Harsh braking

All brakes are just about finished, I have an issue with the drivers side front caliper bracket as it doesn't seem to be a standard thread. Other than that I have laid out all the brake pipes and connected the pedal box and both brake cylinders and clutch.

The cylinders come with rubber rings that can be discarded. The size does matter!

This kit is a left hand drive so most things have to be mirrored accept of course the pedals! When the pedal box goes in it has to be bolted to the floor pan, don't forget to use some sealant round the holes!

The 3 way brake connector bolted to the rear diff plate.

I'm running out of things to do before the engine and gearbox go in. I cleaned the gearbox which now looks pretty good, not sure whether to change the clutch or not, will take a look in the next day or so. I wanted to put the wheels on before I try and get the engine in as I need to roll the car back to give room for the lift.

Nice rear end!

Once I sort out the front caliper bracket problem I'll connect the brake hoses and get the wheels on.

I'm really happy with the wheels, after taking them to one of those DIY jet washers they look great. I even ordered 4 new BMW centre covers from e-bay to really give that final touch!

The gearbox just needed a quick squirt of WD-40 and a wire brush but the engine requires a little more. A final clean may have to wait until I can take the engine somewhere to have it professionally cleaned but that will have to wait until I have it fitted in the car!

More suspension and diff

I had a few problems understanding the layout of the rear suspension but the help available from the GKD forum as well as calls and emails to Peter at GKD have been invaluable. I started first by cleaning up the Diff and giving it a quick paint. I should check out the oil level as some leaked out while in transit as well as laying on the garage floor. I then bolted it in position and bolted  the front bracket in position ready for drilling.

One drive shaft in place.

When the rear Diff bolts are tightened to the chassis and the front bracket with rounded front edge (lower middle) is in place and tightened the two holes required to bolt the bracket to the chassis can then be drilled.

A few different views of the rear suspension setup. I haven't yet found the locking nuts for the eyelet which is part of the track rod assembly (lower left).

I may have to remove the drive shaft as I have to drill the front diff bracket.

.. also I need to get the drive shaft end bolt further through the hub to get the nut on. I'm a bit reluctant to do things that are difficult to undo!

I finished off drilling and riveting the cable tie bases. I had to remember that mine is a left hand drive so brake pipes have to be moved to the other side of the prop shaft tunnel. Fuel pipes and electrics go on the same side as a RHD. Clutch pipes are much easier in a LHD as they go directly to the left hand side of the gearbox.

The small white clips can be seen here and there. I put then all at 150mm apart.

The front passenger brake assembly is finished and ready for brake pipes. Unfortunately I have had problems with the caliper mounting bracket on the drivers side. The threads are either wrong or not good as they are too tight and are destroying the bolt threads. If anyone has a spare bracket I'll be very interested :-)

I decided not to tighten anything too tight just in case and then at the end go through a long list of bolts and nuts and their corresponding torque settings.

Attacking the rear end

Back home again and an attempt to catch up a little on lost time. One thing worth remembering when picking up donor parts, like I did from a BMW breakers is to get them to undo the rear drive shaft retaining nuts (rear wheel bearing nut). This is much easier when the back axel is attached to the car but when it's lying on the garage floor there is nothing to stop it spinning. To get around this I put the wheels back on and put a metal rod through them.

At this point I made my first expensive mistake. I only had a 32mm socket and tried to remove the drive shaft nuts. It worked fine on one side but it kept slipping on the other. So what did brains do? I got a angle grinder out and removed part of the lip on the hub to give me more room to get to the nut. It still didn't work and I was forced to buy the correct size socket 31mm and it came off a treat. Once off I realised I actually needed the hubs!

Not a smart move - I had to buy two new hubs from BMW for £65 each, they do look good though :-)

Once the nuts were off I removed as much of the rear suspension parts as I could (anti roll bars and control arms etc) and then removed the drive shafts from the diff by removing the torx bolts.

A screwdriver between the torx to stop the shaft spinning while undoing them.

Now left with two drive shafts still containing the hubs. This is where my new puller came in handy ...

 ... but it wasn't actually a hub puller so I needed to clamp the three legs of the puller to stop them slipping off the hub.

Typically one came off nice and easily but the other didn't but then a brain wave - I didn't need a puller at all; I just picked up the whole thing including trailing arm, rested the hub on the bench with the shaft facing downwards and bashed the shaft with a hammer and out it came!

 The drive shafts, a clean up and they looked almost new. No leaks, no cracks in the rubber gaiters - perfect. Interestinng, the car was from 96 and the labels on the end of the drive shafts stated 98, perhaps I didn't get the rear suspension unit from my donor!

On to the uprights and bearings. I used a press at work and everything was going great, the bearing slid into the upright no problem and then a split seconds lack of concentration I started pressing in the hub before I had put the locking washer on. I then pressed out the hub which left part of the bearing on the hub. To cut a long story short the bearing had to be binned - £45 for a new one. The other one was fine.

All the necessary parts - a little bit of oil helps the bearing go in.

TIP: When pressing in the hub, support the bearing from underneath with a socket otherwise it may crack - this is exactly what happened to my bearing (the long version of the story)

I need to dremmel a groove into the remaining part of the bearing and crack it off so the new one can go on.

The one that worked!

On hold for two weeks

Nothing has been happening since I'm out travelling but one thing to add is I bought myself a puller to get the hubs off! Once I get home on Saturday it'll be business as usual (I miss my kit!)

Steering Rack

After some great advice (thanks Franky) I managed to remove the steering rack nuts very easily by just heating them up with a hair dryer type of paint stripper, slipped on the compression springs required for the IVA test, greased it up and put it all back.

A few minutes heating loosens the glue keeping the nut in place

Compression spring in place

A little grease over the spring and then the gaiter went back

The IVA also requires a gaiter covering the steering rod nut. Once that was in place I put one of the disks on ready for calipers tomorrow.

The IVA required gaiter (black tube) covering the steering arm nut. Disk ready for calipers tomorrow.

Gearbox tunnel panelling riveted

I finally riveted on the two panels on both sides of the gearbox housing. I squeezed out two lines of black sealant and then riveted on the panels. The sealant is a bugger to get off hands so plastic throw away gloves would have been good – oh well next time! Once the sealant was in place I turned the lights off and shone a torch around the back edges of the panels to check if light came through.

Tape used to cover and fill large holes with sealant

I’m also working on the front steering rack, had to call Peter to talk me through what was needed for the new IVA regulations. The inner ball joints have to be removed so a compression spring can be placed behind them, this is required so the steering straightens automatically. At the moment I can’t get the cap nut off – that’s the next task.

The clamps holding the steering rack to the chassis.

Once I pulled off the gaiter this was underneath. Trouble is even using a plumbers wrench I can't seem to undo the cap "bullet" nut to the left.

Front Springs and Dampers

Once the lower wishbones were in place it was onto the real Lego type parts. I found out that it was better to install the upper wishbones before the dampers otherwise it wasn't possible to insert the upper wishbone mounting bolts. For some reason I don't seem to have enough washers to attach the passenger damper but that is easily fixed. The latest version of the kit actually has the springs and dampers already made up as well as the wheel bearings and hubs so a lot of the hard work has been done.

Looks more like a car everyday!

Wishbones done

After a telephone call to Peter we managed to sort out the wishbones. I had to push the rear bush further in to allow the rubber washer to compress more. It was still a pretty tight fit but at least no welding required!

I turned the chassis over as I was fitting and drilling the undersides of the panels anyway which made it easier to work on the wishbones

The side panels on the drivers side fitted snugly to the lower and upper chassis but the passenger side there was approx. 5mm too much panel.

The chassis is slighly shorter on the passenger side which meant the side panel was a little too tall.

This was sorted by placing a metal plate along the edge of the pre-drilled holes and squeezing down with a set of 1m long clamps (I just happened to have a set of three from making my work bench 13 years ago). A clamp and plate were also used on the vertical edge to stop the panel bending outwards.

The clamping created a small ridge but as it's the underside of the chassis it shouldn't be noticeable

The claps were also very good way to pull the panel to the chassis before drilling.

Even though the panels are now pre-drilled they still require some de-burring once the holes are drilled into the chassis. The Dremel is great for that.

Now I need to get help turning the chassis up the right way again ...

Off to a fairly good start

Last couple of days (only a couple of hours each day) have been spent drilling the two panels either side of the transmission tunnel, my new Dremel tool has come in handy for fine cutting and filing the panels where they come in contact with welds.

The gearbox has been seperated from the engine so it was easy just to place it roughly in it's final position so I could estimate how much I could cut and bend out the panel closest to my right foot. It's very tight between the pedals so any extra space is welcome. I'll probably have to wear ballet shoes to drive the car anyway! 

A very small gap right of the three round pedal holes will give a little extra space for the right foot! I noticed also that the gearshaft cover has to be changed as this one is obviously from the right hand drive donor!

To vary the work a little I also started on the front suspension but came across a problem where the bottom brackets on the chassis are slightly too close so the wishbone won't quite fit in. I'm still at the stage where I'm reluctant to bash anything too hard - I want to try to bend it as in B in the photo and not A.

Peter says this is quite normal when a chassis is first made on

 a jig and then welded; small adjustments may have to be made.

  

Kit and donor parts safely stored in the Cellar

After a very long trip to Kent the donor parts including tyres were collected Thursday morning and then spent 2 hours with Peter in the afternoon checking off all the kit parts and loading them in the trailer. It's a shame that the fibreglass parts weren't bubble wrapped as there is some damage but they can be touched up later.

The 9 cubic meter box trailer was great but there was no good way to

stack parts so the roof box and back of the Mondeo came in handy too. The

engine was placed over the trailer axle but was still too far forward which

made the Mondeo very light on the front wheels.

Engine out and ready to load, I forgot to take the battery

and some parts aren't needed.

The engine was a bugger to get down into the cellar but a rope tied to the engine mounts, a 2m long scaffold pole and 4 happy helpers solved it.

Spent today emptying all the boxes and placing the parts neatly on shelves. I did notice that perhaps I had made a slight miscalculation with the width of the opening I need to cut in the wall to get the car out; I'm going to have to remove the door as well. That and put a driveway across the neighbours garden!

This step 0 of 80. I've put the GKD key ring on a hook

hanging from the ceiling; the last stage to complete!

Checked the kit

Went over to see Pete today at GKD and had a quick look at the kit. All the panels have now been pre-drilled which makes life much easier, a few other things have also been improved according to Pete. There are plenty of bags and boxes to keep me busy for months (I hope not years!)

The holes pre-drilled in the panels. Doesn't the black look good!

Dubble skinned Fuel tank.

The Donor

Went over to BMW Recycling in Little Chart today to check out the donor. Looks good, sounds good and has a nice set of BMW 16" alloys with fairly new tyres. The car has 78,000 miles on the clock and is from 96 - I'm happy! 

 It won't look like this for long!

Engine looks good 

Very pleased with the wheels and Tyres

Getting very close

Well only four days left until the drive to the UK. The trailer is sorted and Jörgen my very kind brother in-law has agreed to lend me his Ford Mondeo estate because my VW Sharan is off the road with engine troubles. It's a long trip I'll be taking with Freddie my youngest son. Hopefully by Friday next week the trailer will be full of kit car and donor parts and we'll be heading home to Stockholm.  

Another challenge

I thought I had better check to see if I could get a trailer sorted for when I fetch the kit and donor parts. Well in Sweden just now it's winter and in winter it seems all the trailers available for rental have winter tyres with spikes. That's okay in Sweden but in Europe spiked tyres are not allowed! So what do I do? Wait until the 1st of April when the tyres are changed; like hell no! So far the solution is to hire a 9m³ trailer with spikes which also has with it summer tyres and then change to summer tyres at the border! It's a real pain but definitely doable and probably the only choice I have. I’m not sure of the consequences if I drive without changing them and get caught!

Donor sorted!

I´ve had problems finding a donor BMW 318is in Sweden either too many owners in one case 23! Very high mileage or just too far away to collect so contacted Ian at Bridgend Recycling BMW Spares in Charing Kent. They just happened to have a 318is 1,9 liter M44 almost the same as the M42, physically the same size at least so should pop nicely into the 4 cylinder chassis. Price very reasonable too apart from the UK VAT laws. If one buys the whole car one doesn't have to pay VAT, if the garage strips it you then have to pay VAT on the parts! I still plan to drive over the first week of January to pick up the kit and donor parts.

In the mean time I have cleaned out the garage and planned how I shall get the car out once it's built. Overall it's a great size 6 x 4 meters so should be plenty big enough to build the car. The garage had a proper door and exit earlier in its life but part of the land was unfortunately sold and became the next door neighbour. The previous owner of  our house then decided there was no further need for a full garage door hence the door we have today is only 79cm wide. Hopefully it's wide enough to get in the chassis as well as all the parts, engine etc. Once it's built however I'll need to remove part of the wooden wall, wide enough to get the car out as well as being high enough to also get out my motor bike, approx. 140cm. The red rectangle in the picture shows the area I'll need modify into a door.  I’ll also need to fix the garden to add a slope out and up to the right between us and the neighbour. That job is way down on the list!

I've always had trouble getting the bike in & out