You need a bigger garage haha
made some progress on the diff last night. old fluid drained, cover pulled and cleaned, inside of diff cleaned, new bushings pressed into subframe with homemade tool, cover resealed and whole unit slapped back into subframe. I have to get it to JD’s now for welding.
I am wondering if anyone locally has EFILive so that I can change the VIN in the GM PCM to the original BMW VIN for inspection purposes. Or, can it be done in HPTuners.
HP Tuners won’t let you do a none GM VIN you have to use EFI Live. I’m guessing this will also stop you from ever being able to use HP tuners to make tune changes since HP tuners licenses off the VIN and it wouldn’t be supported.
Have you actually looked into doing this? I forget what year the PCM/motor is but if its newer than the BMW setup it shouldn’t matter for inspection if its newer.
I sold my copy of EFI live a while back however 
goddamn kids these days with their hashtags and selfies and shit. @faggots
There’s a guy down in PA that did this swap and tuned his own, here’s what he had to say:
I wonder who has EFILive locally
I’m ready for your hood and other fender…gotta coordinate that soon…possibly this weekend?
this weekend would be good Nick. I can drop them off Saturday afternoon if that works.
@GV1390 #circlejerk #bombingthroughafieldagain
@Spam16v #fml
@focusinprogress @checko @Norb shop dirt bikes vs the wagon in some fields? Down Town B-Lo gangster shit.
LOL. does shop dirtbikes imply I can’t bring my rmz450?
F that, bring that bitch down so I can pucker my butthole.
I have a funeral to go to in the morning but I can be there in the afternoon, maybe 1pm or so.
Spent some time in the garage last night. The hose bib fitting was leaking so that came out for a new one to be sweated in - of course I ran out of half inch copper pipe couplings, so that will get done tonight.
Onto the automotive work - it was a drivetrain kind of night
Sprayed down the subframe a bit with brake cleaner, then simple green, then finally warm soapy water to clean it up.
I had drained the diff a few weeks back when I pulled it out of the car, so I filled the diff with about a quart of new Mobil 1 75W-140, and turned the output stubs quite a few times to churn up all the sediment/beer can tabs in there, and drained it. When I had the cover off I cleaned it up fairly well inside and resealed the cover, so it was nice to see only a bit of brown that came out. Filled it back up fully, torqued the plugs, done. I would have reinstalled it in the subframe last night but unfortunately my new front diff bushing melted/deformed just enough during the mount reinforcement welding that it was junk - slid out of the bore with a strong push from my fingers - so another is on order. I should have waited to install it until he had done the welding with the old one in place, so the blame is on me - but live and learn.
I also took apart the shifter on the T56 to diagnose and solve a somewhat severe rattle I had under load. The plan was to replace what I thought was a bad receiver bushing (plastic) on the shift rail. Of course I found that it had been replaced with a brass one when I had the unit rebuilt last year. The shifter itself felt funny and loose, so I disassembled that and found the aluminum cast case to be cracked in a few placed with some small bits of material missing around the central ball fitting. Keep in mind that I bought this used with unknown miles and proceeded to beat the hell out of it for 10,000 miles, so I really owe it nothing. I was never really satisfied with the shift action of the stock unit so I decided to treat myself, and picked one of these up
MGW
With all my bodywork now at the painter’s I placed an order for a few things that I wanted ready when he was done so that I would not be held up, as well as some other items that I have been putting off.
Fender Liner hardware
Fender bolts (OEM Torx)
Angel eye harness - one side of the current setup is fraying/damaged and causes flickering
Axle to diff stub hardware (OEM external Torx) - with as many times as I’ve removed and reinstalled diffs the external torx heads on these are torn up.
Front diff bushing
Rear sway bar bushing brackets (steel) - factory material is aluminum and is prone to failure. The steel units are from an E36 M3 application
New cabin air filters- Mann
I have a lot of pictures of recent progress and details somewhere but my laptop has been acting up lately so I am in the process of backing it all up onto my HDD.
Will this one snap off next time we meet up for lunch like the last one?
for what i paid for it, it fucking better not
Magnetic drain plug on the M5 differential told an interesting, but not that surprising, story
Fine paste/sludge. This is after all the liquid oil drained off, and the plug had sat overnight.
Sludge cleaned, leaving fine particles. Again not too surprising considering this was with entirely brand new clutches/disks, and was the same fluid that that I did “break in” on. Fluid has approx 10K on it.
Rear diff cover is pretty clean, no surprises.
After receiving the rear end back from my fabricator. Bet you didn’t know a whole rear end will fit in a wagon!
I am running 75W-140 this year rather than the old 75W-90 last year as it is what was originally recommended for the M5 diff.
I also removed the old single fan that I robbed off a 2005ish Monte Carlo at the junkyard last year. It was originally a dual fan but didn’t fit the Corvette radiator, so I carefully fabricated it to size (who are we kidding, I sawzall’d it right down the middle).
Besides looking ghetto, it obviously didn’t have the CFM that two fans would, and didn’t provide the extra cooling capability that something with an integrated shroud would provide.
See ya later buddy. When the radiator exploded in its face last summer, it kept working just fine with no issues, so I’m thinking that as a thanks for its fine service, I would hook it up to 12V and put empty beer cans in the blades (put on your safety glasses kids)
Empty! Note the long hose between the crank pulley and radiator that runs from the overflow bottle to the water pump area. This was previously zip tied to some plastic flanges on the old fan.
The replacement fan is an OEM dual fan out of a 4th gen LS1 WS6 Trans Am. Uses the factory mounting clips on the radiator for perfect fitment. Even the electrical connector is the same! I just need to wire up another connector via relay to feed the 2nd fan, and have my tuner activate the 2nd fan in the tune.
How’s that for OEM: the WS6 LS1 fan even comes with these nice clips that probably held the old fan harness. I used them for the previously mentioned coolant line and it fits like it was designed to be there. Sorry, no pics of the fan installed.
Pulled the cluster and MID as they both have had missing pixels since day 1. My money is usually spent on less trivial things but a specialist somewhere in the northwest does both for $150, so I can’t go wrong with that.
Finished up the evening by pulling the rear bumper in preparation for the new one.
:bigtup: Awesome work man, Cant wait to see it rip around this summer.
Super Sedans of Lancaster!
Cant wait to see this/hear this rip by my house
^^ lol @ super sedans, should be a good summer. I have only been in the neighborhood since late October so haven’t explored too much of the back roads. But, where it opens up to 55 (I think I have passed your place, saw the Benz in the driveway) is where I do my shakedown tests to make sure parts aren’t falling off
l’ll gladly ruin the road in front of your house and piss off the neighbors :tup:
I think you missed putting Subaru badges on the wall.
But i always look forward to updates… Im sure ill miss seeing this around North buff.
^ i thought about the Subaru decals too but decided against it as I don’t see the point it getting a hard dick over a 14 year old wagon. I am selling it for something newer this summer anyhow. It has been a fantastic car to me.
I still have some very close friends in NoBo (most of them in my wedding) so I am there once in a while.