83 320is - The Mulligan

[captain awesome]

Thursday after work I took the car around the neighborhood, this time in daylight. No tag, seat belt, hood, bumpers, etc.
The exhaust is now at the top of the priority list. It's too loud to drive anywhere, and certainly difficult to hear any possible issues like tire spin.... With that said, I think the car is running decent. It's responding to throttle well, the clutch stop needs installed as I'm used to the position on the e30. The tires that are on the car aren't exactly sporting right now, and the wiring is just kinda dangling around. I'm driving a half finished car basically. Time to start sealing the firewall stuff, a hood, bumpers, trim, and again the exhaust. I’ve got a 12” louvered glass pack and a round turbo muffler on the way. Hope to have those welded in before the end of next week. I’ve also noticed that I probably got the oil pressure and engine temp connectors swapped. I’ll test that theory tomorrow, and hopefully it’s just that simple.
Look, proof it saw daylight!
Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

[captain awesome]

After my first few times starting the car, the temp gauge would stay fairly steady when running, but just turning the key it would peg out. After running the car for a bit, the oil light would SLOWLY start to light up. I knew something was funky, because oil is getting to where it needs to, and it wouldn't light up until it was warm. Paranoia started to set in that I've got some bearing issues or oil pump problems. The way it lit up really bugged me though, so I checked how I clipped the harness on my 318is with this one and sure enough I had oil swapped with coolant. That makes sense, and best of all was a simple fix.

Before starting a victory dance, I let the car idle for a while to build up temp and see how the gauges reacted. Temp gauge is now doing it's thing, and the oil light hasn't come on at all other than when it's just the key flipped over. Unfortunately while idling the car started to run rough and didn't what to idle any more. After unclipping ICV, the idle started to go back to normal. A minute or two later though it started revving up and dropping, until it finally shut off. Weird. I turn the key over, and the battery barely turns the starter. It's drained. Either I've jacked up the alternator wiring or the alternator isn't alternating. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the alternator as it wasn't looking too purty before I cleaned it up. I was really hoping to get the car hot enough to trigger the electric fan, but didn't quite make it to that point. These little details are the main reason I have chosen to just take my time and work through the bugs. If I tried to drive the car straight to the next event Sunday, I would have been screwed.

My louvered glass pack and small tube turbo muffler should be here Thursday, so hopefully I can get those welded in quickly to help save my ears.

[cgifool]

After my first few times starting the car, the temp gauge would stay fairly steady when running, but just turning the key it would peg out. After running the car for a bit, the oil light would SLOWLY start to light up. I knew something was funky, because oil is getting to where it needs to, and it wouldn't light up until it was warm. Paranoia started to set in that I've got some bearing issues or oil pump problems. The way it lit up really bugged me though, so I checked how I clipped the harness on my 318is with this one and sure enough I had oil swapped with coolant. That makes sense, and best of all was a simple fix.

Before starting a victory dance, I let the car idle for a while to build up temp and see how the gauges reacted. Temp gauge is now doing it's thing, and the oil light hasn't come on at all other than when it's just the key flipped over. Unfortunately while idling the car started to run rough and didn't what to idle any more. After unclipping ICV, the idle started to go back to normal. A minute or two later though it started revving up and dropping, until it finally shut off. Weird. I turn the key over, and the battery barely turns the starter. It's drained. Either I've jacked up the alternator wiring or the alternator isn't alternating. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the alternator as it wasn't looking too purty before I cleaned it up. I was really hoping to get the car hot enough to trigger the electric fan, but didn't quite make it to that point. These little details are the main reason I have chosen to just take my time and work through the bugs. If I tried to drive the car straight to the next event Sunday, I would have been screwed.

My louvered glass pack and small tube turbo muffler should be here Thursday, so hopefully I can get those welded in quickly to help save my ears.

Small successes! Annoying though I bet it will sound awesome once you get the exhaust fixed up

[captain awesome]

It won't take much to improve the quality of sound on this one, so I hope we are both right.

The check list is getting so much smaller. A full day dedicated to just wrapping up little details would dramatically push me closer to roadworthy, but for now it's just a few minutes here and there.

[autox320]

It won't take much to improve the quality of sound on this one, so I hope we are both right.

The check list is getting so much smaller. A full day dedicated to just wrapping up little details would dramatically push me closer to roadworthy, but for now it's just a few minutes here and there.

Oh yeah, a victory shuffle and back step. I've done the same plug swap on the M42 for oil press and coolant temp. Always makes ya pop the oil cap and see if it's getting oil to the top of the motor. Then again the lifters will be noisy as hell if no oil . Factory light is about 7psi so scary for sure if it's ever on.

Sounds like alternator diode or bad regulator. Once the voltage drops near 11V the ECU and fuel pump will cause some crazy running and die. Also the ICV may need some lube. The ICV itself can cause idle to oscillate if not working right. Arrow toward motor if not checked again.

You'll like the muffler regiment. Will be throaty top of the revs but slightly larger than stock sound at idle. IMO perfect M42 representation. Not loud or obnoxious at all. I like to hear the engine when I flog it.

It will work out with more time, just chip away at it.

[captain awesome]

I put the battery on a trickle charger for now. I'm pretty sure all of my cheap multimeter batteries or fuses are toast, but will ruffle through them before spending cash on another. If I remember correctly the regulator is an easy fix, but I'll price out another alternator to see if it's cost effective.

I'll look at the ICV position and lubricate as well. It seemed to be doing it's job after some soaking freed it up, but there is a distinct possibility that I got the direction flipped.

Muffler stuff rolled in last night, but I've got a full weekend of activities planned so no work until next week. I'm pretty sure the wife was more excited than me to see them.

[captain awesome]

I had to clean up the garage this afternoon, and managed to spend a few minutes putting the front bumper and grill stuff back on. I need to epoxy a couple brackets for extra bracing, but nothing too serious. The rear bumper stuff looks like a couple L brackets, and the sooner they are bolted in place, the sooner I'll stop trying to vomit looking at that funky e21 butt.

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

[OLD MAN]

OK - Ok!

You are making me want to get my track car out and runnning it!!!


Looking great - you are getting close to the really fun part.

[captain awesome]

OK - Ok!

You are making me want to get my track car out and runnning it!!!


Looking great - you are getting close to the really fun part.

It's so close, but unfortunately I'm changing some things up in life. As soon as I get some of the kinks sorted and the title shows up in the mail I'm going to be selling it. If I get no takers, it will be stripped of the pricey parts and scrapped. Hate to do it, but I have some things planned out that don't include all this stuff.

[captain awesome]

Saturday the new owner picked up the car, and assured me if any new progress is made, it will be posted in this thread.

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

[cgifool]

Sounds like a good outcome, congrats to all!

[okieflats]

Is the new buyer getting the m42 with it?

[captain awesome]

Yup. I won't give away too much, as I think they have some plans for it and I don't want to speak out of place.

[autox320]

Yup. I won't give away too much, as I think they have some plans for it and I don't want to speak out of place.

Sorry to see the project end here man wtf ; but understand. Hope whatever is going on it's a good thing

[captain awesome]

Sorry to see the project end here man wtf ; but understand. Hope whatever is going on it's a good thing

I'm selling my e30 as well. It seems weird typing that out, but I am trying to reduce the amount of tinkering while maximizing seat time. To really get the e21 where I wanted it, would require me to haul it everywhere. That means I have to buy a trailer and something to tow it with. So two more pieces of property to pay tax on, extra insurance, and maintenance. I then found out I would have to keep the trailer behind a fence, which I don't want to build. It kinda snowballed.

Anyway, I wanted to buy something that I could do track days with, autocross quite a bit, and also be my daily with all the creature comforts neither of my BMW's currently provide. The answer was a highly modded 13 Scion FRS. Loads of suspension goodies and other niceties the owner already did for me. I plan to run it as is right now and see how it goes, but future plans include an open flash tablet with an e85 tune and possibly a header. That should put 200 to the rear wheels. If I can manage to get the time off, I'll have my first ever HPDE on the 9th of May.

Here's a crappy pic of it and the bottom part of the sheet is the current alignment settings.

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

[autox320]

I'm selling my e30 as well. It seems weird typing that out, but I am trying to reduce the amount of tinkering while maximizing seat time. To really get the e21 where I wanted it, would require me to haul it everywhere. That means I have to buy a trailer and something to tow it with. So two more pieces of property to pay tax on, extra insurance, and maintenance. I then found out I would have to keep the trailer behind a fence, which I don't want to build. It kinda snowballed.

Anyway, I wanted to buy something that I could do track days with, autocross quite a bit, and also be my daily with all the creature comforts neither of my BMW's currently provide. The answer was a highly modded 13 Scion FRS. Loads of suspension goodies and other niceties the owner already did for me. I plan to run it as is right now and see how it goes, but future plans include an open flash tablet with an e85 tune and possibly a header. That should put 200 to the rear wheels. If I can manage to get the time off, I'll have my first ever HPDE on the 9th of May.

Here's a crappy pic of it and the bottom part of the sheet is the current alignment settings.

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

Dude! Another one of my fav cars. The FRS is good out of the box. Lots of mods and very track capable as well. A pure drivers platform. Bravo and well done. Carry on Sir

FRS is much better than the cousin BRZ especially out of the box. I know same engine but the platform is different. FRS all the way for track minded junkies

[Erik Dlux]

I feel really sad to see you sell something you worked really hard on. I understand the logic though. I think it just hits me twice as hard because I have fresh empathy after doing my build .

That alignment print out is cool! Did you get that done? If so, how much did you pay? I need to get mine done with something other than a year measure. lol

[captain awesome]

Yeah, I spent a while thinking hard on it, and it was the only car that ticked all the boxes. I'm really excited to do basic maintenance and upkeep for now. Future mods are an open flash tablet with an e85 tune as that's a 200hp to the rear mod, and possibly an equal length header. It grips for days where my e30 would just flop over. My first autocross with it is this Sunday, and I think it's going to go well. It's the best money I've ever spent, and it really wasn't even that expensive to acquire.

Looks like that guy was killing it on the braking zone. Mine has DBA T3 Rotors and Yellowstuff pads, and it's insane. I don't have a ton of cars to compare to, but it's the most capable I've driven.

[captain awesome]

I feel really sad to see you sell something you worked really hard on. I understand the logic though. I think it just hits me twice as hard because I have fresh empathy after doing my build .

That alignment print out is cool! Did you get that done? If so, how much did you pay? I need to get mine done with something other than a year measure. lol

It was a tough decision, but after putting everything on some scales, this made the most sense and balanced out right. My wife and kids love the new car, and I'm grinning from ear to ear.

The print out is what came with the car. The guy had like 5-6 alignments with the same shop that must be pretty well known for it. Total I think he spent close to a grand on all of them, but I think they were around $175 each at that level. They did height adjustments for him and then the alignment based on his input. Would be nice to see some corner balance figures too, but didn't get that. I need to find place local to me that does similar work, this place is 3 hours away from me.

[johnd15]

Hey guys! I'm John, the guy who bought the Mulligan from Derrick(captain awesome). You all might remember me from last year, I bought the turbocharged '78 E21 last year and had a question about the Recaro seats. Well digging into that car I just found an enormous amount of rust, though I still planned on fixing it. But when Derrick put his stuff up for sale, as rust free as the car is, I knew I had to get it. Unfortunately I have to scrap the '78 at this point, so sometime in the future I will part it out after I take what I want from it, so stay tuned for that!

On to the car, I picked it up last Saturday and had one goal in mind; make the MidAmerica '02 Fest in Eureka Springs Arkansas, about 40 minutes from my house. That meant I had 5 days to get the car streetable, which meant;

do the exhaust
fix the idle issue it had
get an interior in it
relocate the battery to the trunk.

The first project was the battery relocation, I wanted to get a regular battery in the car, and had all the wiring and stuff from an E36 convertible we parted out. I still need to button it up and make it more permanent, but it works for now.







Next was the idling issue. Once the car started to get warm it would sputter and die. Started with the fuel lines, making sure pressure was good and that the return line wasn't clogged. While I was doing the pressure test, I realized that I had forgotten to plug the airflow meter back in, and as soon as I did that, it died. Bingo, got a meter I had off of an '95 318i and that fixed the problem.

The very second I had fixed the airflow meter, the radiator started leaking at the expansion tank. The '95 came to the rescue again as it also had a brand new radiator. Unfortunately, the stock radiator was COMPLETELY different from the Chinese one Derrick had to use for budget reasons, and it took quite a bit of modifying. I also replaced the thermostat housing to fix a leak that was coming from a small crack in the housing.

After that was the exhaust, we welded the new resonator that came with the car on and then used the stock(I think) piping/muffler to finish it off. There is a tiny exhaust leak from somewhere but it still sounds pretty good!



The racing seat was removed from the car and we welded the stock brackets back in, then I took the carpet and seats from my '78 car and put those in, and I put the dash back it to hold the instrument cluster. With time running out, we were able to get this all done, and by Thursday I took the car for a shake down of about 70 miles!!









And on Friday, my brother and I headed out to the '02 Fest!!! It was a blast, although we were kinda nervous starting out, we didn't know what the '02 guys would think about a multi colored E21 crashing their party. While they did tease us a little bit, they were happy to see us and welcomed us to the group. Friday started with a drive to Rogers, lunch, and the back to Eureka for some tech sessions. My car even was picked to for the buffing demonstration! Saturday there were more tech sessions, and we had all the cars photographed, and we took one last drive out to the Beaver dam before the awards/closing ceremony. It was an amazing event!






And what do you know, another E21 was there! A 1982 320is!!



















LOL!!! How perfect is this?



























74 2002's, 2 E21's, 1 E30, 1 Barvaria, and 1 1800, 79 cars in total!! There were also 3 other M42 swapped cars there!

Everyone loved the car, and wanted to make sure I let Derrick know what an amazing job he did with the swap!

So from here I plan to mainly get the car resealed by get a sunroof delete plate for it and plugging up the firewall. Then hopefully we can repaint it, get the Euro grills on it, chrome mirrors, buy a matching rear bumper, ect. It also needs a skid plate BADLY(see upper photo), I'm pretty sure the oil pan scraped after hitting a bump during the drive... Yikes!!

I'll just make it a fun street car to enjoy. So stay tuned!!

[captain awesome]

This is awesome John! The car really couldn't have gone to a better guy to get it going, and glad to hear the issues you had weren't completely terrible. I'm sure your Dad is figuring out a manifold right now for future turbo fun.

[johnd15]

Thanks Derrick! Yeah they were more annoying than anything, nothing very hard to fix. Lol! We've talked about it a little bit, definitely something we'll think about in the future. Though I think those roots style supercharger kits are really cool too!

[captain awesome]

Yes they are nice, but often at super high price for a used up unit. Also you have to convert all of the pulley system to the m44 setup for the serpentine belt.

[johnd15]

Yeah they are a bit out of my price range for sure. I'll just stick with the power I got for now, it's a very peppy car even as it sits. Could use a little more at sub-3000rpm but it picks up quick after that.

[captain awesome]

A MarkD chip is the best bang per buck. If I didn’t sell the e30 so quickly I would have sold you mine. There’s a used one on r3v I think.