Tim's Mystic Blue ZHP Coupe

[timmo]

Whew, we’re officially into the same year as this posting, and nearly caught up! Car came out of storage again in April. I had some nice Tesa tape on hand so I decided to fix some of Tim’s sketchy wiring from 2015, along with some of the peeling harness wrap in the engine bay.

Back when I first got the car I hardwired my dash cam, taking power off the homelink garage opener. But I wasn’t too electrically savvy back then. Having built the majority of a full engine harness for the FSAE car has taught me a few things, and man looking back on this I really shake my head on what I did.

It’s not the best solder joint in the world, but at least I did pull out the $10 soldering iron I had back then. But since I spliced too close to the homelink connector, there was no space for heat shrink, so I put a small piece of electrical tape over it. Over the 5 years it’s been installed, that piece of electrical tape became unwrapped, leaving live +12V exposed.

My homebrew 12 to 5V stepdown also shown:



Used some high-quality electrical tape as insulation, then wrapped everything with fabric sound-deadening interior harness wrap tape:



Decided I’d follow what Porsche does, and wrapped the seatbelt buckle in the same tape to prevent scuffing of the centre console:



Also took the opportunity to take both beauty covers off and clean. Unfortunately not a full-out detail since I didn’t have time, but better than it was before:



Then, re-wrapped this harness behind the airbox with abrasion & heat-resistant engine bay harness wrap tape:





I had a small split in the plastic loom that runs above the thermostat, which I repaired a couple years ago with regular electrical tape. I highly urge people not to use this stuff – after a few years, it’ll be a sticky, brittle mess. Re-wrapped it with the same engine bay harness tape:





Engine bay pic after the partial clean. Still need to do a proper detail on it:



I’ve always had these scratches in the BMW Performance Intake. My bet is that some grease monkey used it as a workbench for his tools, when working on the car. And this is why I don’t take my car anywhere… after asking around I think I’ll try a Magic Eraser, then Solution Finish and see how that turns out. Just gotta buy it first:



Then I thought I’d take care of the small split in the elephant wire sheathing for the trunk. Normally I’d replace this, but since I wasn’t making an FCP Euro order anytime soon, I decided to try using some self-vulcanizing tape. I’ve had great success using this stuff on the FSAE harness, and even sealed a leaking gas line for our MIG welder.



If this repair doesn’t hold up, I’ll place an order for a new sheath, but I bet it’s waterproof. If applied properly, you can’t even unwrap it – for removal, you must cut it off, as all layers have fused together.





My car also really needed a wash. California road-trip aside, I think this is the dirtiest I’ve had my car:



Aaaaah… much better!



Lately, I’d been keeping a constant eye out for local partouts. Rock-chippy front-end paint aside, my car has had a couple cosmetic issues that have always slightly bugged me – ugly door seals, and a cracked passenger’s headlight. But these issues weren’t big enough to warranty me paying the prices that a used headlight or door seal go for.

I’m sure as many of you coupe owners know, some door seals were faulty from factory, where the fabric inner lining would separate from the rubber seal. The PO tried to glue it but ended up ripping it off, leaving an ugly brown mess. As I mentioned before the body shop in California ended up tearing the driver’s side seal, so I was lucky in the fact that they bought a brand-new one ($$$) and replaced it for free. So that left just the passenger’s side to deal with.



And as for the passenger’s headlight, well all facelift coupe owners have been cursed with non-removeable lenses from factory. And it seems the only aftermarket replacement lense is $200 for a set, which is insane considering what sedan or pre-facelift lenses cost.



I guess my car is sort of like two-face at this point, haha. Cracked headlight, bad door seal, and scraped bumper – all on the same side!

But an ad popped up recently about a guy selling the rear quarters and hood off a facelift coupe. So naturally, I messaged him about the passenger’s door seal, and headlights. He hadn’t even posted ads for these parts yet, so he wasn’t sure what they were worth. The result of which, after some negotiation, resulted in a flaming deal that resulted in me coming home with a set of headlights and the one door seal that day:



After some cleaning, the door seal was indeed in excellent condition as the seller had mentioned. Not bad, considering I paid well <10% of what it cost brand-new:







And the headlights… well, they definitely need some elbow grease. As these are non-dynamic xenons, I’ll be swapping the passenger’s side lense onto my housing, and vice-versa. I then plan on wet-sanding to get all of the pitting and cloudiness out, then spraying with 2K clear to prevent them from getting yellow and cloudy again. Then, another wet-sand with 2000 grit (only if there is significant orange peel). Then compound and polishing with my DA, to get the surface as perfect as possible.



Quite grimy outside, but clean inside!



Both headlight lenses were cracked right under the headlight washer. I’ll have to stop-drill the root, then epoxy. I’m not concerned about this, as you can’t see it when installed:



To celebrate the purchase, I then went on a late-night COVID cruise. Might as well take advantage of the cheap gas, and empty roads.

[timmo]

Well, I lied about the fact that I wouldn’t see my car until 2020. Come Christmas break I was itching for something to do, and decided to re-wrap my pillars. My B-pillars weren’t too bad, but the A-pillars were sagging quite a bit. But that was nothing compared to the C-pillars – the stock fabric was actually hanging down and covering the vanity lights! So end of last year I lifted the car cover and pulled all the pillars out:





I did briefly consider pulling the fabric and leaving it, but there were nasty glue marks left behind:



Not sure how people wrap their C-pillars with one piece, or how the stock fabric has no relief cuts. That one curved section by the rear window vent actuator needed a relief cut, and patch. It’s not ideal, but at least I don’t notice it:





Unfortunately I didn’t buy enough fabric to recover the B-Pillars, but they only needed the sides gluing down. The mismatch with the A & C-pillars doesn’t really bother me:



The A-pillars turned out decent. The only gripe I have with them is that the airbag strip doesn’t sit quite flush, but still pushes into its slot and stays in place:





All installed:





Looking back on this project, I wasn’t aware that you could buy material online that was a very close match to OEM fabric, so I wish I did that instead of buying generic black alcantara. The stuff I bought seems to be very high-quality, it feels just like a brand-new alcantara steering wheel, but there is a definite mismatch in shade with the headliner. But it’s a heck of a lot better than stock, and as I was now satisfied with scratching my itch I put the car cover back and waited until April to take my car out again.

But one small thing to add before the next update – in February of this year myself and a few others were going to be driving to Austin, Texas for a workshop (2 day drive, for a 3 day workshop, don’t ask). Given how much Canadians get screwed over for cross-border shipping, I decided to use this to my advantage and make an FCP Euro parts run and have those shipped to Austin for pickup. As I was planning on tracking this summer (hahahahahahahahahahaha) I purchased pads, rotors, and fluid, so I’m not so thermally limited with standard no-name pads, and to get rid of my slightly warped rotors.

I purchased:
• Zimmermann Rotors
• Hawk HPS Pads
• ATE Type 200 DOT4 Brake Fluid
• Exhaust Manifold to Midpipe Gaskets (in case I have to drop the exhaust to replace the handbrake cables, when I do my handbrake rebuild this summer)

Funny story – I figured, since I was staying at the Hilton Austin, that I could just have my packages shipped via UPS to the UPS office within the hotel. But after talking with them, they wanted $80 to hold the packages, “because it’s a conference centre”. So instead I had it shipped via Fedex to the Fedex office a 10 minute drive away, and just picked them up there for free. And when I got back to the hotel I consolidated some of the boxes to cut down on trunk space, so I had spares. This may have been a slightly dick-ish move, but I seriously couldn’t find a big recycling bin, so I brought the empty boxes to the UPS office and asked if I could recycle them there.

[timmo]

A couple weeks later it’s mid-June, and it’s the first autox event for me of the season. The first event in that series (PITL) actually started in May but again I was busy with school & FSAE:



6 days later, another autox with OMSC at Mosport:





Even got to tootle around on the GP track during lunch (Alligator lapping):



Then something fairly dramatic – during one of the runs this guy’s wheel randomly flew off. Luckily no one was hurt. From what I heard, he was using the wrong type of lug nuts. He had OEM 370Z rims mounted, which sheared right around the lugs.



You can see the parent material of the 370Z rims still torqued down on the rotor. I really feel for the guy!



A few days later I finally got around to installing my aux cord. I actually bought this on eBay back in 2017, but again somehow never got around to installing it.



My glovebox flashlight was so dim it was basically useless at that point, so I cannibalized it and turned it into another 12V outlet. I plugged in a USB charger to that, so I could power my Aux-Bluetooth adapter switched with the sleep/wake of the car. Then ran my aux cable from behind the dash to behind the glovebox. I don’t have any controls aside from volume, but I can’t complain considering the whole setup to get Bluetooth audio cost less than $10. I really should’ve done this earlier – during my California road trip I would sometimes be stuck for hours with either no radio reception, or 1 radio station that only played country. Nowadays, Spotify is all I listen to when I drive.

Next was tackling the aforementioned rust. Off came the rear bumper:



Into the house it went:



Hmmm, doesn’t look so bad…



Unsurprisingly, it was much worse:



Bunch of sanding with the sanding attachment on the Dremel:





There was also a random rust spot in the wheel well itself:





And, the rusted weld in the front wheel well:



Soak with POR15 Metal Prep to prevent further rusting once painted, then rinse & dry and paint:







I gave all 3 spots couple coats of POR15 base coat, then left the rear & front wheel wells as-is. With the areas close to the rear arch, I top-coated that with some colour-matched touch-up paint just to blend it in a bit better:



I then degreased all the areas on the body behind the bumper, and wrapped everything up. Definitely glad to have (hopefully) stopped that rust from spreading:





2 weeks later, yet another autox with PITL:



Unfortunately (or rather fortunately) I then took a 6 week vacation for my graduation, so my car just sat. Went to Japan (bought some small goodies at Super Autobacs for my car) and drove the R32 GTR at the backroads by Mt. Fuji (maybe the one I drove was clapped out, but it’s definitely overrated – my E46 handles way better in the twisties. I really liked the RB26 though). Also spent some time with extended family in Singapore and Malaysia, and also went to Bali for the first time.

Back from my trip at the end of August, I resumed driving my car by putting a bloody scrape in the front bumper, arrrgggh. Just me stupidly getting a bit too close to the wall at the underground garage at my apartment. My front bumper has never looked good, there are multiple spots of peeling clear, and it has so many rock chips that you would think it’s been sandblasted… but at least it looks uniform! This scrape is quite noticeable from some distance away. I’m thinking about getting it repaired and painted, but I’d also have to do the hood as well, since that’s peppered with rock chips too. The one good thing about having bad front-end paint was that I didn’t care too much about normal wear and tear, for example any rock chips or bug guts that would have ruined the paint on my road trip. Because of that piece of mind I think I’ll leave it for now, but damn! I’m so pissed at myself:



Anyways, not a whole lot to report before storing my car for the winter. Just 3 more autox’s, for a total of 6 autox’s for the summer. Not bad considering I was gone for a month and a half!

Last round of PITL:



Got a nice video to go along with this one (thanks to a passenger’s helmet cam):

Unfortunately, no pics at TLMC in Barrie. Followed by that, the last round of OMSC at Mosport. It was a fairly rainy October, and only ~25 people showed up. So I ended up getting 13 runs!



Alas, come end of October, bad weather was quickly approaching, so it was time to store the car.

Started off with the floor mats, a nice vacuum is definitely needed:



Then spray with carpet cleaner, and rinse:



After a proper clean, the mats are like new!


I was too lazy to bring the vacuum out for how little dirt there was on the carpets, so I just found some cheap dollar-store masking tape I had laying around and used that to clean the carpets out (the light marks are just worn spots):



Standard 3 bucket wash:



After which I found a long scratch where I hit a cone:





2 minutes later with polish and a MF towel, all gone:





Brimmed the tank:



Tire pressures to maximum:



One last goodbye before car cover goes on:



Can’t forget the butt plug, don’t want foreign objects going up it:



See you in 2020!

[timmo]

I realized from my last post that I forgot to include a pic I took after I’d cleaned the car. Probably my favourite interior pic that I have:



Zoom forwards a bit to the end of May, at the FSAE Canadian competition. Bear in mind that this was about a year ago, back when new Supras were quite rare. Man, front plates really do spoil the look of that car. From what I was told, a guy from TMMC (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada) came to check out the competition and potentially recruit:



Anyways, another few weeks passed and a maintenance wash was in store. But I also took the wheels off to fully clean the rims + re-coat with Poorboy’s wheel sealant.



Before:



After (and as I’m writing this, I totally planned to have the wheel weights in the same orientation for both shots lolz):





Since the wheels were off, I decided to replace my front ARB droplinks. I had actually bought these back in California two years ago, but just never got around to installing them. One of the boots was torn, so it was definitely time to swap them out:



I also randomly decided to re-lube the front caliper slide pins with silicone paste. When I pulled out one of the lower slide pins, I had a rather unpleasant surprise:



Well, at least it tightened when I went to reinstall it. Which is something I cannot say for the other side – the slide pin just kept spinning! I never checked these since I bought the car, so I’ve done quite a few autox’s, one or two light braking events from 240 km/h, and my big road trip with this stripped slide pin. Grrrrrrr and this is why I never take my car anywhere. Stupid stupid generic shop that did the brakes and the safety inspection back in 2015.

I did some research into fixing it with a helicoil or thread insert and found that is M9 X 1.25. Apparently this is a common thread for slide pins. Who the hell thought of this, why not just make it M10??? None of the local hardware stores had one, and it was even hard to come across online (heck, McMaster-Carr, the holy grail of all online stores that cater to building/engineering supplies, didn’t stock it). Luckily a Chinese seller on eBay had a full kit for sale (drill bit, tap, helicoil install tool, and a bunch of helicoils) for pretty cheap. The downside is that stuff from China takes freaking forever to ship. So I figured, since this fastener wasn’t under any actual tension, and that I had been driving like this for 4 years, it was fine to just send it.

While there I inspected all wheel wells, and found one small spot on the MIG weld where the strut tower is welded to the rest of the body (behind the strut and just above the FCA):



And here is why I say that no body shop is perfect. This is inside my driver’s side wheel well, pointing up and towards the rear bumper. This area was repaired with my accident in California, and although they did an excellent job with the paint, I shouldn’t be seeing this much rust after only 2 years (and when most of the time, the car was sitting):



Definitely best to repair it now, before it spreads to the outside surface and requires an actual body shop to make it look good. So I placed an order for more POR15 and bought some foam brushes in preparation for repairs.
 

[timmo]

Since my car was stored so long, at this point we zoom forward to just about a year ago, in April 2019. I was about to graduate from undergrad, and decided to have my car out for the upcoming summer. Perhaps I’ll give a bit of a summary of my storage procedure:

• Full exterior wash, re-coat the car with paint sealant
• Vacuum + shampoo of floor mats, vacuum of carpets (not that there is much to do, given the awesome floor mats), general wipe down of all plastic surfaces with interior cleaner, leather clean + condition steering wheel & shift knob, leather clean + condition seats
• Drive to gas station 2 minutes away, brim the tank. This also gets rid of the rust on the rotors from the wash
• Let the car get up to operating temp. While the car is idling, add fuel stabilizer, and pump the tires up to ~50 psi to avoid flat-spotting
• Turn the car off for the final time. Lock the car with the trunk open, disconnect battery to prevent a drain on the system, and close the trunk
• Plug the exhaust tips with plastic bags, then put a car cover over it

Then, when I take the car back out from storage, removal is basically the reverse of installation, aside from getting the interior dirty, and extracting fuel + fuel stabilizer from the tank. But I also do an oil change on the spot, as I’d rather not run on oil that has been sitting around for a while:



I’m not sure if the BMW Performance Exhaust has exhaust packing or not, but when I pulled the plastic bags out this time, some fibreglass bits came out. Might be a placebo effect, but I feel like the car was ever so slightly louder after this happened. Oh well, the car is a tad quiet anyways!



Beading for dayzzzzzzzzzzzzz:



At this point it was right before my last FSAE competition in May, so we were testing out the car every chance we could get:



Unfortunately the front wing broke, so I tried stuffing it in my car to get back to campus. It was juuuuuust big enough to not make the squeeze in, so it was stuffed in someone else’s car after I snapped this pic:



More late-night testing on-campus. Frankly I’m surprised the school gave us permission to do so – I’m sure the students in nearby residences weren’t too happy. But we really needed to pile miles on the car, so I wasn’t complaining:









Then, we packed up and made the quick jaunt over to Michigan International Speedway:





Unrelated, but a couple bonus pics from comp of me doing my thing. I couldn’t resist posting these because I really miss FSAE:





This was a result of “just follow the GPS”. Apparently, the fastest way back into Canada included taking a ferry. Here is where I was definitely glad to be at stock ride height. The ramp was quite steep, so I’m fairly certain I would’ve scraped with even a mild drop.



Got home and gave the car another good clean:



This also marks the first time I cleaned the neglected exhaust tips, ever since I got the car. I know, I know… I maintain the tips on a regular basis nowadays. It’s still not quite up to snuff, but I think I’d need to go out and buy one of those foam/brush drill attachments to get the really stubborn carbon deposits off. It’d take hours of me sitting on my ass, doing it by hand:

[timmo]

This one is probably going to be the shortest update ever. I have folders for media separated by year, and 2018 marked the year where I only took 5 pics of my car:



In the last post, I put my car to storage right after my road trip back from the SF Bay Area in September 2017, and didn’t take it out of storage until…………………………….. April 2019. It was due to a combination of things – just being on work terms and not requiring a car at the very start and end of 2018 (and being winter as well), and being in school but focusing on FSAE during the summer.

So on the upside… for anyone needing some tips on extremely long-term storage, let me know.

[timmo]

:0 is that E5? They let you work on your car in there? That's pretty clutch. Seeing that place brings back some pretty excrutiating memories lol.

🤨 small world. I spent most, if not all of my spare time in undergrad in E5 doing FSAE. And no, no personal car work allowed lol. I just parked my car there at the time (5 years ago...) and let's just say that was off-hours, with no one else around.

[ATB88]

:0 is that E5? They let you work on your car in there? That's pretty clutch. Seeing that place brings back some pretty excrutiating memories lol.

[timmo]

Well, as it was now time to leave the SF Bay Area, I gave my car one last detail before setting off. This is probably one of my favourite pictures of my car:



Filled to the brim:



Which made me hellaflush in the rear:



It was right at the end of August, and there was quite the heat wave (it peaked at 40 degrees during the drive!):



The first few casualties of the trip:



A quick jaunt later, I was at the Canadian border into BC:



Stayed with some relatives for a couple of days, then continued into the interior. That year was Canada’s 150th birthday and to celebrate, Park’s Canada gave out free passes to all national parks. Boy oh boy, I definitely took advantage of that:







Jasper National Park:



Maaaaan… the winding one-lane road highways were a dream to drive on!



Probably the most scenic McD’s drive-thru in the background:



Stayed another couple days in Banff/Canmore, then continued through to Edmonton. Lots of casualties:



At that point I realized my rims were in dire need of a clean:



Luckily, I had my uncle in Edmonton, so I was able to wash my car there. Unfortunately, there were only 2 buckets, so I decided to just wash the body to get the bugs off, and left the rims filthy:



Unfortunately, the only notable event between Edmonton and Toronto was me crossing 330,330 KM. If any of you have made that drive… boy is it boring!



Nevertheless, filthy again but back home:



The next day, I immediately set out to work. Haha such contrast:



My wheel bucket was actually filled with tea once I was all done:





Cleaned under the door sills as well (which have broken clips, and are unfortunately really loose):





Before putting the sill back on I put some silicone paste where all the holes were – I’m guessing the body shop that did the repairs in Windsor 2 years prior put that grease there for rustproofing.

Me being the weird person I am, and storing my car when there’s still 2 months of good weather left:

[timmo]

As I had mentioned with the RACP stage 1 reinforcement, the shop “forgot” to install new OEM diff bushings, and had given a partial refund for not doing so. I had a decent amount of car work done, but still had a few remaining items to do, including those bushings.

I did a bit of reading online and found that soft durometer poly diff bushings had negligible increases in NVH. Seeing that ECS’s bushings were 88A, I decided to go ahead with those. So for the umpteenth time, I dropped my exhaust and driveshaft and set to work:





Original cracked bushing:





One of my co-workers was a tech at BMW, so one of his old colleagues was kind enough to let me borrow the proper tools to replace all 3 bushings. The job would’ve definitely taken significantly longer without these – the rear bushing took quite a bit of force to remove even with the tool, and there was a loud bang when the bushing can un-seized itself from the sleeve in the rear subframe.



I drove around with the bushings installed and had a noticeable clunk. Turns out I put the bushing in backwards, d’oh! Re-removed everything again, flipped the bushing, then re-installed in a couple hours. Still didn’t solve my clunk, I’m not actually sure what solved it but it was gone after all my car work in California was done.

I have to say – I do not recommend ECS Tuning bushings. NVH is fine, but fitment was not. Perhaps I got one from a bad batch because I didn’t read any bad reviews, but the stepped head of the front bushings were too thick, which pushed the bolt head onto the aluminium driveshaft protector/brace thingy (?). This transmitted fairly loud scraping sounds to the cabin, and I thought something was seriously wrong. Unfortunately I don’t have pics of the actual problem, just the fix:



Basically I hammered in a flathead to create a gap, in which I squeezed some seam sealer, which was leftover from the Vincebar install kit. This did the trick, as the scraping noises were completely gone. Downside is that if I ever have to remove that brace, I have to redo that procedure, which takes a full night to properly cure (ask me how I know).

At the same time, I replaced all the shifter bushings, swapped in a BMW Performance short shift lever, and installed a new shifter shaft seal:





Which was then topped off with a new 6-speed ZHP shift knob to complete the job:



Man, the difference with the shifter was night and day, as my bushings were original at 322,000 KM. I also installed the ECS Tuning stud kit, then fitted my new rims, just in time for the next autox event.

So the funny story about the below pic is that I still wanted to go to the autox event, but my car was still at the body shop. One of my friends drives his parent’s Prius as a daily, and we went for a small romp on the backroads. My, oh my… I understand why that car makes people drive so slowly! For shits and gigs, we decided to try autox’ing it. However I got my car back from the body shop a couple days before the autox. My friend has since been autox’ing his Prius on the regular.



One of our other friends is an amateur photographer, and he also came by. So at least I have some pretty decent pics of my car in action:



LOL stock suspension doing what it does best:



Unfortunately it was almost time to drive back home. But not before my style 135s turned from this:



To this:



Probably much easier to haul back to Canada, given the limited space in my car.

[timmo]

Thanks! I actually found your car in the pictures on yelp lol.

https://m.yelp.com/biz_photos/almade...ahFvy9Hx4RK7sQ

Haha yup, Phil (the main body/fab guy) posted a few sample pics. If you'd like to see more of their work he regularly posts on his instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spoolinphil/

[heinzboehmer]

Almaden Collision & Kenny Auto in San Jose, reviews can be found here. They truly do quality work, and guys with all sorts of cars get stuff done there. It's been a while so I forget what car it was, but a Chevelle (or similar classic) was getting a full respray when I was there.

Thanks! I actually found your car in the pictures on yelp lol.

https://m.yelp.com/biz_photos/almaden-collision-and-kenny-auto-san-jose-2?select=bvuA_-xCahFvy9Hx4RK7sQ

[timmo]

Wow that sucks. Glad you managed to avoid a worse accident.

Quick question, what body shop did you go to? I live in the bay area and need some paintwork

Almaden Collision & Kenny Auto in San Jose, reviews can be found here. They truly do quality work, and guys with all sorts of cars get stuff done there. It's been a while so I forget what car it was, but a Chevelle (or similar classic) was getting a full respray when I was there.

[heinzboehmer]

I was lucky to have avoided a front-end collision that could have totalled my car, but he still tagged me in the left rear quarter panel. We pulled over, 3 Hispanic dudes got out of the car, and none of them spoke English. How did I know? When he was trying to give me his insurance papers, he instead gave me his court order for DUI.

Wow that sucks. Glad you managed to avoid a worse accident.

Quick question, what body shop did you go to? I live in the bay area and need some paintwork

[timmo]

With the RACP locked down, I started to enjoy the back roads around the area (headed to Alice’s quite a few times with friends and co-workers, drove around La Honda/Skyline/Page Mill). I also started autox’ing with BMW CCA Golden Gate Chapter and Golden Gate Lotus Club. Funnily enough, this was the first time I was autox’ing my car, but I had been autox’ing with my Formula SAE team for two years at that point. I still remember the conversation I had with after my first run with my friend (who is also an instructor with BMW):

Friend: “Oh, that really wasn’t bad for your first run! How did it feel?”
Me: “Not bad, but it’s pretty… numb? And really, really boaty”
Friend: “Eh, this is fairly average and a decent car to start with. That Cadillac over there is boaty. Also, you’re turning in waaaaay too late”
Me: “Yeah, I’m used to the FSAE car where you turn and it just goes right away”

Regardless, it was still tons of fun and I was now hooked.

Me being a noob and not putting the tape on my window:


Well, back to never-ending car work. I had a leaky oil pan, so I purchased a Harbour Freight engine support brace (man, I’m so jealous of how cheap the tools are!) and got to work replacing the oil pan gasket (Victor Reinz). Once again, “while we’re in there”, I did the following as well:

• M3 engine and trans mounts (Rein)
• Front struts (Bilstein B4), strut mounts (Lemforder), reinforcement plates (genuine BMW)
• Inner + outer tie rods (Lemforder)
• Steering Guibo (genuine BMW)







I was honestly appalled at the quality of the casting for the oil pan. Tons of little burrs that ripped the shop towel I used to clean it. I had first-hand experience with quality cast aluminium gearbox casings at my co-op, and they were as smooth as a baby’s bottom.



I also found these little guys, and was quite concerned. However after getting some opinions it’s very likely a brittle piece of old valve cover gasket:



Man, I hate rust. To get the tie rod end off the upright, I used a pickle fork and had to hammer for half an hour before that sucker came out.



I also bought new rims. As much as I like the look of style 135s, I was looking to downsize to a square 17” setup. Lower unsprung mass, less understeer, cheaper tires, and the ability to rotate your tires are a few reasons why I wanted to do so. I had a corporate discount with Tire Rack, so got a set of 17 x 8.5” TR Motorsport C2, wrapped in 245/40/17 Continental ExtremeContact Sport. Although these are cheap rims, I had read multiple reviews from guys who had abused them, and they are JWL certified. Also, call me a basic b1tch, but I love the look of TE37s, and wanted to bring a bit of my love for the JDM scene to my car.





I put a couple coats of Poorboy’s Wheel Sealant and will be annually recoating them to minimize buildup of brake dust, and maintain ease of cleaning.

I had also ordered a stud kit from ECS Tuning, and was holding off on mounting my new wheels until those were on the car. This turned out to be a lucky decision, as 5 days later this happened:

I was lucky to have avoided a front-end collision that could have totalled my car, but he still tagged me in the left rear quarter panel. We pulled over, 3 Hispanic dudes got out of the car, and none of them spoke English. How did I know? When he was trying to give me his insurance papers, he instead gave me his court order for DUI.

Look at it on the bright side: my car was already tainted from the accident prior to this one, so now both quarter panels are jacked up (yay!):





The other side, that swung into the shoulder:



I brought the car to a body shop on recommendation of one of the guys on the ZHP facebook group, and they had lots of good reviews. He came out with an estimate for repairs, but before repairs could commence, I had to deal with the aftermath of the accident. It was clearly not my fault, but this guy used the shittiest insurance company possible. They wanted to total my car like the last accident, and were evaluating my car at a retardedly low number without room to budge. Whenever I tried to prove to them that my car should have higher value given it’s a ZHP and is in exceptional condition, they were complete assholes over the phone. So I called up my own insurance, who immediately gave clearance for repairs, and would go after the other company for the bill. Haha, suck it!





With respect to attention to detail, this body shop was far better than the last one, and other things on my car were inadvertently repaired as well. Some of the fasteners and plastic push pins for the rear splash guard were missing, which were replaced. The battery and storage trays on the sides of the trunk were also missing push pins, and new ones were there when I picked the car up. I noticed a bit of haziness on the paint, and the guy whipped out the DA and polish out on the spot. All of this makes sense, since he wore an Obsessed Garage T-Shirt when picked my car up.

In addition to the repairs with the quarter panel, other things were done as well:

• New left tail light (I had noticed faint water spotting inside the lense, but didn’t think much of it)
• Rear bumper repaired and resprayed (had minor gouges from PO parallel parking in city, so now it’s mint)
• Both rear style 135 rims were reconditioned (left side had minor scrapes, right side had “chips” from my drifting into the shoulder)
• Replaced driver’s door seal (I’d noticed it had a tear, so they immediately ordered a new one no questions asked). This is something I’m pretty happy about, since the felt liners on both seals were missing since I bought the car. At some point the PO tried re-gluing them on, but failed. So there were nasty brown stains of dried glue on them

Of course, having an accident still sucks. But I was glad to have had a few things on my car repaired, all gratis.



Before:


After (looking back at this pic, I’ll have to re-seat the door seal, as the gap in the felt is shifted such that part of the felt liner goes under the interior trim, pushing it up):


Alas, no body shop is perfect… 2 years later I found minor rust on the quarter panel, right where it interfaces with the rear bumper. I’m guessing the body shop in Windsor was a lot more diligent with making sure the paint extended all the way to where the quarter panel stops, and the inner wheel arch began, to prevent rust from forming in Canadian winters. It was no big deal, since it was in an area that you cannot see, and had not spread to the outside surface of the quarter panel. The rust was so minor that I sanded it down, POR-15’d it, and painted over it with touch-up paint two years later.