JackBenny's 1991 318is Project

[jackbenny]

Good God, I've just spent 2 hours going through this thread, incredible work mate! I am craving more!

(PS: I'm also going to order some 5 lug TH2's to match my M-tec II kit)

Nice! I haven't seen TH2's on E30's yet. Going for a kind of tarmac rally look huh? Post pictures when you get them!

[jackbenny]

Hey josh, cluster looks great. I think that might be my next time waster while i keep sourcing my swap parts. I tinted and put some new projectors in my headlights this weekend to pass the time.

You mentioned something about door cards in one of your posts. I have a full set of tan coupe cards in pretty decent shape with map pockets and such lying around. If you want them, you can have them, just let me know and ill bring them to the club meeting this Thursday.

btw. I want that engine cover.

tee hee. I had to unwrap it and show it off. I was not expecting it and it actually arrived late for Christmas. I'm going to try and find a vinyl guy and create a stencil that replicates the BMW M Power on the stock cover and paint it on the carbon cover. I think that would be a neat, subtle touch in the engine bay.

I still have my existing cards. I have a thought on how to integrate part of the cards with the carbon door panels and wrap them in alcantera. Hopefully I can look at the cards and get something sketched up. No pockets or handles, just a grab strap. Think 911 RS.

I'm going to try and make it for thursday but work isn't cooperating right now as I may have to make a quick trip back to Germany. Hopefully everything will work out.

<edit>
Tonight I will take some pictures of a little present M42Technik sent me. Resourceful individuals might be able to figure out what it is...or you can just look below for my re-edit.

<re-edit>



...to make it more aerodynamic...yeah, that's it, aerodynamic......

[jackbenny]

I'll admit I didn't read the whole thread. Your strut tubes have m3 sway pickup points welded on. Why did you not use them? My understanding (and the reason I bothered welding those tabs on mine) is that they increase the force of the front anti-roll bar --- serving to effectively raise it's diameter in performance.

Would it have interfered with the big brake setup?

Excellent question. The answer is....I didn't have the M3 links. That has since been rectified and is an item in the pile of parts and will put on the car at the next visit.

I plan on sticking with the stock bars for now. If I need to upgrade later to larger bars for whatever reason, I'm saving that for later as it will give me an opportunity to save up for them. I'll weld in the reinforcements as well.

[browntown]

I'll admit I didn't read the whole thread. Your strut tubes have m3 sway pickup points welded on. Why did you not use them? My understanding (and the reason I bothered welding those tabs on mine) is that they increase the force of the front anti-roll bar --- serving to effectively raise it's diameter in performance.

Would it have interfered with the big brake setup?

[Ray Smoodiver]

Good God, I've just spent 2 hours going through this thread, incredible work mate! I am craving more!

(PS: I'm also going to order some 5 lug TH2's to match my M-tec II kit)

[Ray Smoodiver]

Good God, I've just spent 2 hours going through this thread, incredible work mate! I am craving more!

(PS: I'm also going to order some 5 lug TH2's to match my M-tec II kit)

[bejbis]

Hey josh, cluster looks great. I think that might be my next time waster while i keep sourcing my swap parts. I tinted and put some new projectors in my headlights this weekend to pass the time.

You mentioned something about door cards in one of your posts. I have a full set of tan coupe cards in pretty decent shape with map pockets and such lying around. If you want them, you can have them, just let me know and ill bring them to the club meeting this Thursday.

btw. I want that engine cover.

[jackbenny]

Turned out well Josh. I did the mine with the same ebay rings, but used red to match the color on the fuel and temp gauges. I used a touch-up paint and brush and as you stated, if I look closely, I'm able to see some brush strokes, but I think it's unavoidable no matter how patient and steady-handed you are. Honestly, I'm pretty anal about details but you don't really notice it after you install the cluster and start driving. Makes the gauges sooooo much more enjoyable to look at! Only difference is I also got the Alpina tach strip from Guten Parts. Really like the contrast of the green color.

Congratulations to you both on the upcoming birth!

Thank you sir. This friday is the ultrasound to find out the sex. that is going to be a fun day!

I've been looking at the cluster for awhile now and the blemishes don't bother me too much anymore. I went back and forth on the alpina stripes but finally settled on leaving them off. The cluster makes me smile now when I look at it. I just hope the damn thing works!

Parts have been coming in today. Thought I would take a picture to show how much has amassed. Christmas was good to me ass my family got me some cool gifts I just couldn't bring myself to purchase.

We'll just call it the dreaded "teaser" for now. I'll take inventory when everything arrives.



Can't wait to get back to the car in a couple of weeks!

[TrentW]

Turned out well Josh. I did the mine with the same ebay rings, but used red to match the color on the fuel and temp gauges. I used a touch-up paint and brush and as you stated, if I look closely, I'm able to see some brush strokes, but I think it's unavoidable no matter how patient and steady-handed you are. Honestly, I'm pretty anal about details but you don't really notice it after you install the cluster and start driving. Makes the gauges sooooo much more enjoyable to look at! Only difference is I also got the Alpina tach strip from Guten Parts. Really like the contrast of the green color.

Congratulations to you both on the upcoming birth!

[jackbenny]

...and now to continue from the previous update post.

Like I said, I decided to use a paint pen to see how it would work. I taped off all the gauges and cleaned the needles with acetone (nail polish remover actually) so there wouldn't be any contaminants to mess with the paint.



The painting began. Ignore the wife's wish list, it made a nice place to get the paint pen flowing.









You can see that the paint pen didn't make it all the way down to the black circle, so I had to improvise and used a toothpick to get all of the white covered. The fine point allowed me to paint all the way down.

Two more coats were applied.









The flash time on the paint is pretty quick and after it dried, I removed the tape.

Speedo came out pretty good...





As did the other 2 smaller gauges...





A little leakage on the fuel gauge though. Luckily it blends ok with the black...





And finally the tach. The econometer needle is a pain to do but I think I got most of it...





I was a little disappointed with how this came out. I like the color and from a distance the needles look good. When you get right up close you can see some blemishes. That part made me a little sad but overall I'm pleased with the results.

And now reassembly...







For the plastic, I used Plexus glass polisher. I used Plexus on my faceshield for my motorcycle helmet and was pleased with the results. The plastic was in decent shape so I freshened it up a bit.





So ends the refresh. It's a decent project to do yourself but don't be afraid to consider someone like Guten Parts or the like if you don't have the patience. For the most part I'm pleased.

Parts started coming in today. This weekend will be spent in town so I might start looking at the door cards and see what I can come up with there. I did participate in the CF Door Card group buy so I have some ideas on what I want to do.

At the same time I will try and get some of the parts posted up. You may be able to figure some of them out as a good chunk are sitting on my desk!

Til then...

[jackbenny]

That green plug you have pictured is the plug required for cruise control. The cruise plugs in there to get power and a speed signal.

That would explain the difference in clusters. oh well. At least I feel better for not missing something so obvious. I need to check continuity from the speed sensor pickup to the dash next. I might do that the next time i'm with the car. The speedo circuit board didn't have any burns on so I'm hoping it's still good. It worked in the car it was pulled out of...well, that's what I was told. ;)

[e30guydownunder]

That green plug you have pictured is the plug required for cruise control. The cruise plugs in there to get power and a speed signal.

[jackbenny]

Cluster Foxtrot

With the cold weather and laughable "snow storm" we received this weekend on the gulf coast, I decided to spend some quality time inside the warm house and work on my instrument cluster. I had performed some work on my original cluster, adding trim rings, replacing the SI board, changing the odometer gears and painting the needles. But the speedometer never worked and the tach started working intermittantly.



About a year and half ago, I acquired a supposedly working cluster. It was in a bit nicer shape than my original cluster so I decided to transfer over all the good parts and repaint the needles.



The first step was to take apart the original cluster in order to raid it for parts. There are plenty of write ups out there for this and they are all great.



I had a brand new SI board in that cluster so I pulled that bad boy out.



Success!



I now focused my attention to the trim rings I had installed. These are the brushed aluminum kind and I picked them up off ebay a couple of years ago.



They eventually popped out with some persuasion.



The cluster was disassembled further to get the odometer gears and to take a look at the tach.



The other cluster was also disassembled in the same manner. Note the fact that this cluster has both of its mounting ears. The trim rings were reinstalled on the new cluster.





As I took apart the new cluster further, I had some difficulty taking the speedometer out. hmmm, this cluster has a plug that my orginal cluster didn't have. Could this be the source of my non-functional speedometer?!?



With the speedometer removed, I began work to transfer the new odometer gears to the new cluster.

All the good odometer gears removed from the old cluster.



And all the gears removed from the new speedometer. The new gears are not compatible with that brass nub so you have to remove it. I used some wire cutters I had laying around and snipped it off.



Then the new odometer gears were installed on the new cluster's speedometer.





I had a choice of two colors for the needles: red or orange. I decided to paint one of the old cluster needles to see the difference. The wife liked red, but I preferred orange.



The taping of the needles began. I used paint pens this time to see if it produced different results. Sadly, it seems those pictures didn't upload last night so ...



....to be continued...

[jackbenny]

Okay, now that you've gone through most of the process, I'd like to ask you a couple questions... How many man hours do you think were spent sanding on the car -- including body work, blocking pre-primer, after primer etc.? Do you think you'd ever do a project like a respray again?

I ask this because if you remember, I recently did pretty much the same thing to my car. I had quite a bit of little dings to repair -- one bad one that was below the rear license plate and above the bumper. I did 95% of the body work, and since I was new I would say I did every single spot at least twice, if not more before I was satisfied with the result. Then we sprayed primer, blocked it, found a couple dings I missed, sprayed primer again, blocked it again, and then had to block/cut/polish/wax after paint. I don't even want to know the amount of time that I put in to it, and I can say with relative confidence that I will never do a respray myself again.

Anyways, it looks like it turned out well for you. I know you haven't seen it in person yet (I think at least), but do you know if there is any dust that settled in the paint? I'm curious because I set up an elaborate makeshift booth in my garage, and cleaned absolutely meticulously and still had dust in a few spots.

And it's hard to tell from the pics, but your orange peel doesn't look quite as bad as mine was. I hope or your sake that it's not as bad, because blocking with a minimum of 1200 is a slow, disheartening process. BUT, the light is at the end of the tunnel! Once you get it blocked and do that final pass with the high speed buffer, you will be so satisfied with the result.

Also, a separate thread for the e21 would be great. And if you haven't found a solution yet, I would just say if it's hard to find, just make your own linkage for the carbs.

Good stuff Josh, let's get some pics of it being assembled!

You know Jordan, I've been trying to calculate how many man hours we've put into the car. Each trip we had 3 to 4 people working on it and I did a bunch of prep before I dragged it to Louisiana. Probably a good 3 to 4 hundred hours. Believe it or not aside from that rear valance it was quite theraputic. I could afford to take my time because it isn't a daily so when ever I got frustrated, I could just walk away.

As far as the paint, my uncle is quite a talented shadetree painter. This is his third car and he keeps improving. It was cold when they painted so they used an activator rated for 60 degrees i believe, it was the lowest temp available for that paint system. I think this helped. According to my father there were two tiny runs and a few fuzzy particles and that was it. The orange peel is not too bad, i think the camera makes it seem worse than it is. The good news is that my wife enjoys wet sanding so that may help the burden of finalizing the finish.

Will I do another respray. Its funny you ask. After my father's 2002 gets completed (we bring it to the barn in March), my wife wants the E21 resprayed the same color. There isn't much work to do to it so I don't anticipate blowing it apart to the same degree I did the 318 but it had a cheap respray and she wants the car to stick around for a while. who am i to argue? :p

I figured out how the carbs work and just a modification or two are need to fix the existing linkage. I felt stupid once I figured it out as it is rather clever. I'm hoping work will calm down so I can get some of the maintenance out of the way before the baby comes.

I've got a trip scheduled in february to go and install my new headliner from kevin chinn, and some other parts. In march when we bring the 2002, we will assemble to e30 and i will take her home.

when i get back, i'll take some pictures of the goodies i got as well as some interior ideas i have for some feedback.

too bad its so damn cold here in hamburg that i cant hit the salvage yards!

[TwoJ's]

It's got a bit of orange peel in there but with all the wet sanding and polishing it'll be nice and shiny.

I really wish i was back home so i could play with it!

Okay, now that you've gone through most of the process, I'd like to ask you a couple questions... How many man hours do you think were spent sanding on the car -- including body work, blocking pre-primer, after primer etc.? Do you think you'd ever do a project like a respray again?

I ask this because if you remember, I recently did pretty much the same thing to my car. I had quite a bit of little dings to repair -- one bad one that was below the rear license plate and above the bumper. I did 95% of the body work, and since I was new I would say I did every single spot at least twice, if not more before I was satisfied with the result. Then we sprayed primer, blocked it, found a couple dings I missed, sprayed primer again, blocked it again, and then had to block/cut/polish/wax after paint. I don't even want to know the amount of time that I put in to it, and I can say with relative confidence that I will never do a respray myself again.

Anyways, it looks like it turned out well for you. I know you haven't seen it in person yet (I think at least), but do you know if there is any dust that settled in the paint? I'm curious because I set up an elaborate makeshift booth in my garage, and cleaned absolutely meticulously and still had dust in a few spots.

And it's hard to tell from the pics, but your orange peel doesn't look quite as bad as mine was. I hope or your sake that it's not as bad, because blocking with a minimum of 1200 is a slow, disheartening process. BUT, the light is at the end of the tunnel! Once you get it blocked and do that final pass with the high speed buffer, you will be so satisfied with the result.

Also, a separate thread for the e21 would be great. And if you haven't found a solution yet, I would just say if it's hard to find, just make your own linkage for the carbs.

Good stuff Josh, let's get some pics of it being assembled!