Another pair of Cobra Misano seats....interior makeover started!!

[andy318iS]

I'm confident this makeover will not be completed in my lifetime.

Or mine! LOL

Keep em coming.

Will do my best!

[andy318iS]

Got the rear brakelines remade to suit the pedalbox. It now means all lines have been replaced so 100% increased my chances of having a leaking joint somewhere! LOL.... we shall see.

Onto this weeks update, due to not having any space left on the V8 for a power steering pump I started to think about other options. A few weeks ago I did pick up an electric steering column from a corsa but those things are freaking HUGE! So that was sold on and plan B was formed.

A popular mod for kit cars is to run an electric power steering pump from a Saxo / Pug 106. Not the smallest of things BUT easily plumbed in and wired I though its gotta be work a punt, one cropped up local on ebay so I went round to grab it!



There are a few different types but this is ideal for me due to the external reservoir that I can put where I want (within reason)

I scratched my head for a bit deciding where I wanted to put the pump - obviously ruling out in the engine bay straight away! LOL ended up with think I had the space in the driverside wheel arch behind the front bumper. Ive seen these mounted vertically (normally horizontally) so knew I had a plan and go cracking with some scrapes I had in my stock pile...

Clearing up this mess I then had some space to get on





Given a clean up and a lick of paint it was time to stick it to the car :-)



...and finally the pump fitted, I;m happy to say this thing is mounted SOLID!! I can now measure up for the hydraulic lines and get those ordered! Only a small part but still moving forwards :-)



Thats all for now....

[mmmcookies...]

More

[andy318iS]

Time to drag this into the present! Been a busy few months with life and shit so the car took a bit of a back seat only grabbing the odd hour here or there but things have calmed down a little so its back onto the old girl!

I'm afraid its a mix of phone and instgram filtered pictures these days, sorry chaps!

So onto business, the car was sat like this which look lovely but the picture doesn't really give the true story, the engine mounts were STILL not 100% buttoned up. Reason being is space around the drivers side of the engine, steering column + engine mount = fark all space for exhaust headers! So the plate steel mounts were binned and it was back to the drawing board....



So.... I think these are revision 3.... very simple in there design. I use the phrase of if it looks right, it is right.... the photo shows mocking up the mount strut in the jig I made, the mock up being out of 40mm plastic pipe to get the angles and chamfer etc.



The OE e36 mounts have been junked in favour of some much shallower items to free up more space, its wasn't a bolt in mount so mods to the cross member had to be made.

All welded and done, the engine is finally in with some workable space for the headers....



Moving forwards I picked up some flexi pipe insulation (which is exactly the same diameter as the exhaust tubing I'm going to be using to help me start to get my head around the fabrication of those but that'll wait till next time....



While I'm waiting for some exhaust bends to arrive (an teach myself how to tig weld!!!) I've started the revised layout of the boot install, that includes an upgrade to the air ride compressor, I've pretty much gone as good as I can justify and picked up an Air Zenith compressor! Can't wait to get this wired up and running!





I had to remake the compressor mounting as the Air Zenith is much larger than the old compressor, the front bar is removable so I can still take the battery out before anyone says anything lol.



The boots stripped of old the old install (apart from the motorized tool tray which is staying) with thoughts turned towards the new layout



There's actually alot of crap going into the boot - 2 batteries, air compressor, e-level, 5 gallon dry sump tank and 5 litre air tank! I'm still messing with layouts but it needs to look epic and still be serviceable!



The cars down on its wheels at the moment so any excuse for a snap of the centre locks tucking....



Things are moving forwards nicely at the moment with the gf being away training for work and I've knocked the gym on the head for a while I'm down the garage most evenings at the moment trying to get some shit done!

Untill next time... :-)

[Digitalwave]

Oh yes!

[ColdshotM3]

wow this thread is coming up on a decade!

[andy318iS]

wow this thread is coming up on a decade!

Jeez!! Thats a scary thought! LOL

So.....

2 updates in 2 weeks! WTF!?!!

Seem to have a little momentum at the moment so thought I'd best capitalize on it and get some more shit done!

After digging out my old Optima that I've had for 6+ years (which I bought secondhand anyway) I slapped it on charge to see if it could be saved. I've a CTEK reconditioning charger so gave it its best hope, unsurprisingly it wouldn't hold charge! Not the end of the world but did mean I had to sort out a new battery to run the ICE and airride etc... so last week I dropped past to see Am @ BladeICE to pick up a new XS Power XE12-40, as batteries go these are pretty epic! Super small and super powerful so will be ideal for the power hungry ICe install and air compressor.



So moving forwards it meant I needed to make a battery tray which will tuck in under the air tank and behind the dry sump tank.... raiding my metal of cuts pile I found some 20mm box section.



Which I then cut down along to opposite corners to give me 4 L sections, which I then cut to length to suit



Then stuck it all together...





So that give the battery something to sit in, then I had to rustle something up to hold it in place.... some bracket of cuts, threaded bar and a piece of aluminium...





Got it positioned in the car and made the necessary brackets to hold it square and level



I'd previously knocked up the air & breather tank brackets along with the oil tank stand so all that was put into the car and tacked in place!

Now I know the oil tank stand in on the piss BUT the pre-dilled holes in the mounting plate aren't square so I positioned the stand to suit (before anyone comments lol)



Battery in...



Quick picture of the elevel on the left of the boot



Breather tank...



And as it stands pretty much at the moment! I'm going to be concentrating on getting the air plumbed and wired so the oil tanks will be coming out the way but I think for a while I'll run with this layout and see what happens.....



I have left space down the right side of the spare wheel well to possibly cut out and reform that area for the exhaust for the right bank of the engine! :-D

[Digitalwave]

Keep em coming!

[volodka1985]

I hope I live to see this finished. (I'm in my late 20s)

[elliott95]

^ Hhahahaaha omg cough cough asshole cough cough hahahahaa jk jk

He will finish, i have faith. Come man !!!! Motivation!!! Check out my thread btw i finished my widebody over the summer!!

[andy318iS]

Keep em coming!

I'll do my best!

I hope I live to see this finished. (I'm in my late 20s)

You and me both!!! I'm 33 and starting to worry I won't see it through! LMAO

^ Hhahahaaha omg cough cough asshole cough cough hahahahaa jk jk

He will finish, i have faith. Come man !!!! Motivation!!! Check out my thread btw i finished my widebody over the summer!!

Haha, thanks for having the faith! I'll definitely check out your build thread ;-)

[volodka1985]

^ Hhahahaaha omg cough cough asshole cough cough hahahahaa jk jk

You and me both!!! I'm 33 and starting to worry I won't see it through! LMAO

I meant it in the best way, clearly this project is a big undertaking and life always gets in the way of those.

[Guam135i]

Wow

[andy318iS]

Unfortunately my build threads have been well and truly neglected in recent months think guess the main part is due to social media and just sticking picture on Facebook or Insta :oops: so I thought it was well overdue I tried to wrap up the goings on of the last however many months because believe it or not the project is still going strong!! LOL. I'll start where I left off.....

To enable me to move the car around the garage easier as I've collected more tools which equals less space I picked up some cheap(ish) dollies and got the e36 loaded onto those



Some people may or may not know I picked up a side line project for a few months that distracted me somewhat over Christmas of 2014, carried out a pretty reasonable restoration, decided I wanted to get back onto the e36 so sold the 6 series.

The neglect the e36 suffered....



One of the final shots before the e24 went...



I was digging through some parts I'd tucked away for the e36 and found some old newspaper packing! LOL



Anyway, back to business.... once the e24 was out the garage and up for sale it was time to uncover the e36 and drag it out the corner of the garage, I must admit I'm always excited to get back into the old girl after having some time out!





The only trouble these days is I just like to crack on with the work so I don't take many (if any) progress pictures so the picture below is me deciding to remake the back quarter of the e36 / 46 bonnet as I was never really happy with the quality of the work I'd done god knows how many years ago!

So a template was made and fresh steel cut, shaped and held in place in prep for welding



After super slow tack welding, some fit and finish I put the bonnet back on a mocked up the frontend, it was nice to see a face after so long!! still along way to go but it was a good feeling to see some decent progress being made



I had a little reminisce about some of the wheels and seats that I've bought and sold most without actually fitting on / in the car! haha. The Civic Type R seats or the cloth Vaders never actually made it into the car but I'm happy to say both pairs of Cobra Misanos did with them both actually living on in other peoples projects!



I must admit a couple sets of these wheels were destine for the Bang Bus.... but the Impuls & ZW1's were for the e36....



Talking about wheels though I did end up find myself buying another 10 BBS centrelocks! : damn you interwebz and boring lunchtimes at work!!!



I reminisced a little more about the old Bang Bus.... did love that thing but again it was keeping me from the e36!



Back on the bonnet, after making the new skin and trying it back onto the car it was clear the bracing hit the intake on the v8 so I ended up cutting out the bracing for clearance which left me with a very flappy bonnet so I had to do something about that.... I needed some new bracing.... and before that I needed a metal folder to make that bracing.... so £10 of angle and box later, some welding and bish bash bosh...



Which let me fold nice angles like this....



I'll leave it there for the moment, there is a whole lot more progress to update which I'll try and do tomorrow! So I hope you've enjoyed this for now :-)

[Mpowered02]

Great! Nice to see that you're still plugging away at this car. Looking forward to more updates!

[ayton]

Nice work!

[andy318iS]

Ok, back into the update on this old heap!

So I'd the metal folder made I wanted for the bonnet bracing so that only left me with one thing.... to start making some! Bending, chopping and so on making sure I had plenty of clearance for the intake of course! I must admit it was nice seeing the folder I'd made actually working to a fairly reasonable level of finish LOL



A hell of a lot of hours went into this! I plated over any holes on the underside that weren't necessary (read as all of them lol) ground back all the welds, finished up any little jobs trying to get it ready for the fillering



It'd have been rude on to have tried the bonnet back on to make sure I still had the clearance needed, I think I must have sat for about 20 minutes just looking over the car still picturing the final article and looking like this it seems to be sooooo close!! (but its not really LOL)



Leaving the frontend in a stage I was happier with I got back onto a problem that I think will be the bane of the life for the entire project! Manifold (header) clearance. I'd relocated the steering coloum position on the bulkhead and made a slimline slined link to the rack but the routing still hampered the header space so it was back to the drawing board, jumped on the net and order some UJ's and bits, thought about where the best position for the column would be a got the grinder out



Got the principles set so I was happy and then carried on



In the mean time I needed another run around as the 6 was sold for picked up a Beetle to run around in knowing I really wouldn't bother modifying it because I hate Porsches!



Anyway, back to the car..... sounds stupid by the e46 headlights have never properly been fitted so I corrected that issue, scratched my head, made some brackets, welded some stuff and happy days!!

[/URL]

Love it or hate it I dont care, this is exactly how I pictured it would look and I love it!!!



Unbelievably there's still more to come but I need to get back to work.

[LowFalutin]

This is unbelievable

[liilpa09]

Glad to see the project is still going strong!

[andy318iS]

Into the final(ish) installment of the current goings on...

As the headlights were fitted I thought I might carry on with another small job on the front end and fit the s62 radiator, I was thinking about using an aftermarket aluminium radiator but do like the idea of using the OE rad and header tank :-) the OE item is wide! and meant I had to relieve the chassis rails of some space in order to fit it correctly, I couldn't use any of the e36 or e39 OE mounting hardware so made up some brackets and got it in place happy with its height and position.





News on the engine.... FINALLY I pulled my finger out and thought I better deal with this, after talking with Ergen Motorsport (the guys that made my e36 / s62 wiring loom) I got the engine down to these guys for a full rebuild. I'll detail the works more another time but the basic outlines are it'll be a fully built s62

So one morning I loaded the engine into the back of a rental van and headed the 3 hours down the road to Ergen



A couple weeks passed and I received a nice update from them in relation to the strip down so works nicely under way



So this has let me again get on with the never ending things to do and a biggie is to get the power steering lines made. As there's no room for the power steering pump on the s62 I'm using a electric unit hidden in the inner wing so needed to have some bespoke hardlines made so I made the pattern of stupid angles and went to see a little local industrial hydraulic manufacturers and had these lines bent up for me after some fine tweaking and bending they were fitting nicely, tight against the chassis rails, you can't see from this picture but they also following nicely horizontally to



With that ticked off the list I thought I'd break out some filler and start the epic job of bodywork! Having never done anything on this scale before its been a quick learning curve of little tricks and processes but I'm getting there with the guide layer of filler primer down ready for yet more block sanding





Keeping the momentum going I jumped straight into the engine bay attacking both inner wings (leaving the bulkhead on purpose until I get the engine fully plumbed in) I've since finished the sanding and have shot a coat of primer again ready for more sanding



That pretty much brings things up to date, with things moving forwards nicely I hope updates will be more frequent and of some decent substance!

[Digitalwave]

Looks like you are making some great progress again!

[raoke]

Bravo andy! Keep going!

I think the E46 lights look great. Will you be doing anything mods to that like dual xeons? In the past few years they've come out with many retrofit options.

[andy318iS]

Bravo andy! Keep going!

I think the E46 lights look great. Will you be doing anything mods to that like dual xeons? In the past few years they've come out with many retrofit options.

Thanks man

No I doubt I will upgrade the lighting, I can't be bothered with trying to hide the ballast boxes in the bay! LOL

- - - Updated - - -

A bit of a round up from the last few weeks...

For a short while the car actually looked up a car!! fitted up the wings so I could gap the bonnet. I hate doing body filler work, its so damn boring - fair play to anyone that does it for a living!!!



After what seems like some forward progress, I did something stupid.... unsure how / why I managed to break the 2 front Accuair sensors, I spent quite a while locating them in a position I thought working well. Was pretty pissed off as they aren't cheap to replace but such is life, ordered another 2 sensors and I have them here waiting for fitting and sussing out why they broke also picked up a seamless aluminium 3 gallon air tank but that'll get covered when I get back into the boot install.



On the upside I did get the engine bay inner wings into a guide coat of primer, as mentioned I've not done the firewall yet as I want to get the engine plumbed in first, although I might do it just so its another job off the list! Anyway here one of the inner wings, not totally smoothed as I wanted to keep the seam & spot weld detailing around the turrets



As I can't leave anything alone I picked up a set of coilovers for the Boxster so got those to fit at some point.... KW's - were a bargain off ebay!!



Also finished building myself a new road bike, pretty please with the out come... having been putting a few miles on it to see if anything falls off! LOL



Sanding, filling blah blah blah...... primer!!



And finally (again only the first guide coat) the bonnet starting to take shape, I needed to get some paint on it just for a moral booster! I'm working on the leading edge around the headlights at the moment.



That's it for the moment folks!

[elliott95]

Awesome to see this build still around, i still have my car and i am converting to RHD. Ill post a picture to help you get some moral boost going but it looks awesome man, great job.

Any chance you could send me the link of where you found the steering column u joints?

I am going to have to possibly move around mine to clear the US spec headers. If the column wont clear ill just swap headers though trying to avoid this....

Also do you have the old power steering lines for the e36? If they are RHD would you sell?