I have to agree. Thanks, Dave! I look at this forum for tips on how to keep my E30 happy before I open my Bentley. It's that good. John
Forum: Community Forum

The crank has detent balls on each side of the handle. The handle folds up into a slot that spreads out over time resulting in the detent not working like it should. Remove the handle and you will see all this on the back side if the handle. I was able to get mine to work better by squeezing the sides of the slot together with channel locks. Mine has started drooping again, and I'm a little
Forum: Technical Forum

I tried to edit but it didn't work. I wanted to add: If you aren't in a hurry it might be good to also get the seals and gaskets that go on the front of the engine and replace those when you do the timing belt. They could be pretty old. I replaced mine last summer and even though I had put them in there 6 years earlier, they looked pretty used up. It won't add more than a couple
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Hey! Nice looking car! Mine would look just like that if I had any decent paint on it anywhere. It looks like you have a trunk spoiler that I don't have, but otherwise we have the same car. Mine's an '87, 2 door, burgundy red 325 with tan sport seats just like yours. It sounds like you might have an LSD too since your buddy lost it in a wet turn. If so, we really do have a matched
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QuoteMichiel 318iS Now we're talking beer! Belgian beer! Probably the best beer in the world! I understand you made it yourself. Makes me a bit jealous but at some point in my life, I'm gonna try to do this myself. My uncle makes his own (has a small scale brewery), I like the taste of it but carbonation might have been a bit more. Last week, we managed to get our hands on a c
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QuoteArcheo-peteriX This is true. I probably won't take the truck out when the roads are not good; I'll stay inside and o I like this plan. I'm having a taste of the Belgian Dubbel I kegged yesterday right now. It isn't carbonated enough yet, but I still like the taste. I've been following the whole iX saga. Sorry that you had to let it go, Peter, but I won&
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QuoteArcheo-peteriX Yet again; the terrorists win :X So true, along with the rest of the post. If you all haven't seen the Saturday Night Live skit making fun of the new TSA rules, here's a link to it: It's hilarious if you aren't planning to fly soon. I'm so glad the job I've had for the last year has required no travel. The one I had before had me out
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QuoteEarendil Well this probably has completely cleared its self up... I think. The brake pedal is back to normal, and the car is accelerating again near 100%. So... now what do I do? Get ready to fix it while you have the chance. You know it's going to need work soon. You've been given the warning. Here are a few tips that aren't directly related to your problem, but they mi
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteRosie158 Anyone else have a similar experience??? I found a lug bolt broken off and the stub left in my front hub after a trip to the tire shop (I mean the same day too). They tried to deny that they did it, so they haven't seen me again. That was a huge mistake on their part since I have five vehicles that use four tires each. John
Forum: Technical Forum

I'm in Atlanta for the weekend. I saw a dark grey M3 as I drove through a nice urban neighborhood. I just had to tell some people who might care. It sure was pretty. John
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Quoterkj She's the only one that relates the news these days so I can understand it. John Stewart's who I go to for that. It isn't real news, it puts the real news to shame. And I need the comedy so I won't cry. John
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QuoteDave_G Oh, and you are correct: there is no way to examine the clutch disc without dropping the transmission and removing the pressure plate. The test in the Bentley manual is doing something with the position of the slave cylinder piston, but I don't know how that works, and I would be skeptical of it anyway. As the clutch disc gets thinner, the pressure plate has less material b
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteEarendil John, which Michelin are you considering? I haven't gotten that far. I just know that I've had a lot of Michelin tires on other vehicles and they always perform well and last a nice long time. I'm running the stock size tire, which I think is 195/65 x 14. John
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteEarendil So, 205/60-14 Falken Ziex ZE-512 it is, unless someone wants to steer me away from that tire? Tread wear doesn't appear to be great, but getting my car to 20K or 30K more miles probably won't come down to tires I've had at least two sets of those on my car and the tires I ordered were Falken ZE-912's. I wouldn't get the 512's. They're not all
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteEarendil 1. Any experience, stories, or opinions on purchasing tires online from a place like TireRack? I ordered my last set of tires online, but I don't think I'll do it again. Check into how much it will cost you to get those tires mounted and balanced at your friendly local tire shop. Maybe for a really special set of tires it would be worth it. It might be possible to
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Quotesdp BTW.. I love the way you painted the air intake manifold and valve cover.. that was a nice touch!!! That was Tyler, not me. I agree, he did a nice job on that. John
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Quotesdp But what gets me... If we did miss putting the belt back on by a tooth and the valves were indeed touching the pistons.. Wouldn't I feel it when rotating the engine. Wouldn't it jamb? It seems like you would feel it if the pistons hit the valves, so maybe that's not what you hear. I also doubt that the engine is built so that being off one tooth would cause things t
Forum: Technical Forum

Quotesdp OK so we got a new rocker but the #3 cams were in the compressed position, so we had to put the timing belt back on so that we could rotate the engine 10-15 degrees so we could slip the #3 rocker back on the shaft. As we worked the shaft in and placed the other rockers back on we reversed the engine rotation back to it's original position. We took extra care to make sure the rot
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteArcheo-peteriX I don't know if others have noticed the trend but some auto makers are now selling tires ythat are nitrogen filled. At least one gasoline manufacturer is pushing it's new 'nitrogen enriched' fuels. If I remember my high school chemistry and physics, 3/4 of the earth's atmosphere is made up of nitrogen. So how does replacing the last 25% in my tir
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Looks nice. Are you the second owner?
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QuoteEarendil Oh, one more thing! After all this work, the coolant system seems far more pressurized than it used to be. Could this be gasses from the cylinder? I can't find a standard operating pressure for the coolant system. Anyone ever measured this before? I forgot to address this in the last post. You can check for a blown head gasket by running the engine with the radiator cap
Forum: Technical Forum

There's a 4th possibility in the "what if" category that I think is the most likely. What if you are still freaking out? Really, think about this. The car wasn't using a bunch of coolant before the broken spring caused you to have to work on it, right? You've never gotten it too hot, right? Why would the head suddenly be warped? It doesn't make any sense, so it p
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteEarendil Oil cap, @#$%. Nothing visible inside, but on the bottom of the cap there it was, a little white residue. So now I'm confused. I can't imagine why the coolant/oil mix didn't show up until now on the cap, but why the sudden lack of coolant out the tail pipe? I don't think I'll be running the car any more, not with the possibility that the oil is compromis
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteEarendil So, the inside of my cylinders has visible scoring, but not up and down the wall, at an angle. I suppose I'd describe it as if something "spiraled down the cylinder". However I can not feel the scoring with my baby soft fingers, and every cylinder has the same look. Thoughts? I can also move all the pistons side to side when at TDC, some more than others. However
Forum: Technical Forum

QuoteEarendil What do you think, should I attempt to clean them more? The tools I used are kind of at their limit It looks pretty clean to me. Rub a little motor oil on the cylinder walls if you got brake cleaner on them. You need to keep a little oil on them to prevent corrosion while they're exposed to moist air and it'll be good to have some oil on there when you start the eng
Forum: Technical Forum

Quoterkj QuoteKelly Wow, what a thing. I suppose I should give my sparklers a test with the T-wrench. Given that they're supposedly correctly torqued now, what level should I set on the wrench? 15 to 22 ft lbs? This is my first post from the JingleBerry (or FrazzleBerry or BlackBerry depending on my mood). Cheers, Kelly I caution everybody on "torquing spark plugs", d
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I think you should change the title of this thread to "Fortunate" adventures. After all, you found the plug that came out and you were able to get the new one to tighten up in the hole. In an "unfortunate" adventure neither of these things would have happened. John
Forum: Technical Forum

I got my LED's in today and they look good. Of course, when I went to buy the parts listed in the article I found that you can't buy 390 ohm resistors at Radio Shack any more, so I bought 330 ohm instead. If I've done my calculating right, that means I'm sending 3.75 volts to each LED. The LED package listed them as 3.3v nominal, 3.6v max., so I guess we'll see how long
Forum: Technical Forum

It looks like things are going real well. Tearing into an engine is fun, isn't it? What's really fun is starting it up after you get it all back together. You'll be there before you know it. Add another vote for putting the timing belt back they way it was done at the factory. Fixing an engine is fun. Fixing an engine because you screwed something up is not so much fun, and that
Forum: Technical Forum

Have any of you all done the LED conversion like this? I'm wondering how this would look with white LED's. The instructions say to use orange, but I don't see why plain white wouldn't be more like original. The original bulbs were just plain white. I replaced my bulbs once with white bulbs and they looked fine, but died already. Is a white LED too bright maybe? BTW,
Forum: Technical Forum