Getting this 3.0CSi back on the road

[mulberryworks]

I recently got a MaxJax and am pretty pleased with it. It was on sale through Costco, so that was nice. I only have a 9' ceiling so it's the only one that would work for me. At it's max height it's enough to roll around on a very short stool sitting upright. I put a thick foam pad on a Harbor Freight furniture dolly and covered it with some spare vinyl.
I'm planning on getting a longer hose made for one side so I can put the pump next to one of the columns rather than have it live around the front of the car.

I'm envious of your space, I have a one car garage to work so I've had to build a storage shed in the back yard to clear out some elbow room.

Ian

 

[Bmachine]

This thread becomes more fascinating all the time...

I love the idea of building a garage for the car since you had nothing else to do. ;-)

And, btw, what an idyllic setting. With a lake right next to your house...

 

[Gransin]

I recently got a MaxJax and am pretty pleased with it. It was on sale through Costco, so that was nice. I only have a 9' ceiling so it's the only one that would work for me. At it's max height it's enough to roll around on a very short stool sitting upright. I put a thick foam pad on a Harbor Freight furniture dolly and covered it with some spare vinyl.
I'm planning on getting a longer hose made for one side so I can put the pump next to one of the columns rather than have it live around the front of the car.

I'm envious of your space, I have a one car garage to work so I've had to build a storage shed in the back yard to clear out some elbow room.

Ian

Yes, I've been reading alot of positive things about the lift, downside is that it is quite expensive at 3200€ delivered home. I was thinking the same thing, putting longer hoses and even maybe some piping in the concrete floor from where the posts would stand to a corner where I could have the hydraulic pump, so the hoses don't have to lay around all over the floor.

One can never have enough space, I'm sure my garage will be way too small after putting in all the tools and stuff + one or two cars. But that's how it is. There will be a cold storage-attic on top of the garage so that will help a little with part storage.

This thread becomes more fascinating all the time...

I love the idea of building a garage for the car since you had nothing else to do. ;-)

And, btw, what an idyllic setting. With a lake right next to your house...

Haha ;-) It was fun and educating, I've never built a house-foundation before. I was planning on building everything myself but after thinking about it I had to take in some help to construct the structual walls and roof. But hopefully I'll manage to finish everything that is left by myself with some help from friends and family.

And yes, we love it here, we really lucked out finding this place when we were searching for houses.
Just finished up fixing up the sauna, looks so much better than the pale thing it was before.

Cheers,

 

[mulberryworks]

Yikes, that's quite a bit more than I paid. With tax and delivery, I paid almost half that, equivalent to 1732€ for my MaxJax. Hard to beat the purchase power of big box chains like Costco. Too bad IKEA doesn't sell auto lifts.

I had about a VW Beetle and a half worth of various parts above my Mom's attic for years. All passed up a ladder and a 1 meter square hole.

Lovely place you have there. Nice work.

Ian

 

[Peter Coomaraswamy]

Not sure if I'm more interested in the garage than the car- they're both beautiful! I think we can tell how much fun you're having with both and that's what it's all about Super great work and thanks for sharing.

BTW, your comment about how easy the trans went in from underneath has a lesson hidden in there; for some reason, even with an alignment tool the trans can be a bear to get bolted up but if you have both out and fit the trans up then remove it for installation then I guess the alignment is more exact. Regardless, superior performance so far!

 

[Gransin]

Thanks to both of you, I think most of the additional price on the lift is shipping + handling, but I'm not exactly sure. I still have some time to figure out what lift I need/want.
And yes Peter, in my experience it's the easiest way to get it bolted up, but in 90% of the cases you don't have both engine and trans out of the car, so then that's not an option.

After a long break from any updates on the car... and after three and a half year of dreaming about this moment, I finally got the call yesterday, the car is painted!

Before that, I'll throw in a couple of pictures from October when we made the CSL-front spoiler fit properly to the car:

And here we are today, freshly painted in Polaris Neu 060. While I'm very exited about this, I'll admit that the paintjob isn't totally perfect or up to a concours level, nor did I pay for that, but for my intended use it will be more than good enough I hope!

It was surreal to step into the shop and see it for the first time, wow.

And a sidenote, the doors are just bolted up without aligning, so nevermind the gaps.


Cheers,

 

[Gransin]

A bit challenging with the weather over here, but we decided to go get it late on Friday to avoid traffic and be able to drive very carefully and slow to avoid salt and sand.
We took all the small roads possible leading home and managed to get it home without any salt or sand spray on it. Phew.

Back home

There is about one single gasket on this car that we decided not to replace, well....
The oil was checked before it was transported to the paint-shop, and it was okay and no problems.
At the paint-shop I think they drove the car a couple of times between the garage and the paintbox + we drove it onto the trailer after it was painted.
In this short period of time, 2 liters of coolant fluid had been able to leak into the oil. We noticed it by a routine check of the dipstick.

So we suspect the headgasket, or shall we say, we hope it's just the gasket and nothing worse. Have to remove the head and inspect what's going on.

Shit.

Cream, and 7liters+ came out of the engine.

It is a bit hard knowing where to begin with a bare shell, but have to begin somewhere. Did some small repairs on the taillights and started putting some dynamat in the car.
I had no idea how to put the dynamat in the roof, but luckily Dequincy had a good answer for that I found in another thread here on the forum.

Cheers,

 

[eriknetherlands]

It's coming together nicely. I like the silver.
Let's hope its just the head gasket.

Are the welds under the rear seat, in the center towards the back, a reinforcement for the diff mounting?

 

[Gransin]

Erik,

Thank you and yes let's hope it's only the gasket. Have to look at it from the bright side, now I can get everything cleaned up properly after the paint and also bring the intake to get it powder coated. Leaving it untreated after blasting didn't work out as well as I hoped for.

The welds in center under the rear seat are where we found stress cracks in the body, we drilled the end of the cracks and simply welded them. We replaced alot of the diff mount "box" under the car with thicker steel, lets hope this helps out to prevent more cracking in the future. There are some pictures of it on the first page of this thread.

Cheers,

 

[Gransin]

Headlights installed:

Turn signals:

Taillights and bumper:

Yes, finally

Front grilles + spoiler:

Replaced the rails for the rubber on the front bumper:

Cheers,

 

[eludvigs]

Beautiful work! Love it.

 

[Markos]

So beautiful - great job!

 

[PrussianMotors]

Wow.. very informative thread. Looks like I have a ton of work ahead of me on mine!

 

[Gransin]

Thank you all!

I made another thread about the setback on my cylinder head, no blown gasket.. cracked head.
http://www.e9coupe.com/forum/threads/cylinder-head-questions.24296/

But everything seems to work out fine, I found a new head and it's currently at the machine shop to get a good cleaning, the water channels pressure tested and a skim. Should get it back in a week.

So this is the current status in the garage:

It gets crowded on the workbench pretty quick when you tear down two heads

The cam from my cracked head has the number three on it, which makes it a 272 degree cam, right?

Between working on the two cylinder heads we also got the front bumper installed:

And let there be light:

Cheers,

 

[aearch]

yea getting the lights working
seems menial to some
but i found it was extremely rewarding.

 

[Gransin]

So I got the head back from the machine shop:

No leaks and everything within specs, so started to assemble the head:

And back in the car again:

Time for the exhaust.

Both rocker covers are also installed, I bought everything from W&N, panels, plastic clips, chrome trims and it did fit together without any modifications.

Got my intake back from powder coating, just went with a clear coat. Didn't have time to assemble it all right now but I took a picture of a C-pipe.

I thank Stevehose for this one, he found a really good paint for the dipstick.
Tamiya Color and code TS-34 Camel Yellow

Cheers,

 

[rsporsche]

so who made the stainless exhaust - W+N or Fritzsbits?

 

[Gransin]

so who made the stainless exhaust - W+N or Fritzsbits?

Scott,
This is the W&N system, very pleased with it!

Cheers,

 

[Peter Coomaraswamy]

One of the finest I have seen, once again I am humbled by such artwork; I was thinking last night as I went through my new acquisition (88' e32) that working on these cars requires a measure of "forensics" in that each piece, scratch, etc tells a story. The time and patience put into this CSI says something about the historical value of the e9 in general, something about its re-builder and allot about the brief period in time where some cars actually seemed to have souls... and every soul is worth saving!

Thanks Robert for a great lesson.

 

[Bwana]

Well done! Did you have the valve seats refinished when it was at the machine shop or just had the surface decked? I would think it would be a good time to put in harder seats for unleaded fuel. The '72's were still designed for leaded fuel, correct?