Fancy Stancy 325is

[B C]

Nice Borbets

[jc43089]

Snap said:

Nice Borbets

I've gotten so many requests for trades on BBS but they are just so fancy I can't give them up!

[Jdesign]

Nice! Glad to see this on the road! That body work isn't much better than my E36, but it is unfortunately better though.

[jc43089]

I had an exciting morning... Made it almost 7 miles from my house and the front differential mount bolt snapped preventing any forward progress without terrible scraping of the driveshaft on the floor pan.  Not sure why it snapped today, I was just cruising along.  My phone didn't have reception so I started walking/jogging towards home trying to hitch hike.  Well nobody stopped so that took an hour and a half.  Also needed a shower because of mega sweaty action.  I drove back with ramps and tools in the wagon after calling AAA.  I took the bumper cover off while I waited which was easy because only 3 self tapping screws held it on and got it loaded onto a rollback truck without a problem.  Got it home and unloaded into the garage and sure enough...

I realized after getting more than half way that a better idea would have been to just drive in reverse along the shoulder but then it was too late for that.

[B C]

Saw "front differential" expected ix content.

Sorry to hear about the unfortunate event!

All part of the game unfortunately

[jc43089]

I'm sure it had nothing to do with my general hooning around  I guess some people just drive around lamely with never even one tire losing traction.  I don't see where the fun is in that?

It might have something to do with me telling a coworker yesterday that he should have fun and do a burnout once in awhile and that I giver every day and nothing ever breaks.

[Daggerty]

Gotta use up them tows

[Daggerty]

It's almost halfway through the year

[jc43089]

Daggerty said:

Gotta use up them tows

Yep! I've only used one this year so far.

[jc43089]

I made a "bushing" from stainless steel and Nylatron which is a lubricant embedded nylon, because it was in the cutoff pile at work not really for any special reason.

The fit turned out great into the subframe, I could have gone 1-2 thousandths smaller but I got it in.  No pics of it installed because it was 11pm, I will get some another day.

I drilled the hole in the differential larger to use a 1/2" bolt with a nut on the back rather than the casting threads.  I had to grind some on the casting to get the nut in there.

The old bushing was a struggle even with the air chisel.  I didn't realize it had rubber on the outside of the outer sleeve.

Back in action, I drove it to work today and it seems great.  Fun fact: the bolts holding the axles to the differential flange were all able to be removed by hand, yes I did not have to rotate the axles to get all 6, they were so loose I just reached around the axle and took them out with my fingers.  Pretty sweet.

[Earl]

Nice job on the solid bushing. That bushing was one of the worst to get out when I refreshed the subframe on my coupe.

[Daggerty]

Do you think the bolt snapped because it was loose? 

Like the new stainless steel bolt its shinny

[jc43089]

Daggerty said:

Do you think the bolt snapped because it was loose? 

Like the new stainless steel bolt its shinny

It is quite possible that it was loose the whole time.  I could not get the broken piece extracted though and ended up drilling it out completely.  I will replace the bolt with a grade 8 or 10 regular one, stainless looks cool but is not great as far as strength.  I did not measure how long I would need so I borrowed several from work to try.  We build food equipment so everything is SS.

[Jdesign]

jc43089 said:

Fun fact: the bolts holding the axles to the differential flange were all able to be removed by hand, yes I did not have to rotate the axles to get all 6, they were so loose I just reached around the axle and took them out with my fingers.  Pretty sweet.

Awesome. I love finding things like this after buying and driving for a few 100 miles. Your repair looks great!

[jc43089]

I got the injectors, they look good but I haven't had time to install them yet.  I am trying to get my boat ready for sale to free up some cash for the barn/shop project.  Last night was one step forward and three backwards.  I was filling coolant (2 stage cooling on the Volvo Penta I/O setup) so I could test run it after replacing timing belt, water pump, seals, etc and it was leaking coolant out of the heat exchanger housing.  So I had to drain the coolant and remove the heat exchanger to split it and replace the gasket.  I broke 4 of the 14 screws off even with torching and tapping on them.  Darn that galvanic corrosion...  So I brought it to work with me to extract after work today.  Fun fun.

[jc43089]

It looks like this, the red thing in front is the heat exchanger housing.  It has a brass plate type element inside that the raw water goes through with coolant surrounding it.

[jc43089]

So the car has been driving great other than water filling up the cylinder 5 and 6 spark plug wells after a big rain.  It did it even with the beauty cover installed...  I guess I need to run the hose on it and watch where water is going.  the rubber ring that somewhat seals around the outside of the hole for the oil fill is missing so maybe the water is running onto the oil fill cap and then under the cover?  It seems far fetched but it happens pretty much every heavy rain storm.

[B C]

Just saw the post about the boat heat exchanger. Where's the dislike button when you need it??

Different chassis, but, the "elephant trunk" drain on the e30 firewall is responsible for similar behavior on a 24v e30. Whatever collects in the rain tray needs to drain through the elephant trunk instead of dumping onto the valve cover

[jc43089]

The boat is running great as of Saturday night, very late...  I had replaced the timing belt, engine water pump, seals on the front of the engine etc.  Then I couldn't get it to start, not even a pop.  So I installed the marine electric fuel pump that I had bought a while back, now I had fuel to the carb, still no start though.  So I took the carb apart and cleaned it, 44mm solex downdraft, it had some dirt in it but the jets looked good.  Still no start...  Double checked the timing belt because it drives the intermediate shaft for the distributor, everything lined up perfect.  I double checked the plug wires are installed correctly.  That looks great according to FSM.  I removed the distributor cap to see if I had somehow installed the rotor wrong, hmm it is not pointing to cylinder one when at TDC...  After rotating all of the plug wires clockwise one spot it runs perfect.  Apparently someone installed the distributor turned 90 degrees long ago and I never looked when disassembling it because it ran fine.  I learned my lesson on that lol.

Good thought on the drain.  It is probably clogged with leaves and junk.  I will check that tonight.

[jc43089]

I checked it out at lunch time, the drain was totally clogged with rotten leaves and twigs.  The next rain storm will test if that fixed it.