1.9 Track Car Project

[Bringit96]

After selling my old very rusty Z3, I went and got another.

It's 98 1.9 M44 and upon first glance looks pretty crap, which is fine because it was very cheap!


Job 1

So the plan is to tackle the sills first. Take off the outer sills, decide what to do with them later, then clear all the rust off the inner sills and see if I've made a financial mistake.

Once I've decided it'll be onto rust treating, prevention.

For rust cleaning: Bilt Hammer Hydrate 80
For rust prevention: Bilt Hammer Dynax S50
For primer: some Zinc anti rust primer I got off Amazon... probably Hammerite branded.

Job 2

After that's done and dried it's onto servicing. Oil, filter, air filter, fuel filter, spark plugs. All that fun stuff.

Job 3
As it has no cat it needs one. Luckily the Z3 exhaust design means the manifold section is okay. Unbolt the cut off cat section, get a new one and then a back section.

Job 4
Brakes. Car doesn't like moving and the caliper seem a little sticky. Good thing I've still got my original calipers and carriers with discs and pads! I've also got a set of calipers and carriers from a 328 that I got gifted so I can upgrade to vented discs when the time comes.


I'm with the car until Friday so I should probably get out of bed earlier than I did today!

Will post some pictures of the car and as I go

 

[t-tony]

Have fun mate!

Tony.

 

[hard top]

Yep, as above, have fun ....

 

[Bringit96]

Getting back into the swing of things...

1pm


5pm

Need to wake up earlier tomorrow

 

[t-tony]

If you need an early morning wake up call Al, ........................ I'll ask Shirl to give you a ring.

Tony.

 

[Bringit96]

If you need an early morning wake up call Al, ........................ I'll ask Shirl to give you a ring.

Tony.

It was a long day. Got the car up on jacks, remembered I had to loosen the wheels before lifting the car....so down then up again

 

[t-tony]

I thought you had got yourself an impact wrench mate?

Tony.

 

[Bringit96]

I thought you had got yourself an impact wrench mate?

Tony.

It's been on the shopping list for a while. Haven't needed it until this week so I've been shopping other things

 

[t-tony]

Will save some blood sweat and tears when funds allow mate.

Tony.

 

[Bringit96]

Sills are off and will go straight in the bin.

Inner sills look like this-

Passenger side front:


Jacking point:


Rear:


Driver's side-

Front:

Rear:



So the plan is to treat all the areas but not to put the protective agent on the passenger side sills. I'll probably go over the areas with some black paint to seal everything once it's treated and then get the jacking point cut out and welded. Wax and welding don't go well together, so I've heard...

Of course with sills no one would know the holes were there but they are and it needs fixing. Again, if it's welded and the sills are on, no one will no either so all good.

Only need it to pass it's MOT until I can get a trailer. Time to crack on!

 

[Althulas]

I used this item as a bases for my Jack point repair https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/JACK-PAD...p2349624.m46890.l6249&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0 I had a good welder local to me do the repair if you look on my build you can see some photos.

 

[Bringit96]

I used this item as a bases for my Jack point repair https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/JACK-PAD...p2349624.m46890.l6249&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0 I had a good welder local to me do the repair if you look on my build you can see some photos.

Cheers, that's a great find!

 

[Bringit96]

Onto treating with the Bilt Hammer Hydrate 80.

Before:

After:
First coat went left to right, waited about 20 mins and then did a second coat going top to bottom, as per instructions.

Bottle says to wait 24 hours or 3 hours and protection won't be any less. Unfortunately I don't think I have enough hours of daylight today to get the primer on, so that'll be first thing tomorrow and later in the day the Dynax S50 cavity wax

 

[Bringit96]

As I couldn't get the seats out to pull the interior (a whole different story of today), I decided to service the car.

First was the air filter. Opened the box to find no filter at all! So new standard one put in.


Next was oil. The first time I've done every step by myself! After getting the car up in a way that I was happy it wouldn't fall on me...
Had to remove the airbox to get the oil filter tool on with a rachet. It was a crap one from Halfords that doesn't rise up for the ratchet head. So extenders wouldn't fit.

All went well after that. Kind of.

In the now infamous words, shouted out by @Grumps at Zedshed Midlands...

"It missed"



Good thing we've got a full bag of kitty litter

Clean up, spark plugs and primer for the sills all to come tomorrow!


Oh and I put a code reader on the car while it was warming up. Only 2 faults

1- Camshaft position sensor
2- Voltage. Pretty sure this is due to the fact the auxiliary belt isn't on so the alternator isn't on.

 

[Bringit96]

Job 1 officially complete!

The sills are now treated, primered and waxed. Well the driver's side is, the passenger side is just treated and primered.



Had an interesting problem with spark plug 2. It seems to have something hexagonal sat on top of the 10mm nut:



For reference, this is what all 3 other plugs looked like (all new now)


Need to get some needle nose pliers long enough to try and grab it. Other than that, servicing is done!

Just need to start it now

 

[Bringit96]

Still doing videos, finally got around to the intro for the car! So if you wanna see what the rest of the car looks like feel free to watch

View: https://youtu.be/kj50IlRz_V0

 

[Pingu]

I went to the British GT Championship and one of the support races was a BMW Compact Cup. They were all 1.9 E36s. It might be worth trying to find out what they do to their cars as the Z3 and E36 are very similar and you are running the same engine.

 

[Paul Rice]

Compact cup cars tend to have Z3 quick shift and Z3 steering racks fitted.

 

[Bringit96]

Compact cup cars tend to have Z3 quick shift and Z3 steering racks fitted.

Sounds like they should just race the Z3s I know a place that's very handy with the M44 1.9 engines so I'll likely take it there but that's a long long way down the road