Coast to coast road trip with a 5x8 enclosed trailer, follow along for laughs

[Mannyf540]

Awesome pics Joe, I really enjoyed your Insta!!

Good luck out there, sad to say a varmint almost took out the ol’E39!!
Glad you got the Spal hooked up and squared away.

[joekitch]

i mean i should have put the spal on before i even made the trip, instead of fooling with the mechanical fan, which doesn't jive with the zionsville shroud much anyway.

got to say though, the fan being at full blast all the time is getting a little annoying.
any recommendations on good pwm fan controllers i can toss in with the relay setup?
i'll do that along with replacing the aux fan, so both will work together and roughly follow eachother's speed as temps climb

[JimLev]

Joe, were driving thru AZ, there's a dead rabbit on the road, must be yours. Should I give it last rights or send it back to you for a hood ornament?

[joekitch]

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Is it about half way along this stretch from springerville to Winslow? If so, that's probably him but I got no use for a dead rabbit so, last rights it is.

[Mannyf540]

Joe, were driving thru AZ, there's a dead rabbit on the road, must be yours. Should I give it last rights or send it back to you for a hood ornament?

I say the E39 Mafia, take that there rabbit’s head back to Joe, Jim.

As he tried to take out a fellow E39er, off with his head Jim!! Wascowy wabbit!

[computiNATEor]

I almost hit a small rabbit today. He zig zaggedtoo! They must have it out for us!

[JimLev]

I say the E39 Mafia, take that there rabbit’s head back to Joe, Jim.

As he tried to take out a fellow E39er, off with his head Jim!! Wascowy wabbit!

Maybe chop off it's foot for a lucky key chain.
Had 2 deer cross the road in front of me today on the way to Sedona. They knew better than to stop and change direction.

[joekitch]

I actually saw like seven deer when going south from Winslow to Mesa through Tonto National forest at night. That ride was literally the most terrified I have ever been.

Anyway, a strange thing. You know those misfires I've been fighting? At idle and during hard pulls with the trailer? I just swapped ignition coils for cylinders 1 and 3 last night and the misfires vanished completely. Although maybe I just jinxed myself by saying that.

[StephenVA]

Keep rolling! Enjoy the ride through the Southwest in summertime..... Hot hot hot!

[joekitch]

what's the current wisdom on the best fitting aftermarket front bumper?
i imagine i'll get an aftermarket m5 rep (with headlight washers) and then buy an OEM t-bar to get it back to msport looks

[justinca540i]

There's a place across the bay in dublin that sells them prepainted iircl they should be on sale rn for around $300 called dublin customs and colisons or something similar. I've used them in the past

[joekitch]

these guys?
https://www.yelp.com/biz/dublin-collision-repair-dublin
$300 for an already painted bumper is extremely nice...would it be annoying enough to fit that i'd be better off letting them do mounting and fitment or can i just do it myself? i've removed and put on the front bumper a few times before...which reminds me i need to get new washer lines

[justinca540i]

IMG_0478 (1).jpg

This was my E39 with one of there bumpers and I installed it at home

[BimmrMeUpSnotty]

There's a place across the bay in dublin that sells them prepainted iircl they should be on sale rn for around $300 called dublin customs and colisons or something similar. I've used them in the past

Haha! When I was ten years old, my friends and I would ride our dirt bikes on the horse trail from Walnut Creek, it was only 17 miles away, but as a kid with other kids that far away from home, it was cool. We would ride to a small bike shop in Dublin for some hop up parts, get chased by the cops, we’d ditch them on the horse trails, same with the cops in Walnut Creek, seems like there was always the same two cops that wanted to bust us, we were to good, they never got us in all the daily chases.... lol!

[justinca540i]

Sounds like fun. Lots of good childhood memories I take?

[BimmrMeUpSnotty]

It was real world Dukes Of Hazzard stuff, which was one of my favorite tv shows at the time, Hell yeah! Sure had a great childhood, still currently living it,.... lol, the toys are just far more advanced, haven’t had any cop chases in a while though...

[joekitch]

ooh, hope these guys are as good as they seem, a solid hour drive away from me even before traffic, and they aren't open on weekends

[geargrinder]

i mean i should have put the spal on before i even made the trip, instead of fooling with the mechanical fan, which doesn't jive with the zionsville shroud much anyway.

That's an interesting learning oppty I think.. makes sense that the visco puller wouldn't work as effectively in terms of pulling air through the whole fan. In fact I think the stock shroud has some advantages over-all in aerodynamics, being deeper and slightly tapered around the back corners to help pulling air down the sides. The ideal metal shroud would be formed like that too I think, but its obv 100x more expensive to make than a flat sheetmetal assy, so... nobody's gonna do that... Not to mention one of the advants of the metal ones is increasing working space in front of the engine... if you make a metal version of the stocker you lose that bonus too.

any recommendations on good pwm fan controllers i can toss in with the relay setup?

I have owned one of these for years, sitting on my "kewl new parts to put in the car" shelf, but have not put it in yet as I'm Mr.One-Fan-Man. I think I got onto them from Mr.PhillyDilly?

http://www.autocoolguy.com/

When I got mine he was anti-screw-in-sensor and didn't want to make them but nice to see he does now. I remember when he first released them they were expensive too but he's priced them down now to a reasonable point... if I ever was to use mine I'd def pick up one of them... Annoying he doesn't use some auto industry standard goddamn sensor but insists on mfring his own soldered up crap, but... is what it is... The controller units are super nice at any rate...

i'll do that along with replacing the aux fan, so both will work together and roughly follow eachother's speed as temps climb

Yeah the thing that's usually done is to set one just below the other, so they come on progressively still... that gives you the quietest operation, and in light cooling conditions runs only as much fan as is needed, while still having a complete fail-over functionality. Basically you can leave the Aux fan as-stock, set your new controller up just below that, and you're good. Also doing it that way means you don't have to bother to run the wires for the AC connection to your new fan since the Aux will (as stock) act as the Auto-AC fan.

ooh, hope these guys are as good as they seem, a solid hour drive away from me even before traffic, and they aren't open on weekends

Dude you really need to sign up for counseling about your drive-whining.

It was bad enough when you thought :40 drive in Mass was a massive life crisis, but bro, you live in Cali now. An "hour drive" is the shortest distance any 2 things are away from each other.

[iShipwreck]

Dude you really need to sign up for counseling about your drive-whining.

It was bad enough when you thought :40 drive in Mass was a massive life crisis, but bro, you live in Cali now. An "hour drive" is the shortest distance any 2 things are away from each other.

Lol. I was going to have an "actually" moment to tell you otherwise but... yeah that's pretty accurate.. Where I live, to get to major areas of interest takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour depending on where you are going and time of day. Oh and there's always traffic. 11:00 a.m. on a Saturday going from L.A to the OC and there was traffic, lots of it. Once it took me 3 hours to get home and I only had to travel about 25 miles. Why do you think we are all angry all the time and got some serious road rage? Beautiful sunny California! Welcome!

[computiNATEor]

We do drive like maniacs out here.

[msvphoto]

We do drive like maniacs out here.

In between traffic jams that is. Tuesday next week is expected to be horrific, especially here in Santa Cruz.

[computiNATEor]

In between traffic jams that is. Tuesday next week is expected to be horrific, especially here in Santa Cruz.

What’s taking place? I have a cousin up there who practically lives out on the waves.

[msvphoto]

What’s taking place? I have a cousin up there who practically lives out on the waves.

Day before the 4th is expected to be the worst traffic day of the year according to AAA and SC gets gridlocked during summer normally. I expect it won't be pretty.

[computiNATEor]

Day before the 4th is expected to be the worst traffic day of the year according to AAA and SC gets gridlocked during summer normally. I expect it won't be pretty.

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, the whole Monterey Bay area can get gnarly. Very few alternate routes. The roads are beautiful up there, though. Better than our concrete canyons.

[JimLev]

That's an interesting learning oppty I think.. makes sense that the visco puller wouldn't work as effectively in terms of pulling air through the whole fan. In fact I think the stock shroud has some advantages over-all in aerodynamics, being deeper and slightly tapered around the back corners to help pulling air down the sides. The ideal metal shroud would be formed like that too I think, but its obv 100x more expensive to make than a flat sheetmetal assy, so... nobody's gonna do that... Not to mention one of the advants of the metal ones is increasing working space in front of the engine... if you make a metal version of the stocker you lose that bonus too.

Yeah, the viscous fan outside the Zville shroud won't do that good at pulling air thru the radiator.
An electric fan needs to be bolted to the Zville shroud or if you are using the OE plastic shroud the fan needs to be inside the shroud to be effective.

Fan10a.JPG