E36 328: In over my head!

I have a couple of updates. The car has a slow coolant leak somewhere. It only seems to leak about 3 or 4 oz low, indicated by the expansion tank. I did remember that the coolant hose that goes from the expansion tank to another hose near the engine needs to be replaced, so I ordered that hose, along with a new expansion tank. If these two items don't fix the leaky coolant, I would have to have a shop test it. The passenger CV axle is leaking, so I also ordered a rebuild kit for it.

This was all I did to the car yesterday, except for rotate the tires. It was so cold (30 F) and windy (20mph) that I couldn't work on it for too long, especially since that's unusually cold and windy for my area.

The driver side fog light broke last week, so eventually I will buy a used one.

The front end of the car is developing a surprisingly high number of tiny paint chips and are rusting, so I should get the car wrapped if I keep it, which I should do. I should do it by next year, at the latest. The chips and rust spots are hard to see in pictures, but aren't that tough to see in person.

I was planning on attending the MSX Expo in Charlotte, but I probably won't be able to now. I also have an auto-x event the next week; that should be no problem. I just hope that it's 50 degrees on that day. My region surprised me by having an event in February, even though it's the last day of the month.

Also, how can I fix the leaky power steering hoses? Can I do a custom stainless steel lines so they don't leak? I don't want to let the leaks constantly flow.

I fix leaky PS hoses by replacing the whole pile with my own home-made version of this setup: http://offcambermotorsport.com/ocm/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=7&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=236&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=26&vmcchk=1&Itemid=26

The major thing to get right is you need a real PS reservoir to act as an air/oil separator (like Canton makes) or it cavitates the pump and the cap leaks oil all over. The rest is just 2000psi hoses and AN fittings.

Common reasons coolant might go missing that are NOT a head gasket:
- Radiator cap is not holding pressure
- water pump is pissing at the little hole (bad internal seal)
- pin hole in the radiator
- pin hole in the heater core
- loose hose clamp

With regard to axles - Autozone has remans with a lifetime warranty for just a few bucks more than a boot replacement kit costs. I took a chance last year and put them on my race car. They are fine after a whole season of abuse so I'd say it's a super easy way to go if you don't want to spend a couple hours mucking around in that filthy grease.

I ordered a new expansion tank for the coolant, so that will show if the radiator cap was faulty, or the tank is leaking at the bottom from a loose hose clamp, or one of the other issues. I might have taken a chance on an Autozone axle, but I did have a bad experience with a rebuilt steering rack from Advance Auto Parts, and an aftermarket guibo.

I did some work on it Wednesday and today. Unfortunately, I screwed up and got a piece of a screwdriver stuck in the groove.

It's wedged in there pretty good, so I may not be able to get the piece out. I did test to see if I would still be able to remove the nut with an impact wrench and a breaker bar with an extension. Neither worked, and I did strip the nut some when I used the breaker bar. I will use a propane torch to see if that will work, but if it doesn't, will I have to hack the wheel hub or axle off? I don't see a third option yet.

Use an angle grinder to remove the shoulder of the nut where your screwdriver bit is stuck.

I grinded more than I wanted to, but I did grind the shoulder of the nut off.

This was after I heated up the nut with a propane torch and tried to get the nut off. I may grind some more off, but I still may have to cut off the wheel hub, sadly.

I will probably have to end up cutting the hub back here without cutting the housing.

This looks like a good application for that Dremel you've been wanting to get . Get an arbor and bunch of 2" cutoff wheels. While you're at Lowe's, pick up a few cold chisels. You can make a few finer cuts, and get further down into the meat of the nut. Once you make a cut, whack away with the chisel to try and split the nut. You'll probably need to do a few around the whole nut, but will eventually prevail.

I finally cut part of the axle nut off, and then tapped it off of the axle. It took me about an hour and a half trying to get the axle out of the hub and diff. I did start cutting it, then gave up on that idea. I took the axle apart while it was still in position, and finally had the clearance to take it out.

Maybe this one is an aftermarket axle, because it should have just been able to come out. I ordered the axle(an aftermarket one) and other parts a few days ago. Now I'm waiting for them to come in to finish the job.

I also just bought a set of BF Goodrich G-force Rivals in 225/50/16 for this and next season's autocross.

On the coolant leak topic, I had two in the list that GPS mentioned (lower radiator hose clamp was slightly loose, and radiator cap was not holding pressure) on my E36 328is. The radiator cap was spraying a fine mist, I never saw any drips on that one, but it was visible when the engine was running.

I have hood struts and new hardware.

Hopefully, I will be using the good camera soon instead of my crappy cell phone camera.

OOOOOhh, G-force Rivals!

Here is the axle that finally got delivered. It came with new hardware, which didn't fit. It took quite a while to thread a few of them in to find that out. I'm glad I bought new OEM hardware.

I really don't like these torx bolts. They strip out too easy in my opinion.

This axle flexed into position much easier than the other one, so that one had to be a lower quality aftermarket axle.

There's not an indentation in the threads for the axle nut.

These are the factory wheels I bought to race with. If companies keep on making Extreme Performance summer tires in this size (225/50R16), I will need to get these refinished eventually, because they're beat up.

I also replaced the hood struts. It was getting irritating forgetting my wooden stick to prop up the hood. Plus, since it's a BMW, people would perceive me as being more ghetto than if I did it with my Camaro.

With this tire and wheel package, the rear looks like it's slightly taller overall. It makes it look lower and the front looks like it's 1.5 inches too high. Visually, it looks unbalanced. I will measure the ride height from the ground to the top of the fenders, and compare them when I switch back to the other wheels. If I was a tuner, I would immediately be ordering custom springs for the front and back. Since I'm a racer, I will race with it, then determine what the car needs. (Damn, the picture quality sucks!)

Looking good man.

Thanks. After driving it for a day, I felt a big driveline vibration through the axle I replaced. I put more grease in the cv joint a couple of days later, hoping that it would alleviate the vibration. It did reduce it slightly, so I ordered a genuine BMW axle. For some reason, the OEM ones for the manual trans aren't available without the markup. I thought I learned my lesson about getting aftermarket parts. One day, I'll get it.

I have a two event autocross weekend on the 21st and 22nd, but I may have to miss out on Saturday's race because of my work schedule.

In reply to Mr_Clutch42:

Are you sure it's the axle? You were using a torch on the outer bolt... which could have melted the plastic/rubber seal and let all the grease out of the wheel bearing if you got it hot enough.

I hope that's not what happened. The torch I have is fairly small to get the other parts too hot. Plus, what would the vibration feel like if it's a wheel bearing issue? One went bad last year, and it just howled.

I replaced the coolant expansion tank, cap, and the hose from the engine to the bottom of the expansion tank. It took a few hours.

I checked the front brakes, and they're good. I need a brake pad sensor, it got worn through. I test drove the car, all seemed to be good. The coolant kept dropping, and I kept wondering why. I finally figured out (after spilling out about 2 qts of evans coolant ) that it was leaking out. It is slowly leaking out of the rock hard coolant line from the expansion tank to the radiator.

Edit: I also changed from synthetic oil to dino oil. The engine is a little too worn out for synthetic, because the bottom end rattles louder with it, and is a little louder in general than with dino oil. It also leaks with pure synthetic oil. The engine has a relatively low 144K miles on it.

It was also leaking out of the bottom of the expansion tank, too. I fixed that yesterday, but sadly, I had to contaminate the Evans coolant with water. When I get the cooling issues worked through, I will revisit the Evans coolant in a 3 or so years.

These did come in.

My low profile jack stopped working, so I need to watch a couple of youtube videos to see how to fix them. I ordered some hydraulic jack fluid so I can bleed both of my jacks to see if that's the problem, then go from there.

I got these in late, so I'm glad the universal hose is working. Oh, and I have two autocross races, one tomorrow and the next on Sunday.

I had to work on Sat, so I only had three runs. I was feeling confident, being able to place well with other people's cars last season and such. But God had different plans. I went out there, ready to throw down some good times, and I sucked. I've done this enough to know that I should have kept the tire pressure the same from side to side, but it was my first event on my G-force Rivals, so I wanted to see how it would handle. The mismatch was from the sun heating up one side of the car. The course was also unusual, because it had a section with two laps, even though the course was an airstrip. The turnaround was a figure 8, which was also unusual for our normal setups. Much of my bad driving came from being used to the Direzza DZ102 tires I ran once last season. They aren't soft enough for competitive autocross, so my throttle and steering inputs could be abrupt, and the car would still be balanced. With the Rivals, I stomped on the gas, and the engine would get into the vanos and increase power delivery, while the tires would claw into the tarmac like an angry, snarling dog. The car would surge forward and the rear end of the car's balance would get upset. It felt exciting and like the car gained 20-30 horsepower. Also, with the tire pressure being unbalanced for two of my three runs, the car would go from plowing forward, to suddenly oversteering. It was fun catching it, but it killed my times for those two runs. On the last run, my driving was just wayyy too sloppy, and left me disappointed with myself.

I still had the next day to race. I had one of the hotshoes, Brandon, with me on my first run. He said that he wasn't good at coaching people, but he still obliged. He did give me a tip to sit a little closer to the steering wheel so I didn't have to reach as far when I'm cranking the steering wheel. I actually drove smooth, especially with my throttle inputs. He said that my driving was good, I was looking ahead and close to key cones. There were a few spots that I hesitated, but that was expected since it was the first run. I felt relieved that I could race again, and felt much better. I drove a little better and ran almost two seconds off my first run. Then I asked our fast B Stock driver, Dave, his time, and he got 47. something seconds when I had got 50.2. He told me to use the brakes less. I tried that on my third run, and I got really sideways near the end of the course and got a 51.4. He also spun out in front of me on his third run. I talked to him for a while, and his car is a '10 or an '11 STi that he bought brand new, with a special rally suspension package that is a little stiffer than the stock STi suspension. He said that it's not soft out on course at all, so his platform is much better than mine. I mentioned this in another thread, but our local region changed the trophy system so all the Stock classes are grouped together, all Street Touring classes together, Street Prepared and Street Modified are together, and Modified and kart mod are together. They did it to reduce trophy awards and time announcing them. They also did it to encourage regulars in similar categories to compete directly so people don't get discouraged or bored from no direct competitors and quit. In the afternoon, for some reason, I quit looking ahead at one part of the fast section of the course, and completely ruined my good driving technique, and my times. I managed to get a 48.8, but that was plowing over a cone, so it wasn't my fastest time. I did see that the unofficial times showed that they didn't call it out, which isn't that great. Some of the fast STR drivers were getting in the 46s, and one guy from my next closest auto-x region got a 44, so I need to get him to coach me when I race at one of their events. I want to be a national champ someday, so I do try to chase down everybody, no matter what car or class they are in.

I didn't get pics of the race, because I don't have a good camera yet. I did install wheel studs after Sunday's race, but then had to torque them down today with my torque wrench. I was surprised that hand tightening them seemed to have them at 19ft-lbs when installation guidelines said to torque them down at 20ft-lbs.

They're not that long, as you can see, so they look subtle. Non-car or even non-BMW fans wouldn't notice at all.

I just got in my new sway bar endlinks. The ones on the left are heavy duty front ones, for longer life and hopefully, more stiffness for the track.

The coolant also came in, but the cooling system needs to be fixed before I can even think about using this bottle.

My local shop did some diagnostic, and they found that the coolant was leaking from the thermostat housing yesterday. Whew!

The axle finally got in.

It's a Genuine BMW one, yet it didn't fit. It has to be because the rear wheel bearing or hub is an aftermarket one. I'm screwed, because I will need to modify it to fit. I just realized this now; yesterday, I called bavauto, and they send me a return label to send it back.

I replaced the sway bar endlinks.

This one has the old endlinks on it.

Fresh rubber!

The bottom of the front endlinks are twisted, so I think I will adjust those so that they're straight.

I also replaced the brake sensors.

This box holds the sensor plug. It's clever, keeps the connectors as clean as possible.

Most importantly, I replaced the thermostat housing with a better aluminum one. I also replaced the lower hose.

Unfortunately, I had to put the aftermarket axle back in.

I was trying to take the car off the jackstands with the BMW jack, and when one jack was out from under the car, it would teeter. I messed up by making the jacks about level all around. I knew I was in trouble. I tried to take the second jack from the same side to see if that would work, and it didn't. The car fell off three of the jacks; it was pretty scary. I may have to cave in and buy another low profile quick jack if I have to raise the whole car at once. The jack got bent, so I have to recycle it.

With the new endlinks, especially in the front, the car changes direction so fast, it's incredible. It does this when you turn the wheel fast, for regular driving, it behaves normally. When the car dives left or right quickly, it feels like a sports car. It was amazing, because I backed the car up some, then pulled back into my parking spot to check the lug nut torque specs. Just turning the wheel that little bit allowed me to feel that the car's suspension felt tighter. The real test will be on Sunday at my next autocross race. The rear endlinks also seemed to absorb quite a bit of the vibrations that I believe are coming from the aftermarket axle, which is nice, but I still want no vibrations.

I also have the good camera back, yes!

I looked at the cooling system to see where and possibly why it's leaking. I didn't feel the thermostat have coolant around it. I did see some come from the hose on the bottom of the reservoir tank. I tightened up that hose as well as I could, then I tried to bleed the system, since I didn't really bleed it that well before. I opened the bleed screw and the cap, then drove around the neighborhood a little, then opened the bleed screw and cap about 5 times. I made lunch with them still open, and few minutes later, the bleed screw had steam and hot coolant shooting out of it. After it quit, I drove it around and the temp started to rise. I cut the engine off and opened the bleed screw and steam shot out of it. I drove it home and opened the screw, more steam and coolant shot out of it. When it finally quit doing that, the coolant still rises almost to overheating. Why is it doing this? I did observe that when I drove from my house to the corner store at about 45 mph, the temp went from a little higher than halfway down to halfway.