Transmission swap and engine compartment refresh Winter 2023-2024

[boonies]

Busy day yesterday. I want to make some space in the garage because it is getting tough to move with all these parts laying about. That means getting some parts ready to go to powder coat and to the machine shop.

I finally got the final gland nut off the front struts. Those gland nuts were a tough, welded on with time and grit. The next job with the struts is to get the one broken bolt out of the bottom. Using alternate heat and oil before resorting to drilling...and fingers crossed.

Pressure washed the front sub-frame so it is ready to drop off for powder coating this week after the rest of the parts have been washed.

The engine is in the path into the garage, so that needs to go too. The head is off and pistons are out. The surprise here is that there is really no piston ring ridge. Rod bearings were in great shape, but the oil pump drive chain seemed loose.

I am dropping off the head at the machine shop Monday. They will take it apart, make some evaluation of the valves and guides and then some more parts to buy.

 

[boonies]

I dropped the head off at the machine shop today. Their plan is to disassemble and identify parts list for me to source. I will then collect the head and vapor hone it, then I will return it to them and they will do a final wash & clean when they finish their work

I took the broken steering column support to my welder today and they were able to patch it up. The casting is thin and has some impurities and as such the weld is ugly, but the part was saved.

While I was there they welded a nut to the broken bolt at the bottom of the strut tube and we were able to immediately unscrew it.

 

[boonies]

Engine compartment and front wheel well stripping is well underway. A fair amount of light surface rust was discovered on the driver's side frame rail and very low on the passenger side firewall. The process is to remove the grease, then mechanically strip using various grits.

One hell of a mess...the goal is to have the majority of the sanding done by the end of this weekend so that the metal rust prep and clean can happen and then prepare for primer.

 

[Stevehose]

Looks great, doing this cleanup/sand/prep took me 10x longer than planned. Come to think of it, everything took me 10x longer than planned!

 

[boonies]

Looks great, doing this cleanup/sand/prep took me 10x longer than planned. Come to think of it, everything took me 10x longer than planned!

Thanks Steve, everything is taking much longer here too...

My target is to have it on the road this summer. The machine shop work is slated for April, so I will have some time to get the engine bay ready.

 

[tdgray]

that’s hard work. 10X is an understatement.

Really nice.

 

[Breiti]

Wouldn't you better remove the wiring harness?
Much easy to do the work and it isn't a big deal.

Breiti

 

[boonies]

Wouldn't you better remove the wiring harness?
Much easy to do the work and it isn't a big deal.

Breiti

Completely agree! I started on the wheel wells and kept going and just worked around the wiring as I was chasing ugliness...

 

[Stevehose]

Completely agree! I started on the wheel wells and kept going and just worked around the wiring as I was chasing ugliness...

Me too, for an "in situ" rehab at some point you have to draw the line on the opening of Pandora's box (and potentially more work) and I didn't want to risk this by removing it. I did re-wrap it with proper friction tape though. For the stripping and painting process I wrapped it in masking tape and tethered it out of the way.

 

[boonies]

This morning I pulled the A/C hard lines that go through the firewall and removed the rubber grommets and stuffed the wire loom inside the car today. I would like to re-wrap the loom as well.

@Stevehose did you keep the copper hard pipes or did you run the thin wall AC lines through the firewall?

 

[Stevehose]

I kept them - I did not want to open that box and start going into the dash etc. I wrapped them in pipe insulation, put flare fittings on the new hose and carried on. Just charged it last week.

 

[rsporsche]

when you get down to the fact that most of what goes thru the firewall is covered up with insulation ... it doesn't really pay to take that stuff out ... unless you are redoing the interior insulation at the same time.

 

[tdgray]

Very good point indeed.

It’s a slippery slope…. When head down at speed… can get out of hand real quick.

 

[boonies]

Well, I pulled the AC Tubes out (again after having removed them for the interior refresh).

The paint and undercoat stripping is completed today, with the final sand across the engine compartment and a hand sand with 3M sanding pads to smooth out the sanding marks. Will have to see how it looks after epoxy primer.

After sanding I sprayed all the bare metal with KB Rust Blast. I sanded all the surface rust that I found thoroughly, but this product will stabilize and convert any remnants and flash rust to zinc phosphate which is stable.

 

[boonies]

Busy week on a variety of tasks.

Picked up a number of items that I had powder coated.

The sanding and paint prep is coming along well and of course uncovered a few very small areas of concern. There were two small rust holes on the driver's side inner fender and a firewall weld had failed on the driver's side. I was able to clean and weld all three areas relatively easily.

Dropped off the engine block at the machine shop for hot tanking and then machine work when their schedule opens up. Meanwhile I picked up the bare head and brought it home for vapor honing.

 

[paul cain]

I launched the winter project a few weeks ago with the removal of the original 4 speed. That process went very well overall.

The driveshaft was easily removed and the only “surprise” was the guibo was about to grenade. Not sure of the age, but my timing was perfect.

I had my son give me a hand lifting the 5 speed into position (nice to have him here, but with the transmission jack it was easier than I expected and could have done it by myself. I have measured for the new driveshaft so that will be ordered this week. Not needed for a couple of months though.

With the transmission out of the way I was able to complete the removal of non-OEM under-coat that was applied when rust repair was completed on the car in the early 1990’s. Using an ocilating tool I was able to remove the undercoating and then used die grinders to clean up areas that needed some more aggressive cleaning.

There were a few surface rust spots along the frame rails and the larger panel sections that had been replaced had some surface rust under the paint layer. All that was removed, sanded and then rust converter used to treat the bare metal.

Over the past few days I have then applied direct to metal epoxy primer to the areas that were cleaned (rear seat forward). The next step will be SEM undercoat.

Once the undercoat is completed I plan to roll the car off the lift ramps and remove the engine.

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Very impressive photos of the scraping of the stoneguard. Hours of work in a pretty horrible work environment. Well done!

 

[rsporsche]

looks great - what color did you paint the subframe?

 

[boonies]

looks great - what color did you paint the subframe?

The subframe is now gray undercoat to match the floors. It seems like the entire floor area was undercoated from new. My coupe had another layer of black on top of the original gray.

 

[boonies]

Looking for some thoughts & advice on a few topics.

Head gasket: Is there a recommended brand? I have found the Victor Reinz brand to be available at most of the online sources. Any concerns or recommendations?

Pitman Arm studs: I broke one of the "safety wire bolts" that ties the pitman arm to the strut tube assembly.

I am searching for one replacement. BMW & Maximilian do not carry this part #32211113179. A link on our site indicated that Rogers tii has them, but they only have the 2002 variant, which is m8 vs the m10 that is needed on the coupes.

I am also having a heck of a time digging out the rusted safety wire from those bolts. Drilling did not work, I am searching for a new tiny punch (I have one that is just a hair too large). The bolts have been de-rusted.

 

[CSteve]

Lance, you are a one man, oops, person, machine shop, auto repair, restoration shop. Impressive work you are doing. And looking forward to summer when you join the Rocket Dogs for one of their Sunday drives in your better than when it left the factory coupe.

Steve