E39 Build: 6.0 LS. Coils. Burnouts.

[nsogiba]

Of course life has funny way of being very inconvenient, so my winter beater decided to give me issues in the middle of the winter. I had been smelling coolant for a month or two and had theories about heater core, head gasket, or best case scenario, a leaking hose, water pump, etc. No overheating ever. Some digging showed the driver's side head leaking coolant at the back of the block (apparently a common location). So everything came apart, and I replaced the following:

Heads surfaced and cleaned up
New MLS headgaskets+headbolts
Valve cover gaskets, bolt grommets, plug tube seals
Plugs and wires
water pump, thermostat, related seals
lower and upper hoses
exhaust and intake gaskets

I did the timing belt a few months ago so all those tensioners are fresh as well. The water pump was still working but had some crud built up at the weep hole, so it probably wasn't far from the end. Boy oh boy was it fun pulling the heads with the motor in the car. The head bolts are too long to put in once the heads are already hung, so you have to put them in halfway and then work everything into place as an assembly with 6 bolts rattling around while trying not to gouge the head or the new gasket. I had to jack the motor up by a few inches just to make some room. Should be wrapping it up tonight.

Not how I wanted to spend the weekend, especially with a real bad cold




Heads all ready to be slapped in. SOHC powaaaaaa

[nsogiba]

Nothing big to report, just chipping away at little stuff

Once the subframe came out the rear sway bar was staring me in the face, so I swapped it out for a thicker, 16.5mm M5 unit. Factory is 15mm. Oddly enough one of the brackets was crushed, not sure how that happened. Some monkey must have wedged a prybar or something against it at some point.

M5 on bottom, 540 on top


overall comparison, 540 on right


Crushed bracket? what...


Undamaged M5 bracket.


Not a bad idea to change things since the rubber isolators had seen better days anyhow on the 540 unit. There had to have been a fair amount of slop in this during normal movement.


After a few revisions of tools I finally got all 7 bushings out. The subframe bushings were not bad, the front diff bushing was probably in the best shape out of all of them. But the 2 rear diff bushings...oh man. Here's to hoping the new bushings cure the wheel hop I was getting.
One side



Other side

[nsogiba]

Thanks boys

Things with the house are slowing down and the weather has been a bit more friendly so I tackled the rear end Friday night. It helped that the exhaust had already come off a few weeks back, but overall this was a piece of cake...I was surprised how easy it was. The original plan was 4x new subframe bushings and 3x new diff bushings, but I may throw in a bigger rear sway and do some general rear suspension maintenance as well since everything is stupid easy to get to. The parking brake shoes were down to bare metal, and the hardware needed some attention as well.



Some crappy pics of the original subframe bushings, I'm hoping this was contributing to my wheel hop. Not terrible shape but they have some age on them.







Surprisingly easy to roll around once you throw the rotors and wheels back on...







Also going to do front diff mount reinforcement while it's out.

Rather than rent the expensive tools for the subframe bushing job I'm fabbing some out of scrap. Sure glad I dragged the big box full of old angle iron over when I moved.

[Chasen88]

^+1 and nice build !

[Chuckdee]

Congrats on the new house purchase man!

[nsogiba]

couple more for the road...

fat fuck with his new friends



FUEL!!!!!!!



cats are like liquids. take the shape of the container.



Til next time...I'll have to get up some pictures of my garage remodel when I am done.

[nsogiba]

I just really work my dick off to make things happen...what I lack in brains I make up for in motivation. Beer helps too. I have a natural curiosity about things that makes me keep plugging away at a project to see the final result.

I work as an equipment design engineer for a medical device manufacturer...we build all sorts of medical kits, from blood/waste bags up to specialized dialysis treatment kits that spin at many tens of thousands of RPMs to separate blood cells. I design and build a lot of the automated equipment that builds and tests these products. One nice thing about the manufacturing world (and not really that surprisingly) is that many of the scientific and engineering principles from the workplace transfer over to the street, so naturally if I work hard to gain expertise as an engineer, it helps out in the garage, which helps do better burnouts.

Regarding the house...I just am lucky enough to have a better half (wedding is in September) that is in a strong career path and equally as motivated to "get started early" in life. She enjoys nice things and knows you have to bust your ass to get there. Rates were also low so it was a no brainer to jump into a house. Due to the high cost of buying a house, we wanted to do it once, do it right, so we skipped the whole "starter/beginner" house and went straight for something that would appreciate in value with not a whole ton of investment. Plus, by buying something while we're young, and if we stay on our current track of keeping ahead of paying principal off, we can have it paid off while we're still relatively young as well. Which leaves more income for other necessities and toys.

The Subaru is showing slight signs of age so I am pretty sure I'll be selling it for something newer this summer. A smaller, 2005ish 2.5 5 speed Impreza wagon would be perfect. I really have fallen in love with the utility of the wagon and the AWD...could do with a slightly smaller body to help with fuel economy though.

The cat is still fat. We just added a few fish friends to our home, 2 colorful Tetras named Doug and Patty Mayonnaise, and a snail named Turbo. I did not name them, blame the woman.

[imprtslyr0223]

This is incredibly impressive stuff. What exactly do you do for work? This project seems like it involves a bit of engineering background to achieve, not to mention you're 25 and just bought a house and have 2 cars and a fat cat...

[nsogiba]

Not much progress on anything. As usual the weather is kicking my ass this time of year. Despite having an 18K btu infrared heater in the garage (which is finished, but I'm not sure about insulated), it still struggles on the colder days. Granted, this is single digit weather we are having, so no surprise. We are coming up on a stretch of a week or so where the weather will be in the 20s and 30s so I'm looking to make good progress on the car. Before it got super cold I made quite a bit of progress on my garage decorating so I will have to show everyone once it's all done, as I'm still waiting on a few things in the mail. Otherwise it has just been progress on the inside of the house as it's the only place I can work for extended periods of time. I am considering stepping up to a big boy ceiling hung forced air unit heater for next winter.



Had to drive to Pittsburgh for business a few weeks back during a blizzard, came home to this...



I did get a chance to put together some wheel cribs to get the car off the ground while keeping the wheels on. I'll be doing some suspension work later in the year and need to have the weight on the components before torquing them down. Also nice not to have the car 6" from your nose



I caught a serious case of "while you're in there" when it came to the rear end...what started out as wanting to drop the diff to change fluid and change the diff bushings turned into "oh, I might as well replace the subframe bushings while the diff is out, and might as well pull the subframe to do that". So, the rear subframe will come out some time over the next few weeks - I am also looking to have someone local weld in some aluminum reinforcement to the front diff mount. I have always had issues with wheel hop and even some instances of the driveshaft rubbing the body so I am looking to eliminate all that.

[nsogiba]

If you don't mind me asking, what pick-n-pull are you hitting up to get your parts?

We have a local yard that is on the lower end of the quality spectrum. Lots of busted ass domestic sedans and rotted old imports. Occasionally you get something nice, and they have an online database that is updated weekly with new inventory which is super convenient. Good for those OEM odds and ends that you always end up needing.

It's called M&M U Pull It on William St in Buffalo/Cheektowaga area.


Today's treat for myself:



Warm up the welder and put the beer on ice, we gonna make this bitch louder

[Minicharger]

Wow, heavy build you got there. I'm really excited about this, real good work!

[terolla]

If you don't mind me asking, what pick-n-pull are you hitting up to get your parts?

[nsogiba]

I'm just about wrapping up my mini garage remodel and ready to get back into automotive projects. One of the things on the list is redoing my exhaust. I'd like to do a cat delete and get rid of the small diameter OEM BMW pipes that run back to the rear axle as well as revise the location of my cutout since it drones my brains out. What's a reasonable size to run from the manifolds back? I was thinking 2.5" duals, 3" duals might be overkill but I have to consider the possibility of going turbo one day.

[Stupid Kid]

ah I think I've got your thread bookmarked in my ls e39 folder from another site, seems familiar.
Thanks for being so through, makes a good reference for when I do this in the... future. Just a question of when, not if

[benz88]

looks good! thats the Cam I want to toss into my LM7 in my truck haha