Cyph34r

I got a few more components off my L20b today, and I'm thinking that barring any catastrophic failures, I should be able to have the engine itself ready to install (its on one of my stands right now) with another solid day's work, though i have other projects for the next few days. I've checked out all the exhaust components and they just need to be welded together and installed, and the carb looks good to go. My plan at this point is to work on the engine, install it and the transmission (not my first transmission swap, though it is my first auto->manual), and then just go back to searching for the pedal and hydraulic line while I get everything else in the car sorted out. At this point the car has already been parked for months, and I decided a new winterweight jacket and insurance for my motorcycle was probably a better idea than another vehicle (my driveway and the street outside currently contains 3 BMW E30s, none of which are mine, a Fiero, also not mine Betsy, my motorcycle, and a 720 on stands.) I've got the stock distributor for the engine in good shape, but a friend has the correct Pertronix kit if I decide I want to ditch the points. I don't have a correct ignition coil, but the plan was to just grab one from RockAuto when I order spark plugs and other tuneup components (with all the car work me and my friends do at my house we make about 2 orders a month).The 4-speed transmission I have is good, so I'll probably install that over the iffy dogleg I acquired a few months ago with my new hood. I'm not even certain about the big unit under the glove-box. Nothing's actually wired up in there, its just a blower with no electricals connected as far as I can tell. That's fairly low on my priority list, not being a component that's required to start the car.

I can't deal with automatic transmissions for very long before they start to annoy me, and the one in Betsy was definitely on its way out by the time i got a hold of the car, and was almost unusable by the time i decided to park it. I'm gonna tear the engine down and re-time it, since the person who last assembled it apparently installed the timing chain wrong, and as long as I'm tearing the engine down i figure i'll go through and carefully inspect everything and replace all the gaskets and anything else you guys might suggest doing, in the interest of getting the engine in to a dailyable state. While i wait for those components I'm just going to start trying to spend at least a couple hours whenever i have a day free working on getting some aspect of the car fixed/upgraded/replaced/jury rigged/etc, and hopefully that way by the time I find the hydraulics, I'll have already done everything else that needs to happen. On a semi-related topic: I've been looking for about an hour now for a thread or page that i saw a while ago (not sure if it was here, or the 510 realm, or somewhere else entirely) for identifying the year of the 510, since mine is titled as a 1970, but I've been told its a 1969. Maybe I'm just not thinking of the right search terms to put in, but if anyone happens to know where that thread/page is, could I get a link? (Or if you can tell from my pictures what year my car is, what year is my car?)

I like simplicity and I already know how to fully disassemble and reassemble an L engine. Also I now have an L20b in my garage that seems pretty fresh, or at least turns freely and everything inside the oil pan looks clean (I'll see what the rest looks like when i get to it i guess). Unfortunately since I currently have no working vehicles, Competing this project might have to be delayed again until I can find someone that has the stuff I need for the auto->manual swap for cheap or trade (except I don't have much to trade except bits of a disassembled L16) In the mean time I'll probably pick up a 620 or 720 in running order and drive that until I can get Betsy on the road.

I keep changing my mind about what powerplant to put in it, but I want to daily it, so i figure there's no real reason to up the power very much. I went out and cleaned all the stuff i'd had stored in the car out, and got all the prep work done to get my pathfinder out of the garage so i can start more seriously working on it. Thinking my first step is going to be to go through and just clean the hell out of everything inside and out, and start putting together an actual list of everything i need for the car. I got some MR2 seats in good condition from a junk yard that I plan to install in front, and the rear seats, apparently never having been used, and having had a blanket on them their entire life, are still in great condition. I plan to pull out the old gauge cluster and replace it with a panel of VDO gauges. I'm planning in the next few days to do a few electrical mods, as well as all the wheel bearings. I want to rewire the headlights when i install my speakers and radio, but I still think i might want to put E30 projectors in it, and i dont want to have to do it twice... Still don't have the original pictures i took when i got the car, but here's one i took of the interior today (Sorry for the blurry, my phone's camera is terrible at low-light pictures): You can see that i still haven't removed the column-shifter for the automatic from the inside of the car, and the temp-probe line from my coolant gauge which is currently sitting where the driver seat should be.

I got this car in December of last year from a little old British woman (The source of the car's name) who was a friend of the family. The L16 was pretty badly damaged in various ways, so I pulled it apart, after driving it for a week damaged out of necessity, and put the car along the side of my house to wait. Now that I've decided that it is time to get this project dealt with, the only other real problem to deal with is the transmission, Automatic. I've acquired a manual transmission (I seem to have 2 now), though I'm still looking for all the other equipment necessary for the swap (Anybody in the PDX area who might happen to have pedals/cylinders/clutch line and would be willing to part with them, please let me know.). For a while I was considering doing a KA24 swap, but I decided that I'd rather keep the stock engine. I'm probably also going to be staying stock with the visual aspects of the car (no flared fenders or insane spoilers or anything of that nature), and I'm considering not even knocking out the dents. I'll throw more pictures in once I can get at them.

I actually replaced the AFM with one that tested correctly. I'm hoping to get a new camshaft in the next few days so I guess I'll see what happens then.

A couple of months ago I momentarily lost my mind and decided that I ABSOLUTELY RIGHT NOW had to have an S30. I browsed craigslist for a couple of days, then started going around looking at cheap S30s, knowing that I'd probably be putting a fair amount of work in before it would be DDable. I settled on a '76 that had a 5 speed (and a spare 4 speed) and a spare engine, along with varied bins of other parts. When I purchased the car I was made aware of a rich condition that had fouled the plugs (the previous owner suspected the AFM), and the fact that a differential mount of some kind wasn't "good" anymore. (Pictured: Minutes after I got home a friend decided he wanted to sit in the driver's seat.) Once I got it home, I cleaned all the electrical contacts and checked all of the fuel injection system components according to the FSM (and determined that the AFM, coolant temp sensor, and a couple of injectors were bad). On a full check of the various other systems I suspected were bad, I discovered that the master brake cylinder was in dire need of work, and the brake booster was just completely done. Over the past 2 months I've repaired numerous varied "little" problems, as well as those listed above, and upon going to do the valve timing before taking it for a test drive, i discovered that my camshaft is damaged. It has two spots of serious cancer-rust that I've found so far, both in the passenger floor pan, and both still small, as well as lots of little bits of surface rust. I'm hoping i can get it all dealt with before any of it spreads too far. I know I'll get a bunch of "search the forums" and other such suggestions (such is the way of the internet), but does anyone have any suggestions of any other problems I should look out for during my testing of the car, specific noises to listen for, things like that?

Didn't I tell you I thought I saw it on Multnomah at some point after you told me you'd spotted it at PnP?

God I hated that E36 so much. Other than a vibration noise at like 35 that truck is running better than before you took it to SOAK. The hesitation/loss of power when its cold is almost compeltely gone. And I'm pretty sure this is my first post, so: Hi Ratsun.