Just In Time For Summer - 1971 Bmw 1600

[dasfrogger]

 

Maaaaan your paint looks great! I really need to dive in like you did on my car to try to bring it back. Thanks for the motivation!

[danco_]

7am dawn patrol in Newport Beach

 

 

 

 

Today we did some stuff. Took the cars out. It was a blast. I brought my squad with me and we got some girls, but mostly dudes. But there was this really hot blonde Mom in a Volvo S40 who responded well to my advances. We could have been a thing, but she had what looked to be a 9 year old son in the passenger seat. Ugh, my life was shattered. Her smile was something I'll remember forever. But then I remembered I was in an 02 and I could probably get any girl in Orange County. I soon forgot about the hot mom encounter. 

 

Some photos of me, cars, me and cars, me in cars, and friends. 

 

At an impromptu meet in Huntington Beach. I made it through the entire day, spanning 4 beach cities and I didn't have to put on a single pair of shoes or slippers. 

 

 

 

Abby and Mike Carey bought me a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Ice Cream which was a nice gesture. I think there is a hidden meaning behind the frozen treat, but I have yet to uncover it. I will continue to search for answers. 

 

 

 

 

In Corona Del Mar, overlooking Pocket Beach and some Pacific Ocean. God Bless this wonderful ocean.

 

 

And then some more of me and cars. The Inka car is a genuine 74tii that a good friend picked up. I make sure she gets the treatment she deserves, until he is back in town. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pretty good day. I think I fixed the overheating issue. The car never made it past 3/4 on the temp gauge, and the car was driven in some very heavy stop and go traffic. A few days ago, I drove it for about 20 minutes up to 4k rpm with the rad cap off to purge the cooling system of any air. I think it worked. I will still replace the fan with a higher CFM fan, and if things go smoothly, I should be golden. A good Sunday.

[danco_]

I need to get a good set of camber/castor adjustments and weld them in. I have an extra rear subframe or two so that should happen sooner than later. 

 

 

 

 

New developments: 

 

I've been driving the car a few times a week. Temperatures haven't crossed the 3/4 mark so I'm happy about that. I think they can be lowered with a higher CFM fan. I intend on grabbing a thick 12" SPAL fan pretty soon and doing the conversion. That should keep the idle temps at bay. 

 

 

But for all the paintwork I've done, I need to redo it. After about 2-3 weeks, it's gone flat in many spots. I don't know what happened, but I don't like it so I plan on redoing it. 

 

I visited my buddy Ayed of Kings Auto Body in Huntington Beach and I gave him the skinny on what products I used. He told me that the Meguiars wasn't heavy duty enough for my application and that 3M has a much better product and will actually last much longer. So naturally, I ordered a bunch more 3M stuff last night.

 

But here is the majority of what he used on a small spot of the hood:

 

 

 

and this is the product of 2 minutes worth of buffing and polishing:

 

 

In the photo above, you can see where the paint went flat. I hope to correct this in the next week.

 

I'm loading up all the surfboards next week and we're going to Mexico for the weekend. Only good things happen in Mexico so the 02 is coming. I plan on not dying so I should post again in the future. 

 

Also, I should have the corbeaus in tomorrow. 

 

 

 

 

Oh and I have a secret admirer. I hope that it's a girl, but I am betting it's a guy. Tools have been showing up at my house the last week. I know they aren't mistakes because they have my name on the shipping label, but they were sent as gifts so I cannot verify who the sender is. Either way, I accept the tools and I hope more come. I kind of like this.

 

You can never have too many screwdrivers:

 

 

 

Or Prybars: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later post: 

 

 

Today was get-the-seats-in day. I'm tired, but I'll scrap together a post so you have something to read in the morning, or during work when you should be productive, but you are instead surfing r3v build threads. 

 

So here is the car, and one of the two corbeau seats: 

 

 

 

 

Then I pulled out the seats that have been in the car for about a year, in preparation for the seat brackets, which I promptly ruined. More on that later. 

 

 

 

 

And then I welded up the seat frames. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And did some testing, but here is where I messed up. Instead of stenciling the seat to be about an inch from the tranny tunnel, I some how flip flopped the measurements and pushed the seat about 3" from the tranny tunnel. I didn't find out until I bolted the seats in. I was too angry to fix it tonight. If you ride in my car and mention anything about the passenger seat placement, I will stop the car and ask you to get out.

 

 

 

 

Grainy, low light iphone picture, but the seats are in and bolted down. I'm going to throw the new carpet kit in because I don't like the exposed seat rails. 

 

 

 

 

The seats sit at least 3" lower than the stock seats, and the steering wheel now feels much higher than where it first was. I'm not sure if I like this yet. Do I feel cooler driving around? About as cool as a high school asian kid in his EG civic hatchback stance car. I will say that these new seats make hard cornering much more enjoyable, but I also feel the road more so than before. It's now more apparent than ever that I need to change the door rubber gaskets, and the rear quarter window gaskets to get the little creaks and vibrations out. These gaskets, like the rest of the gaskets on the car have turned to plastic and no longer seal very well. The road noise is louder now. But the seats must be 20 pounds lighter than the stock seats which I do appreciate.

 

 

Anyways, I need to do more driving to get a better feel for the seats. Not bad for a pair that only cost me $70

[ray_]

Pretty soon it'll look like Gerock's wannabe ti project.

 

 

I'm under the E24 today. Clutch hydraulics and chattering ABS which I decided to fix instead of just leaving the computer unplugged.

[danco_]

Pretty soon it'll look like Gerock's wannabe ti project.

 

 

 

 

That's the greatest compliment you've ever given me. I've known you for years now, and through all the abusive language and mental breakdowns, your one compliment made it all worth it. Thank you Ray. You are a diamond in the rough.

 

 

And Jim's ti project is bitchin'. Way cool. I'll take an early roundie any day of the month. 

[ray_]

Careful. I can edit it.

 

:-p

 

...Clutch/brake hydraulics working. Yay.

 

Cheers,

[danco_]

Minor updates: 

 

Dirty and in desperate need of re-polish using the industrial 3M stuff.

 

 

 

 

The car was at my buddies shop in Long Beach, Ca over the weekend getting a few things taken care of. Shop's name is Long Beach Autohaus owned by Scott Parsons; great guy and super knowledgable. These things include: 

 

-tuning the 38/38 and adjusting the chokes (correctly)

-re-adjusting timing

-adjust valves

-create bracket for intake manifold/oil dipstick tube

-redo most wiring in engine bay

-new ground cable with new location

-install oil catch can

-fix/correct vacuum hose for brake booster to manifold

-new d side motor mount

-redo shifter bushings and change a few things back there

-other stuff

 

Photos of some of those things: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got the car back today, and decided enough was enough with holding the door open with my knee every time I got in or out of the car. I had to replace the door brakes. I couldn't take it anymore.

 

Removing the passenger side old door brake: 

 

 

What is left of both door brakes. Note, I didn't break anything. This is exactly how they came out of the car. 

 

 

and a fresh set:

 

 

 

 

 

I figured I'd also install the new door cards since I had all the necessary pieces to do so. Everything went well and looks better now. Huge aesthetic upgrade.

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, very satisfied with the one hour I had to tinker with the car.

 

Tomorrow's agenda includes ripping out the carpet, cleaning floor pans, and laying down a fresh layer of raam mat sound deadener and ensolite, then the new carpet goes in. I also want to prepare the paint for fresh polish using the 3M stuff I bought a week or two ago. 

 

 

 

I'm strongly considering getting the car resprayed. Don't fight me on this. It's probably going to happen. I'm leaving the bullet hole though. Don't fight me on that either.

 

 

 

 

It feels good to work on the car a bit.

[ray_]

Get a fuse box cover, silly.

[danco_]

Get a fuse box cover, silly.

Find me one and I'll use it. 

[dasfrogger]

Any word on what they had to do to get your carb adjusted? Just chokes/mixture/idle screw? or did they have to swap jets too? I haven't dug in too much, but mine isn't quite right.

[danco_]

Any word on what they had to do to get your carb adjusted? Just chokes/mixture/idle screw? or did they have to swap jets too? I haven't dug in too much, but mine isn't quite right.

Great question. I'll ask today for him to put together a baseline tune. Something for my records as well.

[Beach_Bum]

Any pics of the dipstick bracket? I've been wondering what to do with mine since I switched to sidedrafts.

[danco_]

Threw this one as well

 

 

It's one of Connor Elkington's units. They are PERFECT. 

Any pics of the dipstick bracket? I've been wondering what to do with mine since I switched to sidedrafts.

I'll snap a photo for you today

[danco_]

Been driving the car around all weekend and more today. It runs pretty good now. Still can't wonder how EFI will change the car, or turbo. I really really want to turbo this car. I've gotten used to the 150 furious horsepowers of this car. I need another hundred. 

 

Here is another quick snapshot from earlier this evening. The 71 Type 2 Bus may become a future project. 

 

 

 

This little car is so great. The color is growing on me, and I feel better when the car looks better. And right now the car feels good.

[danco_]

So I bought a set of early euro reproduction bumperettes and rear seam convers from that guy on Northern California Craigslist and they came about 30 minutes ago. Naturally I decided to drop everything and install at least the front bumperettes. Except I was soon met with an issue; a rather large issue.

 

The driver's side unit installed fine. The bolt coming from the bumperette passed through the bumper, the spacer, and the bumper metal mounting frame thing that bolts to the frame rail. The passenger side was a different story.

 

The passenger repro unit came with a significantly shorter bolt that failed to pass through all required bumper parts, and I was unable to secure it to the bumper. See photos for bolt length differences: 

 

See?

 

After an attempt to install it, you can see how the bolt is too short: 

 

 

And here is the photo of the current configuration. Driver's side is installed, passenger side remains with a US-variant bumperette. Goofy but the contrast between both sizes is great. 

 

 

 

Time to contact the seller and make this right. 

Edited April 15, 2015 by danco_