New addition to the fleet

[Karl Grau]

Just ordered a couple 'in stock' parts from pelican over the weekend. Monday's email told me the order had been transferred to their Ca warehouse. Wonder when they'll actually ship. Not griping, just a 'first timer' with them.

I left a snarky feedback for that order and five minutes later got an email from the owner.

"Hi Charles. You make a good point - maybe I should change that message. Our supplier on this is 1.2 miles away, and it’s supposedly on our dock right now being processed. We use their warehouse as a supplemental one and we get eight deliveries a day or so from the various warehouses like that one in the neighborhood. With our new cart, I think I did recently change that message. I think it used to say “in process”, I should probably modify that.



I have my warehouse guys checking on your order right now to make sure I don’t look like a fool for saying it would ship today if it doesn’t. We had a 15% increase in orders with multiple people out sick in the warehouse combined with some new technology problems from the new shopping cart launch that happened Friday night. If there weren’t computer problems I’d be out in the warehouse packing boxes!



I will be watching this one throughout the rest of the day, and I’ve copied myself on this email so that I will put it in my “shopping cart” update list.



Thx,



Wayne"



Wayne R. Dempsey

CEO, Pelican Parts Inc.

[Karl Grau]

The stücks I was waiting for to finish came today.



One of the things I was replacing was an intake boot that was hard as a rock and showing some surface cracks. By accident, I found out that the e46 version is different than the e39 version. The e39 boot has a ‘muffler-silencer’ box that, while quieting intake wooosh, gets in the way of anything you’re trying to do on the driver’s side of the engine. If you want to remove the airbox, you either have to remove everything from the intake to the fender wall as one piece or remove the muffler-silencer box which is a PITA.
I guess BMW decided that the less genteel e46 owners didn’t need their wooosh silenced and I decided I don’t either.




When I drained the coolant, I also pulled the drain plug on the block, so with the refill, I’m just going to let it self-bleed overnight.

[cddallara]

Just ordered a couple 'in stock' parts from pelican over the weekend. Monday's email told me the order had been transferred to their Ca warehouse. Wonder when they'll actually ship. Not griping, just a 'first timer' with them.

Parts showed Wednesday

[wkohler]

How did that fan shroud fit in that little box? They must really be taking this bullshit dimensional weight thing seriously.

[Karl Grau]

Parts showed Wednesday

It's all back together and the good news is, I have no more oil leaks. The bad news is, I have a new coolant leak. During the course of the work, I at one point gave the radiator a stern look so that's what is probably leaking.



Also, I forgot to mention, if you own a newer BMW, for the love of god, buy one of these. It's to remove plastic rivets which hold 90% of the car together.

[davintosh]

Link plz. And/or name of said gadget. Thx. (I hate those stoopid plastic rivets.)

[Adam W in MN]

Also, I forgot to mention, if you own a newer BMW, for the love of god, buy one of these. It's to remove plastic rivets which hold 90% of the car together.

[Karl Grau]

Link plz. And/or name of said gadget. Thx. (I hate those stoopid plastic rivets.)

http://bit.ly/1HZ40Hh

[davintosh]

Link plz. And/or name of said gadget. Thx. (I hate those stoopid plastic rivets.)

http://bit.ly/1HZ40Hh

[Karl Grau]

My coolant leak is coming from somewhere near the upper radiator hose nipple which is apparently a "classic" e39 leak area. Wrestling the hose off for my recent repairs may have cracked something. I should have just done the entire cooling system when I had everything apart since it was on my to-do list anyway. The car only has 56k miles but all those rubber and plastic parts are 14 years old now so I'm just going to go ahead and do it now.

[wkohler]

Also, I forgot to mention, if you own a newer BMW, for the love of god, buy one of these. It's to remove plastic rivets which hold 90% of the car together.

http://amzn.com/B0002SRCMO

It's only slightly different in design from the door panel clip removing tool, which is cheaper by a couple of bucks. Of course, the plastic fulcrum is really nice on this one, so I might buy one of these. I have some Hecho en Chine crap I bought from ipd years ago. They bought it from GI Joe's, I'm sure, and charged me double.

Harbor Freight has one that does the work for you, but it's not Hecho En Estados Unidos like the Lisle tools.

[Karl Grau]

The radiator and hoses are all original, so fuck it, I'm replacing everything. Plus, who doesn't enjoy removing the same shit within a two week span? I know *I* do.



The thermostat looks like it was made in March of 2009 but any rate, it's getting replaced too.
The only bright spot is that the fan clutch is only a year old.



Ouch!

[davintosh]

The radiator and hoses are all original, so fuck it, I'm replacing everything. Plus, who doesn't enjoy removing the same shit within a two week span? I know *I* do.

Just thank your lucky stars that the M54 doesn't have the little plastic pipe attached to the engine block up under the intake and the plastic gooseneck on the back of the valve head like the M44. Having to remove the intake manifold adds some fun to a cooling system refresh, lemme tell ya.

[wkohler]

FUCK IT, MAAAAAAAN!

[Karl Grau]

Everything but the hard pipes came today. I don't know why the AutohausAZ box ALWAYS beats the Pelican box since Pelican is 250 miles closer.
The radiator was made in South Africa and everything else, Germany.

[Karl Grau]

The rest of the cooling system refresh parts allegedly came today. I say allegedly because the box doesn't feel heavy enough to have everything in it. I don't want to risk wrecking my Friday night, so I'll open it tomorrow. Winter finally came so it’s too cold for car work anyway.

I got another quote to paint the front bumper but this time I went to the shitty, scary part of town and it was only $50.00 cheaper. Not only is it shitty and scary, it's also a long drive, plus I'm leery of taking it to a guy who's too lazy to have some friends write a few fake Yelp reviews for him.

The newer BMWs have four female rectangular jacking points that make raising easier than the earlier cars.
I bought these pads that go on a traditional floor jack or ESCO jack stands (which I use on the heavier front end).



I use cheap crap jack stands on the rear so I decided to make some custom blocks that would fit in the modern jack receptacles and offer a teeny bit of extra peace of mind.

I cut to size and then tapped some aluminum stock to mount on the top of the cheapo jack stands.

[tig]

never mind.

[Adam W in MN]

I use cheap crap jack stands on the rear so I decided to make some custom blocks that would fit in the modern jack receptacles and offer a teeny bit of extra peace of mind.

The project before the project. Nice.

[davintosh]

Why did you polish your tiles? They are so shiny. Seems like and odd thing to do.

I don't see shiny, just crooked.

The rest of the cooling system refresh parts allegedly came today. I say allegedly because the box doesn't feel heavy enough to have everything in it. I don't want to risk wrecking my Friday night, so I'll open it tomorrow. Winter finally came so it’s too cold for car work anyway.

Just looking for an excuse to stay in your Homer slippers and watch cartoons all day.

[Karl Grau]

Cold and raining is a GREAT excuse.

[vinceg101]

You know I'm seriously considering letting you take my Sport Seats in turn for doing all this my car. When can I drop off the car?

Any hopes you can come up with one of those jack stand adapters for the HF 6 ton stands?

[Karl Grau]

You know I'm seriously considering letting you take my Sport Seats in turn for doing all this my car. When can I drop off the car?

Any hopes you can come up with one of those jack stand adapters for the HF 6 ton stands?

Don't bring it to me, it will have coolant leaking from 10 different places when I'm done 'fixing' it.

Send me a pic of the HF jack stand.

Just thank your lucky stars that the M54 doesn't have the little plastic pipe attached to the engine block up under the intake

I might not have the one you are referring to, but I think I do.



I got everything back together in spite of getting a late start due to the bitter cold. As I was filling it up with my saved coolant/distilled water mix, I start hearing water dribbling on the concrete. Oh for fuck's sake, what NOW? The more I work on this car, the more things start leaking.
It was the goddamn O-ring on the lower hose temp sensor.



The PA Soft scanner came so I was able to have a little fun today.

[tig]

Shocked you can reset odometer with that software. Wow.

[OcCoupe]

Your thermostat is upside down which is why you are probably having issues.

[Karl Grau]

Removed the bumper cover because the M-Tech should be back from paint this week. It had 312 plastic rivets holding it on and two Torx bolts.



The M-Tech bumper uses different fender liners, brake and alternator cooling ducts so I test fitted those.

[wkohler]

Sounds like you were missing three rivets. I counted 315 last time I removed one.

[Karl Grau]

I picked up the bumper cover from the painter this morning and I'm pretty happy with it. I bought an extra tow hook cover just so I could have a painted spare. I still can't believe I let Chris talk me into this project though.




I'll probably let the paint cure another week and install it next weekend. I hope I got the right amount of rivets.

[ElGuappo]

That amount will probably hold the ducts on, but surely not enough for the grill.

[Karl Grau]

It took three goddamn hours to put the POS on but now that I know what NOT to do, I could do it 45 minutes.
The key to e39 bumper installation has always been to put the 300 plastic rivets in last. The Greeks knew it, the Carthaginians knew it, now I know it.



I think I mentioned, I'm happy with the color match. Not ecstatic, but happy.



Sometime in the next 5000 miles I'm going to do a transmission and brake fluid change but otherwise I'm done spending money.

[Jeff B.]

Wow! Looks great Chaz.
How many HP is that bumper good for?