hakhawks cosmos e36 coupe

[hakhawk]

the mason engineering rear strut brace turned up today, might install the top piece this weekend, will install the lower piece when i do the diff/suspension swap



got the software and wiring diagrams for the ecu, gotta poewr it up and see if i can read the old tune sometime.

and got my mate making some spacers to bolt the blower to the bracket in extra points, and so i can make a brace from the blower to oil filter housing(much like the brace on the vf engineering kits

[hakhawk]

gave the car a wash today, needed it after last weekend!! need to pull the splitter back out sometime



then i had a play with the supercharger.

changed the oil feed setup, and removed the blue anodizing from the adapter. i also spun the compressor housing around to roughly where i want it to be, so i wont have to massage the strut tower. will also hopefully let me make/use a intake pipe over the charger instead of the crappy flexitube under it.



this is the bracket by itself, i want to add holes for more airflow to the alternator, and smooth off some of the edges, and in general maybe lighten it up some more. not sure if ill keep the steel pulley, its very wide and doesnt look like it belongs. think i'll either use another oem pulley, or maybe look at the gates stuff at work for a nice metal one. bracket will also be painted black.



and test fit my old alternator, which hasnt been tossed yet(knew itd come in handy). not bolted up, but sitting in position. i want to replace my oil filter housing, as i believe the p/steer mounting points are bent the tiniest bit, once i get one that doesnt cost the earth, i can use it for more mockup, and for welding up a brace to (hopefully)stop any forward/back movement, seeing as the bracket is only 10-11mm thick.



very close fit to the alternator. might have to get the outlet neck cut and welded on a different angle.



thats it for tonight, except for maybe powering up the ecu and seeing if i can read the tune off it.

[hakhawk]

well, looks like ill be replacing the bearings afterall. was only planning on replacing the front input shaft seal and maybe the gearbox cover oring, but upon removing the cover, i popped one of the high speed bearings.

luckily rebuild kits are cheap, and i have an instructional on rebuilding it. also means i can give the casing a good clean before paint

DO'H



yep, outer race stuck in the cover looks like its been leaking though!!



that'd probably do it, looks like its been apart before, and they pinched the oring on re-assembly(i scraped off some oring and repositioned it before photo)



and what i was doing before i pulled the cover off, removed the steel pulley, and replaced with a oem plastic one, moved it to a different hole and tapped a thread in it, so theres no dodgy ground down bolt holding it in. i want it to look reasonably oem, and not backyard diy liek it does now. marked out some sections on the bracket to remove and reshape aswell

i also slipped on the bigger pulley, which ill be using/starting with.

[hakhawk]

not much new, should see rebuild kit this week.

got the harness and ecu socket to make up a patch harness for the piggyback ecu, so i dont have to modify the original loom

covered all the unused pins, will make wiring it up a bit easier on the brain



had to modify the notches in the plug to fit the ecu, luckily i have a spare ecu lying around. removed all the unused wires aswell, since harness came from a s50b32, only had to add one pin that was missing.



today i removed the outer bearing shell that was stuck in the front cover, then removed the compressor housing to inspect it and the wheel.

looks pretty good, one mark thats been cleaned up previously, one fine groove thats been there a long time by the looks, and some tiny rough bits that i'll clean up, but otherwise, nothing bad looking.



the wheel looks good, couple very small rough bits on the tips of the fins, mainly along the inner flat edges, not sure if i want to touch them. ill make sure theres no loose stuff, but i think other than that i wont risk it. also rattled off the nut im preparation for removing the shaft and bearings



then i looked at the plenum that came with it. theyve welded 2 thick plates on for nos at some stage, and the plates they bolted on them looked rather crap. im thinking i'll blank one off, and use some of the plate area to tap a thread for the air temp sensor, and the other one im thinking of using as a mount for the BOV

[hakhawk]

played with a few bits today.

started messing around with the rear brace, had to modify the drivers mount to get it to sit flush, still need to drill the holes and add bolts on the side section of it. hopefully the other side is better

definately need to get some locknuts and change the rear shocks to stud setup, will make lining everyhting up much easier



then i decided to have a play with the intercooler, see where the 2 brackets that were supplied with it line up



where it sits, will need new holes drilled for the brackets, but i think ill change it anyway, as the bottom has nothing, and looks like it never did, as the mounts are worn down. im thinking 2 straps of steel flat bar going down the back of the cooler, welded/bolted onto the old aircon condenser bracket, which can be seen here



washer bottle needs to be moved



plenty of space on the passenger side though



not sure what ill do about the inlet side of thoughs though, theres not much room to squeeze piping down behind the headlight with my headlight adjuster motor where it is. remove that and cut off one bracket and theres heaps of space.

[PashaP]

I like it! good job!

[hakhawk]

picked up my diff from the shop yesterday, after finding out the "magnafluxed and micropolished" diff gears i purchased from ebay user: retrosuperbikes were cracked, and him not helping me in ANY way whatsoever(he blamed shipping), i had to source another set of gears, luckily graeme from bell motorsport in hastings, victoria was of great help, and had a set of gears delivered to central diffs in springvale(who were also great to deal with), so they could finish it off for me.

unfortunately, just down the road before the diff shop, i went braindead for a second and managed to take a speed bump at the wrong speed, rolled into the shop, with the guys out the front pointing and laughing at the car.

jumped out, and both foglights had popped out and were hanging all googly eyed, the front splitter had popped into its fully retracted position, and there was water pouring out the front.

turns out i smashed the washer bottle with the splitter. even though its just a commodore washer bottle, i decided to repair it at hozys place.

plastic welded the cracks back together, screwed on some steel plates to hold it together, screwed the mounts back on(at a higher point, so it doesnt sit as low), and sikaflexed it all up



i put a layer over the top of the brackets and screws after this pic



let it dry til late, filled it up with water, and checked it in the morning to find our dodgy patch job successful. so i threw it back on the car, and i hope itll last until i sort another washer bottle out, which was on the list anyway, as current one wont clear intercooler piping

[hakhawk]

yesterday i made some headway on the ecu patch loom, came out a bit shorter than id hoped, but should be ok. still got plenty to go



and today i received some bits from my mate, the pulley that was dented up, hes fixed up and shiney'd up for me aswell, and some barstock and spacers to make up another bracket for the supercharger. i wouldve liked to go alloy, but i can weld the steel up at home, so wont have to pay someone to do it.

and i received an adapter for the oil drain from the supercharger. this is replacing a factory one that has a smaller inlet. hoping its enough, if not, ill need to weld a fitting onto the other sump i have and finally install the better oil pump/sump



oh, and my oil filter housing came in the other day too, ill be using this to mock up the charger to weld up the bracket, and make sure the charger pulley lines up with the stock belt properly. this will also get put on the motor, in hopes to fix the powersteering mount that i think is the cause of my noisy belt

[hakhawk]

had a play with the oil filter housing today, wanted to make sure all the pulleys line up, so far they look right, but will do some actual measurements once i rebuild the charger



also got to fit up the feed line and see how it worked. just a simple banjo bolt and alloy plate where the oil temp sensor goes



looked at setting up the brace i want on there, not sure which way ill go

same location as the vf engineering brace.



or further back to another bolt location, which needs a longer spacer tube, which in my mind might flex and snap the bolt



the first one will probably work fine, the steel bar is sold, but looks like itd allow more flex. im probably just way overthinking it though.

and a couple pics of the car, gave it a quick but shockingly rough wash. still rocking the front splitter full retracted because ive been lazy since busting the washer bottle last weekend

[hakhawk]

received a box of parts today, oil cooler and supercharger bypass. the bov i got with the supercharger was an old GFB one and had seen better days. so i shelled out for the recommended vortech bypass valve. oil cooler is because the original oil cooler hardlines dont clear the charger, and theyve been bypassed since the motor went in, because the original cooler was damaged, and was on the "to do" list.

unfortunately, someone at derale was slack when they boxed mine, and gave me a -10 and -8 fitting, instead of 2 -10s. waiting for a reply from summit to sort out a replacement fitting.



fittings and adapter on the spare oil filter housing to see if everything will work, looks like it should nicely, the hose will wrap down under the charger and out to in front of the radiator



and it looks like i can make use of one of the welded on plates on the plenum, the bypass valve flange jsut fits in, i just need to decide which direction it will face to sort out hose back to the inlet. i can have it facing the angle it is now, or facing directly forwards.



just enough meat to drill and tap holes, and center hole will remove the shoddy holes already there



ive got the next 3 weeks off work, "holidays", which i'll spend some/most of doing work on the car/charger. im waiting on new front control arms to arrive, seeing as my front left, the bush on the outer ball joint is stuffed. its drivable, but not nice on the highway.

and today i jumped under the car to sus out a knock sound ive had for a while over weird bumps, previously everything felt fine, but now with the true coilover setup, i can now move the upper control arm, and the outer "ball joints" have a decent amount of up/down play, so looks like im doing the rear end conversion earlier than i thought. yay!!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZOl0lLfiBs"]Noisy rear end - YouTube[/ame]

[hakhawk]

started pulling the car apart today, exhaust had to come off to get rear end out. it can probably get done without removing the exhaust, but im going to remove the whole rear end in one hit.

while the exhaust was off, i decided to do some stuff ive been planning on for ages, replace the gearbox mounts with a set of e21 mounts, which are stiffer than the stock ones, and new

this required drilling the holes on the crossmember, and cutting off 2 locators. i also gave it a quick scrub, because the gearbox has a light weep that mists everything with oil. eventual plan is probably install a 6speed.

green ones are the new e21 mounts, old ones werent bad, but hey why not, its all apart anyway!!



and i installed my short shifter.

this was the only pic i took, not a lot of clearance up there. fairly sure the leak is the gearbox selector there too.



and i took a short video, the shifter feel is totally different now, cant wait to try it out whilst moving :p shifter play while in gear with the stock one was about twice that i think, ask ari or hozy :p

http://youtu.be/G9Mtg1i-w3g

see how i go, i might do the slave cylinder tomorrow, as i "think" the original one is a bit suspect, its that or some of the syncros in the box have seen better days.

pulled my inner cv's apart, and theres rust spots on them, will see what the old man thinks, if not, ill either be getting another set of second handies, or some "4340" shafts from a melbourne shop.

and this is where i left the car for today, tomorrow i might start taking the rear end out and prepping the chassis for welding in the reinforcements

[hakhawk]

diff came out today, fairly easy job. subframe bushes were pretty average aswell, glad theyre being replaced.



and then the heavens decided to slowly open up, so i managed to get some of the subframe mounting points ground back in prep for welding in reinforcement plates. i might need to drop the fuel tank to get to some parts of it, and the trailing arm reinforcement area, see how it goes though.

i switched over the abs and brake pad wear sensors to the new upper control arms, swapped an exhaust hanger over to the new subframe, along with some cable mounts, put the cv joints back together and started cleaning the splines in the wheel hubs. the cv's are average at best, but ive ordered some "new" replacement cv shafts that should be here late next week(hopefully). ill put the old ones in though, along with some anti-seize, and see how they go.

not sure what ill get done tomorrow, depends how wet it wants to be outside, heres a "end of day" shot

[96E36]

Oh my good God. This is amazing. I always see pictures of it on bf.c, but I've never seen a build for it! I had NO idea how much of a transformation it was.. There are so many awesome little details that you have done to this dude. Well done! I am very envious of your craftsmanship, Keep it up buddy. Well that is if there is anything else you can even do to make it better!

[hakhawk]

Cheers dude, there's a small build thread on bf.c but its more of a quick rundown.

Its certainly come a long way since I bought it, and there's always more to come.

Dad got the reinforcement plates all welded up for me today, i gotta finish grinding the rtab surface down tomorrow so the mounts have full toe adjustment.

[Nico]

a badass e36. love it all the way.