Calypsorot '90 325i Coupe
-
So the goal of this project was to present this at Matt's graduation party which we succeded with but the saga continues...
Friday night when I got home I took the exhaust off and threw the entire front section in my Mom's New Beetle and drove to my buddies house where we welded the flange back on. No after pics because I am a complete welding newb.
Saturday morning got to the shop early and took off the exhaust manifolds and started cleaning the side of the block. I removed the 12 exhaust studs from the ETA parts motor that were only a few years old. Installed them on the head, put new manifold gaskets on, cleaned up mani ports, then bolted on with new nuts. Exhaust bolted up, reused midsection gaskets, fired up car and it was pretty quiet! Drove car home.
Sunday morning it started as normal but idle was hunting slightly. The tach also went out at this time so can't say exactly what I did. Once warmed up this issue went away. Drove the car out to Lake Mills quick to meet up with Pat and had no issues. Drove back to Waunakee for the grad party and had a great afternoon.
So the young family curse had fallen on my dad's Prius the previous Monday when he smacked a deer at 65mph on 39/94. Since I don't need a daily he took me to my semi Monday morning and drove the car to work for the past two days. I got a call from him about an hour ago saying that the car started billowing black smoke from the motor while driving so AAA was in the process of towing the car to the shop.
We'll have to see what happened when I get home this weekend, damn cars.
-
Never updated this thread but it was suspected that the head gasket blew in early June. Finally found the motivation to start working on this so I ordered a OTC compression and leak down tester kits and started pulling the plugs on saturday to find this come out of cylinder 3.
Deemed it unnecessary to continue with testing haha. Earlier today my brother Matt and I went over to the shop to work on the car for a bit to start removing the head. Got about 1/2 through disconnecting things and popped off the valve cover before we left. Broken rocker on cylinder 3.
Curious to see the carnage inside the cylinders now and if the tip of that spark plug is still kicking around. Good news is we got a plan set for getting a new motor over the winter.
-
M50 swap....
-
M50 swap....
Agreed
-
Winter is here and is so motivation to get this going! Have been slowly working on getting the motor out which I planned on today. Decided to drop the trans and motor down under the car to avoid dealing with the starter. Everything is unbolted and ready to drop except we're hung up on the steering knuckle. Kaiser will send pics of what he had to do to get his subframe out. So yeah until next weekend...
-
I'll have to remember to take that photo. But in the mean time this should be your new sig
-
Pics or it didn't happen. Here's the linkage Chris.
You should be able to figure out how I took them apart
-
It probably doesn't help too much because I don't have a rubber steering dampener thing. Just aluminum sleeves
-
It probably doesn't help too much because I don't have a rubber steering dampener thing. Just aluminum sleeves
unfortunetly this was true. The rubber flex disc had crimped studs going through it. Ended up undoing the slip joint under the kneel panel and pulled it out.
So we dropped the subframe, pulled that, then dropped the motor on the floor. Raised the car up as high as the 3ton jack went and slid the motor out from underneath with just enough clearance.
Discconnected the trans and removed the clutch and flywheel. I've never mounted a engine on a stand before but the stock bell housing bolts weren't long enough to fit through the mounts unless I have it set up wrong. Suggestions?
-
I went and bought some bolts from Ace that matched the thread pitch of the trans bolts and used those. Make sure they are rated accordingly
Edit. I was able to use 2 of my existing bolts (maybe because 24v)
-
I went and bought some bolts from Ace that matched the thread pitch of the trans bolts and used those. Make sure they are rated accordingly
Edit. I was able to use 2 of my existing bolts (maybe because 24v)
That's the plan tomorrow. Working split shifts all week so I'll be at the shop most likely tearing things apart.
-
I went and bought some bolts from Ace that matched the thread pitch of the trans bolts and used those. Make sure they are rated accordingly [emoji6]
Edit. I was able to use 2 of my existing bolts (maybe because 24v)
This is what I did as well. Nice work Chris!
-
Bought some M8/M10/M12 bolts from the hardware store and got this mounted up. I guess too long on the length but just ran the through and it all worked out. Matt and I then started picking parts off.
Removed the head to find the intake valve had broke in cyl 3 as guessed.
Still in there! Basically a hole through the center of the piston.
Plan from here on out is to start parts shopping/planning a budget to see how extensive the build could be. Gonna strip all the accessories/parts off the junk motor to get things cleaned up and powder coated while we wait on the new motor.
-
Wow! That's pretty awesome!
-
-
Update time!
So I'm taking a job for the summer where I'll be out of state and so we decided instead of rebuilding the car as planed that we would just put the new motor in and get the car driving instead of sitting in the shop till next winter.
Picked up the motor Monday afternoon and we installed it last night. Bought the motor and trans from Jdesign's vert with ~140k. It's really clean but of course leaks a little oil like any m20.
It was an all night affair getting the motor in as I wasn't organized as we changed directions of the build plan 180*, mostly just had to find/remember what hardware went where. Ended up doing the reverse of how we removed the old motor: slid motor/trans under, lifted, then installed front sub frame.
A big thanks to Jason for getting the motor to us earlier than planned and being a huge help on installing the motor too.
The car cranks but no fuel at the moment, fuel pump isn't priming so next step is to diagnose that. Matt ordered a csb and garagistic 80a rear subframe bushings as the only other maintenance items needed.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login