MyE28.com

Y'all,

I'm spending my Friday night going between my basement and the garage, incrementally cutting on and machining an E30 aluminum shift console. This is the first time I've used the milling machine on something other than plastic, and I'm likin' it!

Now, does anyone care to reckon why I'm doing such a thing?

-Shawn

Because you are home by yourself bored?

To put cup holders in?

If it is a cup holder I'm buyin one !

because you touch yourself at night?

So it can fit your e28 console.

Shawn D. wrote:Now, does anyone care to reckon why I'm doing such a thing?

E30 track rat purchase?

Folks, a "shift console" is not the interior "console." It's the bone-like piece that connects the shifter to the tranny. See part #1 here.

No, it has nothing to do with cupholders.

Yes, I touch myself at night.

Yes, it's so it can fit my E28, but given the info in sentence #1, why would I be cutting it to make it shorter, given that the E30 shift console is already shorter than the E28 piece?

Shawn D. wrote:
Now, does anyone care to reckon why I'm doing such a thing?

-Shawn

No.

E30 is not short enough for the other component, therefore you will weld the female part to the male part and use the E30 shift level.

Shawn D. wrote:...Yes, I touch myself at night.

Yes, it's so it can fit my E28...

Now that's just wrong.

Is this adventure so you can replace the sheet metal console in your car, which isn't compatible with the e28 aluminum part?

Shawn D. wrote:Folks, a "shift console" is not the interior "console." It's the bone-like piece that connects the shifter to the tranny. See part #1 here.

No, it has nothing to do with cupholders.

Yes, I touch myself at night.

Yes, it's so it can fit my E28, but given the info in sentence #1, why would I be cutting it to make it shorter, given that the E30 shift console is already shorter than the E28 piece?

V8? Oh and what kinda milling machine you got?

To make it fit your G265 transmission?

Shawn, if you have a real mill in your basement or garage, and know how to use it, you can make all the grammar corrections you want and I won't complain. Well, not much.

Granted I rarely have even a possible use for them, but I love the old "traditional" machine shop tools, like a nice lathe or a vertical mill. I can run them, and kind of get the job done, but not well. But when they are the tool, nothing else works, and hardly anyone knows how to use them anymore.

ismellfish2 wrote:

Shawn D. wrote:Now, does anyone care to reckon why I'm doing such a thing?

No.

Hahaha... good one!

Jays535is wrote:V8? Oh and what kinda milling machine you got?

Nope, not a V8. My mill is a Taig 2019CR-ER, which I got from Carter Tools.

RonW and Kyle got the generic reason correct, but the why of the why is more detailed, which I'll post later.

Thanks for the sentiments, Mike!

Doesn't the E30 M3 use a G265 with an aluminum console? Its been said that someone could use one of those with the G265 in an E28, but AFAIK its unverified...

Kyle in NO wrote:Doesn't the E30 M3 use a G265 with an aluminum console?

Yes, it does.

Kyle in NO wrote:Its been said that someone could use one of those with the G265 in an E28, but AFAIK its unverified...

Oh, I've verified something about that claim!

I see....

it runs a aluminum rail off the old steel plate mounts on the tail housing with a neat little adapter that probably could be used to convert any plate car to a rail provided you could find a correct length rail

Kyle in NO wrote:Doesn't the E30 M3 use a G265 with an aluminum console? Its been said that someone could use one of those with the G265 in an E28, but AFAIK its unverified...

Mike W. wrote: I can run them, and kind of get the job done, but not well. But when they are the tool, nothing else works, and hardly anyone knows how to use them anymore.

So true. I have a buddy who's a welder. I bit the bullet about 10 years ago and started investing in machine tools. Have a crap mill and a halfway decent 14x40 lathe now.

We solve problems from entirely different points of view....

OK, here's the deal...

Last summer, I pulled a complete G265 tranny swap kit from a car, intending to sell it on the board. One week after that, the G260/6 in my 535i got stuck in 3rd gear. Thus, that G265 found its way into my car, along with its worn & wobbly sheetmetal shift console.

I was trying to figure out a way to install my aluminum shift console and UUC shifter on the G265 when this thread popped up. I bought the "bow" and the corresponding bolts to attach it to the tranny, but didn't care to spend the $60-something for a new aluminum console, so the sheetmetal console remained (I only had one more autocross to do and the car is no longer my daily driver, so the shifter imprecision wasn't an urgent problem).

I finally found an E30 in a junkyard that had still had its aluminum console, so I spent a frustrating 30 minutes pulling it. I cleaned it up, installed the UUC stuff and a new inner shift boot, undid the driveshaft and exhaust, and lowered the transmission to disassemble the sheetmetal console so I could get it out. I discovered that the bolts that hold the bow to the transmission were about 4" too long; they are 140mm, but the 25mm door hinge bolts I had lying about were a perfect fit. Once I got the bow installed, I discovered that the E30 console was way too long, so I embarked on shortening it.

The E30 piece was already shorter than the E28 piece, but only by maybe 1/2" to 3/4". After modification, it ended up being about 2-3/4" shorter than the E28 piece. My initial eyeball cut put the shifter within about 1/2" of where I wanted it, so with the lever ratio being about 5:1, I cut another 0.1" off the piece and set about screwing and epoxying it together. However, a combination of fatigue and beer had evidently muddled my noggin, so when I was thinking "0.1" shorter to move the knob aft," I was thinking of the rod, not the shift console -- D'oh! Of course, I didn't realize that until this evening, so now that it's screwed and glued, it's 1" further forward than what I wanted. My first thought was to go about modifying the E28 console, but it's going to be easier to simply shim the bow about 1/4", which will move the shifter back to where I want it.

Another thing to note about the differences between consoles is that the E28 piece is straight all the way from the shifter ball area to within 1/2" of the front eye. The E30 piece is bowed along the forward 3/4 of its length, which made it more difficult to set up for machining, and limited the areas where I could machine it flat and attach the mending plates.

Once I measure the modified console and download the pics from my camera, I will update the original thread referenced above, and will update this one as well.

Shawn D. wrote:OK, here's the deal...

Last summer, I pulled a complete G265 tranny swap kit from a car, intending to sell it on the board. One week after that, the G260/6 in my 535i got stuck in 3rd gear. Thus, that G265 found its way into my car, along with its worn & wobbly sheetmetal shift console.

I was trying to figure out a way to...

Good, now that you have that out of your system you can go back to playing with plastic.
When does 'production' start?
r/
D.

MLastovo wrote:Good, now that you have that out of your system you can go back to playing with plastic.
When does 'production' start?

Each time I'm asked, production gets put off by 28 days, multiplied by the square of the number of times I've been asked by that particular person.

Well, it sounds like the milling machine is cleared off though.