Goodbye
Hello!
The Racequip appears completely unused and came with side mounts and bottom plate that I'll likely sell on elsewhere. Based on some quick testing by my lady and me I'm cautiously optimistic that we will be able to share the seat with perhaps some additional padding for her.
The Vaders and back seats are going on the market soon too once I can finish cleaning them up and getting them photographed effectively for sale.
Listed the seats this morning https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/306453245029879/
I really have no idea what they are worth but hope that someone finds a good use for them rather then them sit in my garage.
MKAH door cards on order and hopefully arriving before the weekend. Sparco seat for the passenger side should be here as well this week.
Unfortunately no idea when to expect our rollbar and seat mounts but that's fine as we still have plenty of work to do in the interior removing carpet and sound deadening.
Door cards arrived but have been stored until I finish getting my garage lighting fully hung and the quickjack setup.
Figure once everything is in place it can sit up on the QJ for a few weeks and make the work quite a bit more comfortable.
If I can cut the number of pretzel poses I need to get into in half I think I'll be much more likely to finish the work soon.
Lighting hung and I'm incredibly pleased with the transformation. Still need to get some wire staples to tidy up the excess wires but that can be done later today.
8 4ft LED strips added to the existing 2 4ft fluorescents and 2 sets of track lighting over the workbench on the far right of the picture.
Quickjack is still getting setup but I'm hopeful that two low wall lights will throw a decent amount of light under the car when on the jacks.
Quickjack setup completed. For some reason I expected bleeding it to be a real bear but it wasn't bad at all really.
Still trying to solve the mystery of where are my seat mounts so I ended up doing a head to head comparison of the comfort
and sport
bucket seats ;)
Sport bucket ended up being a perfect fit to start her up, swing her around and get her tucked into the garage.
She's up but has a bit more forward lean than I'd like. Stacked a small and large in the back and I think I'll end up playing around and seeing if I can get less rake.
Large block in the back, small block up front and moving the frames forward made a big difference.
Sick of fogging up my glasses with sweat so this'll do for the time being.
Finally heard back from Garagistic and apparently I should have my seat mounts by the weekend/early next week.
This should be a good kick in the ass to pull the sunroof and carpet and be fully prepped for seats and rollbar install in the next couple of weeks.
Seat mounting bits allegedly will be here on Saturday. Fingers crossed that my FedEx guy doesn't bend or otherwise destroy them when pitches the box from his truck into the middle of my driveway.
Finally some decent weather. Low 70s, low humidity and a nice breeze.
Time to add lightness
Which revealed more of my nemesis the mystery chassis harness
Are some of those extra wires for the 10 speaker stereo option? Or maybe one of the other pre-wired options?
In reply to buzzboy :
Yeah, those "braided" ones are probably sound system wires.
Indeed, all sound system wiring and it's finally all out
Front door cards also got removed which is fortunate because they ended up getting sold along with the seats and glovebox earlier today. Rear door cards are coming out as well and will go to the same local buyer.
And while I was waiting for the buyer to get here I figured I might as well start in on the sound deadening.
Whichever shop originally built the car must have really hated the prior owner because I found this tucked away inside the front passenger door behind the vapor barrier
There were zero holes drilled anywhere in the door so I can only assume this was chucked in there as a real FU.
Rear door cards pulled and the sunroof cassette as well.
I'll be getting some metal straps/brackets welded to the underside of the sunroof panel after which it will be used as the fill panel. Thankfully my local buyer for the door cards and seats happens to run a welding shop so he'll be taking care of that small job for me.
Before starting work on the car earlier today I wanted to make sure that post first phase of chassis harness thinning that it still started.
But, I was more than a little nervous that when I connected the battery I might see the harness make puff the magic dragon and let all the smoke out. So after a quick trip to Costco for a garage fire extinguisher and I was feeling a bit more prepared to slay any impromptu infernos.
Hooked up the battery and started her up and all went quite well which really gave me the spark I needed to get some more thinning done.
Steering wheel and dashboard are now both out which should give me the access I need to trace wires through the harness.
If anyone has recommendations on a quick release wheel hub adaptor setup I'm all ears.
Gutted the front passenger door of its wiring, glass and regulator. In the process of drilling out the rivets of the regulator and struggling with a straight bit I remembered the stepped bit that I had found inside the door.
Worked perfectly to drill out the rivets and now I have a less malevolent explanation of how it ended up in there in the first place.
While I've got plenty of time to gut the remaining three doors I need to figure out how to safely store the window glass for resale before I have three more pieces to put away.
Seat mounts are here and apparently my rollbar arrives tomorrow. Meanwhile I've made no further progress on the car beyond extensive reading and YouTube research on building a custom harness.
From what I think I've learned so far, I should be able to get away with a pretty minimal setup that covers lighting, cooling fan, signals and wipers, plus a few accessories in the cabin for telemetry with far less trouble than it would take to thin the harness to the equivalent level of simplicity. Time to figure out a decent way of planning how such a harness would lay out and operate and then I'll try to find a decent starter kit that provides slightly more than that.
I don't want to spend the time or energy sourcing all of the discrete components and tools if I can avoid it as I don't need the car to be street legal immediately as much as I just need to be able to motor in and out of the garage and a mile from the house to get the refrigerant captured/removed so I can ditch my condenser, compressor, etc.
Rollbar, new steering wheel, hub adaptor have arrived along with wiring supplies and switch panel to tackle wiring accessories and replace the ignition tumbler with push button start with toggle switch because race car
Still working on removing wiring and glass and tonight ended up completely stymied by the rivets used on the rear window regulator. Neither my step drill bit, nor straight bit, nor Dremel could make much headway.
Decided to call it quits for tonight and see if a titanium bit manages to make a difference tomorrow.
New bits are helping but drilling out four rivets in each rear window regulator is boring me to death and making we wish I had a coupe rather than sedan.
With luck all of the glass and door wiring will be out by the weekend and free me up to focus on other, potentially more rewarding tasks.
First rear glass finally successfully removed and what a PITA relative to the front.
At least I now have a semi-proven plan of attack for the remaining two and they'll go much faster (famous last words)
Looking forward to future projects my Bimmerworld oil pan gasket, oil pump nut wiring and baffle arrived.
Plan is to drop the pan and get the baffles welded in and oil pump nut wired.
While the pan is out for welding what other stuff should I be considering as "while you're in there" worthy?
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