German AWD

[Mikewire]

That's a nice tool, but what about an air hammer with a chisel bit? Love the garage BTW.

[kevin286]

Yea, I've done that before on this car and it does work. I don't have one of those yet either though

Thanks for noticing; I'm loving it

[kevin286]

Well I was unsuccessful at getting the balljoint and tie rod end off last night. I could have probably gotten er done with an air hammer as MikeWire suggest, but I don't have one, and borrowing one... well really I just needed an excuse to order the slick ball joint tool anyways.
While I was ordering, I got the rebuilt OEM rack, urethane steering guibo and outer tie rod ends on their way to me. Oh and bonus, 2 lug bolts. Woohoo, I'll be rocking on four again soon

Tonight just removed the steering shaft.
For those interested this is the steering guibo. (The rubber disc there) It's function is to absorb road noise and vibration from making its way up into the cabin.

To be replaced with this guy from IE

[SweaterVest]

Huh,never knew those had a proper name. I always just called them the rubber thingy that goes on the steering shaft...

I just read through this whole thread. You seem to do some great work! Keep it up!! not to be off topic but how did your carpet ever turn out?

[kevin286]

Odds and Ends
I scavanged a ...173 DME. Looks kinda rough on the outside

Bent the tabs back and popped it open

Looks just fine. Turns out I'm fairly certain I already have one in the car, but hey. Spare.
The "173" is the latest DME available in the E30. It has all the latest goodies and even some basic diagonstic stuff like the "stomp test"


Next up, re-install the back seat. It makes me nervous with the sub showing like that. People might think something was worth stealing I cut out some of the foam in the back of the seat so as to not muffle the thump as much. First I measured.

Then cut these out, reverse direction with a hole saw sans the middle spiral bit.

Makes nice little squishy things

Back in place all covert like


I had a busted wing window latch.

In fact looks almost like someone tried to cut through it at one point with string or cable...

whatever... I have replacements

Put that bad boy on and good as used. A couple more soakings with 303 and I think it'll turn black again.

[kevin286]

...not to be off topic but how did your carpet ever turn out?

It turned out good enough for me. In some areas the black has a slightly different hue. Originally those spots were a different color even before I dyed it. With the seats in you'd have to be looking to notice. You can see a portion in one of the pictures above.

[kevin286]

Here's a side by side of the old guilbo vs the new one. Wow, big difference.

The original shaft halves have pressed in stud/rivet things so I ground the heads off

I just used a spacer and the original nuts to pull the stud through after the head was ground off

I ended up removing some of the paint on the steel end, so a fresh coat was applied

All dry and reassembled


I got a little too ambitious trying to clean up my driver side mirror one day and took off some of the tint/glaze? You can see old vs new to me

Conveniently the mirror glass has a ring that locks it to the motor assembly of the mirror.

You just stick a screw driver in, rotate counter clockwise and out she comes.


My driver side seat was missing one of the raise lower shocks.

Having scrounged one of these I needed to remove the seat to give myself room to install the replacement

[MT-Getto]

Lift-o-Mat

[kevin286]

Lift-o-Mat

Yeah, I guess "Mat" is German for "butt".

[kevin286]

Tonight, despite what I thought, upon inspection I found that my car has an older 153 DME. While I'm not 100% sure yet that I'll put in the 173, I think that I will, mostly because I don't think there would be a later version of the same thing if the old one was just fine. This may be a simple case of Americans will buy it if the number is bigger than previous model, but I can't find much on the internet to support the notion that the 173 is no better than the 153.

So I thought I'd give the circuit one more real careful inspection.
These glass lenses from projector head lights work great for this.

Holding a flashlight, the lens and my phone all together really doesn't do it justice, but it's certainly a more magnified, clearer and wider field of vision than standard jewelers glasses. (Now i just need to get another projector glass so I can make some ultra heavy duty inspection goggles)



Everything looks good. So, in she goes... well maybe not. I'm on the fence of "go for it" vs "don't fix it if it aint broke"