JohnS

Named... Maybe I should have called her poopies, Ha Ha! ?

Gurmail. Nice work. That looks super clean. Given all of the effort you've obviously put into this project. One little thing that's super easy and worthwhile is to replace that stock transmission mount with the heavier duty E21 style mount. All you do is enlarge the hole where it bolts to the crossmember. The E21 mounts don't turn to mush as quickly as the stock mounts.

The Pup is my copilot... Okay, you guys asked for it. This morning my daughter came over to "Grandma's" house so I was able to get away. As luck would have it, when I stepped outside I noticed this strange stuff falling from the sky. I hadn't seen it in months... Rain? I would call it more of a heavy drizzle, but we'll take all we can get these days in California. So, a trip to Big Sur wasn't really in the cards today. So, I opted to load up my trusty copilot "La Guera (Blondie)" (who I refer to as just "The Pup") and headed down between Moss Landing and Castroville to get some Artichokes. I grow my own Chokes at home, but I cut the last of mine about a month ago, so had to go buy some. I travelled on some of my favorite backroads which I jokingly call the "Artichoke Autobahn". As we headed past Moss Landing I could tell The Pup was getting sort of Antsy and I knew what that meant so I stopped briefly at Salinas River Beach so The Pup could do her business. She did. She promptly walked over to some tourists and took a dump right next to them. Luckily I had a baggie or else it would have been more embarrassing than it already was. On the way home I dropped by Pajaro Dunes to take a pic for 0257. Mission accomplished. Edit: Added a portrait of "The Pup" that I commissioned (i.e. Paid/Bribed) my Daughter to make. She's good

Tools | Hal Boyles WWW.2002SONLY.COM

That's a great suggestion. I don't drink wine, but loves me some good beers. I'll swing by BevMo and pick up something good and German like Spaten or something. I want to get some Steinlager for me anyway. I told the guy I would come back and show him my "good" car (the 73) some day. Maybe some Oranjeboom? Ha ha

I can confirm that the OEM ATE pads create a lot of dust. I have them on my 74. I need to look into those R4S's

Cool. Glad you guys like it. My fav is the "Slow Down Kook" sign. It's been there for over 10 years and I always smile as I pass at 20 MPH or so to show respect to my old neighborhood. I love that place. Lots of people walking dogs and such. It's an awesome place. My daughter might come and relieve me tomorrow and maybe I can take a drive down to my beloved Big Sur. We'll see. Peace and Love everyone. Love this community!

Hope you guys don't mind all of the pictures I've been posting lately. Like I mentioned in some other post, I feel like I've kind of been held captive taking care of my 94 yo Mom and only get these little windows when I can escape and get away from taking care of her. So today I went and did a little surf check at my local beach. "La Selva Beach" It's a funny name because "La Selva" translates from Spanish to "Jungle", "Forest" or "Wilderness" in English. There's cool palm trees on the way to the cliffs where the locals check the waves, but not really a jungle. It was so cool. I used to live there for many years and lots of people recognized me and were waving when I'm driving The Thrasher. When I'm driving my wife's Honda Pilot, It's like I don't exist. There's this little backroad 'White Road' that connects Corralitos to the coast at La Selva and I always got a chuckle at the street names along that road. Today I took the time to take a few pics. Folks around here probably thought I was some kind of nut, which I am. ? Hope it brings a smile to y'all...

Very True. Today I went to our local O'Reilly's and was able to buy some Valvoline 20W-50 Racing Oil for an oil change. The young guy who helped me knew the difference in the oil and that it had the extra Zinc. He was also interested in my car. I popped the hood and showed him the mechanical fuel injection and he clued into it right away. He said "It's sort of like an airless paint sprayer in how it works". He also commented that it must be for performance vs efficiency when compared to todays electronic fuel injection. I said exactly. There's hope for humanity after-all. ☺️

One thing to keep in mind is that if you stick with the standard tii brake setup, you'll be able to still run 13" wheels. I believe that if you modify those, then 13" wheels are no longer an option. That's only if 13" wheels matters to you or not. As far as the rear brakes go, I wouldn't bother changing to the larger 320i rears if you stick with the standard tii fronts. I changed the rears to the 320i setup on my 73tii and it changes the front to rear balance of the brakes and I didn't like it. I ended up switching the rears back to the standard setup. Now if you go with the vented setup in the front, then the 320i rear drums make more sense to balance the bias between the front and rear. Also, one little tidbit that often gets overlooked is that even with the standard 230mm rear drums, the tii used slightly larger rear wheel cylinders than standard 2002's. I can't remember the size off hand, but you can look them up on realoem.com. Edit: I had to look it up... tii rear wheel cylinders 17.46mm #34213460120 standard 2002 rear cylinders 15.87mm #34211101760 Good luck with your tii, John

I thought I had read somewhere that the internal cones might be different between the B's & the C's. That would make sense since they were trying to comply with different emissions standards on the US 74tii models. Hence the vacuum retard on the unique distributor used on the US 74tii's vs the earlier models that used the 008 distributor. I have no idea about the Euro 74's vs the US 74's though. I know my US 73 has a B and my US 74 has a C.

Thank you Steve. The database, go to the database. Being a computer programmer I should know better ? So it looks like all of the 5.5x13's (R1-440 & R1-485) are ET 22... Interesting Those R1-561's at 6x13 ET 30 look like the shizzle... Or either of the 5x13's (R1-439 & R1-484) at ET 27... I know it's only a few millimeters, but Given this I would assume that the 5x13 R1-439 Alpina model with the round holes are the holy grail? They're all out of my price range so it doesn't really matter anyway. I love all of them though. Especially when they're painted that gray color.

Just curious. Does anyone know what the offset is on those 13x5.5 Borrani wheels? I know the 13x6 Ronal wheels I'm currently restoring are ET 28 and seem to fit perfectly with 185/70 or 205/60 tires. I'm just a curious bystander. Thanks, John My Dad served in the Korean war, but never really wanted to talk about it. He was a damn good marksman and gunsmith though. R.I.P. This is what I surmise from realoem: Early "tii" 5x13 alloys: ET 26 Early 5x13 steelies: ET ? Late "dog dish" 5x13 alloys: ET 28 Late 74 and up 5x13 steelies: ET 29 Later E21 5.5x13 steelies and alloys ET 18

That looks "Dope". I've had more kids come up to me in the last few days and say how "Dope" my car was. When I was a kid, Dope was something we hid from our parents and rolled up in a doobie. I think kids these days are attracted to primer and rust. I've seen old trucks driving around that are all fixed up with what I would call synthetic rust painted on them. My car has real rust. I should start a company R.A.R. Real Authentic Rust. Application instructions: Apply surf racks and surfboards, let salt water drip for two or more decades... ? Seriously. That carbon fiber job looks really nice. What type of resin do you use? Epoxy?

Buzz Kill. I finally figured out what was causing this sort of "Buzzing" noise when I'd be sitting at a stoplight with my 74tii idling. It turns out that the cold start relay (which is just attached with a little screw) was all loose. I tried just tightening the screw, but the hole was all stripped out. So, I went to my local Ace hardware store and found a solution: 2 stainless 5mm x 16mm machine screws. 4 stainless 5mm flat washers. 4 little 5mm rubber fender washers. 2 stainless 5mm nylock lock nuts. No problem. I head back to my car and there's a police car parked next to me. Officer steps out and says: "Cool Car. Can I see your license and registration". I'm like what's up? Your rear license plate is out of compliance. I'm like WTF, I know I just put the new tags on a couple of days ago. He says the Month sticker isn't legible on the plate. Sure enough it was all faded out and looked all white. Luckily I'm a AAA member and I went down to AAA and they gave me a new JUN month sticker after I showed them my up to date registration. Geez! At ACE I bought enough hardware to make the same fix on my other tii in case the cold start relay is loose on it too. Now I don't want to start one of those threads like "I used to be able to buy those bolts for a nickle", but the hardware for the two little bolts, washers, etc. cost me almost $10. Boy that was easy. Anyway, no more Buzz ? PS, since I was already "in there" I used the cold start relay I rebuilt a couple of years ago using Jason's awesome updated electronics even though the original one still worked fine. New one Works Great Jason!

Couldn't resist a twilight ride up into the mountains above Corralitos. I did a loop Corralitos Rd. --> Browns Valley Rd. --> Hazel Dell Rd. --> Green Valley Rd. (upper part) --> Pioneer Rd. --> Varni Rd. --> Back to Corralitos Rd. You had to be careful. Lots of Deer once you drop down into the apple orchard area in the upper part of Green Valley Rd. Then the sweet aroma of Skunk Weed as you pass the area where the commercial Pot Growing industry has taken over. It was a "sweet" ride ?

Good News! The Thrasher Lives! Got the car back from Nate's shop. Couldn't be happier. Went for a nice long drive on the backroads near my house. I forgot how good The Thrasher drives. Doesn't look so nice, but has a 3.64 LSD and Full Dinan suspension package with custom valved Bilsteins (somewhere between the Sports & HeavyDuties). Ran great, all is well in the world again. Ran into Eric Freiz at Nate's shop. I had never met him before but he was a super nice guy who knows all the local legends like Steve Kupper, Jan, Daniel and Tom Jones just to name a few. Was a hoot talking with him. Oh, and the car shifts so much better with the shift lever installed the right way ?

Black rubber shift knob == Good in my book ?

Having that bung is one of the other benefits of that radiator along with that angled outlet hose. The cheaper version that I bought has the three row core, but no bung for a sensor or for draining it and has the straight outlet. Does your car have AC Jim? What do you use the sensor for?

I thought about it, but then decided for my own health that I better not. I don't do good confronting people. I have a tendency to get angry and lose my cool which leads to nothing positive for anyone. I decided to just eat it and move on. These silly little cars aren't really worth getting my blood pressure elevated over. I've actually laughed quite a bit about it after my initial anger. I've been taking care of my ailing 94 yo mother who is blind and disabled. It helps put things in perspective. Are these silly little cars really that important? Is money really that important? I enjoy playing with them, but they're just material things that we won't be able to take with us in the end. It's all a learning experience. Like one of my Hawaiian waterman heroes Kai "Kaiborg" Garcia says: "Stay Humble, Stay Open Minded, Stay Teachable". I like that

Oh, I forgot. I had them take off the lock plate on the tranny output flange and check to make sure the nut was torqued to the correct spec. I provided another new lock plate. It wasn't torqued correctly. Fail #6, You're OUT!!!! ?At least I've found a new shop that knows what they're doing with our older cars. Plus Nate loves his Border Collie who was in the shop. I used to have Border Collies and so we talked about that and sheep herding with them which I also used to do with mine. It been a great experience so far with them. Good sense of humor too which is a plus in my book. Glad that folks on here recommended them. Cheers, John

Sorry folks. This is starting to resemble Carl's "Friends and their mechanical skills" thread. But, it gets better. So, I took the car into Nate Smith's Optimal Auto to have all of the rookie mistakes corrected, Around 3:30 I get a phone call. "Mr. Sieraski, we found something that we think looks sort of hackish and wanted to ask you about it. It seems that when they connected the new driveshaft on the differential side they replaced the special bolts with some grade 8.8 bolts and used a grinder to make them fit. The special bolts have a sort of half circle head on them to keep them from spinning. They also used regular nylock nuts instead of the proper all steel lock nuts. Let me send you a picture.". I said Okay, I know the correct bolts were in there before. So, I went out to the garage and looked at the old driveshaft. Low and behold the correct grade 10.0 bolts with the half moon heads were still in there. So, I lightly tapped them out with a hammer. Then I made the hour round-trip drive in bumper to bumper traffic from Watsonville back to Nate's shop in Santa Cruz and delivered him the proper bolts and 4 brand new steel lock nuts that I happened to have in my parts stash. I'll get the car back tomorrow. Nate and his mechanics were laughing. A grinder! Too Funny! Fail #5

Ha, I thought I was weird. At least I know I'm in good company. I love this place... Don't get me started on guns... Desert Eagles from IMI, but I digress ? they're pretty much "stock", NOT!

True Dat Especially because I'm paying twice to have the first rookie mistakes corrected because my back is still f'd up. ? I can rebuild shift knobs though... Ha Ha

The new upper rubber parts make it pretty tight. You can still rotate it, but it doesn't rotate easily. Before the rebuild, mine rotated super easy which I hated. Probably over time the rubber wears out or shrinks and then it will rotate again. That's why I prefer the original black rubber shift knobs with no BMW logo or shift pattern on them. If it rotates a little, no biggie. Those original rubber knobs are hard to find these days. Most people took them off and replaced them with a fancy walnut shift knob with the BMW logo. I scour pick-and-pulls and e-bay looking for these things now. The top pic is my favorite shift knob in my 73. I've been told by somebody in the know that it's a MotorSport knob probably from an early Euro 635csi. It's a little more squared off at the top and has some texture on the top (I found it on ebay). The other pic is an original 2002 rubber shift knob in my 74. I love these things, but I'm weird ? I'm also into old radios.