e34 Touring

[straight6pwr]

Snap said:

Did you camp alone or was the wife there too?

Makes me think of the Top Gear Africa Special

sadly, rolling solo these days.

I loved that episode because of the e39. the part where he used a log (and proceeded to put it through the rear window) to help with hill starts because the throttle-by-wire was dying was freakin hilarious!

patsbimmer1 said:

Awesome!  Pulling muskies from a kayak has got to be a riot!  The largest i've pulled into a kayak was a 24" northern and that was exciting!  That's a pretty nice set up you got going on in the back of the touring.

yeah it was awesome, caught it on light gear (fishing for smallies) so it was 3x as fun! it was pulling me all over the place.

The Full Banana said:

I love wagon camping. I camped in my e39 touring once this summer so far, and I've done it with previous Volvo wagons. 

Good to see the touring being used as it should!

good form.  its really got some advantages over a tent. 100% dry, guaranteed. quiet, if you are at a noisy campground. warmer and less damp on those chilled summer mornings. yeah, it would be nice to be able to sit up, but its just for sleeping anyhow.

[straight6pwr]

got some maintenance/upgrades done this weekend.

purty purts:

installed REVSHIFT 80A poly engine mounts. existing drivers side was shot and the poly will be needed if I ever go 4.0 swap.  driver's side is a bitch on the v8 cars, but is really not that hard once you know whats going on. found lots of suggestion online, but this DIY is spot on, everything suggested worked http://www.e34addicts.com/Motor_Mounts

next was the oil pan gasket.  three things lead me to changing the oil pan gasket. 1 - leak. 2 - needed an oil change. 3 - some oil pump nuts had removed themselves from the engine, i could hear them rattling in there. it is a common problem with m60s.  I found 5 free bolts and a couple of very loose ones. reinstalled with loctite. disaster avoided.

pretty clean in there for 140k

1994's gasket was a jerk to remove, so this is the victory picture

new, updated gasket and some new bolts to replace the few that had fallen out of the motor lol

next was a new clutch master and return spring. wasnt as bad to change as I've heard. I was able to pull the master through the firewall with the line still connected and then remove  it inside the car, which was very helpful. just had to disconnect the end at the slave cylinder to give it more freedom.  that nice new braided line in the first picture was in case that was not possible, so I did not use it. anyone want it? m10x1.0 bubble flare ends, male one side, female the other, 26" long.

boom.

with the master cylinder out there is good room to install a new return spring, but even with the pedal pulled up all the way, the assembly is too long to get the bolt in.....damn german engineering. well, a pliers and some zipties helped with that. popped right in after that. i suppose this is how RC car hobbyists lower their cars?

last was the idler arm, but thats pretty boring so no pictures.

but WAIT, theres more..."the mystery of the POS clutch master" (which died after only 15k miles.)

these e34 ones are pretty well built, and generally last a really long time. they are all metal, externally and internally. i had to find out why my wallet was unexpected $100 lighter, so I took apart the old one.

the brand new looking old part. FEBI brand, duly noted.

dust boot and snap ring removed.

and here's all the internals. from left:cylinder with seals / washer and snap ring for connecting the pushrod /  washer and snap ring for retaining all the internals / push rod. 

and here is the sucking $0.10 washer which looks to have deformed, allowing for slack in the ball joint where the pushrod connects to the cylinder. no clue how this ended up happening, the washer just must have been a bad part.

[B C]

Chef's head gasket

[straight6pwr]

did some back road kettle moraine isle of man inspired pavement blasting this weekend. I managed 200 miles in about 4 hours.

wishing i had my co-pilot. it wasn't the same without her.

ANYWAYS, found a cool spot for a couple pictures to share. The fall colors weren't on full blast, but it still was amazing.

Also, if anyone is curious about the best route through the kettles, here it is. I feel like I'm sharing some trade secret, but no point in keeping it to myself.  This route is fairly complicated, and even after 6 years or tweaking, I still need a map and notes to get it right, but its perfect match of great driving roads and scenic views. Most of the northern portion follows along the Kettle Moraine Scenic Drive.  We never managed to go south through Delafield to the lower portion of the Kettles because with the above drive and stops, it was already a 6+hour day. Also note, some of the roads in the Holy Hill area are pretty bad pavement wise, so if you have oil pan concerns or stupid rubber band tires, you may not be a fan. The e34 and my old 24v (skid plate) e30 did fine but YMMV

(Google maps won't let me plot the whole thing, so its in parts)

Part 1 - Germantown to Cedar Lake

Part 2 - Cedar Lake to Glenbeulah (Elkhart Lake)

Part 3 - Turn around and do the whole route backwards.

Also, I'll probably be doing this drive again Sunday the 23rd if anyone is interested. Its too much damn fun.

[m42b32]

Next time I go up to RA I'm definitely taking this route

[The Full Banana]

I would be up for that drive! I love venturing around and exploring roads over that way.

[straight6pwr]

well, with all the fun snow driving, and ice rally coming up (which I'm going to try for the first time), i decided I needed to find a way to mount my GoPro in the e34 (and e30). i ordered a suction cup mount, but its on back order and may not show up for a while. so after some testing, i found the best spot to be directly between the front seats (where lots of race cars mount a camera on the cage). so i went about making a bracket with some cheap parts from the hardware store.

soon to be wed:

i sort of wandered about the hardware store looking for something that might clamp easily to the headrest, and boom! a ground clamp that has a threaded hole for attaching shiz.

and some aluminum c-channel to attach to it.

a little filing of the clamp

fits like a glove

 

put a hinge at the end for some extra reach forward, and some fine tuning of the camera position in the end

the camera is mounted with a correct threaded bolt (in general, camera tripod mounts are 1/4x20 thread, as is the case here).

i put some bolts in the c-channel to keep it from collapsing when i tighten down the mount.

voila! camera with be perfectly centered between driver and passenger, making it as far from each person's head as possible. also, it will be at eye-level, which will look the most natural on video.

and so i don't cut my ear off.

replaced the hardware with proper length bolts, lock washers, and philips heads so the whole thing installs only with a screw driver. I may get some 1/4x20 bolts with pre-installed knobs so it can be done by hand, if they have some at the store.

next update will surely be a video from this rig.

[patsbimmer1]

FUCKING BRILLIANT!  Now refine it and sell it for $60 a piece.

[KaiserRolls]

She gone vibrate

[straight6pwr]

KaiserRolls said:

She gone vibrate

not solid enough? do you have a setup in your car?

do you mean vibrate as in shake with the suspension or transfer with the engine vibration?

[KaiserRolls]

Second one, the mount is awesome and will probably work great to be honest. I have just had 0 luck with hard mounting GoPros to anything ever. I always end up seeing the vibration come through the picture (if that makes sense) but then again, the e34 is comfort and class in a nice package, so who knows. Helmet mounts are nice because your head sort of acts as a gimbal. The suction cup mount is okay for vibration. The rubber suctiony part helps knock down some vibration.

[patsbimmer1]

What if you put some rubber around the seat mount area to help absorb the vibrations.

[KaiserRolls]

That would probably help. I am interested to see the video, I've always wanted to make a mount for inside the car but I suck at things.

Dan make this one next:

It goes on your roof and points forward at all times due to wind and science

[Boris3]

Headrest mounts are pretty common and go from $45-100 from venders or can be diy out of pvc, wood, etc. Search camera headrest mount. Straight6pwr has a good design.

Vibration with this approach though depends on how solid the seat back is, especially in an older car and the passenger seat being empty.

[KaiserRolls]

Boris do you have any in car footage? What mount do you use/did you make your own?

Dan as soon as you can upload footage share that stuffs. I need to make an in car mount. Helmet mounted GoPro worked well for motorcycle, but didn't transfer to well to in car stuff

[Jdesign]

Genius. I am curious to how the footage turns out vibration wise.

[Boris3]

KaiserRolls, my setup is in a gutted and caged race car with an old GoPro Hero2 attached to the cage cross bar, so not much help. Clamps to the bar and has a 4" tall post piece that that attaches to the camera. I'm switching to a beefier IO Port roll bar mount this season since my run ins with the gators at Blackhawk Farms in my last race last season led to some strange camera angles (my youtube channel is hrfe30, gator effect is in the Loooong Race Part I video about 12m in and gets worse with a couple of T6 gator run ins later on).

As i mentioned in my last if you google "camera headrest mount" you'll see some options on attaching it to passenger seat. One DIY design has a crossbar that attaches to the headrests.of both seats to be more stable...potential Darwin award with that one. The GoPro Suction cup mount seems to hold up well for folks, attached to the roof or sides depending on the angles you want. Some racers use that setup for a supplemental rear facing camera on the roof/trunk

[straight6pwr]

rich - your videos look great, definitely a stable setup except when attacked by a gator.

mine, not so much on the first attempt - lots of camera shake! when the car isn't moving, i'm not getting any vibrations, so that's good at least. the whole setup has a bit of axis rotation and a lot of springing action of the aluminum arm. the position of the camera is also far to close to me, as my face and shoulder are in the frame. v2 here we come.

[straight6pwr]

so i removed the 'extension' part of the mount and added a second cross bar to make the whole thing very solid. no more springing action. a bit more difficult to mount, but since size is now small enough i can leave it mounted to the car semi-permanently and not worry about safety or it being in the way. its is only about 1" wider than the shoulder of the seat.

the 'ground clamp' is conducive to having a bar on both sides.

i also liked pat's idea of isolating the whole thing with rubber to maybe reduce small vibrations. some cheap rubber washers in the parts aisle did the trick:

safety first!

installed pics, and a test video coming tomorrow. going to film my commute to work and see how it looks.

[straight6pwr]

more R&D needed. v2 certainly much better than v1, but still getting shaking over bumps, which is every 1 second on Milwaukee roads. it makes it look like i'm driving a car with stiff race suspension offroad. from my research it seems like everything needs to be rock solid to help keep the camera lined up with the car. i'll be investigating the tripod mount/screw to see if it has some give and looking at the passenger seat to see if there is a way to reduce bouncing there. maybe remove the rubber isolation strips.  obviously, the seat back has a bit of play in these old BMWs, so i'm thinking some ratchet straps from the seat to the rear bench area to put a little tension on the seat to hold any movement to a minimum.

mitch your prophesy is coming true.