Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Skarpa]

Ticking off small jobs from my list continues. I punched the cover plate from a/c drier hole, made a square hole for the front inner fender in the passenger's side corner and made an earthing point for the battery in the trunk. Then I fabricated a mounting point for the diagnostic port and coil loom connector. I wanted to use the plastic bracket for the connectors that came from the E36. After some thinking this is what I came up with:











It was hard to avoid an overlapping seam when fixing the part so I used panel adhesive and small weld tacks. Another four down, seventeen to go.

[Skarpa]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm somehow slow with my fabrication work when other projects seem to progress at a lightning speed compared to Armo. But what you don't see when reading a project thread or a blog is how many hours it actually takes to make something. I like it how they show it in the newest episode of Project Binky.

https://youtu.be/hR1nU9IJsoM?t=764

I guess I'm not that slow. The difference comes from how much you decide to spend time on small details and how many hours per week you spend at the garage.

[Skarpa]

Yesterday I welded the body screws for the abs pipe clamps.





The clamps are from VW Golf VII. BMW doesn't seem to have a suitable brake pipe bracket that attaches to body screw and has several pipes going side by side.

Then I fixed a rust hole at the base of the A-pillar.












Also I got rid of a few unnecessary brackets in the body and welded a couple of screw holes shut. To do list keeps getting shorter even though I added a couple of thing to it.

[NufnSus]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm somehow slow with my fabrication work when other projects seem to progress at a lightning speed compared to Armo. But what you don't see when reading a project thread or a blog is how many hours it actually takes to make something. I like it how they show it in the newest episode of Project Binky.

https://youtu.be/hR1nU9IJsoM?t=764

I guess I'm not that slow. The difference comes from how much you decide to spend time on small details and how many hours per week you spend at the garage.

You've achieved more meaningful restoration/ customisation work in this project than I have in over a decade of owning and maintaining my coupe...

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

[MCreally?]

metal fabrication is definitely the most time consuming tasks in a restoration. there is a reason why rust repair is the most expensive job to contract out: it takes SO long. I con only take so much fabrication at a time. my floor pans, which were trashed, are a year in the making. I get tired of contorting my body to reach up under the dash. part of wishes I just took the damn thing out in the beginning. keep up the great work.

[Skarpa]

You've achieved more meaningful restoration/ customisation work in this project than I have in over a decade of owning and maintaining my coupe...

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

metal fabrication is definitely the most time consuming tasks in a restoration. there is a reason why rust repair is the most expensive job to contract out: it takes SO long. I con only take so much fabrication at a time. my floor pans, which were trashed, are a year in the making. I get tired of contorting my body to reach up under the dash. part of wishes I just took the damn thing out in the beginning. keep up the great work.

Thanks for the kind words!


This week I left the camera at the garage so pictures of bodywork will ensue later. Instead, here's a little project I've been working on on my lunch breaks. I'll mount the battery in the trunk and I wanted to do the front end of the main power cable using stock parts. I ordered all the parts of the bracket except for the top half of the cable clamp which is no longer available. That one I had to make myself. I took some measurements of the parts and took a look of some photos to figure out the dimensions of the missing part:


I cut correct size pieces of PEHD board. Then I stacked two of them together and drilled a hole in the middle. The diameter of the hole is a mil smaller than in the counterpart to ensure clamping pressure.




I drilled the other holes and then made a cut for the nuts in the milling machine. Metal cutter forms quite a lot of burr when cutting plastic but otherwise it's okay.


All thet was left was sanding small chamfers in two corners and going through all the edges with a craft knife and here's how they came out:




I made several pieces in case I got something wrong and it paid off when I attached one part upside down on the mill. In the body I drilled holes for the bracket in the stock location and inserted nutsert in the holes.

[Skarpa]

Not a lot has happened with the car in the past few weeks. I've mostly been busy with the baby but I did find some time to play with rendering.





That's a TRX390 center with a style 5 rear barrel and a custom made lip. I like the idea of stepped lips much more than just using the straight style 5 lips. Also, I have more control over the offset. That setup would produce something like 8x17 et 28 for the front and 8.7x17 et 22 for the rear and should propably fit the car with a 5 lug conversion. Offsets may not be accurate since I did the calculations in my sleep deprived head. Next I need to find out if it's possible to leave enough collar in the TRX center for centering both the barrel and the lip. I removed too much material from the one I did earlier. The flange will need some fill in welding to have complete mating surface. I don't know when I'll have the budget for the lips though. The price for a round of custom made stainless steel lips is about 1000 eur. But a man can dream and go forth with the project on other fronts. Here's the wheels photoshopped to a red M-tech 1 E30.

[Skarpa]

Last weekend we had a name giving party for our daughter with tons of friends and relatives in our house. Now that all that is over I had time to do some car building. I tried on the front plastic shield behind the valance. There are no changes there except for the ABS recess. In that area I needed to do rething the attachment.



Originally the plastic attaches behind the wheel well panel with sheet metal nuts.


I wanted to keep the structure so that any water splached by the wheel stays in the wheel well and doesn't drip between the body panel and the plastic. So I had to make a lip that comes on top of the plastic. First I got rid of some rust and extended the edge of the sheetmetal to be able to drill a fixing hole there.


Next I made a new lip and attached it with panel adhesive and weld tacks.



The outer screw will be a through bolt with a nut in the engine bay. A bit strange structure but what are you gonna do about it

Next I mocked up and measured all the power steering and brake booster hydraulic hoses and made templates and drawings for them. I asked for a quotation from a local hose company. We'll see what the price will be. EDIT: I got a reply. The connectors and dimension combinations are a bit special so the local hose shop would not be able to make new hoses. I guess I'll need to reuse the heads from the old hoses and have them pressed anew.






I did a bunch of smaller stuff as well. I drilled the holes for the side trim and the rear bumber in the new rear arches, punched the holes for the main power cable and the A/C hoses, made a few grounding points in the engine bay and noticed that my battery shelf is pretty well rusted through. Time to make a new one with a bit cleaner shape.

[bradnic]

nice work.. always wondered about the undertray mounting and tire spray seeping behind it

[Skarpa]

Yesterday when I went to garage it was a bit nasty surprise when the view was this:

Power was down also in the neighbouring houses. I get to build the car rarely so I decided to not let that hinder me. After all I have a flashlight and luckily I didn't need power for the stuff I had planned.

I continued fiddling with the hydraulic hoses. I cut off the fittings from the old hoses and tried to think of ways to get around the problematic non-available fittings. (such as a M16 elbow banjo connector for ID 16mm hose) I was still left with a couple of question marks but I'm sure we'll find solutions for those once I take the parts to the hose shop. If necessary, I'll weld suitable combinations together.







Luckily I have several different hydro boost systems in various levels of completeness so I could pick the fittings that best suited my needs. Once I had the hoses figured out I still had some time left so I had a look at the battery tray in the trunk. I don't think I'll need a huge battery in a summer car and the tray didn't have fixing holes for smaller batteries.


I drilled the hole and tried to insert a nut rivet in it using a washer as a backing plate. However, it was too thick for the rivet nut and it wouldn't swell properly under the washer so I secured it with a couple of weld tacks. No it's well bonded in to the plastic as well by melting.

[Skarpa]

But as always, one modification leads to another. The new booster location blocks the hole for the throttle cable and the throttle linkage will not fit any more.

As you may remember I hit this snag when doing the brake booster relocation. The relocation is complete apart from modifying the throttle pedal linkage. If you haven't noticed I like designing stuff and doing cad work (hence my profession as a design engineer). I whipped up a 3D model of the existing linkage.


Then I designed the necessary changes to fit the linkage in the car.


It will be shortened 47 mm to clear the clutch main cylinder. Existing throttle lever will be cut off and there's a new one on top of the steering column which will place the firewall pass through next to the brake booster.

I assumed that the bent main shaft of the linkage is tube so I turned a small length of 10 mm round bar to locate the ends of the shortened shaft and my new lever before welding them

(Talk about economic choice of raw stock :D)

I had the new lever laser cut.


Before cutting up the linkage I made a jig that keeps the parts in the correct orientation.


Then I cut the linkage. It turned out that the shaft is not tube but solid bar. I had to use a small pin to keep the parts positioned and make a centering sleeve for the lever.


Then I propped everything up for welding.


Turned out good. Hope it also fits the car. Of course I need to cut off the old lever to get it there.


Small job made overly complicated but I wanted to make sure there wont be any snagging because of crooked shaft or anything like that.

[Skarpa]

This week project Armo turned 5 years!To celebrate I ordered the last parts I still needed. Now I have everything except for front tires and some paint supplies + nicks and nacks that come up when assembling.


Yesterday I found time to get some work done at the garage. When I was gathering stuff I laid my eyes on a hydraulic scheme that I drew of the hydroboost hoses some time ago.


Looking at the diagram I noticed that I had the power steering return line and the pump feed line mixed up when mocking up the hoses. The reservoir has four connections with one of them going through a filter. When mocking up the hoses I went with my intuition and thought that pump feed line goes through a filter and all the return lines go straight back to reservoir. But the filter should actually be in the power steering return line. That actually makes sense. We don't want any extra constriction in the pump feed line and the main flow goes through the power steering circuit so that's the best place for the filter. With this information I had to mock up the hoses once more.


The connections are actually located more conveniently now. Only thing I'm not quite happy with is the shortness of the power steering return hose. The hose should have enough flex to react to engine vibration and movement. In the worst case scenario the engine movement will start loosening up the banjo connector but that remains to be seen. I need to weld a shortest possible hose barb to the banjo to have a maximum possible hose length. To avoid problems I could put in a longer hose with a loop to have enough flex or possibly install a cooler for the fluid which would take care of the hose length problem as well.


As the main undertaking of the evening I installed the modified throttle pedal linkage. First I welded in the repositioned left support.


I test fitted the linkage and marked the spot for throttle cable pass through and made a square hole in the firewall.




In the pedal assembly frame I made a larger hole to give space for the plastic tabs.


The linkage fits exactly as it should and has a plenty movement without hitting the steering column.

https://anttikarppinen.kuvat.fi/kuvat/E30+Armo/E23+Hydroboost+brake+booster/MOV_0161.mp4

Next time I need to take the throttle pedal with me and make an adjustable stopper for the pedal top position.

[kalib0y]

Your fabrication skills and attention to detail is remarkable...I enjoy following this build

[Skarpa]

Your fabrication skills and attention to detail is remarkable...I enjoy following this build

Thanks!

[rzerob]

Your fabrication skills and attention to detail is remarkable...I enjoy following this build

Ditto.