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

[prisonerofdoom83]

Doesn’t want anymore cars……buys 6 more

[2mAn]

I'd say the chaos paid off! lol

I'm assuming you made a profit?!

[JasonWilson48]

Wow! This all sounds chaotic, but super exciting. It pays to have some good connections to get you these kinds of deals. My family is in the auction/clean-out business, so I'm always about finding a deal and jumping on it quickly. Also, you have to deal with disposing of some of the crap to get access to the good stuff. Looks like you did the same here.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the two cars you saved. Another project thread coming soon with that clean car you're storing at your buddy's?!

I thought my fly and drive, was an adventure. But after seeing this, I need to get out there and get into some more stuff like this lol.

[AWDBOB]

This past weekend was extremely busy from a friends wedding, birthdays, SOS fixing inlaws vehicles, you name it.

On Friday or Saturday I started to get bombarded with friends sending me a FB link to a vintage BMW collection being sold off in Cincinnati. The listing details showed some poorly lit photos of a few E30s in a moldy warehouse and said something like "50 year vintage BMW collection, over 100 parts cars". Cinci is only 2hrs away. Knowing I couldn't make anything happen that weekend, I saw how much traction the listing was getting and caught a serious case of FOMO knowing it'd all be gone by then. I said I'd reach out Sunday night to see what's left.

On a whim I messaged my buddy Chris in Dayton who runs a BMW bizz similar to what I do with his friend Timon. They bought the 27 cars in southern IN last year, so I was sure they were already on their way to check out this stash. I said.... save me a couple E30s. I had 20mins free on the way to a wedding so he called me and told me what was there.

Later that day he said he arranged a buyout for all of the cars- 17 to be exact. They all had to be moved due to the building selling.

I'm not sure I ever really said I'll take all of them or knew what I was getting myself into, but come Monday morning I had a Uhaul reserved and was headed there to assess the 6 E30s my name was marked next to on a spreadsheet.

Before I left I did a once over on the Xterra before I towed cars for 3 days straight and found a snapped inner leaf on the drivers side. So I found myself swapping a leaf out at 6am before I had to be in Cinci by 10:30. I found out later that this was but an initiation to the chaos.

The building was downtown Lockland. It was next to a river, and the cars were stored in the basement of said building. No lights, mold on every surface. I walked the cars and started noticing what looked to be a different type of Lichen in the shape of a line on the cars and realized that the cars closest to the river were under water when the river would flood.

We were tasked with getting 17 cars out of said basement. Perpetually flooded cars means nasty rust, locked up wheels, etc. Animals/humans had also been using the cars as their latrine for what I assume was the better part of two decades.

I started by taking home a wrecked but otherwise nice condition '87 325e 4dr with black houndstooth interior, crack free dash, 5sp, etc.

I unloaded the car and immediately realized I had space for.... that one car only. And panic followed.

I was responsible for 6 cars, with space for one, on a 7 figure commercial real estate sale timeframe........

Didn't sleep a wink, extended the Uhaul reservation, headed back to Cinci at sun up and it was a brutal day of breaking wheels loose via snapping drums in half with a sledge and yanking them with an old beat up camry to get them outside.

I got a call the night before from a customer and finally had a chance to call him back. His auto trans blew and needed a manual swap..... all 6 of my parts cars were manual. Two down.

There was a really nice flood line 325eS that another buddy wanted to save..... three down.

An 84 318 was so rusty we couldn't even get the car jacked up, so I pleaded with the liaison of the sale to allow me to part the 318 and a different wrecked '87 325e out on site since we had a local scrap guy handling the cars that were fully submerged and thus he could take those carcasses too...... 5 down

That leaves me with the initial car that I took home and a completely rust free cosmoblau 87 325 4dr that I was able to stash at a buddies for now.

What a wild past few days it has been, but it was a really neat experience and felt cool to be a part of.

Chris/Timon got a manual E34 535i and several E32s including a few V12 cars. Ben of Obscure Euro Parts (Cinci based) was the 3rd leg in the deal and ended up with a 750 with individual interior and a 745 turbo E23.

I still have to go back tomorrow to finish parting out my last hooptie, but for now the trailer is returned and it's time to sleep.

I don't care for social media these days so I wanted to type this up to serve as more of a long form calander event for me to look back on.

TLDR: chaos

In no particular order:

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Titanic 318

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[AWDBOB]

Everyone needs a good shop cat...keeps out the critters. Did you name the cat hoopty?

Bahaha no but I will if it returns!

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Speaking of mr mjweimer, I bought an injector cleaning machine from him many moons ago and haven't ever bothered to get it functioning.

I used the long start debacle on sedan hoopty as motivation to finally get it up and running.

I did a set of M20b25 injectors for the aforementioned issue and they went from 4/6 completely plugged to a nice flow match result.

Pretty stoked to have this tool in house for future diag.

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Installed injectors, moved check valve down by the pump, and for posterity's sake double checked my fuel filter direction....

sure enough, the Febi fuel filter I installed didn't have an arrow on it, and the way that looked correct was indeed backwards. Replaced with a Bosch filter I had handy.

Bonus good news, I was able to lift the E30 fully without it hitting my garage door track, which I didn't think would be the case.

A buddy may buy the 4dr hoopty to keep miles off of his fancy daily, so I'm going to keep trying to button up small stuff in the event he takes it home.

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[mjweimer]

Everyone needs a good shop cat...keeps out the critters. Did you name the cat hoopty?

[AWDBOB]

I'll take your word for it

I didn't know second(?) gen Xterras had coil springs up front. Drastic change from the first gen's weird torsion spring thing. I just assumed it was the same vehicle underneath because Nissan.

They got coil springs starting in '05- the same year the Pathfinder got IRS! IRS on the Xterra would make it a better vehicle.... but so would 20mpg.

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Sedan hoopty has always taken 4-5 seconds to start, and I finally got around to diag. Ohmed out the blue top and compared it to others at the same ambient temp, all good.

Installed a check valve in the fuel feed at the rail and it was better, still inconsistent, until it stopped helping and car reverted back to original symptoms.

Finally got around to swapping FPR, assuming it was bleeding off pressure, and the issue appears to be resolved.

I need to remove the check valve to verify the one in the pump is still good with the FPR fixed, and if not, reinstall it down by the external pump so there is more fuel in the line to allow the pump to catch up quicker for a smoother start up transition.

I should probably clean my injectors too, but that's for another day.

Pet a neighboring outside cat too much and made a pal

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[Northern]

Plush and supportive like a nice bra, but without the typical Billy harshness.

I'll take your word for it

I didn't know second(?) gen Xterras had coil springs up front. Drastic change from the first gen's weird torsion spring thing. I just assumed it was the same vehicle underneath because Nissan.

[AWDBOB]

I was downtown tonight and the sky was prodigious

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[AWDBOB]

Blower fan exploded yesterday- installed one I pulled off of a parts car that looked to have been recently replaced. Adjusted the new belts while I was in there.

Replaced an expanding nut (what firewall rust?).

Hooptie daily life! Steering still feels super weird, pretty sure it's the rack or a USM bearing.

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[AWDBOB]

Curious if you get the Billy Bounce.

Transportation trifecta.

I am anti front billy hd/sports, but I don't mind the stiffness in the rear. Helps drown out the destroyed trailing arm bushings lol

edit: I drove my buddies car last month that was refreshed by Ben Thongsai in Chicago with B4s all the way around and OE Sports and it felt great for daily spec. Plush and supportive like a nice bra, but without the typical Billy harshness.

This car has OE sports and KYBs up front, 50406 sports and B8s in the rear and its great for a rolling parts car. I did texas holdem this way too and it was good.

Granted, this is no comparison to OG hoopty with touring GC plates/coilovers, konis and spring rates that feel just right, but it's a fine affordable setup for a daily.

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I'm still battling our DD struggles.... Xterra needs ball joints badly, so I wanted to get hooptie sedan daily-able in the meantime so I can take the xterra off the road to fix. Once it's all finished up and aligned I'm going to list it for sale and see if I can't get into a 6MT crosstrek or something.... if i can find a blown up first gen crosstrek I'll FB25 swap it. I'm over the body on frame cube 14mpg SUV life, and keeping it on the road past 200k when our other vehicle is a needy 05 outback seems futile. I can do one daily shitbox, not two. I need AWD/Manual/10yrs old, and Subaru is really the only thing holding down the fort on that these days, as much as I don't like them.

Turns out when you use your nastiest rusty pulleys and don't clean them up you get poor results. I was 99.9% sure I cleaned all of this up before install but I didn't.

Nothing but the best $4 belts for my rolling parts car. Cleaned everything up and it's happy. AC quietly blasting on the way to bike this evening

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[moatilliatta]

Curious if you get the Billy Bounce.

Transportation trifecta.

[AWDBOB]

Ever since I got the '87 Sedan Hoopty on the road it has had manual brakes and a fading MC under consistent brake pressure (see: pedal fade at stop lights).

I assumed the booster was bad, made sure the check valve was good first which it was, so it was indeed a bad booster.

All of the cast iron ATE MCs/Boosters I pull off of parts cars are rusty messes, but I have a few good late Girling spares.

The '87 325i is one of the cars with the weird horizontal pressure regulator (1156716) that mounts to the MC studs and hangs out under the MC. On the '87, both F/R lines run into this valve.

RealOEM says this valve is used from 7/86 to 6/87.

I grabbed a known good late Girling MC/booster and bolted it up. Brake line fitting sizes were the same, ATE brake master res mounted up the same, etc.

However, I noticed that the late Girling MC front port was stamped 17, and rear was stamped 22 (Front = Vor/V, Rear = Hinter/H).

On the 87 ATE MC the front port was stamped 20, and the rear 17, indicating the F/R lines may be switched on this MC.

I grabbed a spare ABS unit from an '89 and made sure the 87 and 89 ABS unit ports had the same inputs and outputs, which they did.

WHICH MEANS the '87 MC has reversed F/R ports. Following the flow in the horizontal pressure regulator I realized the regulator redirects the flow to the ABS unit.

All of the p/n's for early cars with ABS seem to be lumped under 1154918, but this means there are two early MCs, one with reversed ports for the 7/86 to 6/87 cars that received the weird reversed pressure regulator, and one without. As far as I can tell, the reversed port early 7/86 to 6/87 MC with weird pressure regulator is 1154405 and the normal port early MC with ABS without weird valve is 1154918. Despite that p/n on bimmerworld being listed for cars "without ABS", 1154918 is listed on RealOEM as "with ABS". I verified the ports are the same as the late MC on the 1154918 early ATE MC without the weird pressure regulator.

I now have boosted brakes and a strong MC, but I kept the '87 pressure regulator which is reversing the flow, so I have a 17mm front bore MC and a 22mm rear bore.

Brakes feel incredible compared to the non functional old setup, but they still feel very weird with this switched.

Anyway, I wanted to post my findings about this "one year" MC that I had no idea exists (which, fun fact, uses the same ATE MC reservoir as I've seen on some '88 cars).

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Another '87 I had on the shelf with cut lines
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The 1154918 ports

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All done

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[AWDBOB]

Glad y'all found that as cool as I did- just hanging out next door for 40yrs. They're going to send me the auction link when it's live, I'll post it here.

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Daily driver madness is still kicking my ass.

Had to do front uprights on the Xterra, engine mounts, outer tie rods, and then a full clutch hydro line/component replacement.

Finally got it all buttoned up and the drivers exhaust manifold fully broke off at the flange. My guess is it wasn't long for this world and jacking up the motor to do the engine mounts did it in.

So now I have a full exhaust job from manifolds back to figure out, meanwhile keeping her Outback and my daily sedan hoopty on the road. The Outback got front uprights, front swaybar bushings/endlinks, rear 02 sensor, trans fluid flush with Idemitsu Type HP ATF, and other odds and ends to hopefully remedy the final check engine light of the cali to fed emissions conversion project.

The things I do to avoid having car payments.....

Tapping xterra engine mount threads 1/8 turn at a time

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Billys, new springs, and shock mounts installed with new Moog outer tie rods.

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Sedan hooptie has been getting hotter than I'd like despite me putting in a new tstat when I did the timing belt, so I bought a Mahle 80* tstat and tried out the $80 alloy ebay radiator since this thing is essentially a rolling parts car at this point.

Core is thinner than stock, construction appears to be surprisingly decent. Don't love the drain plug design, everything else checks out.

Car is now much happier. Was getting some belt squeal so I swapped belts out. That didn't change anything, so I may need to remove/wire wheel the drive pulleys. Belt alignment is fine, not sure what else it could be.

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[82eye]

wild to see that.