LQ9 into E39

I installed them last night on the car, and put the car on jackstands resting on these. Since I was jacking front and rear individually the end opposite of where I was jacking would move ever so slightly due to the fact that a standard floor jack moves front and rear while going up and down. When I saw it moving around on those my butthole tightened up considerably so I removed them. They’re not designed for jackstands, only for the wide pads of 2 post lifts that go strictly vertical.

But, they’re easy to install and supposedly cut down on wind noise at speed. See below for a good thread showing their installation and use. You can somewhat visualize in the last few pics how a jackstand doesn’t have a lot of surface area to hold on to.

On a side note this makes me want a lift even more in the garage. I’m getting sick and tired of the constant shuffle with jackstands and floor jack. I initially was settled on a 2 post but my biggest limiting factor is the floor space, and a 2 post would have made my 2 car just absurd to walk around in with cars in it. I still want to use the garage as parking space when not wrenching. I am thinking of a recessed dual scissor lift…need to do some more research on brands and installation but it seems like the right solution for my application.

Fuck yeah…I cut the exhaust off last night to begin planning the new one. I thought it was loud blowing through 2 OEM cats and an open cutout, boy am I glad I deleted those. She loud now.

Becareful w that summit stainless piping, it’s a cheap steel. There’s a reason why it’s so cheap compared to other 4 foot sections of better stainless. I bought it before but ended up putting it on the shelf and used turbo civs good ss piping.

What makes it cheap steel or should I say not good to use? I didn’t see a grade listed so I would assume that would mean it is 4xx series stainless?

I believe it’s 409. 16 gauge.

The viberant brand is almost double for the same 4 foot long 3in dia exhaust tubing because of the quality.

Yeah, mine has 409SS penciled on the side. It doesn’t look medical grade of course but for something I’ll only be driving during warm months I don’t expect issues. Looks aren’t important to me, all I care about is that the welds don’t corrode and leak.

maybe i can switch to aluminized crush bent? :slight_smile:

Makes sense. I haven’t used 409 but I have read to stay away if you can. Everything I usually grab is 304 from http://www.mandrel-bends.com/catalog/mandrel-bends-34/?osCsid=0a40d0282873f8d5a3ab5b65f5136138
They have great prices on 304 and have some nice “kit” options too.

Im sure itll glue together just fine.

Not much progress on anything. As usual the weather is kicking my ass this time of year. Despite having an 18K btu infrared heater in the garage (which is finished, but I’m not sure about insulated), it still struggles on the colder days. Granted, this is single digit weather we are having, so no surprise. We are coming up on a stretch of a week or so where the weather will be in the 20s and 30s so I’m looking to make good progress on the car. Before it got super cold I made quite a bit of progress on my garage decorating so I will have to show everyone once it’s all done, as I’m still waiting on a few things in the mail. Otherwise it has just been progress on the inside of the house as it’s the only place I can work for extended periods of time. I am considering stepping up to a big boy ceiling hung forced air unit heater for next winter.

Had to drive to Pittsburgh for business a few weeks back during a blizzard, came home to this…

I did get a chance to put together some wheel cribs to get the car off the ground while keeping the wheels on. I’ll be doing some suspension work later in the year and need to have the weight on the components before torquing them down. Also nice not to have the car 6" from your nose

I caught a serious case of “while you’re in there” when it came to the rear end…what started out as wanting to drop the diff to change fluid and change the diff bushings turned into “oh, I might as well replace the subframe bushings while the diff is out, and might as well pull the subframe to do that”. So, the rear subframe will come out some time over the next few weeks - I am also looking to have someone local weld in some aluminum reinforcement to the front diff mount. I have always had issues with wheel hop and even some instances of the driveshaft rubbing the body so I am looking to eliminate all that.

Where did you get the 90 elbow for the intake? Is it 4"?

ebay. it’s 4" reducing down to 3.xx" at the MAF, i don’t remember the exact ID of the smaller end. Silicone, it’s a nice piece for $15

I welded a homemade pinion nose snub to prevent all of which you described on my e36 drag car and it worked wonders. bring the diff by and ill weld it up for ya.

I like your jack stands!

FWIW, in the fire truck world some manufacturers use 3cr12, which is a low grade, high carbon content “stainless” steel. It is classified as stainless, but will still oxidize, corrode, rust, etc.

What’s the E36 diff mount like? Mine has a boss cast into the side of the pinion nose, which bolts into a bushing inside a sleeve that is flimsy and welded to the subframe.

On the E39 there have been cases of people breaking the aluminum mount/sleeve off the subframe

See here for nice details of what I’m looking to do. Is this what you mean?

chyeah boiii. Got to deal with this until Santa brings me the lift I want

How does it compare to 409SS

I deal with stainless all day

409 (s40900)

Tensile strength = 380
Yield strength = 207

3cr12 (s40977)

Tensile strength = 450
Yield strength = 280

409 may have better drawability (forming/bending) than 3CR12

Things with the house are slowing down and the weather has been a bit more friendly so I tackled the rear end Friday night. It helped that the exhaust had already come off a few weeks back, but overall this was a piece of cake…I was surprised how easy it was. The original plan was 4x new subframe bushings and 3x new diff bushings, but I may throw in a bigger rear sway and do some general rear suspension maintenance as well since everything is stupid easy to get to. The parking brake shoes were down to bare metal, and the hardware needed some attention as well.

Some crappy pics of the original subframe bushings, I’m hoping this was contributing to my wheel hop. Not terrible shape but they have some age on them.

Surprisingly easy to roll around once you throw the rotors and wheels back on…

Also going to do front diff mount reinforcement while it’s out.

Rather than rent the expensive tools for the subframe bushing job I’m fabbing some out of scrap. Sure glad I dragged the big box full of old angle iron over when I moved.

Nice work!

I am starting to feel like a lot of smaller PITA jobs are “easier” if you just remove entire sections like the subframe you did above.

X…

Yes. I’m almost kicking myself right now…when I installed the coilovers around Septemeber I also did rear rotors, pads, and sway bar end links. The end links were such a PITA to R&R, now they’re right there. But, they needed to be done desperately at the time, so what can you do.

Also, it seems that a lot of guys are dropping the subframes by removing the top 3 strut mount nuts, which of course are hidden under the rear parcel shelf, speakers, etc. Basically, the whole rear interior has to come out including rear seats, c pillars, tray, headrests, seatbelts, sunshade, a ton of other crap. I recently did all this when I put in the coilovers and ended up re-dying the rear shelf black while it was out. What a PITA job. Rather than endure that again, I went to the opposite end of the coilover and loosened the bottom strut mount bolt just a turn, then lowered the subframe until the springs were at “full droop”. Then, the bottom mount bolts came right out (no tension on them) and the subframe dropped the rest of the way.

lookin good. :tup:

I dig it!

thanks boys

Nothing big to report, just chipping away at little stuff

Once the subframe came out the rear sway bar was staring me in the face, so I swapped it out for a thicker, 16.5mm M5 unit. Factory is 15mm. Oddly enough one of the brackets was crushed, not sure how that happened. Some monkey must have wedged a prybar or something against it at some point.

M5 on bottom, 540 on top

overall comparison, 540 on right

Crushed bracket? what…

Undamaged M5 bracket.

Not a bad idea to change things since the rubber isolators had seen better days anyhow on the 540 unit. There had to have been a fair amount of slop in this during normal movement.

After a few revisions of tools I finally got all 7 bushings out. The subframe bushings were not bad, the front diff bushing was probably in the best shape out of all of them. But the 2 rear diff bushings…oh man. Here’s to hoping the new bushings cure the wheel hop I was getting.
One side


Other side

      • Updated - - -

Of course life has funny way of being very inconvenient, so my winter beater decided to give me issues in the middle of the winter. I had been smelling coolant for a month or two and had theories about heater core, head gasket, or best case scenario, a leaking hose, water pump, etc. No overheating ever. Some digging showed the driver’s side head leaking coolant at the back of the block (apparently a common location). So everything came apart, and I replaced the following:

Heads surfaced and cleaned up
New MLS headgaskets+headbolts
Valve cover gaskets, bolt grommets, plug tube seals
Plugs and wires
water pump, thermostat, related seals
lower and upper hoses
exhaust and intake gaskets

I did the timing belt a few months ago so all those tensioners are fresh as well. The water pump was still working but had some crud built up at the weep hole, so it probably wasn’t far from the end. Boy oh boy was it fun pulling the heads with the motor in the car. The head bolts are too long to put in once the heads are already hung, so you have to put them in halfway and then work everything into place as an assembly with 6 bolts rattling around while trying not to gouge the head or the new gasket. I had to jack the motor up by a few inches just to make some room. Should be wrapping it up tonight.

Not how I wanted to spend the weekend, especially with a real bad cold

Heads all ready to be slapped in. SOHC powaaaaaa