Updating the Shop

I've been constantly cleaning the garage since we moved into our house over three years ago.  It always seemed like I was doing pretty well, and then I'd actually try to do a project and the entire garage would fall to pieces.  That became much more literal a few weeks ago when my main storage shelf fell on me.  Many of the shelves fell through their frames and large car parts and all of my scrap metal, used for fabricating things, came down on me.  The bruises on my shins were the things of legend.  Legend and pain.

To tidy things up a bit, Jim and I had some whiskey, argued about optimal shelf design and then built a more appropriate replacement to the old fallen shelf.  We probably should've measured better but things generally went together just fine. Except the main pole, which is hung from the rafters, doesn't always touch the floor.

Clearly, the acrobatics were necessary.

Having built a shelf, I wanted something a bit more sustainable for storing my scrap metal bits. It just so happened my wife brought home a nice wooden crate. Which I then modified by adding a 2x6 floor and some cast steel casters.

Rolling box of metal sharps.  Reach in, feel around, it'll be a fun tetanus shot filled trip to Urgent Care.

I'm a computer geek by trade and was really excited to have the box. It was an old electronics shipping container for one of the more historically significant computing companies - Control Data Corp.

"Data Action Corp" was a pseudonym at the time.

This has allowed me to see floor space in the garage. I still have some things to sell and some items that I should just trash. (But how can I not have a wiring harness for a 1988 Lincoln Mark VII?)

The Bowels of Winter

A major portion of getting the car ready has been winterization.  This car lives in Minnesota.  Furthermore, it lives in an unheated garage in Minnesota.  Today's high was a balmy 15 degrees Fahrenheit.  I'm not really complaining about the heat but it did mandate the car get actual coolant in the lines.  During the build I solely put distilled water into the system and leaving it that way would probably necessitate installing new frost plugs in the spring.  So Jim helped flushed the system and we put in some fresh 50/50.

Explanation for People Who Don't Really Care about Cars
Every car has some form of engine cooling.  Engines generate heat and if too much is trapped inside, it will fail to really operate properly.  The most popular form of modern engine cooling is liquid cooling a.k.a. water cooling.  There are a few key components to this system:

• The engine, it actually generates the heat, and moves the car.  It also has a part on it called, "the Water Pump."  The water pump is important because it actually pulls cool water from the radiator into the engine.
• The radiator.  This is the part where all the water generally goes.  When the "low coolant" light comes on, you generally are putting water into this.

When the engine is turned off there is water left in the engine.  This good, this is how the system is intended to work.  However, when water gets below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Centigrade) it will change itself into ice.  This is problematic.  If a pop-can gets left in the freezer for a little too long you get a mess, the same thing happens with an engine, leave it with just water in the engine for too long and you get the same style mess.

Recognizing this potential problem, most engines have "freeze plugs" which will pop-out before the entire engine turns itself into the can of Coke someone really needed to have cold fast.  The real prevention mechanism is to add "antifreeze" or "coolant."  We put in Prestone's best green goo, mixed with some water, and so the car should now be very comfortable for the winter.

Catching up, Part 1

So, it's time to dust off the blog.

The car has been running since July and I've been so busy between work, family, and getting the car running that I let journaling about it degrade.  And by "busy with family," it's important to note our family did get bigger by one:

The car made small, incremental progress through March, April, May, and June.  I'd spend a few hours on different small projects trying to assemble the car.  Between the newborn, working, and trying to pretend to sleep a few hours at a time, that was all I could ever get done.  Then came Car Craft.

The Car Craft Summer Nationals has been a long running event at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.  Since high school, I've attended nearly every year for at least one day.  No matter the rat-trap, clapped-out, ill-running condition of my projects cars, I've always tried to drag them there.  The thrash for completion began.  Every night for a week, after putting the kids to bed I spent until 2 AM working on the car.  The unforgiving alarm clock would still ring four-and-a-half hours later.  I'd clock my eight hours at work, make dinner, put the kids down to bed, and head back out to the garage.  The Minnesota weather was cooperative by handing me record high temperatures and humidity.  My long time partner in crime, Jim came down Friday night.  We were able to get it nearly ready to start up but it didn't happen.  The wires were in the right places, the oil plumbed to the right holes but we were met with a bum starter and at one in the morning it was going to be difficult for us to get a new one.

My wife was graceful enough to give me the time to put in a near-24-hour push on Saturday.  She was even brave enough to help run the drill press and get her hands dirty after the kids went to bed.  Sunday morning, I fired up the car and headed to the Fairgrounds.

I met quite a few people who found the car interesting. One, Alex Bellus, a local beater-racer, and excellent photographer was kind enough to send me a well-shot picture of the car at Car Craft:

I'd like to extend a special thanks to Alex for sending me this picture and encourage you to visit his website.

The Waiting Episode 1 Part 2

After a significant amount of annoyance to my wife, friends, and strangers, I finally made some decisions about the car and am waiting for the results of those decisions to arrive.

The first major decision was made after spending hours, that I should have spent sleeping, pouring over a mountain of turbo specifications. I had a few selected and then finally took the advice of a friend and called a local shop that actually spent their entire day working on these types of problems. The shop did recommend one of the three turbos I had been considering and answered all of my questions in the disassociated but knowledgable way I've come to expect from a speed-shop answering a phone. They probably only make a sale once for ever ten to twenty callers, so they develop a significant apathy about calls that start with, "I'd like to talk to someone about..." Or they expect to give a recommendation and be immediately hassled over the price. As much as I do love to hassle a sales person, I do tend to feel bad for these guys. They are trying to make a living running a business that caters to a demographic that is notorious for using price as their only selection criteria. This particular shop gets it even worse as they tend to cater to vehicles driven by younger, less knowledgable, and even more financially strained drivers.

And the last bit is dealing with gauges. The little dials and instruments seen on a typical factory dash board is generally lying to driver. Auto manufacturers decided long ago that the average driver simply will not understand why the needles move so much on their oil pressure and water temperature indicators. There are other useful bits of information to know also. On a higher powered turbocharged car it is useful know the oil temperature, the fuel mixture, the exhaust gas temperature, and the amount of pressure being produced by the turbo. Part of the build goal for this car is to avoid decorating the interior like a carnival ride with lights and needles pointing everywhere. My hope was to allow people to sit in the car and find it to be unobtrusive, easy to drive, and brutally quick.

My initial thought was that I could find a nice looking gauge that integrated more than one of these read outs into a single display. The results of the research of that thought proved I was entirely correct -- if I was willing to spend $400 or more to get the proper setup. I decided to eschew with this and get a few repair parts for the gauges I already own. This will lead to a more carnival like atmosphere in the car but it will be a savings of over $300.

So now I wait, the turbo is schedule to ship from the manufacturer today and the gauge parts are scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

The Agony

This blog has never been shy about spending money on car parts. The title itself is wrapped in the concept that racing, cars, the "gear head hobby" costs money. In all fairness to the hobby, that money does purchase some really neat pieces of steel, plastic, and aluminum. Some of the parts I've bought through the years are a venerable showcase of the evolution of the capabilities of on-demand manufacturing and fabrication utilities.

Despite the cost I've kept quite a bit of pride in keeping my overall costs low by comparison. There exist more than one person that I have spoke with over the years with more investment in their project cars than they had in the down payment on their homes. It also does not help that I cannot stand to do anything that is popular. "Popular" in the gear head world tends to be projects which garner a lot of "me too" reactions. They also tend to be popular enough to inspire companies to offer kits. I am not performing an engine swap for which there is any kit, nor is there any guide, or anyone else with previous experience to help with a variety of conundrums found along the way. This means there will be parts that I try to put together that will not fit and need to be refit. Fundamentally, if I have a question I must answer it myself, no end of Google searches will provide me with a direct answer.

All of these things combined have left me with an overwhelmingly disabling complex. I simply cannot ever seem to get myself to spend money on higher cost items even if I need them to complete my project, include the purchase of a new turbocharger. The old turbo was fine for the Capri. It worked well for drag racing but this car is not setup to simply go drag racing and I wanted something that was a little smaller. After over a week of Google searches, posts on forums, and finally chatting with a local tuning shop I bought one.

Of course, now I'm questioning myself over and over again about the wisdom of the choice. The agony only amplifies itself because I won't know how well it works until the entire car is assembled and running. I need to actually have the car drivable before I can even check that my instincts and research are correct.

The Fuel is In!

Last week the fuel lines running from the BMW hard-lines to the Ford fuel rail was finished but that did not complete the fuel system. Since this engine will see some serious boost it was necessary to upgrade the fuel pump. I have replaced the fuel pump on one other BMW (Susi's car) and can say with much authority that BMW's are the easiest fuel injected cars on which to change the fuel pump.


Step 1: Remove Back Seat.

"Oh, why hello fuel pump."

Step 2: Remove Fuel Pump.
I was busy soaking my self in old gasoline to take a picture for this.

Step 3: Assemble new fuel pump, reinstall.

Walbro 255 LPH fuel pump, some hose, some wires, some clamps, and a new sock.

This has been the second largest feeling of accomplishment with the car thus far -- the engine mounts being the first. This is actually the first complete "system" to be completed that allows the engine to run inside of the new car. Tonight, tearing the engine back down to try and stop those damned leaks.

The Girth

Accusing me of enjoying a joke laden with sexual innuendo is akin to accusing a polar bear of being white. On Friday a number of items arrived:
* The big parts orders containing the new press-on hoses to make fuel lines, the new breather for the valve-cover, and the fuel pump installation kit.
* I was able to retrieve the new custom Ford-to-AN clutch line.
* The new, shorter, driveshaft.

The transmission connects the engine to the driveshaft. The driveshaft is what connects the transmission to the differential. The differential connects the driveshaft to the wheels. Different manufactures have different opinions on how to best perform this task but they all have what is essentially a pipe connect the back of the transmission to the front of the differential.

The new driveshaft fit perfectly -- lengthwise. In automotive engineering as in biology, a 'shaft's two most important attributes are length and girth. From the factory BMW's have extremely small shafts. They are both short in length and narrow in girth. Fords are quite the opposite. A Ford driveshaft tends to be reasonably long and have a pretty solid girth. When I went to bolt up the driveshaft to the transmission and the differential, it was not possible. The driveshaft was hitting the floor of the car.

After a few "Oh, shits," a Coke and some "really good ideas," we settled on making a few spacers that allowed the transmission to be dropped 1/2". This let the driveshaft bolt up but left some pretty minimal clearances. I did a little more research and found that most people selling kits are selling 2.5"-diameter driveshafts while mine measures in the neighborhood of 3-3.25". Luckily the driveshaft is pretty easy to swap and the conclusion is that it will make itself fit over time. That, or the shaft will bend and we'll need to get a new driveshaft made anyway.

More encouraging were the fuel lines and clutch slave-cylinder mounting. The fuel lines were the easiest part. Using the appropriately purchased adapters we were able to get these ready to run in less than an hour. I haven't installed the fuel pump yet but it appears that the fuel pump swap will be one of the few well-documented processes I will be undertaking with this project.

The slave cylinder may yet again be a bit of an issue. I had the custom line made to convert from the Ford to -4 AN believing that I could get pretty much anything to eventually convert to -4 AN. What I probably should have done was remove the BMW line and then make a conversion from the BMW metric brake-line fitting to the Ford part. I may need to have the line re-cut and re-crimped with a new fitting if I cannot simply purchase an adapter or small set of adapters. Off to Custom Hose Tech again.

Custom Hose Tech will also need to help me with the power steering line. Those guys are going to start recognizing me by scent by the end of this project.

Not my Car

I awoke this morning sore, tired, and beat. Sometimes to fix a car I need to contort my body like Gumby. When I do it, I never actually mind it, and when repairs for the car don't take forever I don't really "feel it." However, I spent a large portion of yesterday fixing a car that was not a project and not mine. My brother needed a clutch put into his 2002 Impreza WRX. He's a Guardsmen and was called up to train this weekend, the clutch was worn so badly it was nearly impossible for him to accelerate past quarter-throttle.

A few late-night/early-mornings and it has a fresh clutch. I have no desire to do it again - so here's hoping he does not smoke the clutch in the next 30,000 miles.

The Bolt

Part of my Ford into BMW swap requires switching from a cable-based clutch to a hydraulic based clutch. Sparing the details on why that's important and what that means, I will say the general conclusion has been that I switch to an 87-88 Ford Thunderbird TurboCoupe bell housing which has the provisions for a hydraulic clutch from the factory.

I scored that exact part from a fellow over the Internet for $40 and assumed I had an excellent deal. When the bell housing arrived I realized that it was coated in years of grease and grime. Generally, when I sell parts to people online I will at least take it to the local spray-it-yourself carwash and clean off the chunks of grease. The gentlemen I with which I was doing business did not seem to feel the same way. Upon scraping off a few chunks of gunk it became clear that one of the bell housing bolts was stuck in the threads.

The average temperature last week was under 15 degrees Fahrenheit. It was cold. Some days the mercury dropped below 10 degrees below-zero. Really cold. Given this frigidness I elected to call the machine shop I use to see if they would put this in the nice big parts washer, a glorified dish washer that uses acids instead of soaps. They were more than willing and even said they would try to get the bolt out.

Two days later I get a phone call back from Mr. Ken-The-Machinist-Man. Apparently, the bolt is so stuck that he could not remove it using a three-foot steel welded to the stub of the bolt. It wasn't just a tough-bolt but he thinks it is case hardened, like you'd typically find on internal engine parts and military applications. I told him to hold off and started making phone calls.

Call after call proved that if someone had a 87-88 Thunderbird TurboCoupe bell housing they also wanted to sell me the transmission to which it was bolted. This was a premium that I did not want to pay - asking prices near $300. Back to the shop, Ken and I chatted and he figured he could get it fixed, cleaned again, and back to me for under $100.

This is one of those hideously unexpected costs changing from $20 and an hour in the parts washer to $100 and three days.

I have no fear! The rest of the parts list is coming yet this week:
- Fuel line parts.
- The new crankcase breather system.
- The driveshaft.
- The BMW-to-Ford hydraulic clutch conversion line I invented.

Now, onto selling my old turbo.

The Waiting, Episode 1 Part 1

I am not patient. Outwardly, I may emit an ability to calmly wait for things to come, but internally fireworks and butterflies are competing for my mental skies. Last week, I dropped off a few parts that needed some deep cleaning and some others that needed a small bit of fabrication. They are still at the respective shops and when I was told, "sometime next week," I always like to think, "Yeah, we'll have that Monday/Tuesday." Being that my own business does work for contract I should know what that really means - "If we get to it ... uh ... maybe Friday? Probably Tuesday the week after..."

Last night, I finally decided to make my first big racing-parts order. I will not name the parts warehouse form which I ordered because I find there are things that I like about Jegs, Speedway, and Summit. They all have reasonably good customer service but parts availability and web-site easy of use vary based on personal taste and project demands. Actually, I ended up ordering from two of those last night because the question of availability. I ended up spending significantly more on the fuel lines than I had originally desired. In all honesty, Ford probably created the single best fuel injection system of the 1980's. It was a multi-port system, it had some learning built into it, and it still used dead-simple components to keep things reliable. As long as the air-meter was clean and the temperature sensors were kept fresh it really worked very well.

Unfortunately, when a company is first, or a pioneer, or generally ventures off the standards-laden path they need to invent their own standards. Ford did this in spectacular style with their fuel line (the part that runs from the tank to the engine) to fuel rail fittings (the part on the engine). I felt I could probably get the Ford fuel rail to adapt to the BMW fuel line fairly easily because I had a full set of Ford lines that went to a standard 5/16" steel line.


This is not even the hard part. This is simply an example of how tantalizingly close the two lines are in shape, size, and design. During actual implementation I ended up being uncomfortable with the need to use single-flare brake fittings or compression fittings to fit together. Plus, some of the racing bodies for which I'd like to do some racing explicitly ban the use of these fittings on fuel lines.

While writing this post, I got a call from the driveshaft shop doing the work for me, my shaft will be ready in about two hours. Awesome.

The Headache

Last night I was hoping to spend some more time attacking the fuel lines. BMW conveniently uses a lot of rubber hose and hose clamps to assemble their fuel systems. It makes plumbing adaptation not hard. My biggest hold up right now is getting the 3/16" Ford line to adapt to the M3 1/4" line. I'd like to adapt a 3/16" brake flare to NPT and then go from NPT to hose-flare of some sort. Finding that set of adapters was difficult. I tried a local hardware store and a set of parts-stores fitting bins. I may have to concede to running some more expensive AN adapters from a parts catalog.

Unfortunately, I was never able to get to the garage last night. After getting Anja from daycare, and getting some dinner with Anja and Susi, I ended up having a terrible migraine. I was stuck in bed, with the lights off all night, barely able to see/speak/hear anything. Some ibuprofen and 10 hours of sleep/not-sleep later I'm feeling better but I lost an entire night of progress.

A Smaller Shaft

A life long problem, too long driveshafts, is plaguing this swap project.

First, some teaching. A "U-Joint," short for universal joint, is a small piece of hardware that has two bearings on it. One set of the bearings runs up and down and the other set runs left to right. This forms a "+"-sign shape that allows things like a driveshaft to move both vertically and horizontally. If you've owned a busted old front-wheel drive car you may have needed to have a "CV" or "Constant Velocity" joint replaced. The universal joint is the grandfather of the CV joint and they both perform the same function.

U-Joints are sized by their cap size and their width. Common U-Joint sizes are 1310, 1330, and 1350. Sizes any larger than that can be found on heavy duty trucks but for cars, those three sizes are what can usually be found holding things together. All of the documentation I collected before performing my swap into the M3 indicated the stock Fox-body Mustang driveshaft uses 1310 U-Joints. This was going to work nicely since i also happened to purchase a JagsThatRun (JTR) BMW differential flange that uses 1310 U-Joints.

Unfortunately, I was fouled. When trying to assemble everything I noticed the Mustang U-Joint was noticeably larger than what the JTR flange would accommodate. A few Google searches and some head scratching revealed that Ford changed the U Joints used in the Mustang in 1987. On Manual-V8 cars, the driveshaft uses a 1330 U-Joint. Off to the local parts store I went to get the adapter U-Joint. There was a point in time that I lavished when the parts-counter guys would inquire as to what I was doing with my cars. I've grown to really appreciate counter staff that will simply do what I ask when I say, "I don't have an application, but here is a list of part numbers, one of them should cross to something you have on the shelf." And, "No, I'll pay the extra $3 for the one that will actually fit without grinding and welding."

On the return from the parts store, I swapped on the flange and attempted to fit the driveshaft into the car. I discovered that the driveshaft is about 1.5" too long. Given that I'm putting a weird Ford engine into an even stranger BMW (parts wise) this is amazingly close. All appearances indicate the driveshaft would fit if I assembled things differently but for safety and servicing I'm going to get the driveshaft shortened a bit.

The Hydraulics

The M3 has three distinct hydraulic systems. One is for the brakes, one is for the power steering system, and the third is for the clutch. While the brakes are nice and distinct from the engine the power steering and the clutch are more integral. I have, however, moved forward with getting things hooked up.

I have mounted the BMW power steering pump in the ford bracket by grinding out a larger hole which the BMW pump can "pass through." Then, using a few of the factory bolt holes, mounted an aluminum plate to which the BMW pump attaches. The pulley for the BMW pump-pulley lined up perfectly. i will need to have a new hose made because the factory BMW power-steering line is way goofy. Essentially, the Germans routed the hose up-over-and-around the factory motor mount.

What has seemed imminently more difficult was the clutch. I have a hydraulic TurboCoupe bellhousing. Unlike the Capri, which used a clutch cable, both the M3 and the 1987-1988 Thunderbird TurboCoupe used a hydraulic clutch-actuation mechanism. Most factory hydraulic clutches use a similar fitting that would be found on a brake line. In Ford's infinite wisdom, they used a special hydraulic fitting. For a bonus, the only type of line they ever attached to that fitting is a non-serviceable vinyl line.

Luckily, the gentlemen at Custom Hose Tech in Bloomington, MN, are unafraid of such strange fittings. They are fixing me up with a hose that will allow me to create a BMW-pedal-to-Ford-clutch adapter. As soon as I have this line, I'll finish up a few smaller details with the power steering pump and get a line for it. That will complete the all the hydraulics and allow me to move on to the electronics and intercooler plumbing.