heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Super clean. Remember to always use twisted pairs and the shortest wire lengths you can for CAN, and as you know, try not to run CAN in parallel to power wires. This is mostly for people who might want to recreate this but run the wiring a little differently. If you’re pulling CAN from the steering angle sensor, this should be a non-issue since the run is so short. Also, don’t forget to run CAN to your OBD2 connector while you’re in there doing all of this. It’s so nice to be able to grab the data without doing any wiring if needed.

Yep! Have a junkyard harness for the steering angle sensor on the bench waiting for me to wire it up. Thanks for the reminder on the OBD plug CAN wiring, need to order the correct pins for that.

And one more note for future people. Gauge.S is actively sending commands to the k-bus, which means your code reader will not work while Gauge.S is active. Either kill power to Gauge.S or reboot it into WiFi mode (can be done with steering wheel controls). This one got me a couple weeks back as I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t pull codes from my DME. -_-

Hmm, this is surprising. The k bus is usually decently active, so not sure why those are causing issues. Any idea what the commands being sent out are? Steering wheel button things?

[Bry5on]

Super clean. Remember to always use twisted pairs and the shortest wire lengths you can for CAN, and as you know, try not to run CAN in parallel to power wires. This is mostly for people who might want to recreate this but run the wiring a little differently. If you’re pulling CAN from the steering angle sensor, this should be a non-issue since the run is so short. Also, don’t forget to run CAN to your OBD2 connector while you’re in there doing all of this. It’s so nice to be able to grab the data without doing any wiring if needed.

And one more note for future people. Gauge.S is actively sending commands to the k-bus, which means your code reader will not work while Gauge.S is active. Either kill power to Gauge.S or reboot it into WiFi mode (can be done with steering wheel controls). This one got me a couple weeks back as I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t pull codes from my DME. -_-

[heinzboehmer]

Going to be replicating Bry5on's wideband/logging setup and parts have started coming in. Last night I spent a few hours getting the wiring for the wideband in place.

Easiest way to wire it would be to just run the wire through some grommet in the drug bin area, but that would require wires to be floating around the engine bay and I wanted to avoid that. Since I pulled the precat O2 and EGT wiring out of the narrowband harness during my header install, there was just about enough room to feed it through there.

Getting the AEM wiring through required a decent amount of messing around, but it wasn't too too bad in the end. Depinned the O2 connector and used some coated stainless steel wire rope to guide it through:




Some time later it was in place:





Luckily, the wire length was just about perfect to reach a wideband O2 plugged into the headers. No need to be wiring up any extension harnesses or anything.

I did also fit that rubber wire grommet on the passenger's side of the valve cover (12517831185). Hopefully that keeps the top of the valve cover a bit cleaner. I spent some time trying a bunch of different wiring routes until I settled on something I liked. I wish the SS headers didn't make the narrowband O2 wiring so tight...

I then drilled some holes for zip ties in the transmission ECU compartment and mounted the wideband controller there:





In the future, I'll cut the loop of wire going between the wideband controller and the DME housing grommet in half and add some connectors to it. This is mainly so that getting the O2 harness out of the car isn't a huge pain.

And through to the interior:



And that's where I stopped. I have yet to install the O2 sensor onto the headers and have also yet to wire the controller in. My Gauge.S still hasn't come in, so probably won't continue with this until it does. Pretty happy with how stealthy this turned out though!

I did do a bit of thinking and I'm pretty sure I'm going to wire everything to the eject box power supply harness that I have in the center console. It's on a 10 A fuse so should be fine. Here's my messy current draw calculations for everything that's going to be connected to that supply harness:

• Front dash cam: 1 A peak
• Rear dash cam: 1 A peak
• Wireless charger: 1 A peak
• AEM Wideband Controller:
  • 3 A peak worst case
  • 1.5 A peak measured
• Gauge.s:
  • 500 mA peak worst case (estimated)
  • 150 mA peak measured (by Bryson)
• ---------------------------------------------------------
• Worst case peak current draw: 6.5 A
• Realistic peak current draw: <4.65 A

Think it should be safe! Will make everything super easy to wire as well. If I start popping fuses (I shouldn't), I'll run a separate fuse for the wideband/Gauge.S setup.

[heinzboehmer]

Did an oil change yesterday. Unfortunately nothing went wrong, so going to be a short post.

Oil drain plug repair still doing good!



Oil dipstick was breaking apart towards the bottom, so that got replaced:



Also, when I swapped the steering rack, I noticed that the bolt that goes from the PS pump bracket to the oil pan was missing. Judging by the amount of dirt inside the threads in the oil pan, this thing has been missing for a while and I just hadn't noticed it:



New one installed:

[heinzboehmer]

Oh! My mind immediately went to the rear tweeters for some reason. I'll look for witness marks next time the door card is off.

[Bry5on]

Sorry, I meant the woofers down below. They only contact once you snap the clips in so it’s basically impossible to tell by look, feel or hearing.

[heinzboehmer]

I'll keep that in mind! I didn't feel any contact when installing, but maybe I just didn't notice...

Hoping that shaving that lip down gives them enough clearance.

[Bry5on]

The magnets in my bavsound speakers contact the metal door itself so I put some tesa tape in between that location too. Next time your door panel is off, it’d be worth checking for signs of contact. Mine’s obviously a sedan door so the coupe may be better.

[heinzboehmer]

Got a bunch of stuff in the mail today and got straight to work.

First the wiper stalk:



Probed everything and turns out that yes, the E39 wiper stalk is entirely plug and play with the ZCP MK60. Just need to run the M track mode signal wire to pin 10 and done.

I fed that wire through the stock wiring locations to try and keep it as out of the way as possible:





And installed:



Next up some bavsound speakers:



Install was super straight forward. I only have a couple things to highlight.

None of the speakers have clips for the connectors to clip in to, so I wrapped all the connectors in tesa tape to try and keep rattles away:



I also replaced all the clips in all four door cards with brand new ones. Felt pretty great to have everything clip in like it's supposed to:



Also, I didn't love how the rear tweeters sat in the stock plastic carrier, so I removed the lip to get the mating surface as flat as possible for the adhesive. For some reason, I was too lazy to break out the dremel, so instead I used some needle nose pliers to rip away the lip and then a razor blade to clean everything up. Honestly looks kinda terrible, but it works great!



I also added a ton of adhesive to the space between the speaker and the carrier. Did this to make sure it was airtight and to try and keep the speakers attached to the carrier for as long as possible. Hopefully this adhesive lasts for a while.



And finally, I swapped out the smoked depo side markers for some fresh clear ones:

[heinzboehmer]

Hmm, TIS says that both the E39 stalk button and the M track mode button are switching to ground, so I might get lucky and not need to mess with anything. I'll probe my ZCP steering wheel trim and E39 stalk just in case.

E39:


E46:

[heinzboehmer]

Tackled a small but much harder than expected job the other day: steering column bushings. Not a lot of pictures because I spent most of my time contorted under the dash struggling with the install.

Here's old and new:


(apologies for the terrible photoshop, I grabbed the wrong old bolt for the original pic...)

TIS says to "Install nut with Loctite", but doesn't specify the strength. The old bolt had what looked like red threadlocker, so I used that. Also lubed the sides of the bushings (where they slide against the fixed part of the column) just like the stock ones were. Whatever lube BMW used at the factory looked suspiciously similar to the Krytox I used. Probably some PTFE based lube as well.

Getting the bolt through the new bushings was incredibly hard. Required a prybar and a lot of messing around with things. I think I spent like 20 min trying to get the bolt perfectly aligned with the second bushing before it finally went in. In hindsight, lubing the shoulder of the bolt would have likely made my life much easier, but I realized this halfway through the install and did not want to pull things apart and restart.

Here are the new ones in place:



Bryson told me this, so I was kind of expecting it, but I was still surprised by how much firmer the new bushing design makes the column feel. Telescoping it in and out now requires a ton of force.

Driving impressions are all positive. To be honest, I didn't drive the car a lot with the ZCP rack and old bushings, but I can say that the rack and bushing swap has made the steering feel much, much better. Pretty happy with this!

Also, when I did the MK60 swap, I added a wire for M track mode, just in case I ever stumbled upon a ZCP MK60. Now that that's in the car, I'll be wiring it to the E39 wiper stalk button, so I fished the wire out and set it in a more accessible spot:



E39 stalk is arriving soon, so that'll be going in as well. If anyone reading this has wired that stalk up to a ZCP MK60, please let me know if it just wires right up or if I need to do some electronic trickery to get it working. Otherwise, I foresee some quality time with the multimeter in my future.

[heinzboehmer]

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm trying to figure out the best approach for locating, cleaning up, and plugging leaks. Pulling the front clip makes cleaning possible, but then I won't be able to run the engine. Things are pretty tight in there in full trim.

You're likely gonna be better off cleaning everything up first and then reassembling and running the engine. Unless the leak is huge, you probably won't be able to see it in action. But if everything is clean, you'll be able to follow any new oil traces up to their source.

[bavarian3]

Thanks, it's been a lot of work!

To answer your questions:

1. I don't use anything fancy. Waterless car wash (I use the AMMO NYC stuff) for making things look pretty, diluted dish soap in a spray bottle for dirtier areas and diluted simple green in a spray bottle for super grimy stuff. Just make sure to use the aluminum safe simple green if you're going that route.
2. Pulling the front clip is great if the front of your engine is super dirty and you want to clean everything up. If you're already draining coolant, then it's not a ton more work. No need to discharge the AC, the flexible lines going to the condenser allow you to just swing it out of the way.
3. I think it was definitely worth the effort on this car because of all the maintenance/work that had gone into it prior to the swap and because I don't really plan to get rid of the car. However, I'm not sure that's true for everyone. The swap is extremely time consuming/expensive, adds zero value to the car and effectively makes no difference in regular day to day driving (unless you're driving like a lunatic). I do think that the MK60 is a much better system than the MK20, and you can make a case that the better ABS makes the car safer on the street and that the better traction/stability make the car safer in the wet/snow. However, for me, the benefits of this upgrade are almost exclusively limited to the track. If this car was 100% a street car, I likely would not have bothered with this.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm trying to figure out the best approach for locating, cleaning up, and plugging leaks. Pulling the front clip makes cleaning possible, but then I won't be able to run the engine. Things are pretty tight in there in full trim.

[heinzboehmer]

Managed to get through all 32 pages. You're on another level. Amazing work bringing this car to this state.

BTW been there done that living in the city with a project car, your experience with the garage size and nails in tires gave me anxiety just reading about it.

I'll ask some questions:
-with regards to washing the engine bay, anything to look out for with running water damaging components? what cleaners did you use?
-i have some oil leaks i need to locate, along with rod bearings, coolant system and front suspension overhaul. would you recommend pulling the front clip as you did? worth the effort? annoying part is having to pay someone to discharge-recharge the AC.
-now that you have the mk60 for a while, still stand by it not being worth the effort?

Thanks, it's been a lot of work!

To answer your questions:

1. I don't use anything fancy. Waterless car wash (I use the AMMO NYC stuff) for making things look pretty, diluted dish soap in a spray bottle for dirtier areas and diluted simple green in a spray bottle for super grimy stuff. Just make sure to use the aluminum safe simple green if you're going that route.
2. Pulling the front clip is great if the front of your engine is super dirty and you want to clean everything up. If you're already draining coolant, then it's not a ton more work. No need to discharge the AC, the flexible lines going to the condenser allow you to just swing it out of the way.
3. I think it was definitely worth the effort on this car because of all the maintenance/work that had gone into it prior to the swap and because I don't really plan to get rid of the car. However, I'm not sure that's true for everyone. The swap is extremely time consuming/expensive, adds zero value to the car and effectively makes no difference in regular day to day driving (unless you're driving like a lunatic). I do think that the MK60 is a much better system than the MK20, and you can make a case that the better ABS makes the car safer on the street and that the better traction/stability make the car safer in the wet/snow. However, for me, the benefits of this upgrade are almost exclusively limited to the track. If this car was 100% a street car, I likely would not have bothered with this.

[bavarian3]

Managed to get through all 32 pages. You're on another level. Amazing work bringing this car to this state.

BTW been there done that living in the city with a project car, your experience with the garage size and nails in tires gave me anxiety just reading about it.

I'll ask some questions:
-with regards to washing the engine bay, anything to look out for with running water damaging components? what cleaners did you use?
-i have some oil leaks i need to locate, along with rod bearings, coolant system and front suspension overhaul. would you recommend pulling the front clip as you did? worth the effort? annoying part is having to pay someone to discharge-recharge the AC.
-now that you have the mk60 for a while, still stand by it not being worth the effort?