Alpine White Zender Kit E24 633CSI

[Jdesign]

I wish I would have taken more pictures of it when I got it.

[YoungCR]

Did you replace the lower control arms?

[jc43089]

Get you some blue coolant son!

[Jdesign]

YoungCR said:

Did you replace the lower control arms?

Yes. I confirmed last night its the wheels. Anyone have some Style 32's for sale. 

jc43089 said:

Get you some blue coolant son!

According to the bigcoupe guys, peak works fine, and with my time constraint, this is what I did. I ordered the thermostat next day at the parts store and went to pic it up last night. I will give you one guess of what happened......

YUP not the right thermostat. 

Lucky for me I discovered that AFTER it was all apart. I cleaned up the old one and popped it back in there. The coolant was gross so I am hoping that was the issue. I spent 3 hours bleeding the coolant system last night and it seems to be okay. I plan on driving it for 3 hours tonight to see if anything breaks. 

Im cutting it close. I leave for Georgia tomorrow at 1am. 🤪  As the kids would say, "Boi you is Wild" 

PS: I still have no turn signals, but I have summed it down to 1 wire. I just need to find where its grounding out.

[Jdesign]

So I should prolly give a follow up on this.

I did not drive to Georgia. Here are the reasons why:

1. I swapped wheels out and it fixed the vibration for about 20 miles and it came back. I think it might be the spacers now. I still need to prove this theory. 
2. My temp gauge was still climbing occasionally in the wisco temps, Georgia would have been much too hot. I ordered a new water pump and thermostat.
3. According to the radar the entire time there it was going to rain. This reason alone was a deal breaker, and no one else was driving anymore either. 
4. I didn't want to spend the trip fixing the car and wanted to enjoy my time at the show.

Sad reacts only.

[B C]

all im hearing are excuses about not wanting to build character through self inflicted pain and trials.

[Jdesign]

B C said:

all im hearing are excuses about not wanting to build character through self inflicted pain and trials. 

That's pretty accurate.

[jc43089]

wah wah wah, I drove an e30 convertible with my family in it to Alabama through torrential rains.  There were lots of napkins and towels needed to absorb the water leaking in.  Also the wipers didn't work so it was up to the Rain-X to keep the windshield clear.  But it drove flawlessly despite about 100 test miles after a manual swap before leaving.

Just send it.

[Jdesign]

jc43089 said:

wah wah wah, I drove an e30 convertible with my family in it to Alabama through torrential rains.  There were lots of napkins and towels needed to absorb the water leaking in.  Also the wipers didn't work so it was up to the Rain-X to keep the windshield clear.  But it drove flawlessly despite about 100 test miles after a manual swap before leaving.

Just send it.

I 100% agree.

I drove my vert without wipers to the same show 4 years ago. Rained the entire trip, was well worth it. This car just didn't seem worthy yet and I want to make sure its not going to be a thorn in my side.

[Jdesign]

HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SUCCESS!

I tested my theory on the spacers and I was correct. There was about .55mm of additional space between the hub centric portion of the wheels and the spacers. this would cause a shift under a heavy load or impact no matter how straight I installed them. This would offset the rotational mass causing a vibration at higher speed. Yesterday I did a 90 MPH trip on a flat freshly paved road and it was smooth as butter. 

I was also to finally get the side skirts back on and all of the nutserts installed.

Next step is the water pump and thermostat update to try and get that temp gauge under control and all of the mechanical items will be checked off the list.

I also I bought a new radio to replace the 90's style kenwood that sounds terrible. Nothing special here, but it will be less of an eye and ear sore. 

Sorry I haven't added any pictures, I have been jumping from one project to the next and havent been documenting as well as I should.

[Jdesign]

More progress!

I was able to install the new water pump and thermostat and all new gaskets. I tested the temp switches and the gauge and all of it was functioning good. Good enough to show me that the car was still overheating.

I was super disappointed and stayed up all night to troubleshoot the issue. I bled the system repeatedly but I wasn't sure if all the air was out. By morning I decided I was unable to make it to the E30 picnic in this thing. Instead I drove the hybrid and the whole time I was there, all I could think about was what could possibly be causing this thing to run hot. 

I ended up borrowing an Airlift bleeder from Chubs and tried again when I got home. Great success, no air and now its running nice and cool.  

This was after driving for 15 mins in 75 degree weather:

More recently now though my inspection light has come on, and I tried to reset it last night with no success. Did the Si batteries just start to fail?

I moved on to the stereo with all this success and tackled that as well:

Kept going and picked up the owners manual to find the code for the OBC. Well no shit I got that to work too.

Sadly I think the outside temp sensor has failed as it always reads -22F But it seems like the other features work great!

I drove it to work today and it seems like everything is coming together nicely now. 

Next up is this vintage R12 A/C recharge kit. Fingers crossed it works it looks older than I am.

[YoungCR]

Freeze-12 would be alternative If you need more after finding leaks.

[B C]

Freeze-12 is the way to go. Looking at that OBC.  

Do you think anyone actually uses the security code immobilizer on 80's BMWs anymore? I always thought it was cool but felt like it left a potential no-start diagnostic hell if the OBC went rogue

[Jdesign]

B C said:

Freeze-12 is the way to go. Looking at that OBC.  

Do you think anyone actually uses the security code immobilizer on 80's BMWs anymore? I always thought it was cool but felt like it left a potential no-start diagnostic hell if the OBC went rogue

I will look into this freeze-12. I have yet to try the kit I have as I think I will need a hazmat suit to do the recharge. 

I considered it, then thought the exact thing. Apparently in these, you can pull the OCB and remove the glass fuse on the backside for a few seconds and it resets the code and alleviates the cause for "lock out" or "no start" issues.

[Jdesign]

Ughhhhh. These turn signals are driving me insane. There is a reason why BMW's get a bad rep for not using them, they use to be impossible to diagnose. 

I didn't take any pictures of this, but I pulled the stalk out and tested it and cleaned it. It works fine.

From here I looked at the wiring diagram and I am getting power to the hazards and to the stalk, the next thing in the path is the cluster.....

This is the result. They did not design this dash to come apart easily. I needed to pull the HVAC unit anyways due to one of the controls being stiff. Once I got all 78 parts out I started looking at the cluster. I was hoping for a bad ground but found nothing. Instead I was distracted and noticed the odometer gears were on their way out. I must not have noticed it skipping, but the drive gear and secondary gears were missing teeth. The double E2 and E3 gears were both really really soft as well. 

Now after I discovered this, I counted the teeth and went online to find replacements only to find something interesting. I recounted, yup thats how many teeth are on my drive gear; 13. After thinking and being really confused I noticed that someone must have swapped gears already in the past.

I have a 13(E1), 12/48(E2), and 19/48(E3). 

**E1-**The E1gear is always a 12 tooth gear. Somehow mine has 13, maybe there is a gap in the gear on purpose, but it looks like a tooth is missing.

E2- The E2 is always a black gear with a 12/48 ratio

E3- From my research it seems that all E24's only have two different E3 gears; 17/48 or 19/48. There are other models (both BMW and Mercedes) that use variations of the E3 gear ranging from 12-19, but they always have a 48 tooth outer gear. 

I ordered gears and will have to wait to put this all back together. Side tracked a bit, but I was exhausted from hunting down the turn signal issue and this needed attention anyways I guess.

[YoungCR]

Oh man, hopefully that fits back together nicely. What comes after the cluster?

[Jdesign]

YoungCR said:

Oh man, hopefully that fits back together nicely. What comes after the cluster? 

Rear diff and trans flush. Then it's off to the market for a new owner!

[Jdesign]

Quick update

I fixed a bunch of things in one quick swoop

• turn signals work again-AND much much better that they ever have. Turns out (pun intended) that all of the hazards switches I had were failing to contact pin 5 internally. I was able to fix all of them. Thanks @YoungCR for lending me another switch that lead to insanity and also a successful repair. you can have your switch back in NOW working condition too  I had an EE guy also BMW fan come over and we numbed our brains with liquor till we figured it out. 
• Gauges all work again. YUSSS.- I installed the new gears and cleaned everything up and blew it al out with compressed air.
• Reverse lights - they were not plugged in. I found out why, the wire sheething was wore where it passed through the tunnel to the switch fixed it and plugged them in. TA-DA!
• Fix all the dash vents and levers- They were stiff and dirty. constant dust came out when the heat or AC was on. I took all the vents out and cleaned them and lubed all the vent levers and cables.
• Sunroof - fabric was sagging. Took this apart and reattached the old fabric and cleaned all the parts and guides in the roof. 
• Fuel check- I installed a check valve in the fuel line because I was reading that the fuel pump has a check valve that fails and causes laggy starts because of fuel bleeding back into the tank. I ordered one and installed it. This wasn't the problem. I still have in-consistent starts so after a quick install I grabbed the Voltmeter and checked the in-line fuel pump. No power. So the car has been running of of the lift pump. I have since ordered a new pump and lower filter, as there are also two fuel filters on this car. I read that replacing this pump can cause almost and instant change in power deliver that you can feel. Hopefully this is the last of the repairs!

Once again, no pictures. I will share more once I install the new pump and filter.

[HipMF]

This morning one of my co-workers had to show me a pic of a cool BMW that was following him this morning. I was like, "Oh, that's Jason." 

[YoungCR]

You’ll have to show me how to rebuild the switches, glad it helped solve the problem.