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Richard has made excellent progress with the wiring, pretty much everything is in place now ready to go!
Bodywork
Rear lights are in and the tank filler hole is drilled. The wings are not the same, the left one is longer than the right one. Makes for an interesting task lining up the lights. Rear view is nearly done, the real lights still need to go in (rather than the reflectors) the fog lights need to go on. As do the number plate lights!
Also started removing the flash lines from the tub, what a PITA job!
Finally a bit of future tuning news:
This is a crank from a BMW M52B28 engine, with a spacer at the front end this will drop right into the M20 block. Combined with 130mm conrods from a M20B20 and the pistons from the M20B25 this will result in a 2.8 ltr stroker engine. The parts been put in the box ready for rebuilding the engine at some point in the future.
Hi Patrick,
looks like you are making some really good progress and the car is comming together nicely. I'm going down to Marlin next week to pick up my body parts and a list of sundry items so hope to be catching you up again soon!
A bit worrying about the wings being diffrent lengths, i'll have to see what mine are like but I can't believe there would be different moulds?
Your tuning ideas are interesting for next winter!
The tub is not straight either. From everything I've seen pretty much all fibre glass part will warp or will not be 100% not matter what they are for. I managed to install the left wing too high at the back because of the length difference, it just means I have to drill new holes and patch up the old ones - luckily that easily done with fibreglass - do lots and lots and lots of measuring
2.7 engine conversion using a 2.4 diesel or 2.7 eta crank are really popular on the E30 scene but they are so involved requiring you to deck the block and install an adjustable pulley. 2.8 conversions are less talked about but much easier to do as the only machining involved is a spacer (that I can make at home on the lathe)! On top of that you get an extra 100cc. With the spiky dbilas cam and stand alone engine management it should result in more than 200bhp and loads more torque.
Richard spent a good deal of yesterday wiring stuff up again - I was changing the rear disks, pads and handbrake shoes on my daily driver (while putting a screw driver through my forehead, but that's another story)
A little bit of an update to the site to make it a bit easier to view images:
There is a new preview function to all images on the site, it's now no longer necessary to download large images to get a closer look at each one.
Just click the thumbnail or the "preview" button. You'll get a short loading animation and the image will appear. If you want to download a full size one like before click "Full Size" button or the "Right Click Save As here to download full size" link in the preview.
Did a lot of prep work on the bonnet side panels today. Did some initial cuts on the metal today to start fitting the panels in. Also spent a lot of time on the passenger side re fitting the door and adjusting it. For some reason the passenger side causes more trouble than the driver side!
Rather than taking the recommend route and blindly drilling holes for the bumpers in the back and then fitting the tub around it we fitted the tub and then did the bumpers. Drawback, the mounting holes for the tub are now slightly wrong - not to bad can fill those up and move them as needed.
On the + side the bumper holes are not pretty much spot on.
In order order to located the exact position of the holes we inserted a felt marker in each bumper mounting hole, put masking tape on the inside of the tub. Mounted the tub then marked out the approx position of the holes with the markers. Took the tub off and had a look. The passenger side (shock horror!) was too far up and the driver side about right. So taking the height of the driver side as the default - which is approx 25mm up from flat of the area where the fog / reverse lights are mounted. The centre to centre between the bumper mounts is 930mm so we measure 25mm up and 930mm between the two centres. The estimate from the marker was only 4mm too close together.
To double check all the measurements we drilled a small pilot hole from the back at the marked location, making sure the drill ran parallel to the mount hole. The tub was then refitted and a visual check made through the pilot holes to make sure then were in the correct place. The look like they were so we too a hole saw and cut out the final size holes, again making sure the drill ran parallel to the mounting hole. After drilling the first hole - due to it not being straight on - I though it was a full hole size out. Turns out it just my eyes and the fact that the hole is not straight on! Stuck a bumper through the hole lift the back of the tub a bit and it went right in! Repeat for hole number 2 Very happy these are now sitting right it was one of those things we were not looking forward to.
Spent more time on the front of the tub on the passenger side trying to get it to fit better after the bumpers were installed. Took quite a bit of material off the bottom to bring it down. Its now sitting much better but still needs some work. You may also notice the colour sample (formerly part of an E39 M5 diffuser) pretty sure this will be the cars colour, but what is it? So far the top suggestion is LeMans blue as that was a standard colour on the M5.
Thanks Peter, more to come tomorrow hopefully. Richard's going to be looking at the engine bay wiring so I dunno how much bodywork we'll be doing. I think I might spend some more time fine tuning the tub
Bumpers bolted in - the nut is welded to the top so the bumper can be taken out from the bottom. There is also a bolt in the side to stabilise it.
Additional bracket added to the striker pin plate to make it stronger. Its bolted at the bottom and held to the striker plate with a rivnut - this should serve well in pulling the bottom of the fiberglass tub into place on the passenger side.
Spent a long time today fiddling with the tub and doors, the driver side seems fine now but the passenger side it still a little off. Had to stop to order new rivnuts, counter sunk bolts and counter sunk washers. Also ordered lot of rubber trim, door rubbers and a few supplies (an easy way to spend £150!)
Found a away to stretch the scuttle! One big ass clamp in reverse! I have a second one to do the other side too.
This is how it sits now, going to let it rest a bit before moving it out further. Another important question - how did you do up the front scuttle bolts? I can't find a sensible way to get a spanner or wrench in there.
Did a bit of cutting here too, may remake these panels without the louvres.
Another important question - how did you do up the front scuttle bolts? I can't find a sensible way to get a spanner or wrench in there.
Patrick,
not absolutely sure, but I think the trick is to cut the hole for the side repeaters just above the front bolts. Take a look at your build manual CD and you see where to cut the hole. I think you can then get a ring spanner in through the hole.
Now that I've followed mine for a few miles I can say that I'm a little worried about the SVA and the rear lights Patrick. The indicators weren't very visible from behind so I think that even if it passes SVA I might look at some way of tilting them backwards a bit, just not sure how much and how...
I've done fibre glassing the past for audio stuff so I'll probably give it a go myself, if that fails I'm sure places such as CBS or SVC that sell pods, just don't know how suitable they will be.
Driver side front wing, and I thought this one would be easy! If you want to stick to 7J wheels then you can bolt these one without modification. However at some point we are planning to but 8J's on the front with 225 tyres. For these to fit (and they do very snugly) the wing needs to come out a bit. For that you need chop holes on the inside - easier said than done!
The holes are a bit of a mess and the bolts need to be replaces with smooth dome ones. However this was several hours of fiddling after which it was time for a break!
The plan is to open out the holes a bit more so they run exactly parallel to the mounting.
It's not quite on centre but it will be easy enough to open up the mounting holes underneath so they can be moved. The powder coat on the brackets cracked when we bent them (to fit a bit better) so that will need repainting. The brackets are not quite in the right place yet but its getting there.
You can take the wheels off just needs a slide out and pull from the bottom and they drop right out!
The striker pin plate re-enforcement is complete on both sides. Each has a rivnut in place to help secure the front of the tub in place. It helps pull the passenger side in which naturally sits slightly wrong.
The counter sunk bolt and cup washer really finish it off nicely!
Also done loads of fine tuning and clean up on various fibreglass bits like the scuttle panel (to make it easier to put the front bolts in and the rear tub.
As a part of this week decided to rivnut the rear wings on. This means they can be taken on or off without the tub needing to be taken off the car - a good feature should the worst happen and the wing needs to come off for repair. The rivnuts are fibreglassed at the back to reduce the chances of one spinning free and stopping the bolts form coming out.
Finally a more wiring! This time we've installed door jam switches for the interior lighting and as part of the security system:
Tub cutout for rear strut towers - only required because we've made the towers wider than standard to accommodate coil overs.
Driver side view - its been a long tedious process getting everything lined up, but the countless hours have been worthwhile. All the panels are held on with counter sunk bolts and cup washers. Below is a counter sunk rivnut - an excellent device that lets you put a thread for bolting items to anywhere, but more importantly being counter sunk the rivnuts endup flush with the surface they are attached to.
As you may know the passenger side has always been more of a pain, so I started here first and made one or two mistakes. The bolts on the scuttle panel should be a bit higher, and its not cut off straight. However, I plan on making new ones so those can both be fixed when the time comes!
Getting the rear tub to fit this side was a challenge - its now very close, still slightly off so it may need a bit more tweaking.
Finally had time to get an old tyre swapped on to the spare, small issue though the cover is too small to fit over it!
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