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

[AWDBOB]

Budget a/c is a fools errand, but I'm going for it

I bought a new high pressure hose for the seiki compressor, a new drier, expansion valve and parallel flow. A customer gave me a good used genuine r134 pressure switch a while back, and I had some other nicer hoses on hand as well as a curved blade fan and what seems to be a good compressor from a buyout.

I'm all in for sub $200 and sweat equity, but this could potentially transform the car.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr
Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr


Found a few new firewall rust holes during this process. Had to swap evaporator cores as well with a good used one.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr



Amazon was late with my PAG oil so I had to call it for the evening, but tomorrow I'll pull a vacuum on it and hopefully we'll have a/c!

FCP order showed up and I put the new oil pressure switch on, she's almost done!

[AWDBOB]

I'm running H1/H4s on my 318is and it is a great budget upgrade over the stock sealed-beam setup. I can actually see where I'm going on those late night/early morning drives!

Especially considering what a nice set of projectors cost now and how many decent quality non-Hella H1/H4s are available, it's a solid setup for the money!

[mike.bmw]

I'm running H1/H4s on my 318is and it is a great budget upgrade over the stock sealed-beam setup. I can actually see where I'm going on those late night/early morning drives!

[AWDBOB]

I love the sealed H1/H4 upgrade on early models

This is my first time using them- the car had H4s in the high beam spot when I got it so I just fixed the broken one without thinking about it.

I’m just now realizing that H4s are dual filament and thus make for a better low beam which is what I really want any way, so I’m going to swap the H4s over to the low beam spot in the mean time and see if I can get some cheaper Autopal H1s because hooptie budget.

Edit:

Remembered I randomly have a case of new H5001 high beams, this worked out perfectly! H4s are much better in the low beam spot.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr
Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[2mAn]

I love the sealed H1/H4 upgrade on early models

[AWDBOB]

External pump was getting loud and the car started cutting out so I figured it was time to swap it before it left me stranded, which turned into making a bunch of fuel line, replacing the external pump bracket entirely, etc etc.

I was about to place an FCP order when I remembered that I had a nice VDO lift pump on the shelf, as well as a Bosch external that was newer/quiet.

Hoping mastercoat buys me 6 more months with this fuel tank

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr



Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr
Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr


Now that I like this car more I replaced the mismatched drivers high beam with another H4, courtesy of mjweimer. I've had these euro grills forever that I swap from car to car, so I figured it was time to toss 'em on. This process reminded me that the car was hit in the front left which left the low beam aimed at the birds. Fuse one was blown keeping the new high beam from working, so I put a 15a in slots 1&2, and she's good to go!

Replaced flasher relay and finally got all of the turn signals blinking at a normal speed.

I also installed a chipped 173 that has been floating around in old R3V cars for two decades so I can stomp test an intermittent code.

May or may not have broke down and placed a rockauto order for A/C stuff since I'm melting this week. I found a compressor in the stash with a tag that said "Good possibly?" Good enough for me, we'll see if it pushes out the front shaft seal immediately or not later this week.

Oil pressure switch gets here tomorrow and this thing will be pretty well buttoned up.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr
Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

I forgot to take pics today because it was brutally hot, but I made some good progress on the 4dr.

Ever since I did the trunk amp delete I've had issues with the radio shutting off/resetting.

Today I went back through the entire radio harness to see what was going on and finally fixed the issue!

This car has the super odd early '87 premium sound harness (1381719) that only has the single output ground for all of the amp inputs, aka four + speaker wires run to the trunk amp, but only one ground.

So when you do a trunk amp delete on these cars, the easiest way to do so is to run new front speaker +/- to the deck, and use the four + speaker wires running to the trunk amp as the +/- speaker wires for the rear speakers. Connect those to the actual rear speaker wires at the amp connector and all is well. I went over all that again today and it all checked out.

I then uplugged the amp power and antenna power from the power distribution block because I wasn't using either of those two things any more, in the event that something was backfeeding into something it shouldn't have been- no change.

Redundantly, I grounded out both of the leftover grounds in the trunk (one amp ground, and the single old speaker ground no longer in use). The amp ground is already grounded at the g300 under the rear seat, but more grounds never hurt anyone.

I then went through my power wiring for the deck to make sure it was all good. It's so easy to fall into the trap of finding a writeup and treating it as ultimate truth, but since I was having issues, I just used my multimeter to distinguish between Constant+, accessory+,and illumination+. I had accessory and constant swapped, despite doing all of this "right" last time.

Fixed, and still had the same issue.

I had a random thought to check the pins on the Conti provided connectors, and low and behold, my multimeter leads had expanded the pins so far they were making inconsistent contact with the deck and causing all of my shut off/reset radio issues. I then disconnected blue antenna lead because I wasn't using it.

The silver lining of all this is that my Conti head unit now powers up on its own. I've had this head unit in 4 different E30s now and none of them have powered up on their own, which has aways driven me nuts. Not sure what did it, but that was a big plus.

I then threw together my most disgusting cruise harness, and ended up having to hardwire it to the actuator line under the dash due to someone splicing the wrong connector on in the past. Threw in my nastiest cruise module, a cruise stalk that has omni-movement, and I'll be damned if it didn't work perfectly! Love it when that happens.

TLDR, stereo go boom now, car stays same speed

Messing with shitboxes is so much more fun than nice stuff.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

The ole Xterra daily popped a clutch line at a hard line junction so I need to replace everything from the clutch master to the slave cyl. It's going to take a week to get everything from Nissan, so I had to deploy the crusty '87 325i sedan for daily duty for what will be the hottest week of the year.

I haven't had the heart to part this car out, so it's just been sitting ever since it sprung a massive oil leak. I use the car to test parts so I had the interior torn apart testing window motors, among other things. It's a "b stock" car, where I use parts that are perfectly fine for this type of thing but aren't really sellable to make it better.

I cleaned the block and ran the car for a half hour to narrow down the new leak. Thankfully what I thought was another bad cam seal was residual, and it's only the oil pressure switch.

Put a good set of window motors in it, buttoned the interior up, swapped rear springs for some 50406s that I got from someone on R3V FB, fixed central locking (bad passenger front actuator), started reinstalling cruise because I can't live without it, etc.

Need to finish installing cruise, fix the weird '87 premie harness amp delete that makes my radio shut off even though I followed the oddball '87 formula, do a coolant hose, flasher relay, one H4 high beam is out, and i told myself I'd try to get the A/C going if I can do it all for the cost of freon..... a good parts rummage tomorrow will prove if that's possible or not.

Pretty excited to get this car over the hump and into a good daily spec once and for all.

Fixing a bum cruise actuator to use that I can't sell

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr



Engine bay side of cruise on

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr





Clean!!!

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr




Working windows and central locking


Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

I have been neglecting hooptie for so long that I am remembering line items from old lists as I go.

I've been wanting to do a curved blade fan install and resistor delete for a while to help with condenser heat soak which means valence off.

Replaced all my side marker bulbs. Ground off all of the seam sealer, cleaned the window channel and used mastercoat to seal it up which is the best stuff I've found for keeping rust at bay.

Mounted oil cooler properly and fixed some frayed wiring caused by those valence chassis harness clips breaking, despite replacing when I put this valence on.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr
Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr



My fancy hood ground strap crimp failed so I put a stocker back on.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr




Replaced a few lip clips.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr




Working AC on an old car is a fools errand


Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr



Front end back together

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr



And then this is the hitch debacle. Square tube was supposed to be gusseted and attached to the inside of the plate so it could be sandwiched in between the bumper shock and the body.

I may be able to make lemonade out of it, but will have to replace the bumper shock entirely in the design. I think if some eyelet sleeves were welded on in the right spot for the long bumper thru bolts it may be a better/stronger design than I originally planned.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

Burned out, Buy a Cayman?

Same fab guy who did the headers?

I don't have to write much to continue our lovely expression or shared frustration of trying to get good work done..

When people override me and I don't want to micromanage, I instantly get worn out and go you're the expert. I get burned every time. RED FLAG DUMBASS.

Cayman sounds nice, but less stuff sounds nicer.

Same fab guy- he's been great in the past. He ghosted comms when asking about the issues.

Funny how they're all mostly the same

ugh, this is so disheartening to hear. sorry, brother... wish i could help from afar.

we shall prevail- can't let this turd ruin all the fun

[e30austin]

ugh, this is so disheartening to hear. sorry, brother... wish i could help from afar.

[moatilliatta]

Burned out, Buy a Cayman?

Same fab guy who did the headers?

I don't have to write much to continue our lovely expression or shared frustration of trying to get good work done..

When people override me and I don't want to micromanage, I instantly get worn out and go you're the expert. I get burned every time. RED FLAG DUMBASS.

[AWDBOB]

fucking painful to hear this sort of story all the time. I can't trust anyone to do shit to my cars.

Last summer I took my mini to a shop for an AC charge and told them that the valve was missing a cap and was visibly leaking. I asked them to replace the valve and charge.
They said they found no leak, charged it, and added dye. After I got home, I could see that the valve hadn't been changed and the dye was bubbling out.
Now this summer the AC is dead again. Maybe I just do the AC myself with bootleg R134a off amazon.

Last few times the frustration was offset by my stoke about the header, but this time really bugged me as I was lied to to get the car out of the way.

Sucks about the A/C- I had to buy a set of gauges/pump because no one local would even touch my sanden conversion on hoopty, let alone take the money and do it poorly.

It seems that as time goes on it gets harder and harder to get people to turn their brains on in anything they do. Anyone but the owner of the car is inputting as little effort as possible to get whatever it is billed and moved on. Long term its a scary thing, as entire industries are backsliding and will eventually just get replaced entirely.

I shot the guy a message asking what he was thinking.

The more I look at the way he did the hitch, if I welded a sleeve/eyelet to the hitch on each side for the bumper thru bolt I could potentially delete the bumper shock entirely, so maybe not all hope is lost.

Also reminds me of Roysneon's 24v touring exhaust. The shop that was supposed to make nice stainless exhausts that everyone recommended ended up MIGing everything with mild steel wire, and had a massive dip under the rear axle that was maybe .5" off the ground and quickly wore through. IIRC they charged out the ass for it too.

Yeah dude, motion vs action. Theres all this talk about how it's going to be done, but when it comes to the execution, all of that goes out the window. Doing what you said you were going to do is almost unheard of, and when present, it's sold at $250/hr and then still half assed if the tech didn't like the way their hair looked that morning lol

[Northern]

fucking painful to hear this sort of story all the time. I can't trust anyone to do shit to my cars.

Last summer I took my mini to a shop for an AC charge and told them that the valve was missing a cap and was visibly leaking. I asked them to replace the valve and charge.
They said they found no leak, charged it, and added dye, $400 please.
After I got home, I could see that the valve hadn't been changed and the dye was bubbling out.
Now this summer the AC is dead again. Maybe I just do the AC myself with bootleg R134a off amazon. LR4 also needs a charge, so I have more financial motivation than last time to DIY.

Also reminds me of Roysneon's 24v touring exhaust. The shop that was supposed to make nice stainless exhausts that everyone recommended ended up MIGing everything with mild steel wire, and had a massive dip under the rear axle that was maybe .5" off the ground and quickly wore through. IIRC they charged out the ass for it too.

[AWDBOB]

Picked up hoopty tonight. Fab guy dropped the ball pretty hard. He seems like he's going through something, and unfortunately this was reflected in the work.

The car has now been there 3x for exhaust, two return trips to make it quieter, and each time something substantial has been overlooked. I have reached the end of my grace so a nice bitch session feels right.

It's an hour and a half each way, with a ride necessary on drop off/pickup. Huge time suck, miserable heavy traffic drive through the city, etc.

First iteration of the exhaust was supposed to have an ultraquiet and a magnaflow 14815 that I provided. For no reason, the ultra quiet was never added round one.

warming up....Then brought it back (and paid) to add an ultra quiet, which was added under the fucking floor instead of in the exhaust tunnel, which hit everything because it was too low. I didn't think I had to specify that I didn't want it dragging on the ground when there is a 3ft exhaust tunnel being unused.

HEATIN UP.....Then brought it back again this current iteration to add a magnaflow cat and have him move the ultra quiet to the exhaust tunnel where it should've been in the first place.

I asked how it all went, 'good good, we haven't ran the car so can't tell if its any quieter.' see: we didn't add the resonator back and I'm avoiding talking about it and am just going to let you pick the car up and find out when you get home.

Picked it up today, sounded louder than before. Get home and realize they just cut out the ultra quiet, and added the cat. I am shocked, as I purposely mentioned this very specifically multiple times to avoid it, based on my previous experiences of things being left out.

The sandwich bike rack hitch project was also paid for and I was given the weirdest description (see: lie) about how they couldn't get the bumper shocks off (they were off when I picked the bumper up today), so now I have a hitch as a rear bumper with no provisions for mounting a bumper whatsoever. Half finished project that is worthless to me.

I thought our relationship aired on the side of friendship rather than acquaintance/business, but my trust was leveraged to make a quick g, and that really pisses me off. I didn't even think to check this stuff, just paid and left since the lady was waiting on me....

I am insanely burnt out from cars and am just trying to get hoopty done so I have something to enjoy while I take a break this summer and it keeps fighting me.

Cowl rust was fixed well enough. No epoxy primer, just seam sealer in an area with high moisture and sandwiched metal, so I spent the evening eating seam sealer so I can properly prep/coat the metal before installing my new windshield.

TLDR: do stuff yourself