More progress this weekend!

Things are starting to heat up here.  Got a little tease of nice weather so I tried to take advantage of it.  Parts everywhere, 10 million things to work on at in parallel, and never enough time.

Saturday I went down to Tech Shop - it's basically a community shop that you pay a membership fee to join, but you get access to all kinds of insane machinery for fabrication.  I took a powder coating class and brought some parts down to try out (probably too many, but hey).

I got all my powders from Powder365.com.   Seem to be of good quality based on my limited ability to judge.

• Zinc based primer for rustproofing steel parts
• Outgassing forgiveness primer - for use on porous aluminum castings that may have absorbed oil. 
• Black magic - exterior / durable black
• High temp black - for use on brake calipers and exhaust stuff if I feel like it.
• AC silver - alternator housing and whatever else I feel like
• Wrinkle black - engine covers
• Starlight clearcoat - clear finish for exterior suspension components, make them more chip resistant.

 Parts were sandblasted first with ~100 grit aluminum oxide media in the blasting cabinet.

 
I didn't get any closeups but this media put a really nice finish on everything - even on the aluminum stuff.  No pitting or anything, though I increased the tip angle of the gun to prevent it from "digging in".  The texture would probably show through if I were painting it without a primer/surfacer but this stuff doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, just durable.  I'm not building a show car.

After washing the parts off, I gave them a prebake to get the moisture out and outgas any contaminants.  Once cooled off it was time to put some powder on them.

Then into the oven to bake.  Here's some finished parts.

Initially everything looked good but I noticed it was chipping much easier than it should be.  I suspect I either didn't give the metal enough time to get up to temperature in the oven (inadequate cure time) or I didn't clean them thoroughly enough.  Either way I'll be stripping and recoating most of the parts.  I was excited to get some things coated and rushed it a little bit, I think. 

Live and learn.

In other news, I also sold my S52/ZF transmission out of my M3 so I started pulling that out of the car on Sunday.

Figured I'd take some pics of the car before tearing it apart.  It's gonna be a while before it's back to this state.

Anyway, this is where I ended up at the end of the night.

Probably going to spend the rest of the week getting this pulled and packed up.  I have to put it on a pallet / box it up because it's going to Texas.

More to come in short order hopefully.

I'd like to start this week's post by offering a giant middle finger to mother nature.  I'm trying to get shit done and it won't stop snowing.  Anyone who says global warming is a bad thing is a fucking idiot.

Despite my frustration, I made a bunch of progress on some random things this weekend.

Put the compression fitting on my power steering pump return line.  Originally it would have been just a slip fit hose barb but I wanted a solid -AN hose connection to help prevent leaks.  I hate power steering leaks almost as much as I hate winter and hippies.

Sanded the barb off until the fitting and ferrule fit.  A use a file / sandpaper for rough shaping, and a bearing scraper for final shaping. 

Exploded view of fitting.  I'm using an Earl's tube-to-AN adapter, PN# AT165006ERL.  The brass olive gets crushed and digs into the tube, locking the fitting in place. 

Installed.  I gave it a test by making a witness mark and pulling on it as hard as I could - it didn't budge.  I wouldn't trust it to anything of higher than 50 psi (which is the max they recommend) or with anything that could start fires (like fuel) but it should work fine for a power steering return.
 

Also starting grinding away areas on my valve cover that could be potential interference points with my rocker arms.  I'll be running thicker gaskets as well, but it was still a little close for comfort based on what I could see.  I don't want to risk making contact, so I'm taking precautions.  I removed the baffles and will be grinding away most of the associated casting.  Unfortunately I couldn't do this very long because my compressor was sending so much water through the line that I was afraid it'd damage my die grinder.  Again, fuck winter.

Still to do.  Left behind are the rivet bosses the held down the sheet metal baffle / splash guard.  I'll be running a catch can so I'm not concerned about any oil that might make its way out of the valve cover.

 Also worked on some alternator parts.  Cleaned the stator and sprayed it with some Dolph's EB-41 electrical insulating enamel.  Takes any electrical part from zero to badass in a matter of minutes! 
 

  

  
Also sprayed my ignition coils with it.  It took longer to mask them off then it did to spray them.  And unfortunately for me they don't photograph well.

 

Tinned up the coil leads, and also soldered the rectifier and diodes together.  Laid it all out on the housing first to make sure I had it in the right position.  Great success.

 

I also pulled the heads off tonight to check on the cylinder bores and reapply some oil to keep rust away.  Everything looked good.  

I also labeled all my pushrods to reflect their individual valve assignments....with 9 different lengths there's a lot to keep track of.  Happy to say my measurement tool was dead nuts accurate to the measurements I took ~ 3 months ago.

I also pulled the intake manifold apart to fix the paint on the top shell - the paint cracked when torquing it down despite my efforts to prevent that from happening.  Next time I'm going to experiment by adding some felt washers underneath to hopefully serve as a "thrust bearing" of sorts.  My brief testing showed that the felt washer remained stationary while the bolt / washer spun as I tightened them....which is awesome.  Some black fabric dye and they'll be good to go.

Parts everywhere.  Standard.

I know where everything goes.  I promise.

Parts are continuing to roll in.  Let me start off by saying that I hate the iphone camera.

Power steering stuff is all here:

•  Turn One power steering pump + orifice
•  -6AN Russell power steering hose and fittings
• Fragola -6AN weld bung
• M14X1.5 to -6AN rack adapter
• Earl's 3/8" to 6AN compression fitting (for use on reservoir return)

Oil cooler stuff is all here from Improved Racing:

•  Setrab 925 rad
• -10AN braided stainless line
• -10AN Raceflux fittings
• Improved racing oil cooler adapter w/ built in thermostat.

Clutch hydraulic stuff is all here:

• Tilton 77 master cylinder - 7/8" bore
• Wilwood 4 oz remote reservoir kit
• 9/16-18 to 3/8" barb fitting and 9/16" copper crush washer for the master supply port from Sweet Performance (took me for fucking ever to find these parts.  nobody makes them)
• 3AN braided stainless line and fittings from Pegasus (to slave cylinder)
• 3/8" EPDM supply line from reservoir
• Speed bleeder line for slave cylinder (not pictured)

Figured it was about time I starting figuring out if any of this shit is going to work.


The Tilton M/C is obviously not a BMW part, so I need to adapt it to my pedal assembly.  Luckily for me I still have the pedal assembly out of the 325i to do the mockup on.

I made up a bracket out of aluminum - not really sure of placement yet, though.  I don't know how much firewall clearance I'm going to have, so the master might have to rotate down to swing out of the way to make some additional room.  To prevent interference problems between the pedal and master cylinder at that point, I'm going to need to extend the rod end on the master shaft out.  This will also move my engagement point up, which I'm not sure if I'm going to like.  I have all the dimensions / bore sizes / fluid volumes / distance + forces required to disengage the clutch to play with - but this is one of those things where doing the math won't really help me because I don't know where exactly the master can be positioned yet.  On the bench I don't have a firewall to contend with, and that doesn't do me any good.

Even though the master has a rod end on either side giving it a lot of flexibility to move as it needs to, I'd like to keep the bore of the master as parallel to travel as I can to minimize wear.  Unfortunately this is probably as close as I can get to that condition.  Idk yet.

More to come.