MyE28.com DEV

I would get rid of all three and get one cool car. Like an m540i.

Today I cleaned up the front of Maytag.

It started looking like this:






Not horrible, by any means, but faded gray and the bumper had no shine.

I pulled the bumper off and was going to replace the bumper side panels with Vlad's, but the ones on Maytag are actually fine...it was just the rears that were really bad. Cleaned everything all nice. I repainted the vertical struts in front of the aux fan; the black paint that was there was badly worn and the white was showing through the grill.



The grills looked like this before. Quite gray.





A friend recently turned me on to "Wipe New". It worked great on his E30, so I figured I'd give it a try. It supposedly really holds up well. It certainly goes on good and looks great initially. We'll see how long it lasts; I'll report back.






Remember the rule: Never put a rusty part back on an E28. Fog light brackets.


Done, including Vlad's much shinier bumper:

With an is spoiler, this car will look awesome. Needs some tasty lovering only.

kzolee wrote:With an is spoiler, this car will look awesome. Needs some tasty lovering only.

Nope. I think the is spoiler makes these cars look heavy. I have an is spoiler that I could easily paint white and put on, but am not going to.

I have suspension plans for this car. They are convoluted and are based on the fact it needs new rear subframe bushings, the UCAs are showing signs, the springs require spacers to sit flat, I have a new rear subframe sitting around with adjustable camber plates for Vlad, vlad is too low, the blue car has a new suspension I'm not sure I want on it, I bought some used BC racing coil-overs, etc.... It will be lower, but only a little. I want to retain the "base model" look. I also really want this car to continue to have a ride that my wife doesn't complain about.

Someday I'm going to upgrade the headlights in Maytag with Vlad's old Cibies. I pulled them apart and cleaned the insides of the lenses. The glass is pitted but they still work great.



I'm forming a collection of stuff to be powder coated, mostly for the blue car. Once I have enough pieces to make a trip to the powder coat place worth it, I'll get the buckets done. The ones on Maytag are pretty rusty.

Maytag and Cupcake should mate… what are your stud fees?

cek wrote:Someday I'm going to upgrade the headlights in Maytag with Vlad's old Cibies. I pulled them apart and cleaned the insides of the lenses. The glass is pitted but they still work great.



I'm forming a collection of stuff to be powder coated, mostly for the blue car. Once I have enough pieces to make a trip to the powder coat place worth it, I'll get the buckets done. The ones on Maytag are pretty rusty.

You should buy my car for a parts car.

Great thread! I've really enjoyed reading through all the work you've done on this car

I found my head! I've had a search going on CL for a while for a good 885 head and I finally hit the jackpot.

Just a few thousand on it (supposedly) since rebuild. E30 guy who met me in his jacked up Tacoma with big 'murican flag in the back. Really nice kid who works at Boeing. Had built his ultimate E30 325i and then got it crunched. My gain.



He included the intake and valve cover, which I don't need.








I noticed this on the head. Any idea what it means? It looks like it's glued on.


For a little extra $ he threw these in:




I have no idea if these 130mm rods are any good. Thoughts?

I'd like to get the exterior of the head, and the combustion chambers cleaned up. Any tips/techniques for doing so. I'm assuming it's be a bad idea to use soap and water...don't wan the camshaft etc... to start rusting.

Now I'm either going to find a nice donor bottom end or rebuild the Seta bottom end I have sitting on the stand from the parts car.

The little glued on tag is a machine shop stamp. Basically means a shop has gone thru the head and rebuilt it.

Kyle in NO wrote:The little glued on tag is a machine shop stamp. Basically means a shop has gone thru the head and rebuilt it.

Any significance to the "HT250"? I thought maybe it had something to how much the head might have been decked or something.

On that topic, is there any way of easily telling that?

The depth of the divots in the head will tell you how much it's been decked.

Mi gusto taco grande!

Jeebus, it looks I stole these rods. $417?
http://www.maxspeedingrods.com/index.ph ... Series+E28



Motivating me to tear down that block and rebuild it.

You reap what you sow.

Bought the same brand rods for the M30/M90 hybrid. They look okay to me...
If'n I could just find a couple lumps of metal to go on the fire end....

The seller reached out to me today to let me know he just realized he mis-priced the rods. Since I didn't know what they were until I got home (I assumed I was buying a new set of OE rods) I felt bad that he'd made such a costly mistake. We worked it out. I still got a killer deal.

Just finished reading this thread, and for the first topic to go through, I'm amazed and impressed at the detail and effort you have put into this car.

Very motivating.

Keep up the good work.

Now to find another spare day to read about Vlad

I finished reading this topic, now realising I have opened up about ten more browser tabs on other topics you have started....

cek, thank you for taking the time to post details on this and your other threads. All your efforts will help many other e28 enthusiasts!

It warms my heart knowing I'm enabling others to not get the sleep they need, procrastinate on doing the things they should be doing, and to get even more passionate about inanimate material objects. Others did it to me, so I'm happy to give back. :-)

cek wrote:It warms my heart knowing I'm enabling others to not get the sleep they need, procrastinate on doing the things they should be doing, and to get even more passionate about inanimate material objects. Others did it to me, so I'm happy to give back. :-)

That's not what I meant when I said I read your threads when I can't sleep.

Kyle in NO wrote:The little glued on tag is a machine shop stamp. Basically means a shop has gone thru the head and rebuilt it.

Thats a heat tab............if the center is melted out they won't warranty their part.......they know you've overheated it.

Yep. It should melt at 250°. Those have saved the ass of many rebuilders.

wkohler wrote:Yep. It should melt at 250°. Those have saved the ass of many rebuilders.

Interesting. I learn something new every four to six weeks.

Karl Grau wrote:

wkohler wrote:Yep. It should melt at 250°. Those have saved the ass of many rebuilders.

Interesting. I learn something new every four to six weeks.

Me, three!

I've been putting them on Used Engines and heads for 25 years...........or well I have someone do it for me.

ldsbeaker wrote:

Karl Grau wrote:

wkohler wrote:Yep. It should melt at 250°. Those have saved the ass of many rebuilders.

Interesting. I learn something new every four to six weeks.

Me, three!

That makes at least 4 of us now.

Of course I would think being warped into the shape of a banana would be enough proof by itself, not to mention antifreeze and a conventional cap raises boiling point to ~275 and the crazy 2 bar caps on later cars pushes it up to around 300, suggesting you could get it pretty hot without a boil over.

I'm still banking on the banana shape to tell me if it's been overheated or not.

Stupid question on the e to i conversion.......since your lowering the compression. Couldn't you advance the timing? that's what we did in the early 80's on low compression SBC's.

(This is one of those "I've done light diagnostics but haven't had time to really dig in. I'm procrastinating at work, so I figured I'd ask to see anyone had ever seen this one before and knew the obvious solution" posts).

Yesterday everything (apparently) that goes through fuse 9 stopped working. RHS front and rear marker lights, dash lights, license plate lights. Check panel indicates the problem (all 3 indicators are lit).

Replaced fuse, cleaned contacts, jiggled fuse, etc... Still no worky.

I'll put a voltmeter on fuse 9 asap to see for sure, but this has either got to be a supply issue (something broke between the light switch (pin 3) and fuse 9) or something broke 'after' fuse 9 (the GY/WT wire).

My suspicion right now is it's in the switch.