Maytag: The Alpine '87 529i

[tig]

Got a buddy to come by and help me get the shocks attached and diff installed.



Put the wheels on and dropped the car off the jacks to see how it sat...

I had adjusted the shocks 1" higher than how the PO had them thinking that might be close to what I want. He must have had the car slammed because I need at least another 1" in height. Way tooooo loooow.




Now gonna take the wheels off, undo the shocks from the TAs and extend them another inch and try again...

[waynet1]

That looks pretty damn close to stock ride height to me.
Have you measured it?? I think Bently gives the measurements.

[tig]

That looks pretty damn close to stock ride height to me.
Have you measured it?? I think Bently gives the measurements.

This photo was taken from below the car. Trust me, it was tucked.

I re-did it and now it's about right where it was with the old rear suspension. Once i complete the front, I will use that as the baseline.

The car is now back on 4 wheels but I forgot to bleed the brakes so I can't yet drive it. I need to put winter tires on the other cars before I dive into the front.




Oh, and in other news. The SOUNDERS WON THE MLS CUP!!!!!

[waynet1]

That looks pretty damn close to stock ride height to me.
Have you measured it?? I think Bently gives the measurements.

This photo was taken from below the car. Trust me, it was tucked.

I re-did it and now it's about right where it was with the old rear suspension. Once i complete the front, I will use that as the baseline.

Well did you check the measurements? Looks way too high to me now.
Looks like you're ready for the Baja 1000.

[tig]

Maytag has a stock suspension on it. It looks high because most E28s no longer have stock suspensions.



Vlad looks great, I think, but is a tad low for a car I want my wife & kids to be comfortable driving. So Maytag will be a bit higher. Right now Vlad measures like this (it's probably better to measure from center of wheel, but that's really hard to do with one set of hands and without removing center caps):

Front (25"):


Rear (24.25"):


Maytag, Front (25.5"):


Rear (25.5"):


I think the rake on Vlad is about tits. For Maytag I'll shoot for Front of about 25.5 and Rear of 25. I have the correct rake # somewhere, and believe it's supposed to be measured from jack-point to jack-point.

[geordi]

Glad to see Maytag still getting lots of love.

[Eta power]

Both cars look fantastic, as usual!

[Karl Grau]

I think the rake on Vlad is about tits. For Maytag I'll shoot for Front of about 25.5 and Rear of 25. I have the correct rake # somewhere, and believe it's supposed to be measured from jack-point to jack-point.

I will never understand why Americans are so afraid of the 'Metric System'.

[tig]

I think the rake on Vlad is about tits. For Maytag I'll shoot for Front of about 25.5 and Rear of 25. I have the correct rake # somewhere, and believe it's supposed to be measured from jack-point to jack-point.

I will never understand why Americans are so afraid of the 'Metric System'.

Metric this.

[davintosh]

I think the rake on Vlad is about tits. For Maytag I'll shoot for Front of about 64.75 cm and Rear of 65.5 cm. I have the correct rake # somewhere, and believe it's supposed to be measured from jack-point to jack-point.

I will never understand why Americans are so afraid of the 'Metric System'.

Metric this.

There. Next?

[tig]

I realized I never posted these pr0n shots.

[Mike W.]

You know, I think I keep my cars up pretty well. Not perfect, I don't throw money at them, but they work well. Engine compartment looks good compared to cars I look at. I do nice work, no broken bolts are kludged wiring. Quality work, no mickey mouse stuff. I've long thought I'd love to buy one of my cars sometime. But not anymore, now I want to buy one of CEKs cars.

Nice work Charlie.

[tig]

You know, I think I keep my cars up pretty well. Not perfect, I don't throw money at them, but they work well. Engine compartment looks good compared to cars I look at. I do nice work, no broken bolts are kludged wiring. Quality work, no mickey mouse stuff. I've long thought I'd love to buy one of my cars sometime. But not anymore, now I want to buy one of CEKs cars.

Nice work Charlie.

Thanks Mike.

I just feel blessed that I have a hobby that lets me learn so much and then enjoy the results.

[sail_or_drive]

'Tis truly inspiring.

[BenGerman]

Starting at rear. Plan is to complete it first then move to front.

Where exactly do you place the jack stands under the car?
- Nevermind, found all the infos in the pictures. -

The car looks like new, awesome progress!

[leadphut]

This is the 666th reply.

[1st 5er]

This is the 666th reply.

667 actually.

[tig]

With the whole fam home I've been nervous about jumping in on the front end. If I screw something up we're down a car and someone is likely to gripe. But this afternoon after doing honey-doos (landscape lighting) I dug in with the goal of getting disassembly done. Victory.

However read on to see why I already know I've screwed up.

All the new bits ready:


Da fuq is going on here? How can this almost new slave be leaking? At least I think that's brake fluid and not oil. Sigh.


Yeah, those UCAs were shot.


All dis-assembled. Now that I've done it a few times, I actually feel like I know what I'm doing. The only fight I had was getting the steering arm separated from the steering box link. I had to destroy the old boot to get my my puller on.






What'd I screw up?

I pulled the front bearings off because I wanted to use the dust covers and hub nuts. That's when I realized I never ordered new back-side dust covers.


I'm screwed getting this back together tomorrow. Hopefully I can find some shields locally on Monday!

Regardless, next steps are:

- Clean, clean, clean
- Weld on steering box re-enforcement
- Reassemble
- Align
- Drive

[davintosh]

The gold-colored dust cover just presses in place; you might be able to get it off if you're careful. Really careful. Heat it up a bit first and you may get lucky.

[tig]

The gold-colored dust cover just presses in place; you might be able to get it off if you're careful. Really careful. Heat it up a bit first and you may get lucky.

Good call:


Didn't have tons of time today, so I set the goal of just getting it cleaned and getting the steering box reinforcement welded in...



I declare this is clean enough. That black stuff will come off with a lot of elbow grease and a brillo pad, but given how cold it is and how tired I was, and how this car will be just fine with a little grime under it...






Before attempting to weld in the steering box reinforcement dowel in, when i've never welded under something before, and given how much a welding noob I am I decided to install the 2nd dowel I bought into the subframe that will go in the blue car for practice. That subframe had been repaired by an PO. This is probably a fine weld, and probably strong enough, but I thought it ugly. So I cut it off.


I do love my new welding table. It's easy to move around enabling me to send grinding sparks outside the garage regardless of angle.


I was about to weld this into place when I realized somethings wrong with my welder. Wire isn't feeding right. I am aborting for tonight so I can warm up and go play some indoor soccer...

[oldskool]

Indoor soccer and welding shall never be mentioned in the same sentence. Ever.
Again.

[leadphut]

My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with a girl who saw Ferris welding at the indoor soccer stadium, before he passed-out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.

[tig]

I played well. We lost but I scored two goals. Best things is no one got hurt. That's our motto: get some exercise and don't get hurt. Then drink beer.

Today I used my newfound welding skillz to install Ed "Mr Wrench" steering box reinforcement dowels on both the subframe destined for the blue car and the one on maytag.

I think I did ok:






This was taken after paint (paint's not dry in this pic). Not the cleanest weld...hard to weld upside down!


I also got the front struts/coil-overs all setup. This was more of a PITA than planned due to ineptitude, but now there's eptitude. The one thing I'm totally at a loss about is how to know how long to make these. The rears were easy because they were "as built" by the PO and I just made them about 1.5" longer knowing his car was pretty low. In this case, I had the lowers disconnected for cleaning and to get a replacement lower strut fabricated. I guess I'll just put 'em on and see how high/low it is. I think the only realistic way of changing the length is to unbolt them from the strut brace, let them drop and then spin; the shock rotates on the pivot mount, but not freely.

I also have no idea if the shocks are compressed right. They are both at the same setting and those nuts have not changed since the PO sold them to me (same as rears). I'll probably just leave it to the guy who does my alignment to tune them.


I got the steering linkages installed, along with the new pitman arm. I used the old steering links to eyeball the lengths of the new ones so that alignment should't be too far off.

[davintosh]

I got the steering linkages installed, along with the new pitman arm. I used the old steering links to eyeball the lengths of the new ones so that alignment should't be too far off.

That's what we all think when we SWAG the steering link length. Then the car drives like crap all the way to the alignment shop.

There are threads around here somewhere on how to do a quickie DIY alignment; I've never tried it, but some guys have had decent successes with it.

[1st 5er]

I got the steering linkages installed, along with the new pitman arm. I used the old steering links to eyeball the lengths of the new ones so that alignment should't be too far off.

That's what we all think when we SWAG the steering link length. Then the car drives like crap all the way to the alignment shop.

There are threads around here somewhere on how to do a quickie DIY alignment; I've never tried it, but some guys have had decent successes with it.

All it takes is a piece of string..
I do mine that way.

Not sure it'll work without stock suspension components though.