E46 Things
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That IS a phenomenal build!
The 420g is not one of the great manual transmissions ever crafted, hence my efforts to do a few small things to make sure it has its best chance at living its best life. If I ever needed to swap transmissions I would grab a cheap low mile SMG trans and swap bellhousings. The manual transmission cost and availability is not great and with the SMG you know a computer was shifting it instead of a pretend racecar driver. Which all E46 drivers are, including myself.
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160,712 miles
Parking brake shoes and hardware replaced. The shoes were original (no surprise as they dont wear much) and had plenty of meat on the bones. The weak park brake was more a function of glazing and adjustment.
the drum surface received a good scuff and the adjusters were cleaned and slathered in anti-seize. Once it was back together, the handbrake cable was adjusted to factory spec and now the park brake holds the car on my sloped driveway while in neutral.
Im pretty sure I ordered an FTE clutch slave cylinder (OE) but here I am with a Sachs brand. Notice that the pushrod is a bit longer than the FTE. In this photo the stock slave cylinder binds at the last 1/4” of travel and so part of the length discrepancy can be attributed to that. I am not sure that the sticking affected performance while under pressure but it would not surprise me if the seal was affected and able to pull a minuscule amount of air for a brief moment while moving past that rough spot.
The stainless clutch line did not have the same pregnant section that the stock rubber line does so I trimmed it off and attached it since there exits a decent chance of rubbing and abrasion between the corner of the oil pan and the new line.
Transmission mounts were not replaced as the exhaust was in the way of the passenger side mount. I will save them for a future project when the exhaust is dropped.
The MT-LV is the ticket though. I took a few laps around the neighborhood in the cold weather and between the new clutch hydraulics and the trans oil, there were no grinds on the cold 1-2 shift.
It is now parked and on the battery tender again until hopefully March
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I'm glad to see Stroopwafels!
Your AFR is pretty darn lean also... -
You may want to check out your roof condition if that much snow is entering your garage...
I accidentally left the sunroof open on the garage.
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Pulled the car out of the garage for a rinse and re-installed the spoiler because it is very tricky to get the placement correct. I wasn’t satisfied with my first two attempts but it’s all good now.
I was able to try out the new parkIng brake components and can now finally hold the car on a hill in neutral! A functioning park brake is underrated.
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People pay a lot of money for that feature on Jeeps!
Stock sway bar?
The entire suspension setup is Ground Control Race. The sway bars are about the diameter of a Cholula bottle
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Car up in the air and taken apart.
The drivers side sway bar mount is perfectly intact. The passenger side not so much.
The ends of the cracks were drilled. Metal pounded/pulled flat, welded, ground, and prepped for a reinforcement plate.
I had ordered some pre-made reinforcement plates and was surprised when they were only 0.114” thick (11 ga.) Then I measured the chassis sheetmetal. It comes in at a measly 0.053” (17 ga.).
Massive thanks to @Bassboy3313 for coming over and welding, can’t thank him enough for his help.
Grade 8.8 screws were preheated to 300 F, welded, then slow cooled.
Since the drivers side was intact, that reinforcement plate was welded in as-is. Once both reinforcements were welded in they were painted. I am making this post while waiting for the paint to dry. I should have things buttoned up, re-grease the sway bar, and be back in action later today.
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More than happy to help! Was a tight fit to get the mig gun in there, but got the job done. Welding upside down is never the easiest thing either, lol.
it's a painful ethos because it would be a blast.
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