Chromie project - Gherkin pics - 23/05

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Alyman
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:51 pm

It's about time I did a proper thread on my car, so forgive the multiple posts, but I’ve got to bring things up to speed first.

Step one, bought myself an old chromie. 320i 3 speed Auto from back in '83.

Good all round condition, Sapphire blue 2 door.

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Even the bottletops were in great nick!

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Unmarked (but still uncomfortable) comfort Indigo blue interior.

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72K miles on the clock - I have the whole history of the car, and in some years it had only done a few hundred miles between MOTs.

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A really nice original car, which I must admit I was tempted to leave totally stock and sell it on to someone who likes 320i autos. But as I was in need of a daily driver, and this had the solid prefacelift shell I'd been needing for my project, I eventually decided that it was time to make some changes, and transfer over all the bit hoarded from my donor car.
Last edited by Alyman on Mon May 23, 2011 9:30 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:51 pm

The donor car in question was an old prefacelift AC Schnitzer 325ise put together by Rossiters in 88:

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It was one of the highest specced non-sport E30s I've ever head of. From the factory it had an LSD, C/R gearbox, air-con, ABS, electric everything, leather, headlight washers etc etc etc. It was then sent to Rossiters where the full ACS kit, suspension and interior goodies were added. I never managed to find out whether anything was done to the engine by them. At some point the wheels must have gone walkabouts, and the leather interior was removed by the buy I bought the car from.

Sadly the car was very rotten and was beyond help (A life on the NE coast of Scotland will do that). I removed most of the good bits and the shell went to the scrappies.

The first thing I changed was the suspension. I still have the ACS stuff which is quite chunky:

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One of the front shocks was leaking badly though and will need refurbed by Bilstein before going on so in the meantime I bought a brand new kit, made by Spax, and fitted that instead. Just a 40/40 drop, nothing drastic.

The car then looked a bit like this:

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Next stop, engine.
Alyman
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:52 pm

The engine I had spare was the High Comp 2.5 from the ACS kitted car, along with the close ratio sports gearbox. As it was out, it seemed a good idea to have a bash at upgrading the engine management to Motronic 1.3 from the old 1.1 that was in there. The engine had ran fine in its original incarnation, but why keep things simple when they can be complicated? Motronic 1.3 should be more reliable, less wasteful and there might even be a trapped old nag or two somewhere in the conversion. Something to do with 3D ignition mapping, and tuneability.

The conversion involves removing the old engine loom and the "smooth" crankwheel and replacing them with the loom from a facelift M20 and the "toothed" crank wheel.

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While everything was apart it was a good time to refresh things. The Magnex six branch got a lick of high temp paint (which all promptly fell off whn the engine was in and running, but it looked good while it was on te bench :)) and all the belts, plugs, dizzy etc were done too:

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Old loom coming off (don't ask me why this picture is upside down. I've tried uploading it twice - it's the right way up on my system - bizarre):

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New waterpump installed too. Nightmare, as I hadn't realised that there was a difference between waterpumps pre and post facelift. The one shown here is the wrong one (missing an opening) and had to be swapped back to the original type in order that the hoses would connect up to the prefacelift cooling system.

Toothed crankwheel installed

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The engine got a clean and I painted the rocker cover with a random rattle can of copper paint that was lying in the garage. It's actually aged very nicely, it's a really nice dark copper colour these days.

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The Magnex exhaust was looking a bit dull:

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same centrebox after a clean:

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and the rest of it came up just as nice:

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Last edited by Alyman on Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Alyman
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:52 pm

Once everything was looking fresh, it was out with the old:

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And in with the new - with, as always, some help from Paul (Ricey46) and Neil (320Touring) from the Zone.

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In situ:

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There were a few teething problems with the motronic 1.3 upgrade, especially as the loom was connecting to such an early E30 (no round C101 on this car to begin with, so there was lots of wiring trickery, expertly figured out by Willnz from the Zone team and then put into practice by Paul), but I'll leave the details of the motronic upgrade for another thread.

Suffice to say, it was up and running fairly quickly and the improvement over the B20 auto is vast :D


I ran the car like that for a while and nothing changed really except a new set of wheels. I managed to pick up a set of period 16" cross spokes made by a belgian company called RW (long since defunct now). The have an ET of 11 which worried me a bit at first, but I've grown to like the way they fill the arches and I reckon they suit the car:

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Alyman
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:53 pm

After that I had a shot at painting the ACS front valance and fitting it. Instead of colour coding the metal parts of the bumper like it was on the donor car, I've decided to keep the chrome on the upper section:

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The rest of the kit will follow at some point, but probably not the ACS skirts - I'd use a different set I have spare.

Next up was some undercarriage work. It seemed to me like the dreaded rear subframe bushes were getting a bit goosed, so it was time to take the car off the road for a bit of work.

Jacked up and onto the stands:

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The rear drum and 3.45 open diff setup:

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Swiftly removed and put to one side.

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The offending subframe buses required both heat and chisels to remove!

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The rear beam was cleaned up and eventually got a few coats of black hammerite.

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And while I was in the mood for refurbing things, I gave a spare front ARB a clean up and a coat of copper paint.

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Alyman
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 10:53 pm

I was replacing the old drums setup with discs while everything was off. The trailing arms i got were functional but a little bit grubby looking:

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They were looking much better with new poly bushes fitted and a decent rub down and repaint:

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While the new handbrake cables and braided brake lines were on order, I got a couple of welding lessons off a mate - the results of which ended up looking like this :)

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Then back to business, and the good part where stuff starts going back together.

The braided lines I bought are from a company called Hel - they look to be good quality, and you can get them made with almost any colour protective coating. I went for red - it goes well with my springs!

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I'd lost one of the exhaust mounting bracket things from my car at some point, so the area was cleaned up and a new one welded on by a mate (I'm still way to much of a beginner to be working on proper jobs).

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Final checks when putting the exhaust etc back on revealed a comedy propshaft guibo, which was swiftly replaced (come to think of it I had started to notice the occasional knock from under the car...):

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Finally the 3.91 LSD was fitted and the car was dropped back on to the ground, with a few months of dust piled on it...

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After a bit of a clean up...

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Then it was a trip to the MOT station on Tuesday... passed with two advisories. Slight play in steering rack and a missing exuast clamp at one of the front joins. Not too shabby.

Got my road tax disc yesterday, so had it out for a quick spin after work today. Awesome. I'd forgotten how much I like this car!

And there we are - up to date :D
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:10 pm

Nice :D
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:12 pm

Good effort! Don't feel to bad about playing with an original unmolested car.

320i Autos are no fun!
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:14 pm

Aint that a peach :D

I love that colour and the very rare AC valance makes it look ace ..
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:22 pm

...what a difference those 16" BBS have made. Nice.
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Post Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:27 pm

Chromies FTW!

Lovely looking car Aly
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Post Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:49 am

Nice!Keep up the good work :cool:
They don't make bm's like this anymore!..They should.
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Alyman
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Post Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:28 am

Cheers. I'm almost a bit scared of doing more to the exterior as it looks pretty good at the moment, but I’ll be taking the plunge with the rest of the kit at some point soon.

Next instalment will be the interior though ”“ I should be doing some work on it at the weekend. Now that I have a project thread, I’ll be sure to upload some photos as I go along!
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Post Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:38 am

Looking good Aly :D
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Post Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:23 pm

very nice car... :cool:
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Post Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:29 pm

The exterior is perfect, looks absolutly spot on! I quite like the copper colour rear arb too. :cool:
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Post Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:29 pm

Big fan of this. Good work.
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Post Sun Feb 27, 2011 1:28 am

New Chromie club member, It is beautiful. Good job mate.
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Post Sun Feb 27, 2011 1:50 am

Looks awesome that does fella! Funny how chromies are the in thing these days 8)

A morons guide to the Motronic upgrade would be ace as well, mine has the C101 though thankfully but still baffled with what else needs doing with the wiring.
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Alyman
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Post Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:18 pm

OK - next update, interior time.

I had two interiors to choose from, one white one black. I put the white in for a mock up, but it was definitely a clash with the exterior colour:

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”¦so in the end I decided to give the black leather a quick refurb then use that - the bonus being that the black stuff is heated too. The front seats had been kept under cover in the workshop so weren’t too bad, but the rear bench had been stored up on the rafters so it was a bit dusty to say the least.

Before cleaning

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During cleaning

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And after cleaning.

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Alyman
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Post Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:19 pm

Note the discoloration in the creases making them stand out a lot more. Bits of the front seats were in dire need of recolouring too, so I got myself some spray dye (not leather paint) and set to work bringing the colour back to the seats. Some during and after shots:

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Alyman
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Post Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:20 pm

Once the seats were looking good, I had to work out a way of making them fit into the car. The problem with fitting a set of later seats into an early car is that the "feet" of the seats are twice as deep on the later seats as they are on early ones. This means that the studs on the floor of my car were not long enough to fit the later seats. Here's a pic of the difference in depth:

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The solution seems simple enough: swap the runners. It's not quite that easy though. The pic below shows the two sets of runners - you can see that the runners themselves are actually slightly closer together on the prefacelift set (the set on the right) because they are not in line with the holes in the feet, like on the later runners on the left hand side.

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Because of this the connecting bar from the early seats has a different design from on the later seats- it come straight down and meets the runners square on.

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On the later seats the connecting bar is designed for runners that are wider apart, so it has a "wavy" design that allows for this:

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Without completely dismantling the seats to see if it would be possible to swap the connecting bars, the only solution I could see was to bolt the connecting bar to the outside of the runners. It’s not an ideal solution, but good enough for now - the interior will be coming out again when the carpets get dyed and the door cards are replaced, and I'm hoping to have found another solution by then.
Last edited by Alyman on Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:20 pm

Once the runners were sorted, it was time to wire up the heated seats loom and sort out the switches etc. The loom attaches to the accessory socket behind the glovebox (it earths nearby too) and I decided to run the wires through the centre console, and then have the wires to the seats running down each side of the transmission tunnel, under the carpet to the slits under the seats.

As for the switches, I first had to make holes for them - on the bottom of the rear section of the console there are the markings for the switches. The best way I found for cutting them out was to heat a stanley blade and then push that through from the bottom, giving me the guide lines I needed to be able to continue the job from the top.

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Cutting out the holes and making sure that the switches fit:

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I also had a leather handbrake handle and gaitor to go on, which got fitted along with the rear section of the console.

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Alyman
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Post Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:21 pm

Finally, it was a case of bolting in the seats, making sure I had a fuse in the right spot, then starting the car and flicking a switch to see what would happen.... and the news is 50% good - both seats heat, but only on the "back elements". It's still very welcome on cold morning... I'm kind of getting addicted to having them switched on. A project for the future will be to see if I can fix the elements on the lower parts of the seats.

For the time being though, I'm liking the way that the interior is looking. Glad I went with the black instead of the white and that I managed to get the heated loom wired up.

Some shots with the seats, switches and handbrake gaitor/handle installed:

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Post Sat Mar 12, 2011 9:52 pm

Sweet as . :cool:
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Post Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:07 pm

Next up was to try out a different set of injectors. I had a set of M50B20 grey top injectors ready to go in and replace the stock M20b25 ones. The reason I thought I’d try it is that the later type III Bosch design (with four pintle holes spraying fuel out rather than just one) should be better at atomizing fuel, and thereby create a cleaner, more efficient burn. The flow rate for M50B20s is almost exactly the same as the rate for stock 2.5 injectors, so there should be no problems with overfuelling.

While I was under the bonnet I wanted to have a look and see if I could figure why my car was a bit rough from cold start. After plenty of research on the Zone, the C191 plug had been mentioned as a popular culprit. It’s highlighted in the picture below.

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The two parts screw apart from each other, so first thing I checked was the condition inside. All good there, but I’d read that mostly the problems are located under the rubber boots before the connectors, so I pulled each of these back and checked the condition of the wiring inside. All looked good but I gave them a quick clean up just for good measure”¦

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”¦and that did the trick. Nice and smooth through the revs now, straight from cold.

I moved on with the injector upgrade by removing the fuel pump relay and cranking the engine to release most of the pressure from the fuel system. I then removed the fuel hoses from the front and rear of the fuel rail. The rail itself still contained fuel so I had to have plenty of stuff handy for catching/soaking it up and disposing of it. I removed the brace between the rocker cover and the inlet to get better access for unclipping the electrical connectors from the injectors, then I unplugged the C191 to give me the slack I needed to pull the connector loom box out of the way and expose the four bolts holding on the fuel rail. With the four bolts out of the way, I then removed the six retaining clips that hold the injectors into the fuel rail and then prised the rail off the injectors”¦ although one or two remained in the rail and popped out of the engine. Either way, job done.

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The old ”ablue top”a injectors

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This shot, although hideously out of focus, shows the part of the injector that counts as far as this experiment goes. The small silver area has four ”apintles”a (holes) instead of one, as used on the older design.

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For fitting the new injectors I decided it would be easier to insert the injectors into the fuel rail on the bench and sort out the fiddle retailing clips, and then install the whole thing as one into the engine. To give myself the extra clearance I would need for doing it this way, I removed the rocker cover from the engine.

The new injectors in situ:

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And that’s it really. The engine runs perfectly on the new injectors, and there has been no noticeable improvement or deterioration in performance (although they are a little quieter than the old M20 injectors). I’ve not had the car out and about enough to see what kind of difference it has made to economy, which is where I suspect there might be slight gains to be had.

Now that the engine is running well, I think it will be due a remapping session fairly soon, as I have no plans to modify it further for the time being. Apart from maybe a 272/272 cam. I need to give that some thought.
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Post Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:29 pm

Excellent write up mate, a very very nice car :cool:
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Post Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:58 pm

Nice thread, always liked the look of this car from your sig pics. :cool:
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Alyman
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Post Mon May 23, 2011 9:28 pm

Well the ol' chromie is now living in London, and as I don't have any garage space down here I've not really done anything except drive it. I took it out at the weekend and thought I'd trya to get a nice shot for the reflection competition. I ended up going in to the City and getting a couple of pictures by the Gherkin. I never managed to quite get the shot I was after, so I freely admit I laid on a heavy dose of photoshop to the reflection photo. I quite liked the 'arty' look, so I put another couple of the pics through the PS wringer...

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Post Mon May 23, 2011 10:18 pm

Cant believe i aint seen this thread til now..

Car looking ace my man, and lovvin the heated leather- looks exactly like the old calypso did inside.

top work!

also glad the m50b20 injectors are working out- I've still to figure out what the m20b20 equivelent would be :eek:
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Post Mon May 23, 2011 10:48 pm

Your car has come along way just what the factory ordered! :cool: :D
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Post Tue May 24, 2011 9:19 am

That is a seriously nice car,
Love what you've done with it,
Any more updates planned ?
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Post Tue May 24, 2011 11:17 am

Veeeeery nice and subtle 8)
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Post Tue May 24, 2011 7:57 pm

Chromie rightness FTW!

Nice shot!
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Post Wed May 25, 2011 8:45 am

320Touring wrote:Cant believe i aint seen this thread til now..

Car looking ace my man, and lovvin the heated leather- looks exactly like the old calypso did inside.

top work!

also glad the m50b20 injectors are working out- I've still to figure out what the m20b20 equivelent would be :eek:
Cheers mate - quite ironic that I've finally wired in the heated loom - there's not quite so much call for it down here :)