heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[tlow98]

Great info! I have an AS SSK sitting in front of me. It has delrin (?) washers on each side of the joints/shaft interplay. Did yours not have those or did you order one of the AS SSKs that poor people normally buy? ( says the guy that is nickel and diming an engine rebuild). Also, the cup in this kit def has a foam insert.

I have not installed yet, but we'll see!

now to reply to your comment on my thread. Tag, you’re it!

[heinzboehmer]

Mine had those washers too, but there was still some play between the rod and the joint. Might just be wear, not sure.

And interesting! I quickly looked inside the AS selector rod joint and it looked like rubber, but maybe it was just the compressed foam. I can't remember what it looked like when I first got it. I'll take a better look later today.

[heinzboehmer]

Also, the cup in this kit def has a foam insert.

Just checked and mine does not have it. Hard to get the lighting right, but here's a pic:



Only thing in there is a rubber cup looking thing. It's fairly pliable (poking it leaves an indent that "springs" back within a few seconds), so it's possible that this was a past design. Kit is about two years old, so I guess it could have changed since. Also entirely possible that I lost the foam and installed it without it.

Tried looking for pics of the kit before install and could only find these two:




Hard to see, but the zip tie only goes through the top hole on the selector rod joint, so the insert could have fallen out into the box and then I just missed it.

Regardless, I'm sure there was no foam when I pulled the thing off of the car a couple days ago.

[Bry5on]

The foam is supposed to be soaked/squeezed in ATF before install if memory serves. BMW used the same foam joint since the 80s

[heinzboehmer]

Hmm, TIS doesn't say anything about having to soak the foam yourself. I can tell you that it comes presoaked in something though.

[Bry5on]

Cool, not all of them come pre soaked. Some were black foam, some were light yellow/brown foam. Looks like your old setup had the same.

[BMWE46M3]

Just so you guys know, the yellow foam coupler bushing can be replaced by itself without having to replace the entire selector rod joint. The part number is 25111434194.

Also, the couple shown above is the older style that requires those yellow plastic washers to fit properly. The new coupler design (25117580281) does not require the additional plastic washers but protrudes outward as shown in the image below.

[heinzboehmer]

Yeeaah, probably could have saved some money by buying just the foam and adding it to my AS rod joint and then shimming that. Didn't know it wasn't there before buying parts though. Oh well.

Also, the part I bought is the same as the one in the image you posted, with the bits of plastic protruding outward. Still had to use one of the washers (the white AS ones, not the yellow BMW ones) with the AS selector rod. Guessing that the AS and BMW selector rods have slightly different dimensions.

[Casa de Mesa]

Regardless, I felt a HUGE difference in ABS performance. I could stomp on the brake and the car would just stop. With the MK20, the car would get twitchy and unstable under hard braking. So much so that I would have to counter steer slightly to keep it going straight. Now it just brakes in a straight line without too much drama. It's hard to explain, but it almost feels as if only the tires are doing the ABS braking now, whereas the entire car was doing it before. Previous sentence probably doesn't make too much sense, but whatever, braking is now much more confidence inspiring. I'm very happy with this.

Heinz this put a huge smile on my face! So awesome to hear the effort was worth it!! Congrats on being able to take it out on track and feel the results - what a sense of accomplishment that must have been the first time you stabbed that middle pedal.

The track photos are just awesome. Car looks amazing dude. Really, really amazing.

This is gonna sound strange... but here I go. For track days with your stock seats that are known for a feeling of "sitting on top of them" rather than in them, you can get a piece of cabinet drawer liner, throw it on the seat cushion. Cut it so it is sufficiently long that it drapes over the side of the leg bolsters. Then sit on it. It's a bit of a pain to deal with getting in and out of the car, but once you're positioned and settled, it will help a good bit to hold you in place.

Super cheap hack that I used for a bit until I had a race seat. If you already knew about this one, file this under #nothingburger.

[heinzboehmer]

Thanks man! I am enjoying the car a lot these days, which is great after all the time spent messing around with it.

First time I pressed the brake was extremely nerve wracking. Had already tested the brakes on jack stands, but I still had someone scouting out for traffic outside the garage just in case I wasn't able to stop on the first drive lol.

Thanks for the tip! That sounds like it would make a good difference. Kinda wish you had mentioned this before, as I just ordered a set of nogaros a few hours ago

[0-60motorsports]

Awesome Build Thread

[heinzboehmer]

Awesome Build Thread

Thank you! Still have to update some stuff, but mostly caught up

[heinzboehmer]

Speaking of, here's an update on the wiring for the MK60. Will be very picture heavy, but want to record exactly how this thing is routed because it wasn't super straight forward.

This post will document the path the harness ended up taking after much trial and error. I made the harness 2.5 m long because that's how long it needed to be to be routed behind the dash and reach under the glovebox. I did take off the driver's side footwell panels to see if I could squeeze it in behind the HVAC and it looked like there was a ton of space. However, I did not consider that the HVAC box is not square. It gets much closer to the firewall on the passenger side, so there actually isn't enough space to route stuff through there. Lengthening the harness was going to be a lot of work, so I decided to get creative and try to work with what I had.

Looks long enough for that too! It seems like I somehow managed to take accurate measurements. What a concept.

Lol

Anyway, removed the harness from the engine bay by unplugging it from everything and snipping the zip ties that were holding it in. Then took it upstairs and wrapped it in Tesa tape. The green/black wire is for m track mode and the red/blue wire is for the TPMS reset button, so those were left unwrapped. I know BMW doesn't wrap most of the wires that go through the interior, but I decided to just to everything to avoid any rattles. Plus, it does look nice.
,



Added some heat shrink to the MK20 plug because there's a somewhat exposed PCB there and I didn't want it shorting out against stuff. Heat shrink didn't shrink enough to seal against the wires so I added some more Tesa tape. Not pretty, but will keep dust out and won't let the PCB short out.




Took off all the panels in both the driver and passenger footwells. Also removed the radio, AC controls and other trim parts in the center console. Then started routing the harness from the passenger's side to driver's. Order is important as the MK60 plug is slimmer than the MK20 one.



This is where the MK20 plug ended up after pulling everything through:



I then pulled the original MK20 connector through the grommet in the firewall. Unfortunately had to cut the grommet quite a bit to get it to pull through, so there's a big hole into the interior. I'll probably just tape it up for now and then try to avoid getting that area wet. I did order a new grommet, but my order has been pushed back multiple times, so no idea when it'll get here. Also not looking forward to pulling that wiring harness through the new one.



Test fit length and looked for a new ground location:



Turns out there's a bunch of metal over there, but no ground bundle, so I decided to get rid of the MK20 grounds and use the factory location for the MK60 ground. I then wrapped everything in Tesa tape to make it look nice and zip tied it out of the way:




Back to routing the rest of the harness now. This is where I pulled the connector through. First image is taken from the passenger's footwell, second is self evident.




With it in that position, I was able to pull the cable through the space between the HVAC and the frame support:



Passed it behind those wires attached to the HVAC:



Same deal for the wires on the left side:



Then came the challenge of getting the harness in between the HVAC box and the left rail of the frame support. These are much closer on the left side, so I had to unbolt the rail from the chassis so I could move it slightly out of the way. Then I snaked the harness through and pulled it down:





This is where it came out in the driver's footwell:



With the harness in this position, I was able to get it under the HVAC box with a combination of pushing and pulling. This gave me back the ~15 cm that I needed to have it reach. This pic shows how much I pushed it in. It's pretty obvious how far in it is if you look at where the red/blue wire is in the pics at the start of this post:



Here's that same wire running to the center console and then terminated and installed in the switch center plug. You can see it coming out on the right of the second image. Also can see that the harness is no longer in sight. And yes, I did break the old TPMS wire pin when removing, oh well.

[heinzboehmer]

Ran the harness under the steering column, zip tied it to a bracket to keep it out of the way and then passed it into the DME area:



Had to remove the factory tape from the wire bundle coming from the DME to get the new harness into the grommet, so I went ahead and rewrapped everything. Also pulled the part of the stock MK20 harness that comes out in the DME area and snipped the wires in the footwell. Taped everything up to avoid shorts and hid the snipped ends within the bundle:



Here's how I routed everything in the DME box and to the MK60 hardware:





Pretty much impossible to see in the above pics, but this is where I swapped the ground wires running from the PCB to the MK60 connector for the stock ground wires that bolt to a stud in the strut tower.

Put everything back together:



Then came the DSC sensor. I previously had hacked the bracket up with a drill to make it fit (apparently early and late cars have one mounting hole that is slightly offset) because I was in a rush, so I took the time to clean it up with a dremel and add some POR-15 to it. Modified hole is on the top right in the following image:



Put that back in place and ran the wires to it. Here's some pics of where I ran the wires. Basically just followed what was already there:



Started putting all the plastics back on and zip tied the m track mode wire out of the way. If I ever figure out how to use that, I'll run it to an E39 wiper stalk (the one with the "S" on the end of it).



Vacuumed and put everything back together. Wouldn't be able to tell this harness is running through there if you didn't already know about it



I did run into one issue though. I completely forgot that I had tapped the ground reference for the brake fluid level sensor into the ground wires that previously ran to the MK20 plug, which meant that the sensor had no reference after I switched ground locations. Turns out the system does not like it when it thinks there's no fluid and will disable the traction/stability functions. Didn't test if ABS still worked, but I really don't like this failure mode. I would much rather ruin the ABS pump if there's actually no fluid in there than crash because I'm missing these features and the fluid level sensor went bad.

Anyway, I figured this out the night before an autox, so I had to scramble to fix it.

Unwrapped part of the harness and tapped the ground reference into one of the new grounds:



The fluid level sensor has two wires going to it, a ground and a signal wire. I did break out the multimeter to make sure I snipped the correct one, but I was also rushed, so I ended up snipping the wrong one (of course). Put everything back together and still had an error. Took everything apart and realized my mistake. Did a bit more hacking up to my nice harness and all was well.

I did also test out m track mode at the autox and was underwhelmed. Thought that maybe it would be less intrusive there than on track, but it really wasn't. I lasted for one full lap before going full DSC off lol. Everything else worked awesome though! Glad to have finally finished up this project (except for that stupid grommet).

[Casa de Mesa]

Thanks for the tip! That sounds like it would make a good difference. Kinda wish you had mentioned this before, as I just ordered a set of nogaros a few hours ago

LMFAO!!!! That is awesome!!!

Which variant did you end up going with?