heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[bigjae46]

Any reason you're not using the fabric tape? That holds up much better. Amazon - about $2 a roll.

[heinzboehmer]

I’d say drivers side is easier. One exception being the fog light harness. Wait, m3 has a different front harness. There is a large connector that unplugs and allows the harness to be separated from left to right if memory serves.

Pics are of the 330i with an extension to the coolant reservoir plug.

Nice, thanks for those pictures. Might as well rewrap the other side on my car then

[tlow98]

Yep! It was very much like that on the parts of the harness that are exposed to high heat (along the shock tower, under coolant expansion tank, etc.). The parts that aren't (inside drug bin mostly), had that regular super sticky residue from electrical tape on them. It was actually great cause I hate dealing with the super sticky stuff.

This is why I'm tempted to rewrap the other side too. Whenever I touch a piece of the harness, the tape just kinda falls off. Do you remember how many things the driver's side harness went to, compared to the passenger's side one? If rewrapping the driver's side is something I can knock out in a couple hours, I'll go for it. If it's gonna take days like the passenger's side, then I'll just ignore the peeling tape.

I’d say drivers side is easier. One exception being the fog light harness. Wait, m3 has a different front harness. There is a large connector that unplugs and allows the harness to be separated from left to right if memory serves.

Pics are of the 330i with an extension to the coolant reservoir plug.

[heinzboehmer]

Yep! It was very much like that on the parts of the harness that are exposed to high heat (along the shock tower, under coolant expansion tank, etc.). The parts that aren't (inside drug bin mostly), had that regular super sticky residue from electrical tape on them. It was actually great cause I hate dealing with the super sticky stuff.

This is why I'm tempted to rewrap the other side too. Whenever I touch a piece of the harness, the tape just kinda falls off. Do you remember how many things the driver's side harness went to, compared to the passenger's side one? If rewrapping the driver's side is something I can knock out in a couple hours, I'll go for it. If it's gonna take days like the passenger's side, then I'll just ignore the peeling tape.

[tlow98]

Was your old electrical tape surprisingly brittle? Mine had very little tack left and peeled off easily after being cut with a straight blade.

nice work here! Tedious job.

[heinzboehmer]

Alright here's some more details about the grommet replacement.

To start, I just followed the harness and disconnected all the plugs that were on it. This involved removing the turn signal, moving the coolant expansion tank out of the way, etc. The hardest plug to get to was the one on the AC drier. I ended up moving the wheel well liner out of the way and disconnecting it through the wheel well. Here's the sensor:



The firewall grommet snaps into place from the inside out, so I pulled the entire thing into the passenger compartment:



Old grommet was cut off cause I didn't feel like feeding a million wires through it. Here's a comparison between MK20 (right) and MK60 (left) grommets:



And from the back:



It's pretty obvious that they're pretty different. The MK20 grommet is a two piece assembly with two mounting spots, while the MK60 grommet is a one piece unit with only one mounting spot. Fortunately, they're mostly interchangeable. I did find that I had to slot the mounting hole slightly, but that was the only modification necessary:



With the old grommet off, I got started on feeding all of the harness wires through the new grommet. To do this, I depinned every connector and then repinned after the wires were through.

The one caveat were the ground wires. These attach to a ground point behind the turn signal that is not like the rest of the ground points on the car. This one is completely sealed, so there's no depinning the wires and feeding them through. What I did instead was to keep all ground wires that I depinned from connectors "outside" of the grommet. I did try stuffing the entire ground post thing through the grommet opening, but it was waay too big.

Halfway through:



Aand finally all of them:



It's hard to see, but there's one ground wire that I ended up cutting. I wanted to avoid cutting any wires, but I tried following this one and could not find where it went to without taking a bunch of the interior apart, so I just gave up and cut it.

Grommet in place:




Getting those three tabs clipped in required a decent amount of messing around. I ended up using a socket extension to push on the grommet from the inside and got them seated.

Here's that one ground soldered back:



And heatshrink added:



I also took the opportunity to clean the super hard to reach places, which was quite nice.

And finally, everything wrapped back up in electrical tape. So far the super 33 has been holding up great:




I kinda want to rewrap the other side after seeing how this side came out. Maybe when I decide I have nothing better to do to the car I'll do it, but I'll be taking a break from wiring for now.

[heinzboehmer]

Success!



I ended up having to pull the harness into the interior and depin every connector to get them through the grommet. I did give up and cut one wire though, a ground that I wasn't able to trace in the body harness. Not bad for the amount of cables running through that grommet though.

Now just need to rewrap and reassemble all of this:



I'll post up some more pics later, just to document the hard parts (and to remind myself not to do this again).

[heinzboehmer]

You are an absolute madman. I definitely would have just plugged that hole with plastic!

I strongly considered it, but I already have the grommet so might as well. What's five extra hours on a job that would have otherwise taken 15 min, right?

The thing that fully convinced me to do it this way was that most of the tape close to the plugs is peeling off, so it's going to be nice to rewrap all that.

[Bry5on]

You are an absolute madman. I definitely would have just plugged that hole with plastic!

[heinzboehmer]

Started working on something yesterday that I haven't been looking forward to. When I did the MK60 swap, I bought a new firewall drug bin grommet, since the MK20 plug got pulled into the interior. Unfortunately there's a harness that runs through this grommet and the only way to get the new one in is to disconnect the harness from everything in the engine bay and feed each plug in one by one.

Hole left from cutting the original grommet and feeding MK20 connector through. Pretty big water ingress risk:



You can see the remaining harness that still runs through the grommet in that pic. Worked away for a couple hours and disconnected everything it went to, which was a lot of things. Even had to remove the passenger wheel well liner to get to one of the plugs. Here's the entire thing laid out:



Next step is to disassemble the interior and get the grommet out. Then I can feed the harness through the new one. I plan on rewrapping the entire thing in new tape, since it's 20 years old and super crumbly. Thought about using tesa tape, but then it wouldn't match the other side, so hopefully 3M super 33 will hold up to the conditions in the engine bay.

On the bright side, I now have access to a lot of engine bay spots that are very dirty and were pretty much impossible to clean with the harness in place. Will get all of that looking good before reinstalling.

[heinzboehmer]

I got happy seeing the pliers wrenches too especially with the soft jaws. You know they make them for the 180s also right?

Yep, have an assortment of those. Super useful

[jet_dogg]

https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...586#post161586

You linked the wrong post but I saw it further down man that shit is fucking awesome haha. You should send that shit to makita headquarters though I believe they did it for some nonsensical liability concerns but the auto-stop would cease operation regardless.

I got happy seeing the pliers wrenches too especially with the soft jaws. You know they make them for the 180s also right?

[heinzboehmer]

Do you mind sharing a pic of what you did with the switch? I'm probably just going to get rid of it at this point and get the milwaukee.

The m18 is bulky and heavy but at least it's a joy to use and easy on the eyes though I balked at its size at first. For diy and home use the high speed ratchets are great as are the impacts, but it is dumb how the 3/8 and 1/2 use the same internals. Nice thing about the makita ratchet is you can swap anvils that can't do with milwaukee's greedy ass.

https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/main-forum/member-build-journals/13854-heinzboehmer-s-2002-topaz-6mt-coupe?p=161586#post161586

[jet_dogg]

Ah yeah the trigger behavior is annoying. I added a latching switch in parallel with the trigger so now I can just press it and walk away. Makes using it a lot more pleasant.

The M18 tire inflator is super nice, but a good bit bulkier. Plus I have mostly Makita stuff so yeah. I have been wanting the Milwaukee electric ratchets and their higher powered impacts for a while though...

Do you mind sharing a pic of what you did with the switch? I'm probably just going to get rid of it at this point and get the milwaukee.

The m18 is bulky and heavy but at least it's a joy to use and easy on the eyes though I balked at its size at first. For diy and home use the high speed ratchets are great as are the impacts, but it is dumb how the 3/8 and 1/2 use the same internals. Nice thing about the makita ratchet is you can swap anvils that can't do with milwaukee's greedy ass.

[heinzboehmer]

I have to hold the fucking trigger the whole time like an idiot and the oring tore after a few uses not to mention it's ugly. The m12 inflator is on par with this lxt 18v inflator but the m18 inflator blows everything away. Insanely fast, screw on chuck and set/forget walk away. If I were going to the track that's the one I'd take but I understand if you're on another battery platform.

The 20v dewalt is 2nd in terms of power but it's hideous.

Ah yeah the trigger behavior is annoying. I added a latching switch in parallel with the trigger so now I can just press it and walk away. Makes using it a lot more pleasant.

The M18 tire inflator is super nice, but a good bit bulkier. Plus I have mostly Makita stuff so yeah. I have been wanting the Milwaukee electric ratchets and their higher powered impacts for a while though...