My Hoopte30 Project Attempt #6 - the painless way to earn cash back every day

[varg]

Any lead on someone who can rebuild these wiper motors? It would be nice if they had some speed behind them.

Just looking at them, and knowing what my old Volvo's wiper motor looked like inside, I'd say it's probably fairly DIY friendly. Crack it open, replace the brushes, re-grease the gearbox and replace the bearings/bushings if necessary. I'd guess the motor bushings/bearings are a standard sized part, it wouldn't make sense to drive up the cost of the motor by using special stuff.

[AWDBOB]

MMM hoopte.... Still looking like a fun car.

Any lead on someone who can rebuild these wiper motors? It would be nice if they had some speed behind them.

My car is in pieces again, but was looking at the C&C and its just to humid... WAHHh. :p

Just looking at them, and knowing what my old Volvo's wiper motor looked like inside, I'd say it's probably fairly DIY friendly. Crack it open, replace the brushes, re-grease the gearbox and replace the bearings/bushings if necessary. I'd guess the motor bushings/bearings are a standard sized part, it wouldn't make sense to drive up the cost of the motor by using special stuff.

I don't think it would be very hard if you found a good old school electrical repair shop... seems like standard equipment as varg pointed out. Unlikely that it would be worth the hassle to upgrade, but a nice rebuilt one I'm sure would be worlds better than what is on most of our cars.

Man.... C&C was so humid. AND i'm a sweaty italian...... i think i made people nervous with how much i was sweating standing still.

Hoopty isn't getting fancy cylinder head. Talked to Kevin and he said it doesn't have many refinishes left in its future, so I'm saving fancy head for 2.9L m20 in the event that something would happen to it while on hoopty's stock b25.

With Kevin so backed up (i told waaaay too many people how good he was, oops) I ended up picking this already redone 885 off of FB (also listed on r3v). Guy was super cool and met me halfway.

Got a rebuilt head for $260!!!!! deals. He bought a shop and the old shop owner had some random stuff left over from his dealings, one item of which was this 885 head. New Febi rockers from back when they didn't suck, refinished, cleaned, guides, etc. Gonna toss in the 272 cam I got from the Mississippi trip and call it a day.

Have OEM BMW gasket, bolts, etc all ready to put this on..... should happen soon-ish, hopefully.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

I sold some shit boxes recently (don't worry, still have hoopty iS), and saw this beautiful creation lingering on my local marketplace for a while, calling me to it, and then grahamsy2k posted it up on R3V. It looked like a steamy pile of rusty e30 goodness, which meant I had to have it.

I was under the impression that the car was very rusty because the car has pretty bad sunroof rust, but upon getting the car home and looking it over, the floors are minty, the battery box has minimal rust compared to most e30s, passenger rear wheel well isn't bad at all, etc etc. The rust seems fairly isolated to the sunroof.

I need/want a winter beater, so I figured what better thing to do than to bring this '89 sedan on one more trip around the sun. I thought it would be funny to do a Youtube video where I part the car out as I drive it to its most minimal state to see how much I can sell off of the car while still keeping it running and then drive it to the vintage as a driving parts car.

The big achilles heel is the sunroof. It's bad/rusty/missing. It doesn't make sense to rebuild the sunroof with good parts, but it does make sense to weld it shut.

In looking over the car, it's missing:

ICV
Intake boot
Battery
Brown Top Coolant Temp Sensor
Coolant Level sensor

and a few other small odds and ends.

I am not sure if the car stopped being driven due to the sunroof rust, or because it had a mechanical failure, or what, but I suppose we're going to find that out pretty soon.

Was thinking E34 525i front springs and E36 Vert rear springs, sell the plastic bumpers and have cheap bash bars made. Who knows. Whatever I can sell off of it I will, to fund the senseless project I will. There's also a 50/50 chance I won't do anything outside of get it running and part it out. But it hurts my soul to send this car to the grave if it has several more good years in it.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[2mAn]

Bob- Saving America's E30s... one sh!tbox at a time

[AWDBOB]

Bob- Saving America's E30s... one sh!tbox at a time

man I'm trying! i need to finish the lingering pair of 318s, but it's more fun to ignore them and keep buying different beaters

[mjweimer]

Bob- Saving America's E30s... one sh!tbox at a time

...and having a blast doing so...

[AWDBOB]

...and having a blast doing so...

yessir!!! at least most of the time, lol.

got all of the missing bits replaced and a good battery in the car and we have two issues.

1) CEL illuminates with key in accessory position indicating power to DME, but CEL goes out when cranking, which means computer isn't seeing it crank to send power to fuel pump, which in my mind means bad crank sensor.

2) No fuel at rail with fuel pump relay jumped and pump running. the gas in the tank looked like alabama swamp water and smelled like varnish, so before i fitted a new pump I drained the tank and refilled with fresh lawn mower grade petrol. Assuming filter is totally clogged

in regards to the sunroof debacle, I am debating on riveting an aluminum sheet on as opposed to welding, due to the existing corrosion around the edges of the roof. I will make the sunroof headliner functional and keep it up there so the headliner can be kept closed to mitigate some noise pollution from the lack of insulation

after annihilating the already broken glove box latch that looked permanently affixed to the dash, i found a mouse nest and chewed wires above the dme, per the usual

[AWDBOB]

SHE'S ALIVE!!!! I swapped the fuel filter, and replaced the fuel hoses in the engine bay that were hard as a rock, and she came to life!

I tested the original CPS and it was fine. So, for future reference, CEL doesn't need to be on while cranking, only on with key in accessory position to verify power at DME.

I drove the car around the lot and it was fine, but will need plugs/cap/rotor, all of which I have.

The suspension, and sadly the steering rack, is totally shot, so I will find a cheap E36 rack to swap in on the lift. I have used Bilsteins from a parts car that I can't sell that I'll toss in.

I also had a mediocre set of grills/kidney that I threw on.

Now that I heard the car run, I felt okay ordering a sunroof delete panel from turtle labs for a whopping $100 shipped.

I love cars like this, because I get to keep it on the road, and make it drive significantly better with used inventory that isn't valuable to other people, that I don't want to toss.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

I have been putting off buying pistons for 2.7L hoopty engine build, and noticed that the half a mil over Mahle pistons I planned on using (11251714810) had some really wonky stock readings, much akin to what happens right before a part becomes NLA, so I grabbed a set for my Christmas present to myself. I am finishing up another m20 for a buddy, and then can get going on this one for hoopty!

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

aaaaand it looks like my spidey senses were correct, sadly.

Showing NLA now on multiple sites that showed stock last week when I saw stock numbers getting weird.

https://www.turnermotorsport.com/p-406726-7-piston/

https://www.bimmerworld.com/BMW-Parts/BMW-Piston-11251714810.html

[AWDBOB]

Hoopty 325iS is a rolling parts car, and in true Bobbie fashion, a customer needed a known good S3.73, so I sold him the one out of the car that I installed last year at Jakes that I put some verified miles on. I used it as an excuse to swap out the poly subframe and trailing arm bushings for rubber, and to also swap in some nice late model trailing arms, as the ones I had installed were '85 and had the smaller bearings.

Nothing like pulling a subframe with 2ft of space around your car from not having enough room for anything.

I got a cheap torsen 4.10 I may toss in the car for the time being. Or a 3.25. Or a 3.46. Who knows?

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[twright]

Do poly subframe bushings come out easier than rubber ones?

[moatilliatta]

Tight spaces can be tough, big spaces get filled up with junk.

Glad to see some more hoopty wrenching.

What CR you going with?

[AWDBOB]

Do poly subframe bushings come out easier than rubber ones?

They usually do- this time around I used a late model dropout I was saving for this and the bushings I had to remove were rubber.

Tight spaces can be tough, big spaces get filled up with junk.

Glad to see some more hoopty wrenching.

What CR you going with?

Yep, my garage is made up of piles of parts that should all be at the warehouse, which is also full, lol. I have been focusing on turning my garage back into a breathable workspace. I would say it's getting there, but I'd be lying if I did.

The 2.7 build ends up being 9.4:1 compression using the above pistons, 325e 81mm crank, 325e 130mm rods, and shaving the block ~2mm.

I don't think I'm going to jump right into the 2.7 though, as I don't want the car to be down for any more time than it has to be. Just gonna toss a head gasket on it for now and reassess later.

[AWDBOB]

ole Jakey boi came down for some PRI hangs, and to finally get to the bottom of his m20 test mule '89 325i that we've been trying to get running right for ages. Over the past 7-8mo he's tried everything possible to fix an extreme rich condition, including swapping an entirely different m20 in. We rewired the c191 when I was up there working on Linda, changed AFMs, ECUs, coolant temp sensors, all new vacuum hoses, etc etc etc.

This time around, we figured it out! We were getting ready to swap the engine harness, when we discovered that the car previously had a Miller MAF on it, which means someone was sending 12v to the 5v AFM reference wire to power the MAF, and overdriving the AFM. This was the entire issue the whole time. The old motor was fine, none of the billion sensors and things we changed were bad, but it was super rewarding to finally hear it run right after a painstakingly long diagnosis.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr


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The other crown jewel of the weekend was getting the slicktop 318 sedan M42 running!!!

For those who don't remember, I bought a slicktop m42 back in April out of West Virginia for a song that someone did a ton of work to, including swapping in a new engine out of an e36, new clutch, cooling system, etc etc. I bought the car as a non-runner, under the understanding that the car ran, but only for a few seconds until the car blew the fuel pump fuse. I haven't had time to look at the car since its purchase, so I never verified any of this.

With Jake's car diagnosed a day early, we had time to mess with it, and put a battery in the car for the first time since I bought it. We triggered the fuel pump through the C101 to see if the fuse would blow to narrow down the issue.

We quickly realized the car never ran as stated, as the new fuel pump the PO installed was for a 325 and thus didn't have an integrated return line into the fuel sender, so if the car would've ran it would've dumped fuel all over the top of the tank. New hanger on the way from Alibaba, since my only other high pressure-in tank-single sender-integrated return-pump option was $500. Will toss a quality pump in the new hanger before install.

With a temp hose ran into the tank via the fuel sender hole, we could trigger the fuel pump, and the fuse blew immediately. We put a meter on it, and saw that the fuse 11 had a hard short. Going back to the tank, we found the hard short at the fuel pump connector itself, on the new pump. Pulled the pump, and saw the pump wiring smashed in the tank, shorting out. If someone had put a bigger fuse in the car, I suspect this car could've possibly burned to the ground.

With a different (still incorrect) pump in the car, it was clear the car wasn't firing correctly. A quick look at the plug wires revealed cyl 3&4 were swapped.

Fixed the wires, and the car fired to life, for likely the first time in many, many years. With the car running, I started looking over the engine work and every vacuum leak possible was present, so I have my work cut out for me, but now that I know the car runs, it changes the nature of the project.

I have wanted a car that gets better mileage to use for daily duties, so my goal is to make this car safe to daily, add A/C and Cruise, and enjoy it all of next year and experience an M42 car for the first time.

I have spare b8s, H&rs, E30m3 sways, and 15" Kosies that I'll toss on and think it'll really bring the car to life.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr