Change of plans.

Project will be going a different direction. Sold my ls1 and t56 today.

Time to dust off my electric car parts and get that project on the road again.

New wheel

Installed the sport steering wheel today. Bought it used and when I got it part of the rim was rough looking. Bit worn and sort of look like it was drug along the concrete. But a little smoothing some dye the clear polish and it is almost like new! Pictures don't really capture it.

Also started on the amplifier install. Got the first one nearly installed.

E46: Clean door panels

Before and after pictures of the door panels. Some serious elbow grease, new speaker covers and it is much better looking.

E46: speakers and obdii socket

Installed the tweeters today. Luckily the aftermarket tweeters fit into the oem tweeter housings. Transferred the oem connector and it was a bolt in place affair. Even with the factory amp the highs are better. Bass is weak. Expect the ohms differences on the speakers is not helping. Will fit an aftermarket amp to drive the aftermarket speakers.

Today we also added some additional pins to the obdii connector. This car has a 20 pin connector still which means txd (diagnostic bus) is not present at the obdii connector.  Only TXDII (for ISO OBDII protocol), power and 2 grounds were present at the connector.   So we rewired it and added not only txd but can bus and I bus. The connector is more useful now. And we no longer need the 20 pin connector.

Also reinstalled the door panels.  Will post before after pictures later.

OEM left.  Aftermarket in OEM housing right

OBDII Port.  Added 4 pins and wired up the Diagnostic bus, Can Bus and Ibus.  Now I have easy access to them.

Not Sure why but the OBDII pin part number eluded me for awhile.  It is listed on REALOEM  Not sure why I hadn't found it sooner.  So I bought a bunch from ECS tunning when I was ordering some other parts.

E46: Door speakers

Since the BMW mounting holes are nonstandard, I fabricated 6 little brackets out of some scrap to hold the speaker in. Here is a picture of one.

Home made Speaker retaining clip



Speaker held in with fabricated clips



Spliced the OEM connector into the aftermarket wiring then tie wrapped the connector to the speaker to keep it from rattling.  With the insulation back one might not notice the changes.

E46: Snow

The E46 at the moment. Not much going on. Actually I do have interior parts in the house I'm fixing up. Though waiting on parts to be delivered so i can finish. I'll post pictures of that later.

E46: New wheels

Had a warm Saturday and took the time time to clean up the car and change the wheels. It's now sitting on the wheels and tires that I had put on my e36-ls1 last fall. The rear tires went from 205mm wide to now 245mm. Car looks meaner with just that change.

E46: Black car II

Saw a deal on a 2000 323i E46. Was cheaper than my 1993 was when I bought it 7 years ago. And this one is in better condition. So I bought it. Picture of it being towed home (it was dark). And a picture of it in the garage at home. Looks like an LS1 E46 is in my future

Bye "Black car"

The end of the E36 era for me. Sold the black car. But not before removing the engine..... What will happen next?

Again. Nothing to report. Really nothing.

Well still in Sweden and the car is in America. Wish I had it here. The autoban in Germany has some unlimited sections and it would have been perfect. But I just have a rental car and it's not even a BMW. or rear wheel drive and just has 2.0L. Oh the pain. Oh well, at least a 6speed manual.

A comment was left asking if I regretted the project. You can thank that person for the last few updates. Got me thinking about this blog again. Hadn't been updating it because there wasn't much new to say. That in itself I think says something. The car has been reliable and happily did it's job and would scream away from any light or up any on ramp I asked it too.

Do I regret building it? Definately not. When I first put it together I wished I hadn't spent so much money on it though. But after 4 years of driving it my biggest regret is that I didn't spend MORE. More on the chassis. I really should have bought a nicer car to start with. Can't fix the past but for the future there's always the wife's E46, Maybe I coudl put my motor in that when I get back. :-).

Garage is finished.

We worked hard all summer to

get the garage done and in August we finally finished it. My children I think were as happy, if not happier than I was. They were very tired of evey holiday, every weekend, and near the end, every available moment during the week (I even took vacation days just to work on it).

Why such a hurry? What difference does a few weeks or months make. Between the time we started the garage and August I accepted a temporary assignment with my company in Sweden. The entire family would be leaving for in August and the garage had to be done and signed off with the inspectors before we left. We got our final approval on the garage the same day our work visa's were approved for Sweden. We made it. Whew.

The car was planned as an oversized 2 car garage. But since there are no tools in it yet and it was a bit more roomy than I thought it would be all 4 cars and my tractor fit inside. Nice. They will all be out of the weather while we are out of town.

Yes we did build the garage

Going through a year of no garage was painful for me. Scraping windows again. Yuck. Then there was replacing the wheel bearings on the Landrover while it was snowing. Putting on the snow tires on a snowy gravel ground. (cars don't jack up well on gravel even when it isn't snowing.) Then there was the rear differential bushing and cooling repairs on the E46. The LS1 BMW was great. Only repair I had to do to it was the rear door latch broke and had to be replaced.

Broke ground on Weding aniversary in april. What a present. Here are a few pictures of the garage being built and the cars saying. Can't wait until it's done. In fact they didn't. Soon as there was a way to drive up in there they were parking inside.

We contracted out the concrete work and grading and escivation. We built everything else. All the wood, roof, siding etc.

No Garage

Did I mention that the new house did not have a garage. Yes it is a disaster for a per

son that loves to work on cars. This time when we bought the house the neighborhood was one of the first things we looked at. What do they say in realestate. Location location location. So true. Garages not being all that populare in this area we ended buying a house without one thinking. We can just add that on.

Here is a picture of the "Fleet" in its parking area. the maxima was sold a few days after this was taken.

Time to buy another car.

Well back 2008 I mentioned my wife wrecking her maxima. She drove the damaged car for 2 years and actually liked it was smashed. Didn't have to worry about scratching or dinging it. Well the transmission was dieing so thought we'd treat her to a non wrecked car. So started looking for another car. Was looking for a 2002 or 2003 Nissan Maxima (would make this her 3rd) but none of the ones forsale near us were what we wanted.

Then one day an add for a '99 BMW 3 series (E46) appeared and the price was very good. The car wasn't too far so we went to look at it. It wasn't what my wife wanted exactly. It was an auto and she hates autos. And it had more miles on it than the maxima we were selling. But it was in really good shape inside and out. Figured she could drive it a year or so and then I could put my V8 in it and get her something else. So we bought it.

Doesn't it look so shinny. My BMW's paint is fading pretty badly and was never that great even when I bought the car. And the interior is much nicer than my car's was. Hoping she breaks the motor soon so I can have it.

BMW isn't just for play

Decided to sell our house and move to a new neighborhood. For those of you that have done moving know it's crazy. And the way the move worked out we had to have all our stuff in limbo land for a few hours (out of our old house but couldn't move into the new house). Despite renting the biggest uhaul we could get every vehicle was needed and the BMW did it's share that day too. For some reason people get the biggest kick out of seeing the BMW with the trailer. Don't know why. It can tow like any other car. And with the V8 it sure has enough power.

Nothing to report

Car running fine. It's garage spot being used for the electric car project. Due to the snow the EV needs moved out of the garage. I hate scraping windows.

I was driving home with a passenger and it was a nice sunny day. Had the video camera with us so we took a video of driving down the curvy road near our house. Turn up the bass or you'll hardly hear the engine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToyQmXmWe3M

Wow it's been awhile.

I had not realized it had been so long since I updated this Blog. The car just runs and runs like one would expect so there is not a lot to say. I've put on more than 10,000 miles on the car now. I don't even think about the fact I modified it when I get in and hit the key. Of course when I hit the gas pedal I tend to remember :-)

I did have a failure the other day. The brake fluid light came on. So I added brake fluid and 2 days later the light was on. I found that the low pressure line that goes from the brake resvior to the ABS was leaking at a spot where I had added a zig zag length of aluminum piping to re route it. I had used one of the spring type hose clamps which was more than enough for the job but somehow it started leaking. Decided to just take that off and put on a standard hose clamp and see if that would fix it.

Turns out when I went to take the clamp off it had cracked (see pic). Weird but made sense why it was leaking. Replaced the clamp and back in business.

It won't be long and it'll be 2 years that I'll have been driving the car with the V-8. Maybe I'll go do some burnouts to celibrate. Who knows.

Well I have been driving the car for more than a year now and it has been quite enjoyable. I still have yet to finish the A/C or cruise. I have replaced 2 tires already. Boy is it fun standing on the gas.

I've enjoyed the BMW so much that I decided my next project would use the same platform. Next project will be an electric car. Planned performance will be better than that of the BMW engined car (obviously slower than the LS1 powered car). Here's a pic of me towing the donor chassis home and a link to a post where I discuss more of my plans


http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/and-so-begins-17727.html

Suspension upgrade

Well I am not sure exactly when but some time this summer I put on a set of new M3 struts and swaybar links and a used set of M3 springs. The original struts were completely shot so it was a big improvement. The ride is just what I was looking for. firm but not harsh.