Ruby's Thread

[Levy3Poop]

great effort mate !
it looks good .

Thanks for the kind words, bud!

[wworm]

I haven't heard anything about the garagistic kits coming loose, but on Garagistic's product page the say that kits from other companies come loose. Do you have a link to the posi lock thing? That sounds interesting.

http://www.iemotorsport.com/bmw/item/adjcmbkit-lock.html

[Levy3Poop]

http://www.iemotorsport.com/bmw/item...bkit-lock.html

Dang. That looks like it gives you a lot more correction because the slots are a lot wider than the garagistic kit. I wonder how well that holds alignment though. It looks different because that kit doesn't use the eccentric washers like garagistic.

Edit: I wonder how much of a pain it is to align with that kit since you have to loosen it and move the plates 1/16" at a time, or if they have some handy calculation to know how much you need to move it for an amount of degrees sought to be changed. Interesting kit.

[wworm]

Dang. That looks like it gives you a lot more correction because the slots are a lot wider than the garagistic kit. I wonder how well that holds alignment though. It looks different because that kit doesn't use the eccentric washers like garagistic.

Edit: I wonder how much of a pain it is to align with that kit since you have to loosen it and move the plates 1/16" at a time, or if they have some handy calculation to know how much you need to move it for an amount of degrees sought to be changed. Interesting kit.

Yeah I've read that theyre made unnecessarily long, the teeth are unnecessarily small and they're a pain in the ass to adjust but they wont move at all. idk. I'm probably being paranoid about the eccentric washers moving around.

[Levy3Poop]

Yeah I've read that theyre made unnecessarily long, the teeth are unnecessarily small and they're a pain in the ass to adjust but they wont move at all. idk. I'm probably being paranoid about the eccentric washers moving around.

I kind if imagine all the little teeth in those plates wearing down over time, becoming easier to move as each tooth is made more dull. Of course, I'm just talking out my ass here and imagining the friction caused by vibration doing that. Who's to say that same friction won't affect the eccentric washers?

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[Levy3Poop]

Uh ohhh....I was heading home after looking at a few houses in Fort Worth with Linday and our realtor, and I saw what none of us like to see...
The temp gauge was in the red, my battery light was on, and my dash board just looked like a Christmas tree.
After shitting my pants thoroughly, I pulled over, called Lindsay (who drove up separately cause I had to go to school at the airport this morning).
She came and waited for AAA with me.
Being 90 miles from home...I took the chance to upgrade to plus membership which covers one tow of 200 miles, and 3 100 mile tows in a year.
Would have been nice to have done that...idk last week when I was think of it >.<



Of course, being a poster on this fine site, I popped the hood and began trying to trouble shoot.
Coolant splashed everywhere...but not *too* everywhere at least. Hmm..




I initially thought I had a hose with a small crack in it, but then while poking around under the car, I pulled this out from my skid plate....



Well well well, what do we have here? A broken belt? You cheeky bastard.



Yup, the alternator belt broke. Okay, well that would explain the battery voltage light, and since the M42's alternator belt also pulls the water pump, that seems to explain the skyrocketing temps.
I sent Lindsay off to O'Reilleys while I waited for the tow truck.
I know, either send your wife to the auto parts store (which she always hates), or leave her on the side of the road behind a greasy used car lot, waiting for a tow truck.
Neither are ideal, but It all worked out in the end.
Apparently the mouth breather at O'reilleys was trying to sell her some giant ass serpentine belt, even though I gave her the correct measurements.
Also, shout out to Ugosplodes/Joey for verifying the belt size.



Always the sight...



The tow truck driver was cool as shit and we talked about the greasy titty bar in Waco that has pregnant dancers apparently all the time lol.
Linday helped me with "I need a 10mm!" and "Gimme the red and black ratchet!" in the parking lot of the AAA recommended garage.
While working I noted that no more coolant leaked out, so I think the coolant that was everywhere was just the system blowing it's load to relieve pressure via some sort of pressure relief valve.
We let it idle for a good 25 minutes and it never went a half needle width above half.
Horay! I didn't need some overpriced stranger to fix anything! :D



Also, just for shits n' gigs, here's the house we looked at last that Lindsay just fell in love with. 3 bed, 2 bath, 2 car garage, good size back yard, plenty of neighbors with "back the blue" yard signs, and about half neighbors have toys like boats and RVs. We looked on google maps, and the street view took a picture with some sort of classic american car in the garage. That's probably what left that oil stain which makes me feel right at home already :)



But holy crap what a longass day.

[Levy3Poop]

We didn't get that house ^ :(
We even offered asking price. Unfortunately for us, it's a hard core seller's market right now in the DFW area.

Small update for wrenching on the Rube today.
My idle has been kidna funky lately.
It would be normal, then bog down to where it almost shits out, then go up to 1000 RPM, and back down to bogging, and just go back and forth.
I figured it wouldn't hurt to blast the idle control valve in the ass with carb cleaner.
After wrapping up today and moving parking spots, it wasn't doing the bogging bounce, so hopefully it's fixed. It wasn't bogging every time I drive, so who knows?

Here's a money shot of the inside of the ICV after a few rounds of carb cleaner. It wasn't *black*, but it was definitely brown before.



NEXT! I figured "while I'm in here" I might as well finally get around to changing the oil filter housing gasket.
My oil leak has gotten pretty bad lately. As in a quart every 300 miles o.O
I previously tried to last year, but coudln't get the alternator out.
After the Christmas time breakdown, there's a different alternator in now that I can get out.




Here's the face of the oil filter house. It took ages to scrape all the old gasket off.
The old gasket felt less gasket-ey and more like a solid plastic that wouldn't seal a small leak.
Let's hope this fixes it!



And the face of the mating surface of the house. I went over both surfaces with a wire brush just to be safe.



It was a real PITA getting the alternator back in just cause bolts didn't wanna cooperate, and I lost the nut that holds the ICV in place.
Other than that, it was a successful day of wrenching!

[2mAn]

We didn't get that house ^ :(
We even offered asking price. Unfortunately for us, it's a hard core seller's market right now in the DFW area.

Other than that, it was a successful day of wrenching!

Its bad now in pretty much any metropolitan area. Here they consistently sell for over asking price in a week. I've been looking for months, no luck yet. Keep plugging away at it.

At the end of the day, I just want a garage to work in so I can have many successful days of wrenching, and likely more unsuccessful days lol

Glad it was easy fixes, those little changes add up and eventually you will find yourself doing more "fun" stuff versus tedious maintenance

[Levy3Poop]

Its bad now in pretty much any metropolitan area. Here they consistently sell for over asking price in a week. I've been looking for months, no luck yet. Keep plugging away at it.

At the end of the day, I just want a garage to work in so I can have many successful days of wrenching, and likely more unsuccessful days lol

Glad it was easy fixes, those little changes add up and eventually you will find yourself doing more "fun" stuff versus tedious maintenance

Dude, AGREED. I just want a garage so I don't have to leave hundreds in tools lying in the parking lot when I forget washers during oil changes, or anything else. Not to mention have a garage to detail my car in and not worry about dust coming from the shityard that's over the fence from my apartment. It's just a big gravel lot that Baylor keeps their trash trucks and other backup things like AC units and other things. You'll spend hours detailing, and the next day come out to see your car covered in this fine layer of bullshit. One of my friends (who's never owned a house) was bullshitting with me and going "Man, you offered ASKING price?? You're an idiot!". Granted, I know he was just shitposting IRL, but oh man that was hard to bite my tongue to not kill the buzz.

Hopefully this fixes the leak. If not, I DO have the upper oil pan gasket, as well as a new timing chain and all the gaskets for the timing chain case, but that's a lot more work than oil filter housing gasket swaps lol.

[mike.bmw]

Nice job on the oil filter housing gasket! Did you replace the o-ring while you were in there?

[Levy3Poop]

Nice job on the oil filter housing gasket! Did you replace the o-ring while you were in there?

I didn't know there was an o ring until I had the bugger out. I looked at it, and didn't see any signs of weakness, and I didn't *appear* to have oil seeping from that area though. Next pelican parts order I'll include an o ring and a new gasket in case this gasket gets torn when removing the filter housing.

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[Levy3Poop]

Oil change time at 237,937 miles! I was supposed to change it at 237,200, but I haven't had time.
PLUS! Since my speedometer reads 10% faster than actual, my miles add 10% faster than actual.
By that logic that means I only missed it by 437 miles :D



Again, sorry to the apartment. the wind was blowing all my spent oil everywhere lolol
Don't tell the EPA on me



OKAY, TIME FOR SOMETHING INTERESTING AND UNUSUAL!

So as you know, the Garagistic rear subframe alignment tabs are great. The only bitch about it is that it's hard to get your wrench on the outside nut on the toe alignment.
That means you have to tighten it 1/64 of a turn at a time, and you can't always get your wrench off to put back on for another 1/64th of a turn easy.
So my solution was to cut off some of this metal piece that blocks the wrench!

I felt on the back side of it to feel where I can cut, marked that in the silver box, and put the diagonal lines in the area I knew at LEAST had to be cut.
That way I know where to start, and I know how far I can actually go without just cutting into the body.



Lines all marked, time to work



I used my dremel and cut out this nice chunk here.
LOOK AT ALL THAT WRENCHIN' ROOM!
It ended up being more than I originally though, but that's fine.



Now to prevent rust from forming on the freshly exposed metal, I opted for some Bondo rubberized spray.
I figured this stuff will be more resilient to chipping (which would lead to rust) than normal paint.



I tried blocking off the subframe and bushing with the blue towel in the above picture, but anything aerosol goes EVERYWHERE.
Still, That should do!



If you're going to do this, mark the cutting areas like I did, and cut out about 1/4 more than what you think you need at least.
I cut out a big triangle and it wasn't enough, so I had to try and grind the edge back which took ages.

[Levy3Poop]

Hope everyone had a good independence day! I'm on mobile so the formatting will be not up to spec in this post, but my oh my what a day.


I was heading to my parents when I hit this giant solid chunk of concrete the size of a head on i35 (no way to avoid it, shit in all lanes). Also, keep in mind, this is how it turned out WITH a Red46 skid plate.

I immediately pull over to check any damage, and I see blue smoke trailing in my mirror. Well fudge. I stop, and all 5 quarts just drains out into the parking lot of the Colin Street Bakery. I knew it broke the oil pan, and I could see the skid plate was dented as hell.

I call AAA to get towed home, call the TXDOT to tell them how bad 35 is, and get home.

Thank God that last year I preemptively installed a new oil pan and gasket and still had my old pan. No one in town had the gasket, so I had a buddy run to auto zone with my credit card to get some gasket maker. I got the broken oil pan replaced, installed the new (old) oil pan, filled her up with oil, and still made it to my parent's house for 4th of July. Badass [emoji106]


Now, look at the crack I the oil pan. The skid plate got pushed inwards and ended up minimizing the damage, cause if I didn't have the skid plate, it would have just straight up shredded the oil pan immediately. So it was able to at least hold oil until I could pull over and let it bleed out with the engine off. The skid plate has disintegrated a cinder block before, so the plate did a damn fine job considering it was a 75mph bash on a solid chunk of concrete.

The skid plate is so strong that it took a ton of effort (bouncing on it with one end resting on a curb) to bend it back enough to not be touching the oil pan, but I got some safety space back.

While I had the car on jack stands and waiting for my buddy to get back with the gasket maker, I replaced the O2 sensor because I've gotten a couple check engine lights that flashed the code 1221 (O2 sensor) in the past couple weeks. Bosch sensors were $80, so I opted to try the china made Ultra Power sensors from Rock Auto for $20. We'll see if it lasts the recommended 30,000 miles lol. Also, I went ahead and FINALLY installed the ABS sensor that Eddy got and put in the glove box when he had the car. I always meant to do that when it was on stands, but always forgot. Now my anti-lock light is off :)

Also, I guess this counts as an oil change lol. Current odometer 239K, next change due at 242K

All in all it started out a shit day, but thanks to all you guys in the forums who inspired me to DIY my car maintenance, I wasn't at the mercy of shops who are all closed for the 4th of July.

Lesson learned: the 2 second rule while following a car isn't necessarily enough [emoji32]

[rzerob]

I did something similar with a big chunk of concrete and it felt like I destroyed my car but there was no damage except for a destroyed lip, a dent and some scratches on my skid plate. I suggest you get a better skid plate. I have a HIK skid plate. http://www.hikfabrication.com/arvixe...2-m52-s14.html There is no comparison to any other skid plates on the market. And they are worth the extra money.

[Levy3Poop]

I did something similar with a big chunk of concrete and it felt like I destroyed my car but there was no damage except for a destroyed lip, a dent and some scratches on my skid plate. I suggest you get a better skid plate. I have a HIK skid plate. http://www.hikfabrication.com/arvixe...2-m52-s14.html There is no comparison to any other skid plates on the market. And they are worth the extra money.

Damn, that thing looks mean! How thick is the steel, and did it say the hoop has to be welded to the car? Do you know if it will clear a Garagistic X brace?

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