Garage is straightened up and all tools put away in their respective drawers.


I also pulled the automatic gear shift from the car. That involved dropping the middle part of the exhaust and the heat shield. Inside the car you have to release a clip to get the unit to drop out completely. Since it was an auto, it had an ignition lock that prevented you from starting in anything other than park. I had to drop the lower panel to the steering column to get to it and a quick twist to remove from its spot in the ignition. I really didn't want to disconnect anything else to get the cable out, so I chopped it off near the selector and just pulled the last bit out. Here is the offending unit (not really its fault it was formed into an automatic gear selector). I might get to work on it again later today, but for now it is time to go take some friends on the boat and out to eat.


It looks funny with a hole in the floor.

 

That's called a bone hole. It's for eating chicken wings whilst motoring.

 

Haha making me hungry all over again

 

I got the shift assembly in, but now I am stuck waiting on parts. It's funny how you get the parts you need last first. Radiator hoses came in yesterday, but, yeah, not quite ready for those yet. The part that I am really waiting on is the steering column seal that goes through the bulkhead. Mine is torn apart and needs to be replaced. It is in an awkward area that is most easily reached with the transmission out. I thought I timed things correctly, but it took the company I ordered from 5 business days to send something they had in stock and being cheap I had it shipped USPS. That means it will probably be the end of the week before I get that item. So there you go. ****-poor planning on my part bites my in the butt. At least I can clean and refresh parts like the subframe in the interim.

 

I decided to tackle the pedal assembly and after much thinking in three dimension I was able to remove it. The very top bolt is not back in. I just don't have a plan on how to get it in there at the moment. I've got a few rough ideas, but my big paws do not fit too well in that area. I now have to get the hydraulics piped. Could someone do me a huge favor and show me where the two lines hooked to the master cylinder actually go? I think the one to the reservoir goes through a small plug located next to the the brake booster, but a photo would be handy. I see there it clips on the reservoir, but beyond that I have no clue. I also don't know where the line goes from the master cylinder to the slave cylinder. I have the piece that connects to the master cylinder, but no idea where it goes through the firewall. I also have the piece on the transmission from the slave cylinder that has a junction by the transmission upper mount. How it gets from one to the other is currently a mystery to me.

I'm not asking for anyone to disassemble anything on their car, but if someone could help a fella who's down on his luck with some photos it would help me immensely.

Since I am at an impasse with that project, I jumped to the aftermarket alarm system removal. I got that out and will have to fix the damage. Here is my bit of advice for aftermarket installations. Either do it yourself, or just don't have it done. The "installer" was an idiot. They cut the insulation of wires and just twisted their wires to that and covered with electrical tape. I guess when it shorts and your car burns down nobody will really know the root cause, but they did this on 5 different harness wires. They also dicked up the indicator wiring and I have to fix that. Luckily, they spliced that in. No joke that in the space of two feet they have 5 splices of 5 different color wires. Glad they are "professional installers". <sarcasm>

Here is the rats nest that I removed. There is still the LED on my steering column cover and another 8" (200mm) of wire attached to it. At some point I will source a new upper cover, but right now I am hemorrhaging money on this swap. My advice on auto to manual swap is do not do it unless you really want a headache.

 

It was inevitable. It wasn't fun working in an engine bay with the engine hanging precariously by one engine mount next to me supported by a jack stand. Safety third and all of that. So out comes the engine. Now there is plenty of room for activities.


The engine is basically new. I can't recall the exact mileage, but it is less than 20K miles. The front is pretty.


The back looks good too. However, I need to change out the oil filter housing and install the double line for the engine oil cooler. Autos don't have that and yes, that is a pricey piece of tubing.

 

This thread is completely insane and i love it. !

 

Thank you, sir. I'm in a holding pattern at the moment awaiting parts. It's made me laugh that every package that I have received are the last items that I need. The ones I really need don't ship until Monday of next week at the earliest. In the interim I have slapped the engine and transmission together and will install it as a unit. That will beat me trying to wrestle the transmission in after the fact. It was heavy and awkward enough for me to do outside the car. Granted, I did it myself, but aligning those splines is like trying to connect a USB plug on the back of your computer without looking. Here she is installed.

I also noticed that the panels from the interior I removed were filthy. The PO was a smoker and it is amazing where ashes end up. Plus it would appear at least one cup of coffee was spilled at some point. I decided to take everything inside and clean it all up. Here are the before and after pictures in the kitchen after soap and warm water. They were more nasty than the photos. Even the panels that looked like all they had were ashes on them were caked in tar and nicotine.

Mmmm, coffee, don't mind if I do.

So fresh and so clean, clean!

Sure, I'll take a second cup...

and cleaned up

Ashtray, or steering column bottom cover?

Drivers side panel under dash

Both clean and all asking for some conditioner to be applied to keep down the frizzies.

 

I don't know what I can do this weekend. My daughter will be here and I have lots of work to do for my day job as well. We shall see. I might work on the wire harness and install the new fuel injector connectors and if I time allows install the new harness to the engine assembly.

 

I needed a break from the computer screens and decided to mess with my wire harness. As I mentioned before, I have new Bosch 380cc injectors that came with an adaptor to plug into the existing harness. My beef is that this makes the wires contact the intercooler and, pardon the pun, that ain't cool. So I've decided to replace the EV1 plugs with EV6 plugs. It will place the wires a respectable 10mm below the intercooler, or about .5 inches for my freedom unit users here in the States. True story, the US adopted the Metric system in 1866 and were one of the original 17 original signatories to the Treaty of the Meter. What can I say, change comes slowly.

Let's start at the start as that is a very fine place to start. Here is the original section of harness.


Any who, I stripped the old harness cover off of the wires to expose the pieces I'm interested in.



Then I removed the old plug shells. This exposes the actual connectors that I will remove and replace as I get the new plugs depinned and ready for replacement. I need to practice on them as the are not as easy to remove as the EV1 pins. Those were simple. These EV6 pins are a bit more finnicky. I have 3 more practice pieces on the old harness that I will try to perfect before going to the new harness. That will be for tomorrow.



Next, I taped the two wires that share this part of the harness with cloth electrical tape. I separated them a little earlier than the original harness to give a little more flexibility. I was going to go a different route for these and might in the future, but I don't have the correct pins to repin the plugs and well, I'm too lazy and too cheap to mess with that now. Ain't nobody got time for that!


So if I get time tomorrow I will work on the injector plugs and post an update. Who knows, it might be Sunday, but it will definitely be later than today. Have a good one.

 

I had a few minutes and did one EV6 plug. Nope, the old plug and the new pin had too much wiggle room. I've ordered four new plug bodies and will finish that up as soon as they arrive. I did get a box from ECS Tuning with new power steering reservoir, new lines and hardware as well as a new steering column bulkhead seal. Maybe tomorrow I will have some time to install the bulkhead seal. I know it is a pain to install, but with everything out, it shouldn't be too bad.

 

What kind of vitamins do you take? You are my hero.

You seem an organized fellow. What say you log your time on this little diversion of yours and run a tally when completed?
At least they'll have something to engrave upon your headstone.

 

Vitamin B-100 and no way will I capture the hours I spend on the car, or any project. This is a hobby and a release for me. If I'm really stressed I work that much harder on things. As you may surmise, I am overly stressed at the moment and this is my therapy.

 

Making good progress

 

Hooray! Some more parts arrived! Cooling system hoses to be exact and the double pipe. Yeah, I cannot lie - this is some expensive stuff. If you figure each item runs about $35 and the pipe costs $150ish... it adds up. One of those "hidden" costs of an auto to manual "swap".

I also installed my oil filter housing and the starter motor. The housing was completely cleaned and I had to install a new plastic valve internally as mine was broken. Thanks nd-photo.nl for the tip from your thread!
It is getting close to reinstallation time. You'll also notice I have mocked up the coolant lines based on the illustrated parts breakdown. I had no clue how they went as it is nothing like the automatic's setup.

Next up is the engine harness plug connector conversion for the new injectors and then the exhaust manifold and it will be time to set this back in place. Oh yeah, I also got the steering wheel seal that goes on the bulkhead. That thing was a pain the buttocks to say the least. Well, it was until I figured out the best way to install it. The trick is to push the hard plastic piece through the bulkhead, then install the rubber seal, and then once you get the top of the plastic piece in the groove, push the bottom to set it in place permanently.

Well, with some parts now in place I can get back to work on getting things put back in order. Well see what I can get done over the next couple of days.

 

Mainly doing cleaning today and painting some small brackets for installation. One item I did do was clean up my exhaust manifold bolts that were old and crusty. Yes, they will look terrible again in short order. That wasn't really the purpose. It is a proof of concept on refinishing bolts and if I would do it in other areas. I figured it it looks like crap, nobody but us will ever know. It is a black oxide finish, but to get there takes a few steps. If you look at the picture you will see the stages. Rusty, degreased and derusted, wire wheeled and finally black oxide coated. They actually look good to me, so I think I'll continue doing this to fasteners instead of doing my own zinc plating. So if you notice I'm using black bolts, this is the reason. I still want to try media blasting some fasteners to see the variation of finish, but that's for another day.


One last item for feedback. Are my pictures too big? I have tried resizing and no matter what I do they are huge on this site. I'm using the Upload feature to bring in my own pictures instead of using a link to an online host, but even at 50% size reduction they are big. I'm glad I'm not using my good camera and trying to load .raw images. lol

 

While I wait on parts I start looking at things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things. One item I have noticed is that the apron/rail assemblies are painted, but not clear coated from the factory. I get it. It is expensive for something most people don't care about. I do and maybe you do too. The color coat is thin and rubs off fairly easily. Having a BRG MINI, or any dark color, makes it worse as the primer below the paint is an off-white color. I have a can of touch-up paint and clear that I'd bought earlier for the hood. I've decided to use it on the aprons for an OEM+ look. I think it has come out well. Glossy, easy to clean, and more protection... what's not to like. Onward to the photos!

Belt side apron gets lots of wear and tear. I cleaned, sanded, rust treated, acid etch primed before paint.

After base coat and two coats of clear.

Passenger side before paint.

Half way to show the difference...

Ready for a repeat of the other apron.

Same approach - one base coat and two coats of clear.

All done! Now to leave it alone for a few days while the paint cures. I won't wet sand as the paint flowed nicely. I will probably ceramic coat things however to help keep it clean.

This was done last night and this morning. I have to go work on my in-laws house today, but I'll probably finish the wire harness this evening and attach it to the engine. We shall see.

 

Nice work man

 

Some photos that intuition told me might help you. Let me know if you need anything else.

 

A huge thank you, dmath! That is exactly what I needed.

hope I can snake that line in without taking off the brake booster.

 

Happy to help. Good luck.

I spent a little time scrolling through your thread (I'll go back later and read more carefully). For now, one question: Is that a new supercharger? If not, how did you get it so clean? (You may have noticed, that's two questions.) It looks amazing.

 

Thanks! It's not a new supercharger. It is VHT Cast Aluminum ceramic engine paint. Unless you have access to a vapor blasting cabinet I don't know how else to get it as clean as that. I almost always paint cast aluminum parts due to the porosity of most castings. I like things to clean up easily and stay fresh in appearance. Even a well cleaned aluminum part is going to get dirty in short order when left alone to the elements.

 

If I only had the time, the space, the tools, the knowledge, the attention to detail, the humor, the patience…

 

Success! The hardest parts of installing that line were the grommet being behind the brake booster and the connection to the line in the car. I have big hands (XL gloves are tight) so getting them into those spots was not easy for my mitts. Thanks again dmath!

 

They're fine. The site sets them to max-width of the container, so they scale both up and down to fit screen size.

(Pretty sure the site would reject RAW files. JPEG is the most compatible choice for sharing pics. So, again, you're fine!)