cruizin01

My goals were pretty well accomplished given the year we've had. Plenty of burnouts in the truck happened. Got to run it down the 1/4 mile at Marion and through the twisties on Rte 555. The A3 was upgraded to the TT-S. It got the normal upgrades of a downpipe and intake. Tunes for the engine, trans and diff. Wheels and tires to remove the terrible riding 20's. The BRZ didn't make any track events because it was put back to stock and sold to Carvana for dumb money. I had no idea I would own an E30 at this point, but here we are. I guess that means everything I own now is/will be turbocharged.... Not a bad situation to be in.

Thanks for your input. Ill see where I end up once I get the engine positioned in the car and go from there.

Yeah, that was it. Stinks I can buy a Colorado trans cheaper than that adapter. Which I may do as it uses a more ideal slip yoke as well as a better trans mount position. But I read you have to cut the input shaft which isn't ideal. There's also something with the 3rd gear being different. So yeah I figure Ill wait and see where the shifter is at once its in the car.

Come on, you can do better than that. I know in its natural form the shifter is gonna be too far back but it looks like there's a drift company that sells a forward mounted shifter bracket. Haha, we do not. Yeah, K power has a really nice kit but its $5k to start and that's no engine or trans.

Since the C10 is pretty well sorta and I dont find myself needing to tinker with it every 8 seconds my mind started to wonder about another project. My wife was disgusted by the thought of it but eventually she came around. haha. I don't have any manuals at my house at the moment so that was a necessity. My mind wondered around between Conquests to 944's to E30's. My wife's wallet preferred a cheap starting price which as you've all seen the prices for most anything decent and even slightly desirable is hard to find right now. A coworker heard me talking about cars and said a friend has an E30 roller for sale. It was in Orient so I ran down and took a look. 91 318is. Pretty clean shell. No rust that I could find. Needs 2 fenders and the clearcoat is rough. Interior is pretty complete aside from carpet. The exterior needs a rear spoiler installed and a radiator, etc. It does have all new suspension, Z3 rack, decent wheels and tires. So we made a deal and the dude even delivered it to me. So then I ran through the ideals of what engine and trans. I was completely bored by the idea of putting another BMW engine in the car. That would make the most sense financially but I just wasn't interested in it. I did some math between LS swaps, K20 swaps and even some 5 cylinder VW stuff. It was all gonna be +$8k plus for the basic stuff needed. I was digging around Marketplace and ran across this Pontiac Solstice GXP engine, trans and ecu in Tiffin. After looking at some details on the 2L turbo and 5 speed I decided to give it a try. For $1200 it was going to be a cheap, great start for a powerplant. Was it my dream engine? No of course not, but it should be cool and make plenty of power. Controlling the engine seems to be somewhat problematic and may(WILL) require some special wiring and different ECU. I think Ill need a different oil pan and obviously some mounts, etc but I think everything is feasible. Should keep the car nice and light and double the stock horsepower. Another Chevy powered BMW never hurt anyone right? If anyone has anyone they know that is REALLY good with standalone Ecotech harness stuff get at me! This project might be a little slow going but Ill post up the progress and failures.

Agreed!

I have a love/relationship with Hoonigan. But the Hoonicorn vs the world is one of my favorites. I loved that it beat up on most everything except the IROZ guys. Those 5 cylinder Audi's are dumb.

Just means it meets BMW quality standards. Each star rated tire has been testing for that vehicles standards, etc. yeah our labor for batteries is not real cheap. Its 1.5 hrs $158/hr. So $200-225 plus the install and registration. Our website has a 15% off coupon. That should apply.

Small update. As far as the new driveshaft is concerned. Its sooo nice. Fixed all the noise and vibration that I was experiencing previously. It runs down the freeway at 80mph with no issues whatsoever. So that's exciting. Ive been noticing some valvetrain noise lately at idle since I got all the exhaust leaks fixed this summer. I initially thought maybe I had the wrong pushrods in the truck. I measured for them when I put the cam in but thought maybe I was wrong. So I pulled a cover and checked 3 different cylinders and everything was spot on. I finally got my head out of the sand and realized my oil pressure at idle cold/hot sits around 20psi. After digging around that seems pretty low for what most guys see on their LS junk. This was through 2 different sensors at different spots on the engine. The couple most common things for low oil pressure on these seem to be the front cam cover and the oil pump pickup oring. I didn't realize the cam cover but specifically remember looking closely at it for any wear or damage. I decided the pickup oring would be the easiest place to start. The truck needed an oil change anyway. Anyway, I got the pan pulled and the pickup loosened up and pulled the oring. Most guys find cracked orings, mine unfortunately was not. It was smaller than the new replacement but didn't look like the cause of the issue. Shucks. Well, I put it all back together and fired it up. 40psi of oil pressure at idle.. Amazing. I was baffled that fixed it. And the best part is the valvetrain is quiet now. So nice. Anyway the truck is probably done for the winter. Don't really have anything planned for it unless something falls in my lap.

I would call and re-clarify this. My wife got an internal email at St. Anns that doesn't jive with this.

I think we pay between $3-4/tire for disposal. We scrap probably 40-60 tires weekly.

Our price and MAG's should be the same on batteries. The most expensive "normal" battery we sell is $245 plus tax for the 900cca lead acid and AGM's. The price I mentioned early is just normal retail. Just so ya know for the future.

Looks great Clay.

Not necessary. I was just comparing it to our OEM batteries. I can sell most of the medium sized lead acid and AGM batteries for $195 plus tax. So not quite as expensive as the dealer "raping" you proposed. And I think they are a batter battery. Compare the weight of one to any aftermarket battery and you'll notice an immediate difference. It's not uncommon to see 6-8 years out of our batteries. Rarely do they fail early like many of the aftermarket batteries we swap out of cars. Just my $.02

Kerry, what did you pay for the Napa battery? What size was it? (lead acid or AGM) And Mace, there are BMW star rated tires that aren't always sold/installed at a discount tire store. So a Michelin tire isn't always "just" a Michelin tire. There are differences with them.

My wife's dept at Mount Carmel is finally offering a "small" retention bonus that pays immediately plus another one if you stay for the whole 12 months. Its not as much as it should be but its a start. I think you play the middle of the road to try and keep these businesses afloat. You and I both know that this thing isn't going away "real" soon and to lock it down for weeks on end, multiple times puts a large % of these businesses OUT of business. I think you play the gray area just enough to keep the hospitals from blowing up and nothing more. Obviously trying to do this is far from an exact science. (Im not saying they aren't doing dumb things but you have to start somewhere). Once you get the cases "just" under control then you try and start convincing people the vaccine is in everyone's best interest to get back to "normal". Thats my $.02 trying to see both sides of the problem.

This is absolutely the case in Ohio as well. My wife said she heard that Childrens is going to start seeing adult patients as well to help with the influx. (Im not certain on any other details)

Im curious of peoples opinion on getting a vaccine when its available. Assuming you haven't gotten covid yet, are you cool with taking the small chance of getting seriously ill from the disease or having lingering side effects? Or does the vaccine scare you more? My wife and I differ on this scenario. But she's in healthcare and doesn't like the idea of being forced into a vaccine that doesn't have long term study work. I on the other hand feel its worth the chance with the vaccine, especially if it helps extinguish this trash fire we are in from turning into a global dumpster fire (economically speaking).

BMW's information states to only register a battery if its been replaced.

Would have been a great day to be at the track. Congrats.

very cool. gettin close

Good lookin' car.

Looks dope. Love the black on red.

Finally bit the bullet and ordered another driveshaft. I was sorta set on ordering a CV style shaft from Driveshaft Shop in NC. They wanted $1300 for one thought so I decided to shop around. I called Columbus Joint & Clutch and talked to Sean about it. He said he could build one but didn't want to. He said he's had to fix or replace all the ones he's seen. He recommended going to a steel 3.5" steel 2 piece shaft. He swears by theirs and says its what he builds for all the pulling truck guys. He said its common for lowered truck guys to come in with vibration/u-joint angle problems and said the 2 piece shafts almost always solve the problem since you can split the angles using 3 ujoints instead of 2. The upside being I shouldn't have any critical speed issues either since the shafts are half as long, and this whole setup was about $600 cheaper than the CV style aluminum setup. So I went ahead and had them build one, I just had to come up with a carrier support and then redo the rear end pinion angle since you set it up to match the front driveshaft angle and not the engine/trans angle. Funny...not funny side note when I picked up the new shaft, I had asked him to reuse the billet pinion yolk along with the spicer ujoint that was new when I had the aluminum shaft built this spring. Sean says, "I didn't reuse that ujoint because 2 of the bearing caps didn't have any grease in them".... WTF? I said could the grease have gotten pushed out? He says, "no, not likely. we see the spicer ujoints all the time with not enough grease in them. We have to make sure we grease almost everyone of them". Sooo, its very likely this vibration the whole time was at least partially caused by a ujoint the whole time. Who thinks to check a brand new ujoint? Fuuuu... Anyway, here's some pics from the job. Spent most of the weekend on it. I didn't get a chance to drive it as it was late last night and I was filthy and tired. But I think I got it setup very close. Should work out fine for what Im doing. Time for some drag radials right?

That sucks. I dont have any solid advice either. I almost had a $10k fence built only to realize my township doesn't allow "wire" type fencing of any type. Nonsense.