heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Thanks! The car does feel great now. Night and day difference. Although I'm sure most of it has to do with the fact that the suspension was all original (I know, I know shame on me).

[heinzboehmer]

Got a call in the middle of my alignment about an issue with the rear camber. Turns out I managed to somehow destroy the eccentric washers that set it:



Not entirely sure how I managed to do this? Guess I wasn't paying enough attention and sheared both tabs off when torquing. Fortunately, these were new parts and the old ones weren't in bad shape. So I just went down with the old ones and the tech was able to complete the alignment.

As expected, the rear camber was out of spec because of the CMP bushings. Maxed out at -0.5° so I guess I'm doing springs soon. Will probably go with Dinan springs for now, but I'm not sure if the drop will be enough to get the rear camber where I want it. Guess I'm going to have to go measure a bunch of stuff and do some trig. I'd rather avoid camber arms because I like that the stock arms are designed to bend in case of an impact (and also because I really don't want to torque that front diff bolt again).

Also did some quick math with the Dinan springs and those would leave me with about 17mm clearance from the road when backing into the garage. Not ideal but not terrible.

[skristedja]

Great additions! I've had the epoxy vincebar as well for about 3 years now and have had no issues whatsoever. Honestly if the car is riding and handling well, I wouldn't change your springs. I'm on the eibach pro kit (which is only marginally stiffer than stock) with my koni yellows and it's still too stiff for me, granted I do have camber plates in the front that could be affecting that.

[heinzboehmer]

Yeah I'm still debating what I'm going to do. I am leaning towards doing springs just to get that slight drop (and correct the camber issue), but haven't decided yet. I wouldn't mind a slightly stiffer ride than how it is now, but not sure how the Dinan springs compare to the Eibachs.

[heinzboehmer]

Dec 2020

Finally took the car on a real test drive. This is what the cluster looked like at the end of it lol.



Checked the oil and it was about 2 mm below the max fill line. This erroneous warning has happened before, but lately that yellow oil light has been turning on more frequently and the oil is never actually low. I'm guessing the sensor is going bad so I'll replace that next time I change my oil. I've also read that the CSL software expects more oil in the engine vs the regular US software, so that could be contributing as well.

The ABS lights turned out to be caused by this:



Turns out I pinched the cable with the shock pinch bolt (appropriate) and caused a short. I cut off the damaged section, soldered everything back together, wrapped each individual wire in heat shrink, and then wrapped the whole thing in that heat shrink that has glue inside in an effort to make it as water proof as possible.



Buuut then I got sketched out thinking that some water might be able to find its way in and mess with the sensor readings. Not sure how the DSC module would respond to messed up readings, but I'd rather not find out in case it gets confused and does something that might cause an accident. So I ordered a new OE sensor and swapped that one in.

I had also ordered Dinan springs to get my rear camber back in spec, but they seem to be backordered. So I redid my math to see how close to the street I would be when pulling into my garage if I instead went with the Eibach pro kit springs. I came up with something like 7mm off the ground which is sketchy but also not negative so whatever. Ordered and installed them.

I took some before and after pics and tried to be as precise as possible to convey the drop. Set the camera up on a tripod and tried to park the car in the same spot both times. The top pictures are before and the bottom pictures are after.






I think the drop looks great. I know the springs haven't settled yet, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I'll probably take more pics in a month or so once everything is truly settled. As far as ride quality, there's a slight bit more harshness, but nothing that I can't stand. The only problem with these is how ridiculously close I get to scraping when going in and out of my garage. There's no contact, but it's veery tight.



Oh well. Worst case scenario I go back to stock/get Dinan springs and add camber arms in the rear.

[heinzboehmer]

I also decided to remove my AFD flex fuel kit. I barely run ethanol anymore since the car sits all week and I'd rather not have water get into the fuel. Once I start doing all the typical power mods (cams, full exhaust, etc.), I'll get bigger injectors and a tune for everything. With those on the car, I can decide how I want to approach the E85 thing. Might move away from the AFD kit or put it back on. Regardless, I do want to run E85 again in the future, so I'll just keep the kit in storage in case I do end up putting it back on.

When plugging the injector harness back in, I accidentally bumped the vacuum line that goes to the fuel pressure regulator. Accidentally pulled it off completely when reseating it and set off the alarm on the car shortly after (must have happened from me leaning against the car with the key in my pocket). Needless to say, I dropped the line onto the bell housing.



The rear of the engine is to the right, firewall to the left and the circled thing is the line. Ended up having to take the intake off to retrieve it.



It's now ziptied in lol. Don't want to drop that thing again.



The good thing about this was that it made me realize that the bracket on the bottom of the intake was loose. One of the bolts was gone completely and the other was held in only by a few threads. They must have backed out from the vibrations of the engine. I found a new bolt that fit and put both of them back in with some threadlocker. Hopefully they won't go anywhere now.

[heinzboehmer]

Jan 2021

After installing the suspension, I jacked the car up just to give everything a quick checkup. Suspension-wise, everything was fine, but as I jacked up the car, a bunch of power steering fluid that was in the front reinforcement plate dumped onto the floor. Took off the plastic covers and it quickly became apparent that the power steering lines were gone. I think the main culprit was the line that goes straight down from the reservoir, but to be honest, I didn't even bother diagnosing further. I knew the car needed a power steering refresh soon, so I just ordered new parts for everything.

Old oil leaks and this new power steering leak had made things under the intake pretty disgusting:




Took this opportunity to get everything cleaned up (didn't bother cleaning the power steering reservoir since that was going to get swapped out):




Muuuch better.

Didn't get any pics of the power steering install, but there's no more leaks!

[heinzboehmer]

I want to start tracking the car soon, so next up is getting it running perfectly. All maintenance is taken care of (except for one small oil leak that I'll fix this weekend), but the car still had on the stock CSL tune with stock cams and headers. Drivability was totally fine, but I just wanted to make sure the engine was running as best as possible before the track.

Hit up Paul Claude and got one of his off the shelf tunes for now, plan on getting a dyno tune from him once I get all my power mods in. I had very slight low rpm hesitation before, but it's gone now. Car also pulls much harder. I think it's mostly the power delivery that feels a lot more linear now.

I did forget to tell Paul that I can only get 91 octane fuel, so the engine was pinging at low rpm and higher load. I could reliably get it to ping if I opened the throttle past ~40% below 2k rpm in any gear past first. Reached out to Paul and he quickly sent me a revised tune that could cope with 91. All pinging has disappeared! Power is still there too. Extremely pleased with the tune and service from Paul, would 100% recommend for anyone looking to get their car tuned.

And since there were no pics for the tune update here's a sneak peek of one of the next projects:



This was just a quick test to see how my paint reacted to a paint correction. Megs 105 applied by hand (which is why I didn't get absolutely all the scratches out). This car was a daily driver up until a year or so ago. I regularly drove it in the snow (in CO only) and parked it outside, so the entirety of the car is covered in scratches like these. I think the parallel scratches mostly come from brushing snow off of the car. CO uses gravel in the winter instead of salt, so while there is no rust on the car, there are a good amount of chips on the hood and bumper. Oh well, I still think the paint will clean up nicely. Probably won't get to it for a few weeks though, next up is an oil change, valve adjustment, engine retime (because why not), VANOS gasket replacement and valve cover gasket replacement.

[Mike0032]

Looking forward to seeing the pictures post-detail, Topaz is a great color on this car.

[heinzboehmer]

Looking forward to seeing the pictures post-detail, Topaz is a great color on this car.

Thanks, I'm excited too. Just need to find some time to get it done.

[oceansize]

This was just a quick test to see how my paint reacted to a paint correction. Megs 105 applied by hand (which is why I didn't get absolutely all the scratches out). This car was a daily driver up until a year or so ago. I regularly drove it in the snow (in CO only) and parked it outside, so the entirety of the car is covered in scratches like these. I think the parallel scratches mostly come from brushing snow off of the car. CO uses gravel in the winter instead of salt, so while there is no rust on the car, there are a good amount of chips on the hood and bumper. Oh well, I still think the paint will clean up nicely. Probably won't get to it for a few weeks though, next up is an oil change, valve adjustment, engine retime (because why not), VANOS gasket replacement and valve cover gasket replacement.

Done a lot of mods but in terms of pure satisfaction my favorite thing that I've ever done was my car's paint correction. Went the same way as you with megs 105, 205, sealant, and wax. Going to experiment with ceramic coatings next.

[heinzboehmer]

Done a lot of mods but in terms of pure satisfaction my favorite thing that I've ever done was my car's paint correction. Went the same way as you with megs 105, 205, sealant, and wax. Going to experiment with ceramic coatings next.

Yeah, this is definitely going to be fun. Can't wait to see the car in the sun after the paint correction. I think my paint might be a little too far gone to warrant anything more than wax. I'll eventually get it resprayed and then experiment with things like ceramic coatings.

[heinzboehmer]

Feb 2021

Did a couple things over the past couple weekends. First up: oil change.

Nothing too exciting here, but I did replace the engine oil level sensor at the same time since I was getting the yellow oil light with the level reading at full on the dipstick. So far I haven't seen the light again. Always hilarious to see the BMW logo milled off of parts that you can get for 1/3 of the price.

Genuine (old sensor):


Hella:


I wasn't sure if the seal was included with the sensor, so I also ordered the genuine BMW seal. Turns out the Hella sensor does come with a seal, but it came with a green one while the BMW one was red.


Swapped out the seal since I already had the BMW one, but I also kept the Hella one just in case. When I took off the old sensor, it had a green seal on it. Oh well, if there's any leaks I'll just swap the green seal back in on the next oil change.


Next up, valve adjustment and engine retime.

Most important part of this job was this:


After what happened last time, I didn't want to set off the alarm accidentally again and drop something into the engine.

Valve adjustment went smoothly, found 10 out of 24 valves out of spec (!). Most of them were 0.001-0.003" under spec. I was honestly surprised that so many were out of spec, given that I had adjusted them about 20k mi ago. I did move across the country though so maybe temperature differences played a role? Regardless, managed to get them all in spec. Topside of the engine is significantly less clicky between 1-3k rpm now (any clicking noises get drowned out above that by the airbox/exhaust).

I then spent a tooon of time trying to get my engine timed perfectly. Probably spun the engine by hand thirty times and the timing pin slid perfectly into the cams on both sides every single time. Reset adaptations before the first start and re-checked them yesterday (I've driven the car a few times since). Intake cam is pretty much dead on, but exhaust was at something like -4°. Ah whatever, it's within spec.

Also added the BMW fan delete nut on the oil pump since I don't run the mechanical fan.




Last thing I did was get the car ready for the airbag recall. A mobile tech is scheduled to perform it tomorrow, but I wanted to be sure that none of my interior got damaged, so I took everything apart myself:



Also took the opportunity to replace my homemade $0.02 center console bracket with BMW's $5 bracket. Mine worked just fine, but it's a cheap part and will help avoid any future rattles.

[heinzboehmer]

Started my paint correction today. Decided to do the top of the trunk lid because I've never done this before and thought a flat surface would be good to learn on.

I used a mf pad with megs 105, then a foam pad with megs 205 and added megs ultimate quik wax at the end.

Here's the paint after just a quick wash:


Tons of scratches of many different depths and lengths. Super dull look to the paint too.

Here's a quick video halfway through the process:

And a couple shots after finishing and waxing:



I'd say I managed to get about 90-95% of the imperfections out of the paint. Super excited to get the rest of the car looking like this. I'll probably work on the rest in the upcoming weeks/months.

[timmo]

Lol with the way the sensor was milled, I'm just picturing them coming hot off the production line, straight into a giant fixture with like 30 sensors all in a grid.

Wow that old paint is pretty bad... nice job! I need to do mine but I'll do it after I graduate, there's some god-forsaken cat in the underground at my apartment that has taken a liking to my car. And I've came back to my car where someone's left a half-eaten pizza slice, and an entire croissant on my hood. I've done it once back in 2015 and man, I was really feeling it in my hands after, since I just have the el-cheapo vibratey-boi HF DA