oilcan93
Active Member
First of all, I will post pics in a couple hours of everything as the project progresses.
Some of you guys may remember that I bought a "1973 3.0CSI" in Taiga a year ago. It's a great looking car and less than 53k miles. I got it from a friend of mine who had it for about 20 years and only drove it when he came to the island about 2-3 times a year thus the low mileage.
When I got it I couldn't get it to run under load. It would idle and rev in place but when driving it, beyond "3rd" gear the air/fuel was way too rich. I took it to 2 highly referred mechanics on the island and neither could make any sense of the problem..."maybe the incorrect fuel pump, maybe a bad TPS, etc" were the theories. At this point I have had the car for a year and not been able to drive it b/c NObody here can work on it. BMW just laughed.
So there was only one thing to do. I found a free moment in his schedule and after sending him numerous pic from the engine bay, I flew SF Don out to take a whack at repairing the Green Meanie, if it could be done with all the parts that were missing based on the analysis of photos and some of the extra inexplicable ones. I"m thinking "Greeeeeeat!" I've got myself a Frankenstein car that nobody can work on except MAYBE Don.....and that probably won't be easy. Thus the "bad"
Well, here's where it leans more to the "great" side. Don opened the hood almost immediately after arrival, eager to get a look at the task in hand. Did I forget to mention this part? When I was taking pics to send to Don one of the pics I noticed a 3.5 on the block right behind the dipstick. That was the first time the thought occurred to me that maybe the reason the car wasn't stock might sway my way. So let me stop dragging this out and let you know the list of toys we found in the car with assurances that pics will follow soon.
The car is actually a 1974 or 1975 ( I can't remember which Don said but the VIN is 4340499 and apparently the 434 cars are desirable with this car being the 499th of 500 runs I believe) 3.5 CSI with
*A Haltech E6S-8 Engine Management System (thus some of the missing parts)
* A one-off custom distributor
* A set of Stahl ceramic coated headers
* Polished billet aluminum rocker arms
* A yet to be identified aggressive cam
* Custom heavy duty head bolts
* A 1983 blueprinted and balanced head
* A double sprocket timing chain set-up
* Upgraded (and apparently on the upper end of "nice") leather Shiel seats
* And the coup de gras was the discovery of a short-shift close ratio dog-legged 5-speed racing tranny.
That pretty much throws out our original plan of putting in a wiring harness and ECU from a 5 or 7 series Bimmer. As of now, we are taking the engine apart and cleaning in preparation for a new MegaSquirt system to control the whole works.
There is a small amount of rust around the car but after Don inspected it, he discovered none of the rust is in the "bad" spots (wheel well, fender in engine bay, firewall, etc) so about $5-6k in body and all new paint to even out an imperfect previous effort should have it pristine. And it's already had some work done sealing up parts of the undercarriage. The guy who sold it to me didn't tell me anything about the amount of work that was done to it. But honestly, I think he just dropped it off at a race shop in Texas and told them to fix it up. With the exception of the work on the wiring harness, it's all top notch work and fabrication.
How great is it to go from thinking you have a Frankenstein car that nobody would want to own or work on to having one of the most desirable CSI's out there in many circles outside strictly OEM folks?
How luck are we all that SF Don knows all that he does?!?!
Some of you guys may remember that I bought a "1973 3.0CSI" in Taiga a year ago. It's a great looking car and less than 53k miles. I got it from a friend of mine who had it for about 20 years and only drove it when he came to the island about 2-3 times a year thus the low mileage.
When I got it I couldn't get it to run under load. It would idle and rev in place but when driving it, beyond "3rd" gear the air/fuel was way too rich. I took it to 2 highly referred mechanics on the island and neither could make any sense of the problem..."maybe the incorrect fuel pump, maybe a bad TPS, etc" were the theories. At this point I have had the car for a year and not been able to drive it b/c NObody here can work on it. BMW just laughed.
So there was only one thing to do. I found a free moment in his schedule and after sending him numerous pic from the engine bay, I flew SF Don out to take a whack at repairing the Green Meanie, if it could be done with all the parts that were missing based on the analysis of photos and some of the extra inexplicable ones. I"m thinking "Greeeeeeat!" I've got myself a Frankenstein car that nobody can work on except MAYBE Don.....and that probably won't be easy. Thus the "bad"
Well, here's where it leans more to the "great" side. Don opened the hood almost immediately after arrival, eager to get a look at the task in hand. Did I forget to mention this part? When I was taking pics to send to Don one of the pics I noticed a 3.5 on the block right behind the dipstick. That was the first time the thought occurred to me that maybe the reason the car wasn't stock might sway my way. So let me stop dragging this out and let you know the list of toys we found in the car with assurances that pics will follow soon.
The car is actually a 1974 or 1975 ( I can't remember which Don said but the VIN is 4340499 and apparently the 434 cars are desirable with this car being the 499th of 500 runs I believe) 3.5 CSI with
*A Haltech E6S-8 Engine Management System (thus some of the missing parts)
* A one-off custom distributor
* A set of Stahl ceramic coated headers
* Polished billet aluminum rocker arms
* A yet to be identified aggressive cam
* Custom heavy duty head bolts
* A 1983 blueprinted and balanced head
* A double sprocket timing chain set-up
* Upgraded (and apparently on the upper end of "nice") leather Shiel seats
* And the coup de gras was the discovery of a short-shift close ratio dog-legged 5-speed racing tranny.
That pretty much throws out our original plan of putting in a wiring harness and ECU from a 5 or 7 series Bimmer. As of now, we are taking the engine apart and cleaning in preparation for a new MegaSquirt system to control the whole works.
There is a small amount of rust around the car but after Don inspected it, he discovered none of the rust is in the "bad" spots (wheel well, fender in engine bay, firewall, etc) so about $5-6k in body and all new paint to even out an imperfect previous effort should have it pristine. And it's already had some work done sealing up parts of the undercarriage. The guy who sold it to me didn't tell me anything about the amount of work that was done to it. But honestly, I think he just dropped it off at a race shop in Texas and told them to fix it up. With the exception of the work on the wiring harness, it's all top notch work and fabrication.
How great is it to go from thinking you have a Frankenstein car that nobody would want to own or work on to having one of the most desirable CSI's out there in many circles outside strictly OEM folks?
How luck are we all that SF Don knows all that he does?!?!
