CSL Barn Find 2285251

sfdon

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That’s not the filter
Csl and csi has the filter under the battery tray.
 

leonine99

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Wes

Congrats on the very exciting find - and you know you have a daunting project ahead. Is the plan to acid dip the coupe, to really remove and identify all the rust areas? It's staggering how much of my CSi had to have metalwork done after the dip gave the true story.....
 

Wes

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That makes sense. In addition to the gazillion other jobs I'm going to see if I can get the motor running ahead of it going to the body works. If for no other eason than to satisfy my curiosity and to make the car easier to move. At least it's lighter than the one @Markos had to push :)
In all seriousness it will be interesting to see if it fires after 20+ years in the shed. it turns over and has compression, so I'm half way there.
Next steps are cleaning the fule tank, purging the fuel lines, replacing filters etc.
 

Bmachine

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What a cool, yet exhausting story Wes.

Given the speed at which you restored your Ceylon, I expect this one will be in concours condition by Christmas. With a fully renovated house to keep it warm and dry of course...
 

Wes

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What a cool, yet exhausting story Wes.

Given the speed at which you restored your Ceylon, I expect this one will be in concours condition by Christmas. With a fully renovated house to keep it warm and dry of course...

Spot on. Just depends which Christmas :)
 

Wes

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Spent the entire day down at the office today with the apprentice.
The tear down is progressing well but the car is fighting me all the way, which isn't really surprising.

First job for the morning was to remove the muffler and exhaust assembly. As previously mentioned it was being held on with wire and had seen better days. The degree of difficulty here was high as the car wasn't on a hoist. No worries I thought, just grind through the 6 flange bolts on the exhaust near where it passes the gearbox as they will never undo as they are so rusty.

Wrong.

Took me an hour to cut the bolts using a 9 inch grinder in a very confined area. The good news was I don't spray myself with sparks or cut a hole in the floor by accident.
So, an hour later the last of the bolts fall away but the flange wont give. I'm assuming its bound by rust. Fast forward another 30 minutes and still no love. Ok, off to Plan B, cutting the exhaust aft of the flange join. This was a delightful job using a mix of cutting wheel and hacksaw, again so I didn't cut into the car.

An hour later - Victory..

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Where has my lead light gone? Oh there it is. *FYI Lola is always a blur..

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Next job, finish the strip out under the dashboard.
After a lot of stuffing around on account of the nylock nut holding the wheel hun not wanting to give removing the column was quite difficult and required a work around.
An hour later it's out of the car. I'll attack that nylock with the aid of my vice now. Next job, removing the heater.

This one had my flummoxed for a while until some helpful advice from Forum members. I sprayed WD40 all around and into the foam seal/gasket in the engine bay where sits behind the firewall. I must have done this 3-4 times across the morning while getting angry with the exhaust!

Having left it to sit for a couple of hours it still didn't seem to want to move. Time to up the anti. Very, very gently I inserted a 1.5 inch chisel into the foam seal where it runs along the top of the heater under the dash. Having inserted the chisel with minimal resistance I then proceeded to gently rotate the handle in order to gently increase leverage. Pop. the foam seal gave out and 5 minutes later the heater is out of the car. Yay.

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Starting to look a little bare now.

Other jobs we also did today was empty the fuel tank. It had been full of a dilute caustic soda solution for about a week. I thought the tank was actually fairly clean but once I saw the torrent of brown gunk, sludge and rust coming out I was wrong. After rinsing I left the tank inverted in the sun (35deg C) until dry. After that I put in about 500mls of engine oil and turps to seal the exposed metal to stop further rusting until the fuel is back in. The outside of the tank has been cleaned back to bare metal and then treated with Ranex prior to 2 x coats of anti rust enamel. I also found 2 x pinholes along the mounting flange, will get these fixed this week.

The fuel pick up is in good condition only needing a clean with thinners and steel wool. The fuel gauge looked ok on the outside but once I got it open saw it's a mess of all manner of things. the copper wire is broken, the float is rusted in the 'empty' position. I'm not sure if I should even bother with it or just find another @Keshav @Markos would love your thoughts.

After this we called it a day.
 

Wes

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Had a long weekend here in Tasmania, so only really one thing for it really.
In order to break this down into bite sized chunks I've decided to bring part of the car home with me so I can put in an odd hour or two after work during the week.
There are two reasons for this. 1. My workshop is a 10 minute commute from home. 2. I can keep progressing things from the comfort of my home with a glass of red after work.

The first 'mini-project' to get the treatment was the fuel tank. What a mess.
The tubular gauge assembly was totally roached, I'm on the hunt for a new one. The outside of the tank was covered in light scale and god knows what else. Inside the tank looked fairly solid but it was full of gunk. Cleaning down the outside of the tank was fairly straight forward only revealing two holes :(
Inside was a bit more of a problem. Having taken some advice from my radiator guy I filled it with a dilute solution of caustic soda right to the top and let it sit for a week.

Having previously restored a wooden boat I thought bilge water was the foulest liquid known to man. I was wrong it was the contents of my fuel tank. I followed this up with a good high pressure clean. Then left it to dry. It was a 40 deg day so no issues there. I then made a litre mix of petrol and oil, about 100/1 and sloshed it around inside to neutralise any rust.
Pretty happy with the result. Outside got the Ranex treatment on the bare just and then 3 coats of epoxy enamel.
Think the result is pretty good.

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The next area to get my attention is preparing to pull the motor.

Before that though I wanted to see if we could get the motor to fire. After working up a 're-start' checklist that would have made NASA proud Lola (the apprentice) and I turned the ignition and hoped. You could imagine our surprise when the motor cranked and the car lurched forward a good metre or so. Turns out the clutch is stuck. You wouldn't know it from playing with the gear lever but there you go. Scratch that plan, we'll fix all that later. Lets just pull it out now.


First out the radiator. This must be original judging by the BMW branding on it and the hose clamp. Note my apprentice's feet.

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After about 7 hrs of it fighting me the whole way this is where we are at:
What a mess. I'm sure it's easier to put back together and make work..

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The brake boosters were a nightmare to remove, everything was rusted solid. Have also pulled oil filter, alternator and a few other things down the left hand side of the engine bay to give me access to the engine mounts and clearance for the lift.

On the right hand side things look a little less hectic.

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I've hit a wall where the lines screw into the pump on the back of the pedal box (next to the yellow dot). There is little room to swing a spanner, both are already rounded off and to top it off they seem corroded in place. The easy option would be to cut them so I can remove the pedal box and jut buy new ones. Will have a look on W & N to see if that's an option.

The other problem looming up at me are the exhaust headers. Access to the manifold bolts is poor. I suspect the fix is to try to access the flange join down near the fire wall and leave the manifolds in place until after the motor comes out.

Will do some more research and see what falls out.
 

Belgiumbarry

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great , all that work … but that's what you wanted :D

i do not understand the "stuck clutch " part... can't you get the gearbox in neutral ? again i think yes, because you can push the car…..
 

Wes

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great , all that work … but that's what you wanted :D

I do not understand the "stuck clutch " part... can't you get the gearbox in neutral ? again i think yes, because you can push the car…..

Sooo much work. I'll admit it's daunting but nothing worth having is easy to get. To get the CSL I want I'll have to build it.

Not sure what's happening with the clutch. We rolled the car into the ship ok. You depress the clutch and nothing happens. Slopping around the gear stick it feels like neutral.
Will just pull the motor and deal with it later as I've got 999 problems and that's only one of them.

While I'm here what's the best way to pull the motor? Reading my blue binders it looks like it comes out with the gear box attached? That would make sense as those bell housing bolts are nearly impossible to get at with the motor in the car.
 

Markos

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Man that engine bay looks familiar! FYI - I mention wrenches and the exhaust manifold on this page. Keep in mind that you need to unbolt the downpipe no matter what anyway, either at the manifold or at the muffler. @HB Chris recommends leaving the manifolds in place.

https://e9coupe.com/forum/threads/deconstruction-thread-how-to-part-out-an-e9.21251/page-10

You are using some type of penetrant right? If not start hitting your work areas a day in advance.

With the brakes - make sure that you are using metric flare nut wrenches on the brake lines and not open ended wrenches. You want coverage on all six points of the nut.

It’s not a terrible idea to make new lines anyway so don’t sweat it if you have to cut them. Make note of the shape.
 
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Belgiumbarry

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best way to pull motor is lowering it complete with the front frame ….sure as i think you want to get that also out of the car ?
 

Markos

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I’m not even taking the steering column and box into consideration. This car cant be easy to work on in RHD configuration.
 

Wes

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best way to pull motor is lowering it complete with the front frame ….sure as i think you want to get that also out of the car ?

Yes the subframe is coming out but we want to leave it for now so car is both a roller and to maintain some structural integrity until we do the rust repairs in the front end.
 

Markos

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best way to pull motor is lowering it complete with the front frame ….sure as i think you want to get that also out of the car ?

I was going to say the same thing but was hesitant to do so. If you don’t have a lift it may be tricky. If you remove the head you gain a lot of clearance though. The head is also very easy to remove. It’s not terribly heavy but you need extend your body to lift it out. Not great for your back.

Once my car was empty and the doors were off, the front end was very light. Granted the nose was cut off but then nose weighs maybe 30lbs. Anyway, the car was so light that I could teeter it on the rear jack stands with one hand. That was with the rear axle in place and the “empty” gas tank in place.

I pulled the whole motor with the wheels, transmission, and driveshaft out the front. To do it with an intact nose you would need a lift or a cherry picker attached to the bumper brackets. I beleive that this was discussed a few years back. I’ll dig up the thread. The heaviest part of the car is the area between the rear seat and the gas tank. If you go
this route, be sure that everything is disconnected first. Don’t forget the steering column as one member learned.

This gives you a picture of how much clearance you have without actually getting the front end airborne. If you look very closely you will see the yellow top of a jack stand on the frame rail under the rat’s nest of wiring. You wouldn’t need to go up much further to clear the underside of them nose, but it is more than a jack stand would allow.

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Wes

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I was going to say the same thing but was hesitant to do so. If you don’t have a lift it may be tricky. If you remove the head you gain a lot of clearance though. The head is also very easy to remove. It’s not terribly heavy but you need extend your body to lift it out. Not great for your back.

Once my car was empty and the doors were off, the front end was very light. Granted the nose was cut off but then nose weighs maybe 30lbs. Anyway, the car was so light that I could teeter it on the rear jack stands with one hand. That was with the rear axle in place and the “empty” gas tank in place.

I pulled the whole motor with the wheels, transmission, and driveshaft out the front. To do it with an intact nose you would need a lift or a cherry picker attached to the bumper brackets. I beleive that this was discussed a few years back. I’ll dig up the thread. The heaviest part of the car is the area between the rear seat and the gas tank. If you go
this route, be sure that everything is disconnected first. Don’t forget the steering column as one member learned.

This gives you a picture of how much clearance you have without actually getting the front end airborne. If you look very closely you will see the yellow top of a jack stand on the frame rail under the rat’s nest of wiring. You wouldn’t need to go up much further to clear the underside of them nose, but it is more than a jack stand would allow.

View attachment 61276

View attachment 61277

So you reckon pull the head if I want to jiggle it out with the gear box in place? Wasn't planning on cutting the nose cone off so hope the clearance is there.
If I cant how do I gain access to the bell housing bolts? Looks like there are a couple under the car I can get at but cant see the ones on the top yet.
Are you also saying the steering is also connected to the motor or is this a clearance thing?
 

Markos

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Definitely don’t cut the nose off!!! :D Pulling the head just gives you clearance if you roll the motor out. My story is different because I was taking everything apart anyway. If you want to leave your motor intact then your approach may differ.

I put up with a lot of automotive BS but I personally don’t ever want to remove/install a transmission from under the car. I would either drop
the drivetrain or pay to have the work done. Perhaps I would feel differently if I owned a lift and a transmission jack. :D

Thread I mentioned:
https://e9coupe.com/forum/threads/engine-removal-with-trans-in-car.24865/page-2
 
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