It's Alive!

When last seen, the Bimmer has the motor in place and all the wiring and hoses connected. The last thing to do was finish up the clutch bits. While it seemed to go reasonably well, there was a snag at the end. The clutch fork which the clutch slave cylinder pushes, causing the lever to push the clutch plate just didn't feel right to me. I fiddled and farted with it and was reluctantly coming to the decision that I would have to pull the tranny to find out what was wrong. One step forward, and 2 back. *sigh*

Slave cylinder (round bit on left) and the clutch fork (black lever going into the tranny on right)

A lot of forum reading and poring over poor quality transmission diagrams - it is a 40 year old car after all - and I thought I would give it one last shot. Though a combo of flexible mirrors and precariously perched lights I found the spring lever for the fork had come loose and was out of alignment causing my issue. A bit of fiddly blind work had it back in place and with a bleed of the system, I had a working clutch.

Time to work on the 944 and go racing for the next month or two.

And now I'm back. 

So for the month of November I've been trying to get the 2002 motor running. It got pulled way back in January for the repaint. The motor was cleaned up and painted, new rod bearings installed, new water pump, new exhaust studs, new hoses, new starter, new gaskets everywhere while waiting for the paint shop to return the car. By April I had the car back from the shop and began the 6 month process of putting it all back together again. With some breaks for 944 Cup racing, the car was mostly done and ready to get back on the street again. 

If it would only start ...

With suspension and wheels, it can be pushed around at least.

Did the usual checks. A running motor needs 3 things: air, fuel and spark, hopefully all delivered at the right time. Timing light showed I had spark. Full fuel bowls showed I was getting fuel. And air wasn't a problem, so what? Timing?

I pulled the valve cover and manually rotated the crank until the rockers were aligned correctly and I was sure I had TDC on cylinder #1. I made sure the distributor was pointing in the correct location and not 180 degrees out of phase. The timing may not be spot on, but it should be close enough to start. Hmmm.....

Eventually the path of deduction led to the Weber carbs. I had all the correct ingredients, but nothing was cooking. Gas was making it into the carbs, but was it making it out into the intake? A trip to Pep Boys and a can of starter fluid - kids ask your parents - answered that question. A couple of squirts down the carb throats and with a turn of the key, the engine fired up. It didn't sound healthy, but in truth, a diet of starter fluid isn't what it was tuned for. So it's the carbs.

Off with the carbs. Time to dig into them.

A long time ago, actually in February, I 'rebuilt' the Webers.

In all its greasy, clogged glory.

And as cleaned up

What this meant was clean the outside and repaint, clean all the jets, replace all the gaskets. Kinda like a topend rebuild. Now it was time to get down and intimate with those Italian beauties.

This time I took out all the jets and flushed all the passages with carb cleaning making sure everything flowed where it should. Put it back together and back onto the car. BTW, when I say those 4 little words - back on the car - you should hear in your head 'another 30 minutes of work' - as they came off and on numerous times over the last several weeks. Just sayin'.

So back on the car, a couple of squirts of starter fluid, the turn of the key and Vroom!!!! it's working! Hey wait a minute, it's idling at 4000 rpm. Shit, turn it off! That can't be good for a brand new motor.

So for the next week, time was spent working the high idle problem. Turn the car on, and it would immediately go to 4-4500 rpm. I checked for vacuum leaks and more with no luck. Finally in the middle of one session, the motor screaming at 4500 rpm it just immediately died. Crap! What now? That's electrical, I know the sound of a fuel starved motor. Yup, no spark anymore. Back to square one. That led to several nights of electrical debugging, which was solved by fixing a loose wire on the ignition switch. Damn old cars.

With that fixed, I was back to the 4000 rpm idle motor. More reading, more thinking and Its got to be the throttle plates. Webers back off the car, more cleaning, hey the accelerator pump is stuck, hmm that could be keeping the throttle plate open. Fixed that and 'back on the car'. But before this, I marked the throttle lever and carb body with a red paint dot so I know when the throttle plates are really closed.

And wouldn't you know it. The throttle linkage that connected the dual carbs was out of alignment so when all snugged down, one carb's throttle was open instead of closed shut. Some close personal time with a vise and hammer "adjusted" the linkage so both were closed when they should be. And this is the result of that fine tuning.

Oh yeah, still more work ahead, but that's a major turning point. It's time to celebrate with a beer or two. I just bought some Samuel Smith's Chocolate Stouts and look! they're right here in the garage cooler. How convenient.

Sometimes it's not the little things

It's the big things .. like a 8500 lb 3/4 ton F250 pickup.

No, I didn't buy a rollback ...

My 944 is finally done done at Behe's. New motor broken in and tuned on the dyno. Friday night I fueled up the F250 to get ready for an early start. It's about an hour and half run down to John's shop just north of DC. I attached the hitch and started backing up to connect to the trailer when ... WTF? my brake pedal goes to the floor.  I don't remember asking anybody to bled my brakes. And what's that smell? That's brake fluid! I should know, I've coated my garage floor with it often enough.

A peek under the cab reveals a dripping mess, brake fluid covering everything. Being that it was 1. dark, 2. cold (about 35 degrees with a wind) and 3. it was in a safe location (my driveway) I decided the most prudent course of action was to head to the garage, open the cooler and remove a nice St. Ambrose Oatmeal stout from Montreal and drink a toast to Canada. Just because.

I also drank a toast - a Saranac Lakes Caramel Porter, don't want to get into a rut - to this happening in my driveway and not on I-95 pulling the trailer at 70 mph. Now that would really suck.

Once things warmed up by Sunday I crawled under for a peek. Looks like a brake line fitting or connection rusted out and let go. Since the truck is too big to get into my garage there's no way to put it up on the lift. And with something like brakes I want to have a good view of what the problem is and what my solution should be.

And the solution turned out to be using my AAA RV Plus membership (thanks honey!) and having it towed to my local truck shop while I went for a bike ride in the woods. Working on race cars, vintage cars and drinking beer is fun. Working on trucks, not so much. I know how to prioritize.

A couple more updates. The 2002 motor is ready for installation. The distributor was installed and should be close to the correct location. The rocker cover received some attention, and the webers had their linkage attached. Now all I need is the car .... but not until I get the truck back please.

Rocker cover in progress

And the final result

Shot of the carb linkage setup. The bridge is a BMW part from somewhere.

High Carb Diet

Dual DCOE 45's

A couple of hours in the cold January outdoors with a soda blaster did wonders for removing the grease, baked gas & oil and general corrosion on the weber carbs. They came out of that experience generally pretty shiny. But were they up to the Alpine Garage standard? Time to turn to Wikipedia for some guidance:

Scope Creep in project management refers to uncontrolled changes or continuous growth in a project's scope. This phenomenon can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered a negative occurrence, and therefore should be avoided.

Typically, the scope increase consists of either new products or new features of already approved product designs, without corresponding increases in resources, schedule, or budget. As a result, the project team risks drifting away from its original purpose and scope into unplanned additions. As the scope of a project grows, more tasks must be completed within the budget and schedule originally designed for a smaller set of tasks. Accordingly, scope creep can result in a project team overrunning its original budget and schedule.

All quite depressing stuff here. And an accurate depiction of my 2002 project. As my mom would say: Scope Creep Bad! If Billy next door's project had it, would yours?

But reading further I see an out:

If the budget and schedule are increased along with the scope, the change is usually considered an acceptable addition to the project, and the term “scope creep” is not used.

Sweet. I don't care about time (budget I do), so full speed ahead.

So a quick project timeline - mostly in pictures for the verbally challenged.

Grotty looking original carb

Soda blasted and scrubbed

Off to the Alpine Paint Booth!

Meanwhile, in another section of the garage, electro-chemical magic was taking place.

Nuts, bolts and anything the dog wouldn't eat got plated

All new gaskets from Pierce Manifolds, shiny jewelery (plated hardware) and a pretty new dress (paint) and my Webers were ready for their Sweet 16 party.

I tried to match the original gray paint of the Webers, but this was closest I could do. But I am pretty pleased with how they turned out. The paint is bit darker than stock, but is nicely textured and makes the plated pieces stand out.

Now I'm happy, they'll look sweet on top of the engine.