The Rebirth of Old Blue
While I was on my adventures with the TeaEye out east for the past few years, I had left my baby blue ‘68 1600 out in California on my parents’ driveway. Luckily, my dad was thoughtful enough to start it up and drive it every once in a while, and even kept it covered. Those of us into classic cars know that the more they sit still, the more they break. Nevertheless, when I would visit for holidays I would attempt to drive the car, and each time I could feel the consistent decay of the rubber in the suspension and drivetrain. I knew old blue (sometimes referred to as Zibble) was in need of some love.
Well this past June, my employer decided to relocate me to southern California. What luck! Within a week of being back, I had secured a space in a small warehouse where I could begin revamping Zibble. It was, however, only a 4 month arrangement, so there was a bit of a deadline. Having that added pressure certainly ensured that the car got back on the ground faster.
Zibble with Riley’s E30 and Jack’s 911 in our El Segundo warehouse
Once settled in the warehouse, I checked things out underneath the car and promptly made a very large order from Walloth and Nesch in Germany. On the list was almost everything rubber - including the flex disc behind the transmission and the rubber boots on the axles.
The worn flex disc and transmission mount (top right). The suspension bits looked very similar
New rear axle carriers with Ireland Engineering urethane inserts. I actually bought these in 2011 and they have been sitting on the shelf ever since
Even though I have an engineering and technology background, there are certain jobs that I still don’t feel comfortable doing alone on my cars. My father worked at BMW dealers back in the 70s, so I leaned on his experience heavily throughout this process. Four hands are also exponentially more useful than two.
Since it was unfamiliar terrain for me and the whole unit had to come out, we decided to do the rear suspension first. To get it out, we undid the axle mount bolts, the sway bar mounts, the driveshaft-differential connection, and the differential mount itself. The brake lines also had to be undone, meaning that all of the old brake fluid was evacuated.
A closer look at the trailing arm bushings which were SHOT
One day after work, I was able to break apart the subframe into smaller pieces so I could get the differential rebuilt and the bushings pressed in by outside shops. I also had the rear wheel bearings changed.
Jack’s 82 911SC in the shop while Zibble sat floating
The 3.91 limited slip unit from a 320is had never been inspected since its installation in 2010. It was time for a refresh
While the differential was out, we degreased the axle, went over it with a wirewheel, and painted it with some random rattle can paint that was in the garage. Also seen below the axles which were rebuilt at an outside shop. The CV joints can pit over time if not inspected and repacked with grease. In the corner is the differential mount, which had new bushings pressed in.
The top of the axle was painted a gunmetal silver. The new axle carrier mounts with their urethane inserts have been torqued in with new locknuts.
The bumpstops in the rear suspension are fairly thick rubber pieces that don’t need to be changed often, but the mentality was “we’re gonna be in there, we might as well replace ‘em.” Props to my dad who figured out this clever method to install these - they can be somewhat difficult to force onto their mounts, even with silicone spray, so dad made a “press” with a hammer, a 24mm 1/2” drive socket mounted backwards on ratchet extension, while I jacked the whole system up with a floor jack. Those suckers popped right in. Also seen here are brand new “3 dot” spring pads that accept the coil of the spring. These are available in a slimmer configuration for those who want their rear end slammed (super low).
Once the subframe was back in, we were able to fit the brand new H&R lowering springs. The Bilstein shocks seen here were put on in 2008 but only have 30,000 miles or so on them. Then the refreshed differential could be mounted.
Since the sway bar was out, I figured this would be the time to upgrade to thicker bars. Ireland Engineering sells brand new sway bars for about $350 a set, with a 22mm front thickness and 19mm for the rear. Thicker sway bars (along with urethane mounts) help to limit body roll in corners.
The night before I was going to make the order, I saw a pair of Suspension Technique sway bars for sale on 2002faq. I opened the for sale thread and saw that they had just sold that day. I posted on the thread saying something to the effect of “damnit, I just missed these.” Within the hour, I had a private message from someone on the 2002faq selling a set of the same sway bars, except they were local to me. That night, I drove my mom’s Nissan Leaf up to Thousand Oaks and scored the set for $200 (Thanks Mike!).
The difference in sway bar thickness can be seen here - the rear bars are also adjustable. Forgive the hip instagram millennial-speak caption.
Once everything was installed, I got impatient and mounted the rear wheels to try to spin them and then to hopefully drop the rear of the car back onto the ground. Except there was one problem - the wheels would barely spin. Even with Jack spinning one side, incredible force was needed to rotate the wheels. This was troubling, as I had just had the differential replaced.
So out came the differential, after having just been torqued down with brand new hardware. We also took this opportunity to take out the driveshaft so that I could get it balanced. For the next few days, when people asked me about the car’s progress, I would mention that everything was going well except that the differential was super stiff and the flanges could barely be rotated. Most people empathized, agreeing that something must not be right.
Then on the following Sunday, I attended a small Cars and Coffee gathering in Long Beach. In attendance was our friend Rey, who has a lot of experience building vintage BMWs.
While explaining the issue to him, his reaction was different than almost everyone else’s: “That’s great! You want those diffs tight.” This was surprising to hear, as it was the opposite of the reaction I got from many other seemingly knowledgable people. He explained, “Limited slips have a certain amount of ‘lock’ meaning that the two sides are locked together. You want them tight - over time they become looser and your ‘limited slip’ is less effective.”
Once it processed in my brain, it all made sense. In fact, I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t realize this sooner, given my technology background. The whole point of a limited slip differential is that both sides are “connected” - if you jack up a car with a stock differential and spin one wheel, the other wheel will spin in the opposite direction. With a LSD, both wheels spin in the same direction, because they’re “locked” together. The tighter the better - if an output flange is easy to spin, that means your differential needs to be serviced. He also reminded me that the input flange should be easier to spin - and he was 100% right. In fact, roughly 4 rotations of the input flange yielded one full rotation of the output flanges (3.91 rotations to be exact).
With this newfound realization, and a newly balanced driveshaft and new center bearing, everything was reinstalled and torqued to factory specifications.
Zibble floating next to “Heidi,” Riley’s newly purchased Mercedes 190D
Before we got to taking apart the front suspension on the next free weekend, I took it upon to myself to redo some critical components in the engine bay. I had noticed that when the car was cold, it had a bearing whine at idle. I attributed this to be an aging water pump - I only assumed the noise was located there because it was definitely coming from the belt drive system and I had never changed the pump. I drained the coolant and removed the radiator to get some extra room to change the pump. While the radiator was out, I painted it with some hi temp paint and got a brand new radiator cap for it. I also removed the coolant plug from the block and totally drained the engine of coolant.
Once the fan belt was off I could spin the accessories - I shortly learned that the bearing noise was coming from the alternator and not the water pump, and that the crankshaft pulley had a huge chunk missing from it. This is an issue because these pulleys have to be somewhat balanced since they spin at high speeds - a piece missing could mean a serious imbalance of the crankshaft (basically the bottom-most moving piece in the engine). The following week, I sourced a used crankshaft pulley from my friend Jake Metz in Louisville (thanks Jake!) and got the alternator rebuilt at one of the last independent vintage electrical shops in LA.
The new pulley (left) was a smidge smaller - turns out this isn’t a big deal. This pulley has an extra groove for an AC system, which I definitely do not have
Rebuilt alternator with new Urethane mounts installed by Astro Auto Electric in Lomita, CA. The whole thing cost $100 and took 4 hours.
Old water pump vs new water pump
My father advised me to use a good amount of gasket sealant when installing the new water pump. In his experience, it was easiest to use your finger to “paint” on the sealant on both sides of the new gasket. An evening of finger painting ensued. Pictured below is the side of the engine without the alternator - since the alternator and the water pump were new and shiny, I removed the top coolant diverter and painted that to match. I also did as much engine degreasing as I could.
New water pump and painted/cleaned coolant diverter installed. Ignore the ugly old battery
New block coolant plug and crush washer. The one on the right may have been original. Considering the new one was less than $10, this was a worthwhile investment
New radiator cap and new Ireland Engineering silicone coolant hoses installed. You can also see the side of the engine is slightly cleaner than before!
After completing the engine bay work, and installing the new crankshaft pulley (that was a bitch), it was time for front suspension. Given that we only had about a week left to complete the work. I didn’t take many photos. Bushing installation isn’t too tough, however I did have a tire shop press in the control arm bushings. BMW used to sell the control arms with bushings installed, but not anymore. The tire shop tore the outside of 2 of the 4 bushings and charged me $90, thus losing any future business from me.
Removing the struts requires spring compressors if you have stock springs - not using compressors could result in a spring under tension suddenly not being under tension (ie, “sproing” in your face). The shorter H&Rs we installed will not require compressors because they do not stay compressed when the nose of the car is lifted. Due to them being shorter, we did safety wire them to the spring cap so that they stay in position in the future.
Old struts and control arms removed
TeaEye came into the shop for a detail while Zibble waited patiently to have the front suspension reinstalled
Safety wiring the spring to the strut cap. New spring pads are above and below the spring.
Due to the expiration of our sublease at our warehouse, we had only a few days to wrap the car up. The end of the sublease also coincided with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. I had this day off of work but was in synagogue with my family for most of the day. For a short period in the afternoon though, I convinced my father to help me install the thicker front sway bar. What I didn’t anticipate was how difficult it would be to install. A quick search on 2002faq confirmed that we would have to bend the front apron of the nose panel to get the thick bar into position. Massive channel-lock pliers, some choice words and small arm cuts later, and the sway bar was in position.
The rest of the front suspension went in with not too much drama, with the exception of one of the strut bearings failing before it was installed. Since the car had been sitting for a number of years, I bought new Ina strut mounts back in 2011. They sat in their boxes in the garage until I pulled them out to install this summer, to which I found that one of them had a failed (wonky) bearing. A quick trip to Pelican Parts in Harbor City yielded two brand new Meyle strut mounts and dust cap washers.
Once it was all buttoned together, we were able to put the wheels back on and lower the car back down. I was happy to see the new lowered stance almost immediately!
Before taking any long drives, I did want to get the drivetrain professionally aligned, as the flex disc looked a little warped after we torqued it back in. The car also had a bad exhaust leak, so I sourced a brand new muffler and center pipe to be installed. I don’t have any experience installing entire exhaust systems myself, so I planned to drop the car off at Long Beach Autohaus to have all this work done. The car was last there back in 2010, after my 5 speed conversion was completed.
Scott Parsons, who owns the shop and races a 2002 in the VARA race series, had shimmed my transmission down way back then so it wouldn’t rub on the transmission tunnel. After getting the car back, I saw more shims on the center bearing, and Scott assured me that the driveline angle was within half a degree. This work wasn’t cheap, but it did give me peace of mind! I also had Scott take a look at the brakes, as they were still a little spongy even after being bled with a power bleeder.
Flex disc actually FLEXING (hint, it isn’t really designed to do that for any length of time)
Shims that moved the center bearing down
New old stock brake master cylinder for a single circuit brake system
I’m grateful for all of my nerdy car friends who certainly helped to inspire me to get Old Blue back on the road as fast as I could. It’s wild to realize that five different systems on the car were touched in a four month period, and once buttoned up, the car started up and didn’t really miss a beat. We couldn’t have gotten all of this work done without the support and advice of my close BMW friends and the extensive knowledge base on the 2002faq forum.
With the exception of a failed oil filter housing gasket, Zibble has been a fairly reliable cruiser. The checklist is a lot shorter now, and I’ve been getting more comfortable taking the car on longer trips - I even took the car on an overnight work trip to Ventura. Next up is to get the seats recovered and a front suspension clunk dealt with. For now though, Zibble and I will be wandering around Southern California.
