Rebuilding an M49 and prepping a BMW 3.5 CSL IMSA for Monterey Historics

Markos

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Reposting from the Car Lounge. I'm sure some of the west coast folks know husypushy. He and @MyFemurHurts can be seen together sometimes. I removed the photos from the quote so they don't get scrunched...


hushypushy;107103649 said:
With old cars, it seems like it's a constant battle of "if it's not one thing, it's another." My shop was tasked with the prestigious task of rebuilding the engine for BMW North America's 1975-spec IMSA 3.5CSL. Originally, we were going to ship the engine back to Rahal Letterman Lanigan back in Ohio for them to install the engine in the car. But one thing, then another, and the deadline to Monterey loomed closer. So, instead of shipping the engine out to Ohio and having them install it in a car that would then be trucked out to Northern California, they just trucked the car out here--and my shop installed it.

I figured TCL might want to have a closer look at this, so here you go :thumbup:



It's probably going to be a good day when you get to your office and you see this hood chilling in there.



There's the engine, fresh off the dyno where it made 477hp @ 8500 RPM. It can rev to 9500!













Check out the extra belts; it's like that so they don't have to remove an axle if the belt breaks. Just cut the old belt off and slide the new one on.





That's an iPhone 7+, so hopefully it gives you an idea of how HUGE these tires are!





The "air filter" is more like a "large rocks and small birds filter" :laugh:





And with that, she was on the truck and ready for the track!












I can't wait to see it again this weekend at the real Reunion! IMO, this is the coolest looking and sounding CSL out there :cool:

As usual, there are a bunch more pics available on my Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/teal_hushypushy/sets/72157687413978636

Thanks for looking :wave: And I hope to see you this weekend at Laguna Seca!
 

Bmachine

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Awesome set of pics! Thanks for reposting Markos! What site did those originally appear on? I'm not familiar with the Car Lounge.

One of the many thing that are real interesting is that they are running the alternator in the trunk with a belt running off the diff??? I wonder if that is just for weight distribution or if there is another reason.

There is also another belt going off the diff. Wonder what that is for... Diff oil pump?
 

Markos

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Awesome set of pics! Thanks for reposting Markos! What site did those originally appear on? I'm not familiar with the Car Lounge.

One of the many thing that are real interesting is that they are running the alternator in the trunk with a belt running off the diff??? I wonder if that is just for weight distribution or if there is another reason.

There is also another belt going off the diff. Wonder what that is for... Diff oil pump?

I knew about the rear alternators. There is brief discussion of the subject on this site (but very little).

The Car Lounge ws a sub forum started by a couple of guys in Chicago whom started VWVortex.com. VVortex.com later turned into Vortex Media Group and they expanded to multiple european forums. The Car lounge itself started a few years after vwvortex, and is accessible through all of the vortex media forums and directly as well.

I registered in 1997 but "the great server crash of 99" lost the registration info. So according to the site I've only been a forum member for a measly 19 years.
 
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