88' E30 IX
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Thanks guys,
I'm a senior ME, on the SAE Aero team for senior design.
This is my first e30/bmw/car that is actually mine. Spent about 3 years looking for a nice unmolested non rust bucket. Ended up buying it from a guy in Lansing, MI. I've put probably around 3,000 miles on it and have had a single problem. Can't explain how much fun this car is to drive.
Here is a crappy panoramic pic of the interior:
So far I've just been doing maintenance, grease front drive shaft splines, timing belt etc. I'm going to take it back home for the winter and fix the hole in my exhaust hopefully repair some rust.
My plans for after I'm done with school and actually have money are to a stroker build and overall restoration.
I was able to buy basically the front of an ix for $100 off craigslist. Included the block, oil pan, front diff, sub frame, steering rack, new control arms, cv shafts, power steering pump, ac compressor and more. Kinda crazy lol. Everything supposedly came out of a 120k ix and judging by the original cross hashing I'd say it was pretty well taken care of. Still kinda debating whether to use my original engine for the stroker build or this one...
I also bought a drive shaft spline upgrade from a guy in Finland off r3v. It increases the spline touching area length from 18mm to 50mm. This is kinda the first weak point in the ix drivetrain when it comes to an increase in power.
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welcome to the forum!
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Yeah this increases it to 50mm. On the down side you have to drop the transfer case to put it in, but then just grease it with the zerk fitting.
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Welcome, welcome! Another MSOE guy, eh? I went there for AE. Good to see another MSOE bmw here. Great looking ride!
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Always nice to see another guy from MSOE. I'm currently a junior ME there. Love the ix
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Did a little bit of work over winter break:
new odometer gears
lubed driveshaft
tore down my spare ix block
disassembled some spare parts
LOL one h&r one stock spring
m20 tear down
Got the upgraded driveshaft all ready for welding
I've owned my ix for almost a year now and my parts hoarding level is already over 9000!. Did a little inventory and I have about 1.5 complete ix drivetrains and only have $300 invested
I kinda want to buy a beat ix and do some rallying!
Went to my friends bachelor party and my ix and I both woke up lost in the woods with matching faces
Also did some interior decorating when I got back to school
...someone buy this e28 seat it keeps falling over 
That is all
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Yeah it's the oil intermediate shaft bearing. I don't understand how it happened the engine has 120k on it and everything else is fine, the second bearing behind it is perfect. I'm thinking the oil passage must have been blocked somehow? There was really no sludge build up or any other signs of excessive wear. I guess on the plus side I can now safely hot tank the block while its out.
The odometer gears were a breeze, the hardest part of the project was getting the instrument cluster out/in before frostbite sets in lol no heated garage
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How does the shaft look? I have the numbers for the bearings stashed somewhere, I will find them and let you know. BMW will not tell you the numbers, and they will not show up on realoem but they can be gotten for only about 8 dollars each if you know the part number. I would even leave the other one in and see how it does during cleaning. They are a massive pain to reinstall, they are undersized and must be honed to fit after being installed. Probably had 8 hours in fitting those bearing on the m20 I rebuilt and still don't know if it's right cuz it hasn't been started yet.
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The shaft looks fine, surprisingly. These are the part numbers I have for the bearings:
11 11 1 264 196 - BEARING BUSH
11 11 1 280 863 - BEARING BUSH
If I'm not mistaken Bravauto actually sells them.
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I was advised this:
measure the shaft diameter
throw the bearing in a lathe and machine it
press it in
use a brake cylinder hone to get it to tolerance
touch it up with a green scotch brite
.001-.0015" clearance,002" max
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Yep, I didn't have access to a lathe so I took it all the way with the brake cylinder hone, it just takes forever, the problem is the stones plug up from the bearing material very quickly. Once the stones were broken in the left a very nice finish though and then I wrapped a strip of scotch brite around the hone and used the drill to polish it evenly. Keep everything oiled and the finish should turn out good. Worst case is try it again, the bearing is less than 10 bucks.
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Yeah I planned on getting two of each just in case. I was thinking I could probably do it at MSOE's machine shop and maybe have one of the techs help me with the machining. While I'm there I also need to machine the intermediate shaft itself to clear a 89.6 stroke crankshaft. Do you remember about how much you had to take off for it to fit?
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Sorry that was out of order meant the bearing. How undersized was the bearing?
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