months after the ordeal though so it's all water under the bridge.
So now the car is inspected and I get the car registered and titled now. I hand them all the paperwork in (there's a LOT of paper work because the car had to be inspected and it was a previously a lien due to the towing incident) and a week later I get the paperwork back in the mail and one of the papers has a missing signature. A post it note says I need to go get this signature and then bring the paperwork back in. Well the missing signature is from the lien agent of the towing company back in the Bay Area :hitler::hitler::curse::curse: so I look up the lien sale agent that did the paperwork and gave her a call and she was totally uncooperative, "oh you've got something wrong there, you need to talk to the towing company" even though the name of her lien sale service was on the paperwork as the agent that handled all of that shit. So I called the towing company and explained the situation and they spent a couple weeks looking up my car based on the VIN but they couldn't find any info on it. I finally got a hold of the manager and he was very friendly and basically said sure, mail the paperwork to me and I'll sign it and mail it back. So I did that and sure enough he mailed the paperwork right back to me, I turned the paperwork into the DMV again and a couple weeks later got my title and registration :bow:
So now the car is registered, I have a clean title, and the car is running. Great :up: Now I made a list of issues and starting fixing everything in order of importance.
1. Coolant gauge not working
The problem was the coolant temperature switch was broken in half, and the the coolant temperature gauge was seized. I replaced both with used parts and now my gauge works :up:. However I noticed that my gauge behaved differently from my eta. It seemed like my car warmed up slowly. If I drove on the highway my temp would drop to almost the blue zone, and if I came to a red light after a lot of driving, my temp would creep up to midway.
2. Odometer gears, straight forward fix
3. Steering column switch, this was the reason my high beams were on all the time. However with the "new" used switch installed, my indicator's don't cancel anymore when I straighten the steering wheel. They worked before so I believe I'll need to get another steering column switch that has a proper working cancelling tab.
4. Valve adjustment, I suck at these badly, probably didn't do it right and I'll have to go back and do it again.
At this point the first event that I was interested in was fast approaching. It was a drift event at Grange Motor Circuit and I've never drifted before. So I entered the event, did some skids, sucked really badly, got a little better, and went home. Nothing bad happened and my car held up :up: but I still have lots of work to do. At this time I noticed my fresh air blower only worked occasionally. If it stopped working, I would do another drift lap and the vibrations would make it work again. And now, when it does work, it only works when the fan speed is set to max. So I'm guessing the entire blower motor area is corroded and I'll have to replace/clean the blower and resistor. On the way back home one of my rear tires blew out on the freeway so I changed that out. Tried to get the tire fixed at a tire shop but they said the tire is too old to fix, so I'll definitely have to get some roadworthy tires soon.
After this event I got some sport seats. HUGE DIFFERENCE OVER THE COMFORT SEATS! MUST HAVE UPRADE! :up:
5. Differential oil, should have done this before drifting, but I didn't due to time constraints. During this time my car was parked outside and the sun set at about 4:30 each day, so everyday when I got home from work I had a few fleeting moments of daylight to work on the car before darkness.
6. Torx head bolts. After drifting I thought I heard a rattling sound in my motor and was afraid I sheared one of the hex head bolts. Opened the valve cover and ...
..nothing broke At this point however I was afraid my head bolts would snap due to the stress I was going to put on the car, so at this point I decided to swap them for torx head bolts. It was harder than I thought it would be but I did it :up:
Around this time I went to my first rallycross in this car in nearby San Bernardino. Nothing bad happened, things went well overall, car didn't break which was the most important part.
7. Fuel gauge. With a couple events under my belt, the next one was approaching fast (rallycross) and it was a long way away, in Ridgecrest (~140 miles). I swapped the fuel gauge with the one from my 86 325e (this was my previous car and I parted it out) and the fuel level is good now :up:. In case anyone is reading this, for fuel gauges, it doesn't matter if it's VDO or Motometer. What matters is that the fuel gauge is from a car that has the same fuel tank as yours. I first put in a fuel gauge from an 89 cabrio (has the late fuel tank with 2 level senders) and the gauge read fine when full, but as my fuel tank emptied it was reading I had about a half tank left :curse:. My 87 325is and 86 325e both had early style fuel tanks and so the gauge was compatible.
So now that I have an accurate fuel level gauge and my low beams work properly, I set out to Ridgerest for their annual rally/rallycross school. I learned a lot and for the first time started to actually feel like I was doing something right when driving, compared to the days rallycrossing my eta (I'm sure the LSD helped a lot). I checked the LSD beforehand with a torque wrench on the axle nut and it broke away at about 55 ft/lbs, so it appears to be in pretty good shape :up:.
So up in Ridgecrest they have the school/practice on Saturday and a rallycross on Sunday. At the end of practice on Saturday, I finished my last run and the coolant level light came on, so I quickly parked where all my stuff was and popped the hood. My coolant reservoir was empty and Kris (the organizer of Ridgecrest rallycross) lent a hand and a flashlight. Turns out my engine moved and my alternator fan momentarily hit the lower radiator hose and all my coolant poured out. It was getting dark and I started to panic but Kris helped me out by taking me to Autozone to get self fusing silicon tape and more coolant. We took the hose off, wrapped the damaged part with this magical tape, put the hose back in and added coolant. Now my car ran great, cool, and we headed to the school dinner. Then on Sunday we had the actual rallycross and after my 3rd run the guy in the car in front of me gets out and says to me "you're car's leaking" and I look and see coolant spilling out again, the alternator cut the hose again . At this point I decided I had 3 good runs so I retired and spent the rest of event patching my hose up as I learned how to do the day before, so that I could make it home. It wasn't all bad though, someone snapped a nice pic of one of my runs:
That was a high speed right hander right before the finish, so I was really gunning it as you can see by all the dirt I kicked up. Since all the weight in the car shifted to the left, this is probably the exact moment that my alternator fan was tearing my radiator hose apart
Here's a pic of the repaired hose:
So I made it home and figured out the problem was my engine mounts were shot which allowed the engine to move. Also I replaced this hose with the URO version when I changed my timing belt, and this aftermarket version doesn't bend around the alternator as well as OEM. I went to change my engine mounts and discovered both mounts were sheared in half (and later on I found out both transmission mounts were sheared in half as well). At this time I still had my eta in the garage being parted out, so I just took the engine mounts out of that car and swapped them in (they were still in great shape). I did this because the OEM mounts that I ordered wouldn't arrive in time and I was borrowing my roommate's parking spot.
At this point I went to an autocross the very next weekend after the rallycross (during this time there were events every weekend so I was really hustling during the week to get my car fixed up and ready to go). I didn't get a good look while doing the engine mounts but I could kind of tell that at least one of the trans mounts were broken. I went to the autocross at Auto Club Speedway and they changed the course from the usual because of some problem with the planning. As a result the new course was in a HUGE 1 million square feet parking lot. It was a very high speed autocross course. It was a lot of fun but due to the high speed of the course I had to use 3rd gear, but my 3rd gear synchro is shot so sometimes I would fail to shift to 3rd. So it was either try and shift to 3rd and fail, or bang the rev limited in 2nd. I tried both ways, I was more consistent staying in 2nd. At one point I tried banging into 3rd gear and the trans went into gear, then popped out and I noticed my transmission was far noisier than usual. So I stayed away from 3rd and finished the day. Driving home my transmission was noticeably noisier than usual so I took it easy.
At this point I spent the past 5 weekends going to various motorsport events, and now I have a large break before anything else comes up. So finally, time to breathe and get some much needed maintenance done on the car.
- Thermostat. I really should have done this when I did my timing belt but I was trying to do the bare minimum to get my car running so it could get inspected by CHP. I also never did coolant on this car before so I wasn't sure how big of a pain bleeding the system would be (well after all the issues with my radiator hose getting blown open, I can safely say I'm really good at bleeding the system now :up:). Turns out my old (it was the original) thermostat was stuck open which is why my car warmed up slowly, and the thermostat was just slow to respond in general. Now my car gets up past the quarter mark quickly and stays there the entire time without budging, no matter if I get on the freeway, start blasting the heater, or whatever :up:. At this time I also swapped my patched radiator hose for a proper OEM one. I used the Mahle 80*C thermostat.
- Transmission fluid/trans mounts. I know I should have changed all the fluids when I first got the car but I had time constraints, and the sun setting at 4:30 didn't help. The engine oil was clean, and when I changed the diff fluid, it was fairly good looking too so I figured the rest wouldn't be too bad. So now I finally have the opportunity to change the trans fluid, and what do you know, I need a 17mm allen :curse: I struggled for 2 hours trying to loosen the plugs using the 17mm seat bolt and 2 17 mm seat nuts jammed together, but I failed miserably. I finally gave up, went to Autozone, got a 17mm socket, drove home, and within a minute of getting into the garage, had the plugs loosened. So I drained the transmission fluid and this is what came out...
All that came out was a tablespoon of chrome goo I felt really stupid at this point, but the 3rd gear synchro was already shot so I knew I had to swap the trans anyway. I've never done a trans swap before (just removed it from the eta when I parted it out), and I was expecting to do it at some point, but looking at my calendar I realized that right now was my best opportunity to change it, so the sooner I get started, the sooner I'll be finished. I'm just surprised that I drove 7 hours from Sacramento, went drifting, rallycrossing 140 miles away, and autocrossing with no gear oil and the trans still worked pretty well.
So now the trans swap begins. I actually got everything removed in a day when I expected it would take me a couple of weekends. I used this 1/2 to 3/8 extension (https://www.amazon.com/SK-SKT-46175-...pact+extension), a very short 3/8 wobble extension, and my 3/8 torx socket, and I was able to impact off all the bellhousing bolts (except the top right torx bolt because the extension was too straight), which was a lot easier than the first time when I used numerous wobble extensions and a ratchet. Luckily now the eta is fully parted out and gone, so this car is in the garage now and can sit on jack stands full time. Now I'm waiting to get my flywheel from the machine shop and for my parts to come in. I ordered a LUK clutch kit, various shifter bushings, and transmission seals.
Hey everyone, been meaning to make this for a while now. Hopefully someone finds it interesting.
I bought this car November 2017. I primarily bought this car to drive in various motorsport events, but my focus is rallycross because rally racing is my favorite motorsport. I like to keep costs down and I'm not really a great driver so I keep my car stock and compete in the stock class so that I can learn how to drive the car stock and get a feel for how each mod affects the car (that's where the "stock car" meaning in my title comes from ;)
)To start off I'm just summarizing my ownership so far since I didn't do a good job of taking pictures of all the work that I did (just bits and pieces here and there). So hopefully it's not too boring due to the lack of pictures.
Here's the original craigslist ad:
I flew from SoCal to Sacramento, bought the car, and drove it back. The car was owned by somebody, it got towed for some reason, owner didn't want to pay the bill, tow shop sold the car to someone else, and then I bought the car from that someone else. Anyways 7 hours later I was home. I was sweating the entire time because the PO didn't know when the timing belt was last done but it worked out.
The main things I found out that first day were:
- the car was repainted
- VIN plate on dashboard was missing
- car wasn't registered/titled, but had a temp operating permit because PO was going through the VIN inspection process
- 3rd gear synchro was shot (well I knew that from reading the ad already)
- Coolant temp gauge doesn't work (PO said "I think it's the sensor")
- Fuel level gauge was inaccurate (the needle was way past full when the tank was full, I drove about 150 miles at a time then stopped for gas to be sure)
- The heads of MANY fasteners are strangely very corroded. I'm talking about, the black screws that hold the gauges in the instrument cluster, the screws that hold the sunvisor in, etc. It's really strange.
- The shifter is suuuuper sloppy
and as I got closer to LA, I discovered that when I turned the headlights on, all 4 lights turned on. I was flashed many times during the last leg of my journey, and I have no tinted windows to shield me
.Also when I got back home I realized the tires were about 10 years old. And a few lug bolts were missing from the wheels :curse:
So my first priorities were to get the car titled/registered, and change the timing belt/water pump before the engine moves again. This was my first time doing such a job (timing belt) but I took my time and everything went well except I forgot to torque the torx bolt for the camshaft sprocket and my car had a horrible rattling noise until I figured out that was the problem. So now great, my car is driveable for the time being, but still needs loads of TLC and I could tell the car was heavily neglected.
Now onto getting the car titled/registered. This was a HUGE PITA but I'm writing this after the fact so it all worked out in the end. I had to go to the DMV several times, set up an appointment with CHP, etc. And my work schedule is pretty much the same time the DMV is open so it was very stressful. Anyways I finally got my car to CHP for inspection and he looked on the door jamb and saw a second VIN sticker added by the Arizona DMV (the car was in that state for a time), so the officer said "The car was already inspected, we don't need to do this again" :hitler::hitler::hitler: So I spent all this time going to the DMV and CHP (you have to go there in person to schedule the appointment, can't do it over the phone) when the car already had a VIN inspection and was cleared. I'm writing this many months after the ordeal though so it's all water under the bridge.
So now the car is inspected and I get the car registered and titled now. I hand them all the paperwork in (there's a LOT of paper work because the car had to be inspected and it was a previously a lien due to the towing incident) and a week later I get the paperwork back in the mail and one of the papers has a missing signature. A post it note says I need to go get this signature and then bring the paperwork back in. Well the missing signature is from the lien agent of the towing company back in the Bay Area :hitler::hitler::curse::curse: so I look up the lien sale agent that did the paperwork and gave her a call and she was totally uncooperative, "oh you've got something wrong there, you need to talk to the towing company" even though the name of her lien sale service was on the paperwork as the agent that handled all of that shit. So I called the towing company and explained the situation and they spent a couple weeks looking up my car based on the VIN but they couldn't find any info on it. I finally got a hold of the manager and he was very friendly and basically said sure, mail the paperwork to me and I'll sign it and mail it back. So I did that and sure enough he mailed the paperwork right back to me, I turned the paperwork into the DMV again and a couple weeks later got my title and registration :bow:
So now the car is registered, I have a clean title, and the car is running. Great :up: Now I made a list of issues and starting fixing everything in order of importance.
1. Coolant gauge not working
The problem was the coolant temperature switch was broken in half, and the the coolant temperature gauge was seized. I replaced both with used parts and now my gauge works :up:. However I noticed that my gauge behaved differently from my eta. It seemed like my car warmed up slowly. If I drove on the highway my temp would drop to almost the blue zone, and if I came to a red light after a lot of driving, my temp would creep up to midway.
2. Odometer gears, straight forward fix
3. Steering column switch, this was the reason my high beams were on all the time. However with the "new" used switch installed, my indicator's don't cancel anymore when I straighten the steering wheel. They worked before so I believe I'll need to get another steering column switch that has a proper working cancelling tab.
4. Valve adjustment, I suck at these badly, probably didn't do it right and I'll have to go back and do it again.
At this point the first event that I was interested in was fast approaching. It was a drift event at Grange Motor Circuit and I've never drifted before. So I entered the event, did some skids, sucked really badly, got a little better, and went home. Nothing bad happened and my car held up :up: but I still have lots of work to do. At this time I noticed my fresh air blower only worked occasionally. If it stopped working, I would do another drift lap and the vibrations would make it work again. And now, when it does work, it only works when the fan speed is set to max. So I'm guessing the entire blower motor area is corroded and I'll have to replace/clean the blower and resistor. On the way back home one of my rear tires blew out on the freeway so I changed that out. Tried to get the tire fixed at a tire shop but they said the tire is too old to fix, so I'll definitely have to get some roadworthy tires soon.
After this event I got some sport seats. HUGE DIFFERENCE OVER THE COMFORT SEATS! MUST HAVE UPRADE! :up:
5. Differential oil, should have done this before drifting, but I didn't due to time constraints. During this time my car was parked outside and the sun set at about 4:30 each day, so everyday when I got home from work I had a few fleeting moments of daylight to work on the car before darkness.
6. Torx head bolts. After drifting I thought I heard a rattling sound in my motor and was afraid I sheared one of the hex head bolts. Opened the valve cover and ...
..nothing broke
At this point however I was afraid my head bolts would snap due to the stress I was going to put on the car, so at this point I decided to swap them for torx head bolts. It was harder than I thought it would be but I did it :up:Around this time I went to my first rallycross in this car in nearby San Bernardino. Nothing bad happened, things went well overall, car didn't break which was the most important part.
7. Fuel gauge. With a couple events under my belt, the next one was approaching fast (rallycross) and it was a long way away, in Ridgecrest (~140 miles). I swapped the fuel gauge with the one from my 86 325e (this was my previous car and I parted it out) and the fuel level is good now :up:. In case anyone is reading this, for fuel gauges, it doesn't matter if it's VDO or Motometer. What matters is that the fuel gauge is from a car that has the same fuel tank as yours. I first put in a fuel gauge from an 89 cabrio (has the late fuel tank with 2 level senders) and the gauge read fine when full, but as my fuel tank emptied it was reading I had about a half tank left :curse:. My 87 325is and 86 325e both had early style fuel tanks and so the gauge was compatible.
So now that I have an accurate fuel level gauge and my low beams work properly, I set out to Ridgerest for their annual rally/rallycross school. I learned a lot and for the first time started to actually feel like I was doing something right when driving, compared to the days rallycrossing my eta (I'm sure the LSD helped a lot). I checked the LSD beforehand with a torque wrench on the axle nut and it broke away at about 55 ft/lbs, so it appears to be in pretty good shape :up:.
So up in Ridgecrest they have the school/practice on Saturday and a rallycross on Sunday. At the end of practice on Saturday, I finished my last run and the coolant level light came on, so I quickly parked where all my stuff was and popped the hood. My coolant reservoir was empty and Kris (the organizer of Ridgecrest rallycross) lent a hand and a flashlight. Turns out my engine moved and my alternator fan momentarily hit the lower radiator hose and all my coolant poured out
. It was getting dark and I started to panic but Kris helped me out by taking me to Autozone to get self fusing silicon tape and more coolant. We took the hose off, wrapped the damaged part with this magical tape, put the hose back in and added coolant. Now my car ran great, cool, and we headed to the school dinner. Then on Sunday we had the actual rallycross and after my 3rd run the guy in the car in front of me gets out and says to me "you're car's leaking" and I look and see coolant spilling out again, the alternator cut the hose again . At this point I decided I had 3 good runs so I retired and spent the rest of event patching my hose up as I learned how to do the day before, so that I could make it home. It wasn't all bad though, someone snapped a nice pic of one of my runs:That was a high speed right hander right before the finish, so I was really gunning it as you can see by all the dirt I kicked up. Since all the weight in the car shifted to the left, this is probably the exact moment that my alternator fan was tearing my radiator hose apart
Here's a pic of the repaired hose:
So I made it home and figured out the problem was my engine mounts were shot which allowed the engine to move. Also I replaced this hose with the URO version when I changed my timing belt, and this aftermarket version doesn't bend around the alternator as well as OEM. I went to change my engine mounts and discovered both mounts were sheared in half (and later on I found out both transmission mounts were sheared in half as well). At this time I still had my eta in the garage being parted out, so I just took the engine mounts out of that car and swapped them in (they were still in great shape). I did this because the OEM mounts that I ordered wouldn't arrive in time and I was borrowing my roommate's parking spot.
At this point I went to an autocross the very next weekend after the rallycross (during this time there were events every weekend so I was really hustling during the week to get my car fixed up and ready to go). I didn't get a good look while doing the engine mounts but I could kind of tell that at least one of the trans mounts were broken. I went to the autocross at Auto Club Speedway and they changed the course from the usual because of some problem with the planning. As a result the new course was in a HUGE 1 million square feet parking lot. It was a very high speed autocross course. It was a lot of fun but due to the high speed of the course I had to use 3rd gear, but my 3rd gear synchro is shot so sometimes I would fail to shift to 3rd. So it was either try and shift to 3rd and fail, or bang the rev limited in 2nd. I tried both ways, I was more consistent staying in 2nd. At one point I tried banging into 3rd gear and the trans went into gear, then popped out and I noticed my transmission was far noisier than usual. So I stayed away from 3rd and finished the day. Driving home my transmission was noticeably noisier than usual so I took it easy.
At this point I spent the past 5 weekends going to various motorsport events, and now I have a large break before anything else comes up. So finally, time to breathe and get some much needed maintenance done on the car.
- Thermostat. I really should have done this when I did my timing belt but I was trying to do the bare minimum to get my car running so it could get inspected by CHP. I also never did coolant on this car before so I wasn't sure how big of a pain bleeding the system would be (well after all the issues with my radiator hose getting blown open, I can safely say I'm really good at bleeding the system now :up:). Turns out my old (it was the original) thermostat was stuck open which is why my car warmed up slowly, and the thermostat was just slow to respond in general. Now my car gets up past the quarter mark quickly and stays there the entire time without budging, no matter if I get on the freeway, start blasting the heater, or whatever :up:. At this time I also swapped my patched radiator hose for a proper OEM one. I used the Mahle 80*C thermostat.
- Transmission fluid/trans mounts. I know I should have changed all the fluids when I first got the car but I had time constraints, and the sun setting at 4:30 didn't help. The engine oil was clean, and when I changed the diff fluid, it was fairly good looking too so I figured the rest wouldn't be too bad. So now I finally have the opportunity to change the trans fluid, and what do you know, I need a 17mm allen :curse: I struggled for 2 hours trying to loosen the plugs using the 17mm seat bolt and 2 17 mm seat nuts jammed together, but I failed miserably. I finally gave up, went to Autozone, got a 17mm socket, drove home, and within a minute of getting into the garage, had the plugs loosened. So I drained the transmission fluid and this is what came out...
All that came out was a tablespoon of chrome goo
I felt really stupid at this point, but the 3rd gear synchro was already shot so I knew I had to swap the trans anyway. I've never done a trans swap before (just removed it from the eta when I parted it out), and I was expecting to do it at some point, but looking at my calendar I realized that right now was my best opportunity to change it, so the sooner I get started, the sooner I'll be finished. I'm just surprised that I drove 7 hours from Sacramento, went drifting, rallycrossing 140 miles away, and autocrossing with no gear oil and the trans still worked pretty well. So now the trans swap begins. I actually got everything removed in a day when I expected it would take me a couple of weekends. I used this 1/2 to 3/8 extension (https://www.amazon.com/SK-SKT-46175-...pact+extension), a very short 3/8 wobble extension, and my 3/8 torx socket, and I was able to impact off all the bellhousing bolts (except the top right torx bolt because the extension was too straight), which was a lot easier than the first time when I used numerous wobble extensions and a ratchet. Luckily now the eta is fully parted out and gone, so this car is in the garage now and can sit on jack stands full time. Now I'm waiting to get my flywheel from the machine shop and for my parts to come in. I ordered a LUK clutch kit, various shifter bushings, and transmission seals.
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