Project Chronicle

So the spring install went off without much of a hitch.  This included installation of front strut tower reinforcement plates and replacement of the upper strut bearings, as well as a replacement of the front sway bar mount bushings while I was in there.  

What didn't go off without much of a hitch was replacement of the rear trailing arm bushings (RTAB).  Yes there are many how-tos out there as to drilling it out, pressing it out with found items, burning it out (yikes!), etc...  I was able to get them out without issue, but no over-the-counter press or homemade tool allowed me to easily get them re-installed.  Because I'm stubborn, and was already told to do so before I even started, I stopped with the install and bought the tool.  

Kids - Always buy the tool.

All in all I think the car looks great, and the ride is only diminished by some additional harshness.  Yes it does hit bumps a bit harder, but the more noticeable thing is the road vibration.  I realize that you have to give up something to get something, so really, the tradeoff seems more than worth it.  

Last weekend I actually had some personal time, and decided it was best used with a wrench in hand and a mask on face.  In my search for suspension upgrades in preparation for reduced body roll without completely sacrificing ride, I decided to try H&R Sport springs with my already-installed Koni struts.  

In researching this route there are numerous opinions, and I realized that none of them held actual value to me, so I decided to just go for it.  Because coil-overs are expensive and because I already had the struts / shocks, my first thought was to install a Ground Control coil-over conversion, which for the E46 is well-documented and seems like a great choice (https://groundcontrolstore.com/collections/e46-coilover-conversion).  I kept thinking about it, and because I would be doing the work myself and my research said that the Ground Control setup would then require constant tinkering to get the ride height, spring rates, corner balance, etc., etc., all sorted, my best route was a conventional lowering spring.  OK great, now what to choose....  Long story short, my friends at Turner Motorsport suggested the H&R Sport spring.  While in there I also replaced the front strut mounts, front sway bar end links, installed strut mount reinforcement plates, and tidied things up. 

I am mostly distrustful of any aftermarket products where ride and safety are potentially compromised, but man, that body lean has to be sorted out, and doing it on a budget is my favorite way.  As advertised, the drop was spot-on between .5" and .75", and my initial impressions are that the ride has not changed for the worse--  It does feel different, but not in a completely detrimental way.  So initial vote for this install is a thumbs-up!

I'll wait to get an alignment until I get a few miles on the springs, check ride height to make sure nothing weird is going on, and make sure I'm good with how it feels--  I still have to drive this thing so I cannot have something terrible in the ride department, and my original springs are good to go back in if necessary. 

I had to buy a truck in my endeavor to support and protect the human race.  Well, part of the human race, anyway; the part that lives in RI and may travel through one of the 16 Covid-19 mobile testing and evaluation units that were built by my startup, MITS LLC.  I needed something that could tow up to 10k lbs., and the F150 doesn't get it done.  If you step up to an F250 you are very quickly outside of the amount I wanted to spend, and I'm not into the whole Ram vibe.  

First thing - There are no big trucks anywhere.  When they show up on the lot they are usually spoken for.  Next, I had to trade my outgoing 4Runner, so staying within the Toyota family made sense, especially after they offered me $3500 more than the 4Runner was worth because they didn't have any on their lot and couldn't find any to turn in.  I like Toyota trucks, but am not much of a Toyota car fan, and I never really liked the 4Runner all that much, so I was fine to get rid of that and into a Toyota truck.  (Aside - 4Runners have the worst seats I've ever encountered in a modern vehicle, and the engine was also a letdown--  Low power, bad MPG.  Also, the dash and radio kinda sucked.  On the upside, Crawl Control is pretty much amazing, and got me out of an axle-deep burial on Nantucket).  

Long story short, Tarbox Toyota had this truck on the lot and it was pretty much my ideal spec - Grandpa-spec with chrome grille and bumpers, and not a TRD Off-Road or Pro, which are largely stickers and leather seats plus an inflated price, which I didn't want or need--  I just needed to be able to tow.  The Crewmax cab is awesome and provides more interior space than the 4Runner, and the SR5 gives me a 37 gallon fuel tank and aluminum wheels.  

This is my first real truck, and I'm totally into it.  

Every weekend I'm trying tp pick up some deferred maintenance items in preparation for the world returning to to normal at some unknown point in the future.  Today it was changing the differential fluid.   I used Redline 75W-90 NS, which is fine for the open diff that the E46 has.  I used my trusty old pump and the process is straight-forward.  I do find that I also hate the smell of heavy oils such as these, and that it's impossible to get all the oil out of the pump, so I just wiped it off and plopped it in a ziploc bag.  One pointer that I've read for this style of BMW differential - Make sure the fill plug will break loose before opening the drain plug and draining the fluid.   You do not want to be stuck without the ability to get fluid back into the diff in the event that you cannot get the fill plug broken free.   For me it was an easy breaker bar pull and the plugs were loose, but if you have trouble, don't leave yourself worse off than you were. 

So the E46 got a bit of quarantine maintenance on Saturday that included installation of Stop Tech Sport pads, new caliper slider pins and caliper guides all around, and a bedding-in session.  The pads feel great and stop hard, but the harder to believe element is how grungy they brembo pads that I removed were. The brembo pads have been on the car for just over a year and were not driven in the winter, so the weathering has only been done by car washes and the occasional rain drive.  They are rusty with the backing plates falling off, and I can’t say that I would recommend them at all.

So here is my new project.  The site will be a great place to track what happens with it, but initially I will drive it to replace my aging VW Eurovan, while fixing a bunch of deferred maintenance and neglect.  The guy I bought it off of was nice enough, but he had zero receipts and didn't know a socket from a screwdriver, so I'm going into this one planning on learning a few things.

Right off the bat, there is oil leaking from the valve cover (big surprise) all over the exhaust manifold and making a lot of bad smell, the LF wheel appears to be bent at the outer lip causing a chassis shake, LF front sway bar end link is broken (connected methinks), tires are mis-matched between front and rear (one of my cardinal rules to avoid at all costs, but this does have staggered wheels so I let it slide), and the car is totally filthy.  All of this helped with my negotiating, and this 115k mile ugly ducking is now mine.  On the bright side the car is a nice color combo, doesn't rattle or do anything weird, has no dash lights, seems to run great and is faster than I'd expect, and has a clean CarFax.  It checks all the right boxes for what I was looking for, and will be a good project. 

I'm excited to dig in, and to log the project on the site.

Glass out respray and associated bodywork to perform cosmetic refresh of this E9. 

Nearing the end of the cosmetic refresh and final communications between shop and owner.

Correspondence around the spring of 1996 regarding ongoing cosmetic work.

Ongoing correspondence between owner and restoration shop

This captures the initial communications between the owner and the body shop facility. 

These documents show that the car was previously restored in the late 1980s, with rust repair and refinishing the primary drivers of the refresh. 

This provides an overview of the car before it entered into its first cosmetic overhaul with a mechanical inspection and overall condition assessment.