Mileage: 297,651
So it was time to do some basic, "I just bought this car," maintenance. There were a couple things going on. First things first there was basically no power. That might be because it's an ETA, but a Seafoam was definitely in order.
This picture shows how I connected it. I basically followed the directions on the back with a couple recipe changers from Youtube videos and things I read on the forum. You want to ingest the seafoam slowly. I dunked the hose in there and it stalled out the car right away. With a little hose like that going to an even smaller vacuum nipple, it's hard to ingest too much anyway.
So I sipped down about half a bottle over the period of about 3 minutes or so. Right before I decided that was enough I let the motor take a big gulp so it would pile up in the combustion chamber. I then turned the car off and let it sit for 30 minutes. I came back and started revving the shit out of it.
Of course you're going to get a bunch of white smoke. I poured the other half in the gas tank and put 6oz in the engine. When adding to the crankcase it says to use 1.5oz/Liter of engine oil capacity. Ok, old ass engine, time for a tune-up.
Now I guess the idea is to drive the car super hard to burn off all the old carbon. I'm not sure how much of improvement I felt, but it's about the least you can do to an old tired motor. After you're happy with your italian tune-up I would change the plugs as it most likely ruined whatever ones were in there.
So next up were plug and plug wires. I got a good deal on the OE plug wires from BMA Parts. They're generally $137 for the m20. I got them for $100 or something like that. I don't know what's up with them but they are cheaper than Pelican or RM for some thing.
The plugs were the stock Bosch W8LCR, which is pre-gapped and stock for the m20 325i and super ETA. The plug wires were original with the blue #6 wire. Here's a pic of the old spark plugs.
I guess it was time to change them. I drove the car about another 100 miles with the seamfoam in the crank case before I decided to change the oil and do a valve adjustment. While I was doing the valve adjustment I decided to change out the fan clutch. The coolant temperature was raising when I was at a stop and going back down once I was moving again. I decided the fan clutch probably needed to be replaced. I was able to stop the old one with my hand so that was good enough for me.
Upon getting a 32mm bike wrench on the counter threaded nut, I noticed the nut just started turning without much effort at all. Quite the opposite from most of the fan clutches I've removed. I was able to spin the fan and fan clutch off without any effort at all. I then realized the fan clutch wasn't bad at all! It was just not screwed on tight. Doh, oh well I replaced it anyway.
I was trying to find out what the difference is between the Sachs and the Behr fan clutch, but basically you should be able to run either one. I have a 9 blade fan and there are holes for either clutch. Some say the Sachs locks up early, but no one in the e30 scene seemed to notice one way or another about what fan clutch you should run. I just kept the 89-91 Behr that is meant for the 11 blade fan and it worked fine on my 9 blade fan.
With the fan out of the way I was able to get a socket on the crank bolt to turn the motor for the valve adjustment. The valve adjustment is described in the Bentley. You basically take the valve cover off and adjust the valves with a feeler gauge. I did this with the motor cold which calls for a tolerance of 0.010" or 0.254mm between the eccentric and the top of the valve. I have a set of feeler gauges from Sears. Here is the gauge for 0.010".
So with the valve cover off grab a 10mm wrench and loosen the eccentric nut. Get a 2mm allen key or something similar to rock the eccentric back and forth. Put the gauge under the valve you're adjusting and snug it up moderately and tighten down the nut. Pull out the feeler gauge and you should still be able to slide it back in. If you can't it's too tight. I make sure it's snug up in there. The odd thing is that all of them were too tight. So I basically made my sewing machine louder than it already was.
Turn the motor over to relive the next rocker from the cam lobe and continue through each one until your done. Being a Super ETA I have an 885 head. The PO said he had the head replaced at some point and I was crossing my fingers it was a 325i head. But upon inspection there were no dual valve springs. 7 bearing cam but I guess the super ETA cams were 7 bearing special cams. People say there were 4 bearing super ETA cams but honestly those are probably just eta cams.
Of course whenever removing the valve cover gasket remember to order one of those breather hose as they tend to crack.
So I laid down a new valve cover gasket and the 4 little rubber stoppers on each end that keep the rocker shaft hole closed and tightened everything back up. The motor seemed to run a little better, but just louder. I brought it back and changed the oil.
I just ordered whatever 20w50 oil RMEuropean had on tap. After reading a little about old motors and new oils it looks like solid rocker motors like ZDDP and newer oils have less of that. Well next time I guess I'll use something like Valvoline VR1 20w50 "racing" oil. It is conventional and has high levels of ZDDP. It can be had for about $6/Qt from Amazon. I don't really care to run synthetic in an old ass m20, but anything to keep the racquet down is fine by me.
I drove the car after each step. Seafoam - not much change. New plugs and wires - not much change. Valve adjustment - not much change. Oil Change - BIG difference.
So lesson for the day is change your oil. I don't know when the last time was that the PO had changed the oil, but I had only put on about 700 miles since I originally bought it a month ago. And it's an old ass m20 so I'm sure no NEW damage was done.
The last thing I did to the e28 was address the loud BANG noise that occurred when putting the car in reverse and accelerating. I took a look at the drop arm, dog bone or pitman bushings and they were shot.
They looked like this on both sides. Basically 200k+ miles of abuse. I ordered the Lemfoerder brand because I figured I would pay a little more up front and never have to replace them again. It was only $50 more than the Meyles and came with new bolts!
I removed the rear wheel to get access to the nut on the top part of the carrier frame. To remove the bolts I used air tools. Would've been a bitch otherwise. Here is the old next to the new.
I'd say those were about 100k miles over their wear limit. I jacked up the rear brake assembly to make installation of the new dog bone a little easier. Once in place I wasn't able to torque the bolt and hold the nut on the long bolt so I torqued it in the air. For the bottom one I tightened it and then let the car back down, loaded it up with a couple passengers and torqued that down with the pre-load specification in the Bentley. I tried that method at first with the other bolt but there was no way to immobilize the bolt to torque it properly.
Here it is all replaced. You can see my awesome recently replaced OE Bosal muffler! Thanks PO. While I was down there I decided to see what kind of diff I had. I turned both the wheels and they rotated in the same direction. Score! Sure enough I have the 3.46 LSD that some of the 1988 528e Super ETA came with as an option. The higher ratio is due to the fact that's it's an auto. A sought after ratio for the e30 swap guys and good all arounder for the e28.
So that about does it for a little while. Everything is good for the road as far as I'm concerned. I'm not trying to drop huge bucks on this car, just something to get me around town while the "track car" needs work.
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