New Wheels D-Force LTW5 17x9

Date: July

So I FINALLY got my 17x9 LTW5s mounted after a long wait from UUC. Back story is that I ordered these on 11/24/2010 for 15% and free shipping from UUC. They didn't show up until 5 months later 04/24/2011. Long story short Rob from UUC didn't take any responsibility for selling something that was delayed so horribly. I ended up calling D-Force directly and they drop shipped me the first set that they had come in stock. UUC sucks but D-Force is a good company. I will never order from UUC again.

A little information about these wheels. They come in a good variety of sizes with a bolt pattern and offset specific to BMW. These 17x9 have a +41mm offset great for a square setup on the e36. The weight alone of one rim is 16.6lbs! I didn't have a chance to weigh the rim alone by itself but here is an image from Vorshlag.

I couldn't find a lighter 17x9 on the market that looked decent for less than $250. Some say they look like the 5zigen FN01RC. And well, they do. Here is a comparison of them side by side, again, stolen from Vorshlag. The 5zigen are 3 lbs heavier though.

Anyway, I was able to weigh the wheels I was running against the mounted LTW5. I was running the Style 197 18x8,18x8.5 OEM BMW e92 wheels with Bridgestone run flat tires. Which means about double the rubber and a huge 18. The overall weight of the tire and rim of the Style 197 came out to a whopping 51lbs 9oz!

Style 197 18x8 Bridgestone RFT  225/40/18

I put the LTW5 with 245/40/17 Nitto INVOs I had from my DSI's on the scale and the weight was about 9 pounds less.

D-Force LTW5 17x9 Nitto INVO 245/40/17

That's 9 lbs per side x4 = 45lbs all taken out from rotational mass. HUGE difference. I also weighed the lugs against the spacer and studs.

Stock OEM Lugs

Stock lugs were about 12oz.

BBS Lugs TMS Nuts UUC 12mm Spacer

5 BBS 92mm studs, 5 Turner lug nuts and 1 12mm UUC spacer came out to almost 2 lbs. About 1lb 2 oz difference from the OE Studs. So add 1 lb to the mix. 

First things first was to install the studs on the front hubs. To run the 17x9 in the front you need a 12mm to clear the strut housing. Having a 12mm spacer mean you need longer studs. I picked up BBS brand long 92mm studs used from a dude in Arcadia. I put some red Loctite on the ends and torqued them down to around 18-22ft-lbs. Various sources quoted the torque value was anyway from 15-25 so I just went with something in the middle. Anything above 18 felt like a little much.

The ends of the studs are built to accept a 5.5mm allen hex key. A 5mm hex key will not really work and will round them out. I learned that quickly as I tried to torque them down. To be able to use a torque wrench I invoked the double nut method.

Here we are with the spacer installed. (I'm not a huge fan of the UUC spacer, but it'll work for the mean time.)

And here are some of the finished product.

Impressions are that the car feels actually drivable again! So much freed up power, braking, turn-in. Everything feels better. It's nice to have my car back. The 18s were nice baller street rims, but did nothing for the performance of the car. I can say, style wise, they are definitely track wheels and not exactly the most original thing out there, but I am more concerned with function and the best look I can get after first satisfying that function at the moment. 

Easier said = form follows function.

E36 Cooling System Overhaul Part I, TMS Power Pulley Kit, Rebuilt Alternator, FPR Test

Date: Mid July

Mileage: 148,569

So the M3 had been going through a few little issues recently. First it was the CPS and most recently it was a coolant leak in one of those hoses.

After a spirited drive I noticed the temp gauge has risen a notch past center so I pulled it over to the side of the road. With the engine still running I popped the hood and noticed coolant spraying from underneath the intake manifold. I wasn't able to figure out which hose it was while it was due to the overwhelming mist of hot coolant steaming and spraying everywhere on the intake side of the engine.

I pulled it in the garage to take a look. I tried a little make-shift pressure tester with a bike pump that didn't work out too well. I decided I was just going to replace the old stock hoses. There were 3 that I needed in addition to the upper and lower radiator hose. I knew that to replace any of the hoses deep within I was going to have to remove the intake manifold again. I decided to test the fuel pressure and make sure I didn't need a new FPR while I was in there since the FPR is way in the back and impossible to get to. I picked up the cheaper FPR tester from Harbor Freight that works great as long as you use thread sealing Teflon tape around the threads.

I just used some fittings to run it through the feed line at the front of the intake manifold. Iturned it over and it read right at 3.0 Bar which is exactly the pressure it's supposed to be reading while running. I don't know much more than that about testing the FPR but it looked like it was doing it's job so I could save on not replacing that. 

So like I was saying, with this being a multi purpose track car I figured it would be wise to just order all the coolant hoses brand new. It's a little over $100 for all the hoses for a 95 M3. Upper and Lower Radiator hose, little hose on top, Long hose coming from expansion tank and the spider hose, which I believe was the culprit. There are a few more but I bypassed them as they're for the throttle body and not necessary.

I also decided to put a couple more parts on that I was stock piling like the EMP High Performance Stewart water pump and a set of Turner Power Pulleys. 

Other replacement parts besides the hoses and those just mentioned was a new thermostat, gaskets all around, 2 new temp sensors and of course BMW coolant.  

So I set off by first removing fan clutch the radiator and all the bits up on the front of the car. The fan clutch removal was not too terrible. 

I could have replaced the clutch as well but "part II," which was shortly realized after this maintenance might include an aluminum radiator, shroud and SPAL puller fan. So I left the radiator and clutch alone. It looks like the radiator was replaced 7-8 years ago. At least it wasn't original. 

After that I pulled off the intake bits and the intake manifold to get at the spider hose and the sensors.

I again tried some pressure tests to figure out which hose was bad after finding no visible cracks in any of the hoses. With the pressure tests not giving me anything, I said oh well to my inquisitive side, and continued on with the overhaul removing the old hoses.

I went back to the front. Here you can see the aftermarket aluminum t-stat housing that the PO had installed leaking coolant all over the water pump below it. This was something I wanted to address. 

I pulled out the water pump and t-stat housing. Looks like he didn't use the old style gasket or any RTV causing the leak. There is a paper gasket that goes around the outside that BMW doesn't really sell anymore, that you can still purchase if you want, but I later referenced Pelican which showed the use of RTV gasket maker instead. 

The water pump that was in there appeared to be a metal impeller Graf. Not terrible, a decent replacement  the to stock plastic impeller that originally came on the car back in 1995. I would go with a newer style OEM BMW composite impeller water pump if I weren't using the Stewart pump. I went with the Stewart EMP HP water pump for better temps on the track and less parasitic drag on the accessories. 

Old Graf Pump

The thermostat that was in there was the 96-99 model 92C. I swapped that out for the lower temp 95 M3 88C. 

Old 92C Thermostat

Here you can see all the old residue from coolant and dirt and what not. I cleaned all that up with some scotch brite before installing the new pump and t-stat with housing.

Here's a shot of the difference between the Stewart and Graf pump side by side.

Stewart vs. Graf

I put in the new t-stat and threw a goop of RTV around the housing to insure no leaks, put on new o-ring on the t-stat and snugged it down the housing. 

After that in goes the new water pump.

I then turned my attention to the TMS Power Pulleys. They under dive the water pump, power steering pump and alternator. The dyno shows a gain of 7hp. Well, whatever the dyno says, I know it will feel better. I've always loved the feeling pulleys give the motor by freeing up that power you already have. 

Here's the water pump pulleys side by side.

TMS vs Stock Water Pump

I decided to pull the alternator off for more room and to replace the pulley. I got a little happy with my air tools when I couldn't remove the nut on the back accidentally twisting the terminal right out of the back of the rectifier.

I couldn't really tell how it went back together so I took it to a shop to get rebuilt. No stores sold rebuilt Valeo alternators and a new one was like $350. The alternator pulley is specific to the manufacturer either being Bosch or Valeo. I just bought the TMS pulleys for the Valeo brand I was stuck with that brand unless I paid Turner an extra $65 for the Bosch style pulley because I had already taken the Valeo one out of the box and torqued it down. So annoying.

Anyway I got the alternator rebuilt for $105 with a 4 year warranty. It was a little shop in Culver City. He replaced the brushes and showed me it was charging perfectly. They painted silver which I mean it kind of cheesy when you don't mask things off, but whatever, it's all good now, works well and has a 4 year warranty.

So with that little snafu out of the way I put the rest of the pulleys on the torquing them to about 16ftlbs or whatever it says in the Bentley. I wrapped the old belt around the pulleys to hold the tension while I torque them down.

Onto the coolant hoses. I decided to bypass the hoses coming out of the head to the throttle body connecting a secondary external thermostat. The little external thermostat is supposed to sit inside the air box and tell the coolant to run up to the TB when it is cold outside. Since it's never cold in LA and an iced up throttle body is the least of my worries I decided to get rid of it. It just kind of hangs there anyway with the Eurosport air filter heat shield.

Only problem with this bypass is that it leaves one of the 4 hoses on the spider hose open. Since it's such a unique hose I decided to leave it alone and plug it up with a bolt. So far it's held and not leaked. If there is a better way to do this, I'd love to know!

I got all the hoses routed correctly and put new sensors in the head. I figured the coolant temp sensor is important in the whole scheme of driveability. Maybe not as important as the CTS on the e30 but I decided I would replace it while I was down there. I replaced the other one as well.

Old Sensors

I plugged up the hole where the hose originally came out of with an M12 oil pan bolt. Later I'll use that hole for an actual coolant temp gauge instead of the stock gauge which basically only moves after you've blown your head gasket.

The only thing left to do was clean up the mating surface of the head to the intake manifold, put some new gaskets on and put everything else back together. If you're reading this and want me to go into any more detail on some of the specifics just leave a comment at the bottom and I'll fill you in!



Impressions so far is that the pulleys really make a difference. Engine revs up much smoother and pulls more at the top. The old water pump could have had a rough bearing so I'm not sure if it was a combination of the new pump and pulleys. Temps are in the "ON" range, no leaks and alternator runs smoothly.

UPDATE: I did all this about a month ago. I just got back from the track and now the stock plastic radiator is leaking. Argh...so now it's time to do something about that. Looks like round II is in order.

E28 Tune Up! Sea Foam, Plugs, Plug Wires, Fan Clutch, Dog Bones, Valve Adjustment, Oil Change

Date: 07/14/11-07/25/11
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.