The Blue Phoenix - E46 325i

[rherold9]

Note to self, send old bushings to shop and pay them even if it is like $300. Hope you get everything sorted out before this weekend. Take a break for a day and come back at it on Wednesday/Thursday at full force.

I'll probably have sort of catastrophe Friday trying to get my shit in as well. Oh well what you going to do :dunno: .

[Senor_Taylor]

Yeah, Ray says he can give me a refund if I can't have the car ready before Sunday, but I plan on knocking this shit out. I'm 1/8th German. This shit is in my blood. I've got this. NO CAR WILL DEFEAT ME.


In other words, I'm looking for someone to let me co-drive their car on Sunday.

[Senor_Taylor]

Wow, the stars aligned today. I got out of my 12:30 class an hour early and then someone randomly asked me to switch shifts with them at work, so I decided to tackle the car. I got the first bushing in very easily, then the second one was quick as well. My neighbor, Sam, came out and helped me get them lined up and into the pockets and I torqued everything down. Now she's good to go! Total time: 7 hours.

One 1/2" ratchet, one hammer, my finger, my wallet, and my back are the only casualties.

[rherold9]

Wow, the stars aligned today. I got out of my 12:30 class an hour early and then someone randomly asked me to switch shifts with them at work, so I decided to tackle the car. I got the first bushing in very easily, then the second one was quick as well. My neighbor, Sam, came out and helped me get them lined up and into the pockets and I torqued everything down. Now she's good to go! Total time: 7 hours.

One 1/2" ratchet, one hammer, my finger, my wallet, and my back are the only casualties.

Sounds like the typical car project. :thumbup: At least it wasn't your face that got damaged. Now to get an alignment and you are good to go!

[WRXtranceformed]

Wow, the stars aligned today. I got out of my 12:30 class an hour early and then someone randomly asked me to switch shifts with them at work, so I decided to tackle the car. I got the first bushing in very easily, then the second one was quick as well. My neighbor, Sam, came out and helped me get them lined up and into the pockets and I torqued everything down. Now she's good to go! Total time: 7 hours.

One 1/2" ratchet, one hammer, my finger, my wallet, and my back are the only casualties.

Eh just return the saw thing you bought? You "rented" it

[Senor_Taylor]

I kind of like the saw. I don't know, I'll sit on it and think. I've got 30 days right?

[Beej]

Sawzall's are kind of a "if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail" sort of deal.

Glad the car is on the ground! Almost got enough new parts on there to justify keeping the thing.

[Sully]

Yea i was going to say the same thing. Return saw if it was too much. I returned a hole saw after drilling some holes in my steel bumper because when was I ever going to use a 5 in $60 hole saw again. Pretty sure it was missing paint around the teeth anyways so someone probably "rented" it before me

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Senor_Taylor]

Got "new" tires on the rear and got it aligned. Wow, what a difference. The car feels completely different now. Very planted and direct. Feels great. Doesn't seem to pull to the right anymore either, but I need more driving time to determine if it's really fixed.

[Scott]

Got "new" tires on the rear and got it aligned. Wow, what a difference. The car feels completely different now. Very planted and direct. Feels great. Doesn't seem to pull to the right anymore either, but I need more driving time to determine if it's really fixed.

Weird what basic maintenance will do to a car......

[Senor_Taylor]

Well, I'm very glad I got everything ready in time for this weekend. I got her all cleaned up ( and melted the lens on the passenger one in the process) and Bethany looked pretty okay in the sunlight.

She was great on the cruise but when we got to the other side, the guys behind me told me that I was blowing out smoke periodically. Then, when I started it up to head back over, she burped up a sizable cloud. I freaked out and babied it back for the first 50% of the mountain, decided to say fuck it and hooned it back to the burg. The steering gets loose it seems when I hit a bump or rut in the road and the car pulls hard to the right seemingly under acceleration or at constant speed. Need to look into that considering fixing the RTABs didn't change anything.

At the autocross, it blew me away. I had extremely low expectations coming from the Miata, but when I got on it on the first run (with a relatively fresh suspension considering all of the new-ish parts), I was very impressed. It was so composed and tight, and the low down torque made being in 2nd gear no problem. I'm very happy about that and I can definitely see why people track BMW's now. It's a completely different beast on the track with all of the traction and stability controls off and decent(ish) tires on the rear. My times were unimpressive, but that may have been because of the fact that my car had 3 passengers and me loading it down for the last two runs. Oh well

I'd say the car has improved considerably since I bought it from Chan, even if it has consumed 4 quarts of oil in just around 1000 miles. Oh, and the noise from the parking brake went away completely somewhere during all of the hoonage this weekend. Next up is new belts and pulleys, charging the AC/fixing the compressor groan, then maybe figuring out what this leak/burn of oil is. In one of these photos, you can see a puff of smoke coming out of the exhaust.













[youtube]pNhDpjzeMD8[/youtube]

[Scott]

even if it has consumed 4 quarts of oil in just around 1000 miles.

then maybe figuring out what this leak/burn of oil is.

I would figure the oil situation out before spending any more money on the car doing anything else. That is an alarming amount of oil to be going through

[Senor_Taylor]

If it's burning oil, I most definitely can't afford to fix it until a while from now. I figure it's burning so much because of the short trips I make. Chan's wife was driving long distances in it so the oil consumption would lessen as the car warmed up instead of me driving to campus every day.

It doesn't seem to be mixing with coolant.

[SlimKlim]

It could be something like a CCV/ICV which would be an easy and relatively cheap repair, it's definitely worth the effort to diagnose it because at 4 quarts/1k miles you're gonna spend more on oil than you'd spend on the part to fix the issue pretty quickly.

[Senor_Taylor]

I forgot to mention the CCV is the first thing I'm trying to tackle once the Summer hits. But the "burning" of the oil, I can't tackle just yet. I had Jake give some tips about it at the auto-cross. It has also taken me 4 months to drive this thing 1000 miles.

[ViPER1313]

Other cars



BMW



L.o.l

[Jake]

It's $97 to replace the whole mess that is the CCV, do that first before you tackle the other items on your list.

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[*insertusernamehere*]

Lol make sure you give the car enough time to sit. Use high mileage oil, i started using it in mine and it still burns and gives me the blue puff on start up but the dipstick still reads where i checked it last. I haven't bought oil in like 3 weeks and my car is worse than yours.

[Senor_Taylor]

I've been putting Rotella T6 in it, but I have Mobil 1 European formula to put in when I change the oil. The problem is I don't have anywhere to do the CCV. I can't leave stuff torn apart overnight here in Copper especially since it'll be outside. I mean, I can, but I don't want to.

[Jake]

This'll be a day project, if that.