1979 320i Daily Build

[dups]

yeah, not doing that. Where there's a Bill there's a way.

[Somjuan]

yeah, not doing that. Where there's a Bill there's a way.

That's the truth! It's a reasonable budget solution if you happen to have the spare parts on deck. That's about all I'll say for it. Being the US version of the ellipsoids, they actually have a double cutoff both with the bulb and the reflectors themselves. Still much brighter and more useful.

Here's some photos of the ac blower I just rebuilt, very happy with the given airflow so far. The fan is a 5.75" x 2.75" air rotor design that had 'VW' stamped on it. From what little I could dig up on it the CFM rating is about 300, still looking for the stock rating. Resealed, cleaned, and wiring checked. The blower resistor seems to work properly just from measuring resistance across the terminals, but that'll worry me until I find out one way or another by installing it. It's built into the box and very inconveniently placed.

[epmedia]

Some info for those who don't know (I recently learned this); Newer cars put the blower resistor inside the airbox too. I know -weird, huh? They have to do that because the resistor relies on air-flow to keep it cool. I'd imagine a majority of bad blower resistors is the result of stuck blower motors.

[Somjuan]

Fun fact Ep! The benefit of this particular box is that it's actually rather modern in design. Big blower means more CFM as well as quieter flow. On top of that the console design lends itself to improved airflow to the box itself. I only found two other people on the board with one, MisterGuitar and Hagbard. Not sure why they're quite so rare, they're much better than the tiny squirrel cage from what I can find on the board here. Still debating refrigerants. R12 is out of the picture, r-134 makes the other upgrades almost moot from inefficiency, but is better environmentally. If anyone is knowledgable I'd love to hear thoughts.

[Somjuan]

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I did a thing! Took the component speakers from the e28 premium sound and upgraded the 5.25" speakers to Rockford Fosgates. Up front I have a pair of component speakers off of an early model 528e with a similar setup. 4" woofers and a pair of 1" tweeters pointed toward the passenger compartment. None of the tweeters are connected yet, but a set of active crossovers will fix that down the line. I'm very happy with how the music sounds now, the 4x6" sets would start to distort at high volume even with the high pass filters on the amp tuned in to them.

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I'd love to add some sail panel tweeters as well and a pair of 8" woofers under the seats, but at a certain point my budget for this particular project is limited by doing other things to the car. I'm happy with how stock and subtle the system currently looks, and it ought to keep things from being stolen. And I don't want to buy and wire another amp....

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Theres a view of some of the sound deadeninng I did in progress of installing those rear deck bits. Pretty much just slapped the metal looking for rattles and placed it where it sounded off in sheets. I didn't bother to remove the old stuff because the extra mass couldn't hurt seeing as it is a mass damper. Bass is reduced from the trunk, so I may port it somehow instead of the current setup.

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Otherwise I'm still plugging away at the leather dash, and definitely improving with my current leatherworking setup. I may have to hand stitch a large portion of it just because I don't think my machine will handle the sheer weight of the material well. The inner stitching will be fine, but anything visible would suffer consistency on spacing. Whipped this up as another practice piece. Looking much better.

[Somjuan]

I can now confirm that the 2006 640i had some fabulous sport seats. They sit a little too tall though, even with the large range of height adjustment. Also worth noting, but at some point along the run bmw swapped the seat belt, so the actual male part of the buckle will have to be swapped

[Somjuan]

Strike that last comment, it's way easier to have the female ends swap. Bonus points in my book for removing the torx bolt, replacing it with a regular bolt, and then removing the inoperable charge of gunpowder attached to the new style belt buckle. If I were smarter I'd probably just rig that up to work in a crash. There's a fun arduino project for a leter date

[Somjuan]

Just another small update with a finished photo. These are lower than the e30 ones, but ideally would be even lower than currently. I'm just going to bolt them to the floor pan probably, the adaptors work but I'm just too tall at 6'1. In the passenger side my 6'4 buddy barely fits...but he does. So there's a small amount of useful information for you.

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It would be wildly unsafe to be in a rollover with these until they're lowered.

[Somjuan]

UNLIMITED POWER!!!!

Ish. Adding to my list of semi-modernizing mods to the car I'm almost done with the sound system. All the panels are deadened, wires are almost completely run, and so forth.

In continuing with my goal of a retro/stock looking and modern sounding sound system I found a new pioneer head unit that fits the bill a bit better, has three preouts, a cd player, bluetooth, etc.

More importantly, it glows amber and is fully black, to complement the newly traded black interior!

So my resto-mod trend is continuing. Other than that, I scared up more retro tweeters. If anyone happens to know about KD tweeters from the 90's feel free to help me out here, they sound beautiful. They're yellow silk dome tweeters, and very good build quality.

So without further ado, here's the current, almost finished interior.

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Power windows and seats coming soon! I also scared up a set of H1/E4 halogens at the yard, so those are in there now

[Somjuan]

Power seats are wired and happy! I also wired the radio to the new relay box. It all fits pretty well underneath the seat, with some room for expansion! The passenger seat keeps blowing fuses, so I'll have to pop some of the wiring out again. Something might be stuck in the track? It was working perfectly for about an hour.

To edit with more detail -

Just in case anyone wants to do something similar, this is basically a copy of a common mod for offroading jeeps. The fusebox is the stock '93 Grand Cherokee box from the engine bay. Seven relays and a boatload of fuses in a fairly compact box. Honestly it's probably overkill to place the seats and window motors on a relay, but it'll protect the car from running the battery dry if any of them went bad. The fusebox has the second advantage of being easy to place central to the car and therefore make wiring simple to run with the stock harness, and allows smaller gauge wiring as well with shorter runs from spot to spot. The only tie ins to the stock system are the positive battery terminal and the accessory plug behind the glovebox.

The stock accessory bus plug can handle the extra load on the system simply for the fact that the relays pull 200ma apiece maximum to hold open the electromagnetic switch (relay internals) that connect the components by fused connection to the positive bus. Easy peasy. Optional diodes internal to the relays protect sensitive electrical equipment from surges on killing the engine such as amps on the positive bus if you have them.

So in a nutshell, the relays are wired to the positive accessory bus, daisy chained together, and then grounded by the second terminal daisy chained to the chassis. The positive bus is run through the third terminal to the battery and then grounded to the chassis through whatever accessory uses the live wire as well. Solder where you can and heatshrink, then crimp when testing so as to make sure everything works.

That's really about it! I'll tidy this up a bit more later, but it hides below the seat quite well.

[Somjuan]

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...I don't know why all of these photos keep uploading sideways. Just a couple hours ago I got this for a screaming deal from a local guy. The steering wheel is the last sport option missing from the car other than the lip (I'm going for the BBS one instead) and the LSD. Since the LSD will be from an e28 I'm feeling great about this.

Does anyone know how the round black cylinder attaches to the back? The tabs all line up but there's zero tension or anything to clip onto.

[cgifool]

There's (supposed to be) little fingers on the black cylinder that click into holes in the steering wheel.

You can see them in this photo

https://www.ecstuning.com/b-genuine-...r/32331120194/

Mine has a broken one or two and makes it rattle a little when you turn the wheel.

Perhaps all of yours are broken?

I'd try hot glue first before dropping $56 on a new one.

[Somjuan]

You're right Cgi, absolutely no tabs. I went with black silicone as a temporary fix. Eventually I'm sure I'll break down and buy a replacement for it, but for now that'll be fine.

Otherwise I'm really hitting crunch time for finishing my projects before my semester starts, and I enjoy rolling my windows down so that may put a hamper in running another new harness all over the place. I just rebuilt a whole bunch of e30 window switches to use, but I still need to modify something to fit them properly in the door. I have no power mirrors in the car, so that's probably the spot where they'll go for convenience.

The interior is mostly squared away though, so that's nice. The sport wheel looks great, now I'm just up to my neck in alligators...er...leather working projects.

[Somjuan]

...And what I've affectionately/somewhat sarcastically dubbed Project Rocketship is commencing! The local craigslist/Facebook page came through for me in the form of an early '92 e36 M50NV. The swap came with the wiring harness, ecu, and almost all the accessories. The compression test showed 210psi across the board, and as soon as it's on my stand at home I'll do a leakdown. The compression is rather high, but I'll cross that bridge later, since it's not unheard of. A full reseal, new chain and tensioner, and bearings for good measure and this one should be ready.

I'm knocking on wood that stays true.

Here's a crappy photo I shot picking it up from the shop

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24 valves and 2.5 litres of sweet Bavarian dreams. Shame it was in an automatic. As a small bonus, the previous owner already put in a new metal impeller water pump and metal thermostat housing. Corner balancing on this'll be interesting, but hopefully I'll be able to shove it far enough back to make handling not suffer too much