jacckk wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Oddly enough I was talking to Marty about a P38 that caught fire and I had a feeling it was yours - I remember you were towing at the time. Such a shame :( That and a white one in the states going up in flames (I think around the same time?) made me a bit paranoid of my GEMS... I think I changed the two rubber fuel lines when I replaced the engine as a matter of course after that.
Did you change just the rubber bits of the pipe or the entire pipe? If you just changed the rubber bit what did you do about the crimps? I'm thinking of changing mine just to try and prevent it breaking and a fire starting.
Just the rubber bits - I cut the crimps carefully with a cut off wheel on a dremel which let me pull off the rubber hoses revealing nice hose barbs. Then just fitted new hose with good fuel hose clamps.
The torque convertor between petrol and diesel is certainly different, as the diesel has a three bolt triangular flex plate.
Oddly enough I was talking to Marty about a P38 that caught fire and I had a feeling it was yours - I remember you were towing at the time. Such a shame :( That and a white one in the states going up in flames (I think around the same time?) made me a bit paranoid of my GEMS... I think I changed the two rubber fuel lines when I replaced the engine as a matter of course after that.
The diesel looks very tidy though!
Flex plate might have shattered? That would result in no drive.
I just keep my old Dell laptop running XP for most car stuff :) Just easier that way, and I don't have to worry about setting any of it up again if I change/wipe my usual laptop. Plus, it has a serial port, so no chasing USB adapters that I've inevitably used elsewhere in my day job and probably lost.
Well, whatever is running within that Win XP virtual machine is being run on just that - XP, not the host operating system. Anything within that virtual machine is effectively blissfully ignorant of the host operating system - it could be anything, linux, OS X etc.
Always so nice working with shiny new things... glad I could be of help and we got it all done nicely. Marty had thought of pretty much everything in terms of having spares or replacement items, and that was definitely the way to go. Looking at you, exhaust downpipe studs...
I may have mentioned once or twice of my dislike for the FOURTEEN bell housing bolts during the endeavour. Other than those though, which I'd expected, it was pain free. Torque converter was a bit of a mare having not slid back slightly, but we managed to convince that to line up and bolt back up to the new flex plate with some creativity.
First start and cam break-in was as Marty said somewhat unnerving, mostly for me because I'm paranoid as hell about the lack of airflow across pretty much all of the exhaust, and also the P38's talent for trapping air in the cooling system. Had a couple of bottles of water ready in case anything did get a bit lively, but all was well, and the cooling system could hardly have behaved itself better! Quite reassuring to feel the air from the fan suddenly go hot as the new thermostat opened too.. which was nice to stand next to... it was bloody cold in the workshop!
Tool cabinet drawers, tailgate glass, and all flesh present and accounted for! Great success all round.
I need to see what mine looks like now... I didn't fancy going full pelt for fear of the drawers in my tool box in the back collapsing :)
Day 2 is about to begin.
Orangebean wrote:
BTW I don't have a Clarion as per your other post, but in the 95 I have a cheapish Kenwood unit with my version of Ambler attenuators and it sounds bloody brilliant through the door amps etc. Something like that might do him as a stopgap?
I'd do this anyway - the Clarion is a bit naff and not exactly full of functionality. You can get a PAC-SWI to connect the steering wheel controls if he has/wants them.
Orangebean wrote:
It's looking grand Marty!
As you've got Sloth helping, make sure you've got a good supply of Elastoplast around the workshop :)
I still have the scar from that steering box! I will be putting my first aid kit in the car ;)
I like the black personally. My replacement engine in the old car had been painted silver, and it looked a bit bright and 'fake' if you get what I mean. On mine you can't really see much engine. I've got one bit of rocker cover that I can keep clean!
129+ pages detailing the build of a steering damper eh? Must be one hell of a damper!
:)
I was mainly going by the headlights themselves - the early ones had fairly boring rectangular units and a straight edge at the sides of the grill.
I have the same style side steps on my P38 too.
Oh go on then. Funny you should mention the intake manifold.
The C270 they have is a diesel... and it (like BMW*) had swirl flaps, and of course an EGR setup. The flaps basically come loose, and in the case of the Mercs, generally cause boost leaks and get eroded by the nasty exhaust passing over from the EGR, which also makes a horrendous mess of the entire intake manifold, choking it up severely. Or, in the case of this one, as well as some of them coming loose and having been worn away, and the nastiness EGR mess I've ever seen, the linkage jammed up causing it to break off the motor. Solution is remove manifold, clean inside, remove all flaps and blank them off, fit some bypasses to the wiring to fool the ECU into thinking the flap motor and EGR valves are all still there. Simple.
*I suppose the only thing this has over BMW designs, is that in a BMW, the swirl flaps are directly over the intake valves, so if/when they drop off, the engine eats them, goodbye engine.
Except the intake manifold is like a basket shape, and has all manner of crap fitted inside it. Fuel heat exchanger, fuel filter, PAS reservoir, countless hoses... oh, and the wiring loom to the starter motor and oil level sensor pass THROUGH the manifold. So as well as removing all the crap on top, you then have to jack the car up, remove the whole massive undertray, to unplug the damned oil sensor.
Then it still won't come out, because the EGR manifold wraps around the intake manifold. So you have to take off the entire fuel rail, then drop all the coolant and remove the thermostat housing. Then you can lift the manifold out intake runner ports first, clean, de-flap, reassemble.
*Unlike the Merc, on the BMW, the intake manifold is on the top of the engine, and bar removing the fuel rail, is comparatively piss-easy to remove.
Then spend a further three days retracing everything trying to work out why the damned thing keeps going into limp mode as soon as you plant your foot bar one period of about 10 minutes of normal operation, only to find that no, it wasn't either of the flap/EGR bypasses, but a broken wire inside the plug for the boost pressure sensor that you didn't even go anywhere near, but decided to make a break for freedom right as you were messing around with the rest of the engine. And of course, no normal OBD reader would read that fault. Only bit of luck was a local independent that didn't charge me for plugging in, thankfully.
Like I said... smoothest driving car I've ever driven, would make a superb commuter, and the 5 cylinder diesel sounds good and goes pretty well. But I just couldn't own something with such ridiculous design as that engine. Somewhere buried on the other side is the turbo... you can't even see it.
Also - that's a really nice looking L322. Being a 2004, has it had a facelift done at some point, or was 2004 sort of the earliest facelift models that were still BMW based?
Gilbertd wrote:
Ahh, so it's just the Germans then. That would explain why all the Rohde and Schwarz equipment we have at work has black and white mains leads. Doesn't explain why Dina's C180K Coupe has brown live wires though.....
That's odd, I'm sure my parents 2002 C270 used brown for grounds too. Not entirely sure though, it is a hateful hateful car. Smoothest car I've ever driven, but mechanically it is the most sadistically designed heap I've had the displeasure of working on.
I digress.
Brown is ground in BMW world, and an early L322 is basically a mix of E39 5 series / E53 X5.
More than me / OB are ever gunna get... I think two years ago, we a bit one morning, that lasted all of two hours.
Took the P38 out and took a pic, of course...
Has he broken his compression tester....?
You can put a 4.0 in, and ideally change the option in the engine ECU so it know it is now a 4.0 instead of a 4.6.
Oh wow. I didn't think it would be possible to make a car that was already so fugly, just that bit more fuglier...
LR creativity amazes once again.
I must have GEMS heads then... because I stuck BPRs in... no idea what came out, they didn't look pointy.
How weird.