Alpine e30 progress/build thread
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Same site I used. Read it and you start worrying about profile gaskets and bolts sucked into and damaging the oil pickup.
When I opened mine to replace the cracked lower pan after buying the car I found two upper pan bolts were missing...and not loose in the bottom of the lower pan. Just gone. Still can't figure that one out. Did some PO/tech working on the car think they were extras???
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Same site I used. Read it and you start worrying about profile gaskets and bolts sucked into and damaging the oil pickup.
When I opened mine to replace the cracked lower pan after buying the car I found two upper pan bolts were missing...and not loose in the bottom of the lower pan. Just gone. Still can't figure that one out. Did some PO/tech working on the car think they were extras???
What a convenient place to keep them haha. And yeah they make the m42 sound like ticking time bomb, at least the more common problems are well documented.
Speaking of common problems, I think I was miss-judging the source of my oil leak (Its like a greasy swamp so it is hard to pinpoint) and I'm pretty sure I have narrowed it down to the filter housing gasket and especially that o-ring. The oil is then running down the front of the engine and behind the crank pulley making it look like the upper pan gasket/front crank seal are the main culprits
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Hopefully you will be back in time for the E30 meet in May?
The one on May 10th? I really wish I could be, I will be in Michigan for the Formula SAE competition that weekend. I will definitely be at as many of the brew city cruise nights as possible though!
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Updates on the car!
I have been monitoring my oil leak for a while and today I finally got around to tackling the filter housing gasket and o-ring. I didn't get to take any pictures but I got the entire job done in under two hours which was great. The gasket basically fell off and the o-ring was pressed flat and very brittle, both of these were definitely part of the problem. So far it looks like the problem has been solved!
My glove-box has decided it doesn't want to be there anymore and basically fell off. The back where it attaches to the hinge is broken and I don't have the pieces so if anyone has a spare black glove-box laying around please let me know.
Also, does anyone have any experience with dying carpets? Mine doesn't exist and I would like to pick up a carpet and since the Indigo blue carpet will be next to impossible to find I was hoping to get a decent condition tan carpet and dye it dark gray. My concern would be that the carpet won't be soft anymore or that the dye will rub away over time and I will be left with tan spots in the 'high traffic' areas
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Well, two things happened.
First: I walked past the car after arriving at a destination about an hour away and my car smelled heavily of gas. Turns out one of the fuel lines that goes under the intake sprung a leak. I did not have any tools with me so I fiddled with it for a while with what I had (read: bmw trunk toolkit, and some things I borrowed from the maintenance people at the place I was) and was able to reach in and tighten the hose clamp (about a quarter of a turn) that was causing the leak. It did not leak on the drive home from what I could see thankfully. I will probably be taking off the intake and replacing everything under there in the near future.
Also, I bought my car with a cheap retractable antenna and it doesn't sit right so it angles toward the trunk of the car a bit. Its a bit wiggly as well and can sometimes interfere with closing the trunk. Well, a friend of mine slammed the trunk lid down and bent my antenna in half so I will be looking into replacements for that now too. Once I am through finals in a week big work days on the car will ensue!
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Yay updates!
So school is over and finals are done. This past week was the competition for the Formula SAE car my team builds every year. This meant driving over 500 miles from Bethlehem, PA to Brooklyn, MI (Michigan International Speedway) with easily 500 pounds of stuff in the car (full to the brim with all my crap). The day before departure, the fuel line I mentioned above completely let go and the car was stuck in on the street outside the shop we build the race car at. Once we were done for the night, myself and two friends stayed up all night fixing the car:
We were very enthusiastic to be doing this at 4:30am after a hectic 16 hour day
The culprit:
The 2 inch piece of fuel line under the intake manifold was leaking from both ends, tightening it had failed (and it looked ready to turn to dust) so fortunately we had enough fuel injector hose laying around to properly fix it.
With the car fixed and after a day of packing, we set off for Michigan. The enthusiastic pace was a bit much for my car with the extra weight and it started to run a bit hot, so we backed off a bit and it stayed where it should be. Made it there with no other issues (removed the grilles and headlight panels for some extra airflow), really goes to show the reliability of these cars if you look after them.
Who needs lowering springs when you can just fill it with stuff!
After the competition ended I set off for home, no problems at all with a grand total of 1050 miles traveled. Its pretty crazy to think that, of the 3000 miles I have put on the car so far, 1900 of them have been split across 3 drives!
I am making a quick trip to Canada and then once I am back the Bimmer will be going under the knife (And I will finally get to those wheels...) Stay Tuned!
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A few of us on here know the painfully long nights of senior design and that would NOT be fun at all to have a snafu like that. What part of FSAE did you get to work on? I wanted to do FSAE but I knew I wouldn't fit in the car/wouldnt get to drive it, and working with non-car enthusiasts would really irk me for some reason.
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A few of us on here know the painfully long nights of senior design and that would NOT be fun at all to have a snafu like that. What part of FSAE did you get to work on? I wanted to do FSAE but I knew I wouldn't fit in the car/wouldnt get to drive it, and working with non-car enthusiasts would really irk me for some reason.
At my school it is actually a club so you can do it for all four years (I will be a senior next year) but we don't receive any credit or anything, I have been a part of the team since freshman year. We have to do all our own fundraising and everything is on our own time so the team is fairly small but the majority is car enthusiasts which is cool. This past year I designed and made the entire brake system and helped build a majority of the car which was a lot of fun. Brake test for tech inspection (your car must lock up all four wheels to a stop and not stall) was a heart stopper, proud to say we passed on the very first try which many teams fail to do. Next year I am redesigning part of our powertrain (getting the power from the transmission to the wheels), doing some optimizing on the suspension we completely redesigned this past year, and a few other odds and ends
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Well, I was going to dive into a bunch of mechanical things but I got distracted.
I've been sanding wheel lips and stripping wheel faces here and there. Making progress but boy is it slow, one face is almost completely stripped (sooo many layers of paint) and one lip is about halfway sanded since there are many small imperfections I want out, it should be worth it though!
With the car, I got sick and tired of looking at the dull, completely flat paint. I spent a ton of time with a claybar and some nice car wax. The results speak for themselves:
Didn't take a before picture because I forgot again,
In progress:
(I rather like this picture)
And the result!
Before I started, the roof didn't even reflect any light, but boy is it a mirror now!
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Very nice, what clay do you use?
I used the mothers clay bar system, so its a clay bar plus their own spray which seems to work well
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Updates!
So was going to completely tear into the car and do a ton of work but I got hit with a bunch of bills and haven't been paid by my work in quite a while so that didn't happen. I did, however, start doing some of the smaller things that needed to be done:
Brake fluid was leaking from the grommets between the reservoir and master cylinder. They do not sell the Girling master cylinder grommets anymore (hex shape on top) and list the ATE grommets as the replacement part. I was skeptical as the ATE master cylinder is completely different but they do in fact fit properly on the Girling master cylinder.
My brakes are total crap so last summer I ordered a set of rotors and pads but never got around to installing them until this morning
The rotors are blank/coated Balo-Motrex (OE supplier to Audi/VW and much cheaper than brembo's) and I bought OE Bosch pads, I will most likely replace these with a better pad down the road but for my budget they will work perfectly fine. All but one rotor retaining screw came out so I had to drill that one out, I have a replacement on the way. I have a set of braided stainless soft lines waiting to go in, I just need to figure out a good way to do the lines running over the subframe in the rear as I've heard it is a huge pain in the ass.
While I had the brakes apart I noticed that my front sway bar drop links were totally junk, the bushings were ripped and the dust boots were all torn up. I happened to have a set I got for my E36 laying around so I threw those in as well
Old vs. New
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Nice work! The good brakes should improve the driving experience. How did you get the master cylinder bushings installed? I have done it before and it was very difficult so I am wondering if there is a trick to it?
All I did was drain the master cylinder reservoir (a huge pain because there is no good way to do it, I just put a ton of rags underneath and popped it off, brake fluid is water soluble so you can just wash any spills away with water) and then move it to the side so you don't have to disconnect the clutch master feed line. The old ones popped right out and the new ones popped right in, doesn't leak a drop now. Didn't have to bleed anything because I didn't get any air into the master cylinder itself thankfully.
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Instead of getting my work done I decided to post a little update:
got this from andyhundley a month or two ago!
Deep cleaned and conditioned the leather to restore it to its former glory:
It came out really nicely! Looks almost brand new
Made the necessary spacer by cutting a steel sleeve from the hardware store to the exact same dimensions as the one from the car. Installed it and everything works perfectly, unplugged the SRS module as well so the SRS light is disabled and stays off without the airbag
Going to order the colored strip at the bottom at some point too
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