'75 2002 DD Project - Non e46 Content

The only update I have so far is that the wheels do fit around the brake (barely). Right now I'm waiting on the machine shop to get some engine work done. That and classes started back up so I'm pretty busy with school stuff right now.

Update!

The past weekend I was finally able to find some time to work on the '02. The 2.7l block and 885 head are still at the machine shop, but luckily for me I ended up with 2 complete m20's and so I was able to use the spare engine as a 'dummy' to get the engine and transmission mounts made up. At first I was planning on fabricating my own mounts for everything, but considering how much free time I've had to spend on this in the past month I made the decision to purchase some premade mount from Manimal (a member on 2002faq.com). They turned out very nice, the only thing I might change is to cut the tabs and re-weld them so the engine sits slightly lower in the bay. As is there is well over 1" of clearance between the oil pan and the subframe, and one of the upper mounting bolts for the transmission is blocked by part of the firewall. No biggy, but it would make removing the transmission without taking out the engine more challenging. Oh, and I also had to drill out the locating hole on the passenger side mount so the rubber pin on the stock mount would fit through it.

Here you can see the one hole I had to enlarge:




And here you can see the pin fitting nicely inside the hole:




For the driver side mount, you have to notch the stock rubber piece so it will fit at the correct angle. Here's how much I took off with a cut-off wheel:




And here you can tell the my angle was a bit to large. I took off material @ a 45 degree cut, in hindsight a 30 degree probably would have done the job:




With those modifications done I was able to drop the engine in without much trouble. For some reason my driver side engine mount was a little to far in, so I took my trusty BFH and persuaded it to get into it's proper position. Once everything else is mounted and in place I'm going to drop the from subframe and refurbish it, at which point I will also weld in some re-enforcement on the driver side engine mount. For now it fits/works just fine though.

With the engine mounted in place next was the transmission. For those that don't know, the stock '02 trans is a 4-speed, which allows it to be very small. This means that the transmission tunnel is also very narrow. The transmission I decided to use is the getrag 260, which came on all the 6 cylinder e30's. It's much tougher and reliable, but that comes at the price of being much larger. So because of this the tunnel needed a lot of massaging. But after about 5 minutes of minimal results the massaging gave way to cutting and cursing lol.

Here's a picture of the stock transmission tunnel:




And after the cutting and cursing, this is what was left:



In order to help gain more clearance, I also took off a majority of the random tabs on the side of the transmission case:





It doesn't look like much, but removing the tabs probably gained me another 1/2" of clearance along the top edge, which was were the most interfering was happening.

With more clearance made, it was time to lift the transmission in place. Normally I have my friend at the shop to give me a hand, but he had to work this weekend so I was on my own. After wrestling with the trans I welded up a jack adapter to hold it up better. This let me lift it into place until I could get it bolted to the engine.

You can see my handy jack adapter in this pic:




With the trans lifted into place I needed to make sure the entire assembly was in line with the differential. In order to do this I took the e30 driveshaft I picked up earlier and mounted it straight to the output shaft on the transmission with some solid couplers machined to the same thickness as the guibo. This would allow me to use the driveshaft as a 'straight edge' and eliminate any slop in the middle. At this point I also figured out that the stock e30 driveshaft was the correct length and bolt pattern to bolt up to the '02 diff (and obviously the e30 lsd I'm going to install in the near future). This was very good news since I'll no longer need to pay to get a custom length driveshaft made up.

Once the driveshaft was bolted in place and everything was lined up perfectly I fabbed up my transmission mount. You can see the top of it in this picture. It's help to the body with 2 8mm bolts that thread into a reinforcement plate on the underside of the body as well as a nut welded on the inside of the car.



With this in place the entire engine/transmission assembly is VERY solid. I may upgrade to poly mounts down the road, but we'll see how the rubber ones feel.

Here's a picture showing how much clearance there is between the steering linkage and the bell housing of the transmission. It's not very much at all, probably 1.5mm tops. I'll probably have to either notch or bend the linkage to gain some more clearance, but I'm going to wait and see if the transmission moves that much under spirited driving. It may be another reason to get the poly mounts.




Now for the money shots. I put the S54 throttle bodies in there to get an idea for what kind of clearance I would have between the brake booster. I'll need to fab up some kind of airbox for the tb's, so depending on clearance I may also go with a straight boosterless system.








Next on the list is probably going to be making the manifold to interface between the throttle bodies and the head. I'm probably going to end up casting a custom piece, much like what I was planning to do with the bike carbs earlier. This one will be a little trickier though because of the oil passage between the 3rd and 4th intake runner. I'm going to draw it up in CAD this week and see what we can come up with.

The ports on the head:




The ports on the tb's:




The huge benefit of casting is the transition between the two ports can be very smooth and clean. I'm thinking the overall length of the manifold will probably be ~ 10 cm or so. This should leave enough room for an airbox.


Also, the head should be back from the machine shop the beginning of this week. It got new exhaust valve guides, a 3-angle valve job, shaved 0.025" (not desired but necessary to flatten it out) and cleaned. The block is still waiting on me to make up my mind. The cylinder walls have some wear, and so if I reuse the stock 'i' pistons like I was planning it will probably have some piston slap when cold. So I'm taking the pistons in this week when I pick up the head and they will let me know what would work. I really don't want to buy new pistons if it can be avoided.

Oh, and I picked up a m52btub28 crank so now it will be a square (84mm stroke x 84 mm bore) 2.8l at the least. This saves me from having to shave the deck of the block down as well as bumps up the displacement. Win-Win

great update

Thanks, can't wait to get her running again!

Well it seems school has taken over my life this quarter. Little progress has been made on the actual car. The good news is the quarter is over next week AND a lot of the details have been figured out/planned for.

A lot of parts have been rolling in the past few weeks:

New Hydraulic tubing flare tool. This can do all sizes of metric and american brake lines, as well as fuel lines and quick-disconnect for hydraulic applications. This will come in handy when it comes time to run the new brake and fuel lines.




Hmmmm... what could these be..





Eagle H-Beam connecting rods. 100g lighter than stock m20 rods and good for 600+ HP. That'll do donkey, that'll do.




AKG Motorsports Stage II Shifter Assembly. This will let me mount the shifter directly to the chassis. This will save some space as opposed to having to figure out a way to get the g260's shifter carrier and bushing in between the seats. And best of all, the stock old-school shifter still fits!






Next some VDO (they did they original factory gauges for the 2002 for those of you that don't know) series 1 gauges. Right now I just have water temp, oil temp and voltage. In the end I'll also have oil pressure, boost/vacuum and an a/f ratio gauge. (the a/f will most likely be an innovative WB analog gauge).




And finally, on the electrical side of things I got some deutsch pieces. I still need to get the crimper for the terminals, but my initial impression is very good.

Quick list of parts that have come in but are not pictured:

Ford F-150 Lightning MAF Sensor (90mm:troll
LS2 Coils for sequential/programmable Ignition
m20b25 single mass flywheel
m20b25 front pulley/harmonic damper

86mm Cometic MLS Type Headgasket
ARP Head Studs
ARP Main Studs

I'm sure there's a lot more, but I can't remember everything right now. Also, some of the molding material for casting the intake manifold has been ordered, so that should be underway in the next week or two.


And Finally, this past Memorial day weekend I found some time to get out to the shop and get a few things done. First order or business was to tear out the old ratty headliner and fab up some mounting points for my Wink Mirror.

circa 1970's:



My friend and I took some 1/8 steel bar and welded it to the inner roof sheet metal. This reenforced it enough so that we could just tap straight into the roof without needing any extra clips or tabs.




Next was to start on the pedal box. The stock set up is a rube goldberg-esk contraption that looses any connection your foot may have felt to your braking system. I'm hoping to be able to remove the booster and just run a manual set-up, but keeping the dual circuit bits. We'll see how that goes as the packaging will be very tight.

The stock pedal box:



I cut off the entire upper portion that the booster bolted to. Then the two pointless holes were welded up so that the pedal box would actually be waterproof. Then the whole things was disassembled, sandblasted, and partially re-assembled for test fitting.

In the car:




The last bit of work I got done this weekend was fitting the shifter into place. For now it's held up with 4 pieces or bar stock, but it will be completely boxed in with 1/8" steel when it's all said and done, which should be plenty strong. I also got very aggravated at the transmission tunnel not wanting to cooperate since the 'enlargement' process. This lead to me cutting out pretty much the whole tunnel and starting to fab up a new one that will fit everything cleanly.






I really do love the look of the classic knob. Really pulls the interior together lol.




Patiently waiting for more tender loving care...

this thread is boss. can you post a link for the electrical connectors?

subscribed.

I love seeing projects like this.

dude.. it's taking so loooong! Get a move on

Originally Posted by mvrk10256

this thread is boss. can you post a link for the electrical connectors?

Thanks. I just picked up the connectors in a pack from summit racing. Also, Pei330Ci used them on a nitrous set up which is what turned me on to them. I think that thread is somewhere in the forced induction section IIRC.

Originally Posted by wat3rbug

subscribed.

I love seeing projects like this.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Pasha

dude.. it's taking so loooong! Get a move on

Tell me about. I'm hoping to really start knocking it out once I'm done with classes for the quarter.

super sickkk. good luck wit the rest of the project man!

Updates?

Sadly nothing of great amount. I'm STILL waiting on the pistons to come in from a certain vendor, don't get me started with that.

I've also been very busy with work, so that has been eating up a lot of my time. But today I was able to pick up a smaller 220v welder to use at home, so I can knock out some of the smaller work in the evenings which will be nice.

I'll also be working on the intake manifold casting once I get back to school at the end of September.

DD Project is an oxy moron.

When everything is all built, are you going to DD it? Or use it as a weekend driver/track toy/autocross fun?

Lol tell me about it. When the thread was started I intended to just get all the rusty stuff fixed and DD it so I could make the e46 more track oriented (s54 swap eventually and that sort of thing). But one thing led to another and now this will definitely be more of a weekend car and I'll just have the e46 for DD. That being said the '02 will get driven as much as possible, so long as the weather is good.

Subscribed GL

such an awesome thread... good luck man, i'm sure the end product will be amazing

Epic win!

Looking good. If you need any M20 stuff look in part thread. e46F get stuff even cheaper