by alpinac1_pn9him | Aug 19, 2023 | Uncategorized
Six months ago in our last episode of this (seemingly) never-ending restoration, an important and emotionally pleasing milestone was passed: the car was running! The shop that got it started had a punchlist of work I wanted done, mostly road-worthy items (get it running, brakes working right, etc.) and some items that were vexing me, too. Like the heater ducting I couldn’t get installed, hooking up the heater control panel, and installing the finned differential cover.
I didn’t like calling them regularly because I didn’t want to be *that* guy and I knew I was lucky to find a competent shop that was willing to work on a vintage car on my time table: getting it ready in time for the 2023 Legends of the Autobahn, part of Monterey’s car week held every August. So, I’d drop by the shop when I was nearby—about once every week or two—just to check on the progress. When I wasn’t stopping by, it was pretty much radio-silence. I could live with that. The three weeks they said they needed to work on the car grew, which wasn’t really unexpected. And that, too, I could live with. We had a good amount of time until August.
Then, one random day I got a call from the body shop that was the next scheduled stop. The car had arrived. I’ll admit I would have preferred to have gotten a heads-up from the mechanics that they were done with the car. And I didn’t love it when I got to the body shop and saw that a few of the punchlist items weren’t done. But most importantly, the car apparently was running well enough and the heater ducting was in, although the control panel wasn’t. You get what you get and, again, I was lucky to find a competent shop that was going to help get it back on the road. Granted it was a drive of all of two blocks from one shop to the other, but I was very excited that the car was (at least semi?) roadworthy!
A punchlist was also provided to the new body shop, The Works in Santa Clara. Top of the list was to color sand the paint thus “finishing” the paint job that started six years ago. (Recall, the car went to my friend’s body shop in Sacramento for paint in 2017 and halfway through the job that body shop closed. I spend much of the early pandemic driving up to Sacramento reassembling the car from the semi-competed painted job.) The Works was hesitant to color sand paint applied by a different shop and there were several areas that they would have done differently; most of their concern was not knowing how thick the paint was and whether they’d burn through to primer while color sanding. But they took the job as long as I understood the risks. Among the more pressing items on the punchlist: installing the heater control panel, the finned differential cover, the rear spoiler and the Alpina stripes (or Deko kit as Alpina calls it).
At this point, I have to apologize: I try to include a lot of images of the progress because as much fun as it is writing (and reading) about the steps taken, pictures are the best was to chronicle the project. But because the car was in other’s folks hands, there are no before and after images of these important milestones. Alas.
When I got a call from The Works to tell me they were almost finished, I stopped by and saw the car. The color sanding was great I think and, even though there were a few spots where they burnt through the paint, they are very small and something only I would worry about. The rear spoiler looked great but at first I was a tad disappointed by the stripes. Not that they didn’t look good, but there was about an inch overlap where they mated the various pieces together. Having never really looked at the stripes closely on my or other Alpinas before, I wondered how the pieces were mated together. (When I got to Legends and saw the other Alpinas there, I realized mine was better than most so the disappointment dissipated.) Also, the heater control panel and finned differential cover were not installed. But, all in all, the progress was amazing and I was very pleased.
Still, I had not driven the car and I was unsure how dialed-in it was. So, I asked if I could take it up and down the block before they finished the few things left and washed it up. Of course they said yes and, although it needed some work—the idle was too low and the steering wheel off kilter—it ran well and seemed like it would make the drive home in a few days. This drive, as short as it was, was the first time in six years that I was behind the wheel in this beast!
The next week, I picked up the car. The idle had been adjusted, the car washed and exterior detailed. I noticed the gas gauge read full and I was impressed the tank had been filled. Once I hit the road I saw the speedometer was not working and the gas gauge bounced between full and empty when the turn signal was on; for the latter, I suspected the fuel sender or turn signal wiring was grounding out. I stopped for gas on the way home and she drank up 12-plus gallons. So much for a reliable gas gauge and full tank!
The last one proved more difficult than anticipated; every time I moved the wheel to the spot that seemed like it would be properly oriented, it needed more adjustment. Time was running out (I left for Monterey the next day at 2pm) when I admitted to myself it needed to get aligned. Luckily, when I called my local shop at 4:45 they squeezed me in after I explained when and where I was going. I dropped the car off and got the call the next day that it was ready at 1:30. They were able to take out a bunch of toe but the caster was slightly off on one side—it will get new control arms soon in hopes of remedying that issue. Nonetheless, the steering wheel was straight and the car tracked almost perfectly. We were off to Monterey….
Driving to Monterey—yes, I know the way!—was joyfully uneventful other than the Bay Area rush hour traffic (which seems to start at 3pm) and the heat. Judging from the slight smell of gas in the cabin, the car was running a bit rich; I had no fuel gauge or speedometer (thank you Waze for telling me my speed); and for the first half of the trip I regretted removing the air conditioning at the beginning of the project so many years ago. Because of the heat in the valley, I took the coastal route (slightly longer but the curvy roads are more fun, too); once over the Santa Cruz Mountains the heat dissipated and my dreams of a/c receded. Oh, and this car is FAST and fun. F. A. S. T.
Once there, the Alpina section at Legends did not disappoint. In addition to mine, there was a Golf yellow 1972 B2 (based on an e9 3.0 CSL), two 6-series B7Ss, three e28 5-series (2 B7 and one B10), a bunch of e36s and even some new(ish) Alpinas. But I’ll let the pictures and videos do the talking below.
Alpina tribute 2002, huge genuine Alpina truck, stunning genuine B2, and our hero:
Our hero and the stunning Golf Yellow genuine 3.0CSL B2 (Alpina truck in the background)
Some of the other Alpinas:
Pics from the Alpina event organizer; yours truly and our hero (right to left):
Collage of all the Alpinas at the event:
The plan is for even more Alpinas at Legends next year. By then I’m hoping to finish up several of the details that haven’t gotten the necessary attention, and maybe even the bigger things, like a working speedo and gas gauge, dialed-in the fuel injection and an operational heater control panel! Who knows, I may even reinstall the air conditioning so I can take the more direct route next year.
by alpinac1_pn9him | Feb 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
The fatigue of this project—and my 1972 Inka touring restomod project—have weighed on me. So much so that the slow but steady progress I was making during the pandemic has almost abated. And, if not for the intervention of others, who knows, it might have died on the vine. But it didn’t and, as alluded in the title of this post, it’s alive; the damn thing runs. Barely.
The car came home in April of 2022, and Spring was full of hope. After all, it was in my garage and instead of having to drive two hours up to Sacramento (and two hours back, of course) I could just saunter the few feet to my garage and tinker. And there was a lot of tinkering to be done.
So I tinkered. I took off the electrical tape someone installed in a fit of ugliness and re-wrapped the wiring harness with new cloth tape.
I take out the old, non-functional antenna and put in a new one (forget that there was no center console, let alone stereo in the car).
I traced down extra and errant wiring, cleaning messes in the engine compartment and under the dash.
Several little parts were added, like the leaf guards in the hood.
And, I did the one thing that is fairly easy yet yields big results and nice money shots: installed the freshly recovered seats in the blingy Alpina cloth.
Other little things like cleaning the carpet, and rewiring the Hella big/little headlights helped move things along.
But then Summer became Fall and things stalled to a crawl, mostly due to festering frustration. Why was I frustrated? Heater problems. No, not the garage wasn’t heated. Rather, the problem was the heater in the car; specifically, my tinkering under the dash revealed that the heater ducting was removed along with the dash when it was taken out some 5 years ago (to have the cracks repaired); when the body shop reinstalled the dash they forgot to put the heater ducting back in first.
With some ingenuity I was able to squeeze almost all the ducting in place except for one last piece. But, oh that last one. Try as I might, there just wasn’t enough room to maneuver it in there……
defroster ducting as shown in the parts “book”
heater ducting as shown in parts “book”
Frustrated, I walked away from the car for a while. After a couple of months without any progress, my long-suffering wife finally prodded me. I realized the enormity of the project was overwhelming me. True, it was great to have the car nearby, instead of two hours away. But I had finished the tinkering and it was time to do the real work. And for that, there was a lot of comfort in having it in a shop, surrounded by many mechanically minded brains happy to help at every turn. Not having a lift at home also made things tough; that was the only way for me to work under a car given my vertigo. All this killed any joy I found working on the car.
I started to wonder if I should bring the car to a shop for completion. It was not a step to be taken lightly. I took pride in re-assembling the car myself. It was truly my creation, my baby. But I knew my limits and learned that there were things, no matter how successful I was, that were above my paygrade: color sanding the paint, fixing the sunroof mechanism, fine tuning the injection, installing that last piece of heater ducting. So, I had already come to the conclusion that someone else was going to bring the car across the finish line. The only question was when.
Eventually, I decided to finish as many of the punch-list items as I could before getting it to the shop that was going to help towards completion. I wanted to try to start the car, so the engine got populated with spark plugs and fluids and other small but necessary items. Once done, a mechanic friend came over for an afternoon and we tried to get it started. We made some progress; it would crank over but not catch. We verified fuel but ran out of time before confirming spark. And that was the last significant attempt. A short while later, I had the car towed away again, this time to a shop that specializes in older BMWs.
They aren’t finished, in fact they pretty much just started. They get to my car in between their regular work; I’m in no rush and they aren’t either, really. But they got it started and are making the progress that I couldn’t. They also found that the brakes are acting up and it may need a new booster or master cylinder. For me, just hearing it run was great. I’m an amateur motor assembler and worry about I did wrong until the thing runs without grenading. We’ve crossed that line, so I guess I didn’t fuck anything up too much.
<VIDEO of motor running>
The fact that the car is at a shop and that it’s running has brought back some momentum. And, more importantly, I’ve mapped out the next steps. The body shop I used on some other cars is two blocks away and they’re on-board for color sanding the paint, installing the Alpina stripes and rear spoiler, etc.
The biggest question mark with the car is still the heater; if the shop can get the last of the ducting in without removing the dash, then the control unit can go in and the interior can be buttoned-up. If not, then the dash has to come out again, which has a snowballing effect: the windshield has to come out to remove the dash. If the windshield is out, I should replace the new headliner, due to some issues with the fitment of the current one—and a few mistakes in cutting holes for the sunroof cranks and such. That’s a good amount of work, and costly, but worth it in the end to get everything right.
This is no time for cutting corners and a recent Bring-a-Trailer auction of an e21 B6 2.8 drives that point home: This car sold for $141,000 and it makes me wonder what mine is worth once completed. Sure, it’s not a B6. But Buchloe-built e21 C1s are actually rarer than B6s (In the e21 chassis, Alpina built 462 C1s and 534 B6s according to Paulo Tumminelli in the definitive book on Alpina history, OAL-BB 50: 50 Years of BMW Alpina Automobiles). And with the 2.8 stroker M20 motor, it should have the same or similar performance to the B6. I don’t expect it has B6 value but it should be a pretty nice and rare Buchloe-built C1.
But the value of car right now is solely what it means to me. And as alluded above, it is my baby, my creation because of all my blood, sweat and tears that have gone into it. Of course, all my previous projects were my babies for the same reasons and I ended up selling them after a couple of years and moving on to the next project. From that I realized I liked the process as much—maybe even more—than driving the thing. But times have changed and the projects are much more taxing on my older body and just maybe that has flipped. In the past the projects weren’t fatiguing or frustrating, they were joyous adventures. Maybe in my old age I’ll appreciate journeying in the car more than the journey of building it. Time will tell.
In the meantime, I have this in a conspicuous place, reminding me of what it’ll look like completed and to motivate me.
by alpinac1_pn9him | Apr 12, 2022 | Uncategorized
When I left you, dear reader, on New Years Eve 2021 the sunroof was being put together and I ticked off a list of things that still needed to be done to get the car back on the road. The list was significant – finish the engine electrical, populate the interior, including all the dash components, heater, console, and more – but comparatively short, given how long the list was when the pandemic started.
Since then the sunroof and hood have been installed and the car is ready to be trucked down from Sacramento to my garage in the San Francisco Bay Area, some 100 or so miles. Just for a little perspective, the picture below is from October 2017 when Stu came down with his truck and trailer to take the motorless shell up to Sacramento for the paint job.
Getting the sunroof back in was not easy. The entire mechanics were disassembled and most of the little parts did not stay with the shell when the body shop closed. Sourcing those small but necessary parts takes time and ingenuity. Some parts were available from BMW, some were on eBay new or used, some we got from a junk yard with an old 6-series (thankfully BMW used the same parts in several different platforms). That took many trips up to Sacramento to install the parts I got and figure out the ones I needed to get. Slow and frustrating progress.
Above I told you the sunroof was in. And that is true. But it was a misleading but factual statement (my lawyer training coming through!). We finally got all the parts and were able to put the sunroof in the car. But we couldn’t get it operating. Or at least fully operating. The tilt works but not the back and forth. I’m sure with time and energy it will work but I was up for two days and had other things to accomplish before leaving. Plus, I really don’t like sunroofs anyway, so having it in but not working is not anything even near a hardship for me. Finally, the sunroof and the hood were the two final steps in getting the car water tight so it could be trucked back home.
I was working on the hood also the day we got the sunroof in. As with the sunroof, the hood was disassembled for paint and many of the little parts were missing. I was able to find most new or on eBay but they were primered, not painted. So I got some rattle cans from paintscratch.com and painted them in between the sunroof installation. By the next morning all the parts were ready to be put in the hood. By happenstance an e21 was in the shop for me to use as a template; I’d look at the white car there and go back to my hood and install parts over and over. Soon three of us carried the hood over to the shell to reunite them. Bolting it on was straight-forward but took some time. The tensioners are not on right I suspect, as the hood won’t stay up on it’s own. But the car is water tight and ready to come home.
Now we just need to find a time when I’m in town and Stu can truck it down. Once it is back in my garage I’ll populate the interior and wire up the few remaining electrical items and figure out what else is left unfinished. Oh, and see about getting the sunroof operational and the hood staying in open position.
by alpinac1_pn9him | Dec 31, 2021 | Uncategorized
The title for this post was going to be A New Year, given that I sat down to write this on the morning of New Years Eve, 2021. But that title was taken by a 4-year-old post discussing the paint—an event so long ago I forgot the title had been used already. Yes, a lot of time has gone by but, besides retiring from my day job, my daughter graduating college, a global pandemic, and my son going off to college, it feels like not much has happened. Ok, I guess a lot has happened. Just not to the car, that is.
That theme—that life continues to move forward but the car doesn’t really—is both true and false. It’s been a good six months since my last post, enough time to complete the car. Of course that hasn’t happened and the progress that has been made doesn’t feel like half a year’s worth.
In that six months I’ve driven across the country twice, once by myself in a 1992 BMW M5 wagon I bought to replace my daily driver and then a second time with my daughter and her dog, bringing them home for the holidays. Both trips were fun but I would have preferred not have hit the deer and totaled the X3 that my daughter and I were taking across the country.
The M5 wagon in Utah
The totaled X3
Once back from my travels, I made my way up to Sacramento to work on the car. The motor is almost done. Fuel injection was populated. Headers bolted up. Cooling system—radiator and hoses—installed.
Rear windows put in and parts for door trim being sourced from around the world.
And, most recently, the sunroof is finally being addressed. First was cleaning up the sunroof frame and installing the headliner on it. Next up will be reinstalling the sunroof mechanics, the headliner frame and then the roof itself. That may happened next week.
by alpinac1_pn9him | May 4, 2021 | Uncategorized
A lot has happened since the last post in early December. At the same time, it feels like the project bounced around with little coming to completion. During the hour and a half drive up to Sacramento I’d often review the progress in my mind and wonder if it was time for a new post. But there was no arc to a story; plenty was being done, progress was (slowly) being made. But none of the things I’d been working on were completed—the stories had beginnings, some had middles, but no end. And that, I realized, is the story.
Ok, that’s not completely true. There have been a few things that have been completed. The transmission is in and the rest of the drivetrain buttoned up. Some pesky rust was found on the frame rail, ground out and plates welded in to cover the holes and ensure structural integrity. Yet much of the car—the fuel injection, the cooling system, the interior—is still a work in progress, and progress has been slow. And, little by little, it keeps moving forward.
The reoccurring theme with the car, at least in this drive-up-to-Sacramento phase, has been the trying to put together a car that someone else took apart years ago. The transmission exemplifies it: After the motor was dropped in, the transmission was put in—we put the car up high on the lift and lifted in the transmission by hand and stabbed it in the clutch. Once bolted in we realized that we had the wrong rear support bracket (it was from a 5-series) but the transmission was hanging there unsupported; we needed something to hold it up while sourcing the right part. I flipped over the 5-series bracket, which caught a corner of the transmission, barely holding it in place until we got the right part. That took a few weeks: the bracket was NLA and when I found a used one it took awhile to get shipped to my home; it was in the car on my next trip up to the shop.
But eventually, the right support bracket was sourced and in the car, followed by a guibo and the shift linkage, clutch slave and a whole bunch of little things, resulting in a completed drivetrain. That was the good news from under the car.
The bad news was I noticed bubbling on driver’s side frame rail. I poked it and it was crumbly, a sure sign it was rust. A couple of hours with the Dremel tool and I had 3 holes in the frame rail ranging in size from a dime to a quarter or maybe even a half-dollar. After grinding out all the rust, the metal was treated. We cut some plates from steel sheet metal and Stu welded them in over the holes. I ground down the welds and primed it.
The plates being held in by tape, ready to weld
The welds ground down and the plates primed
Meanwhile, with the engine in, I started to populate it. First was the wiring, then the fuel injection. For the wiring, I asked a few folks on the FaceBook e21 page for pictures of the routing of the wiring; using those as guides, I laid out the wiring harness and connected the electrical components. That was relatively easy.
The fuel injection was more challenging. The basics of the Bosch K were easy enough but it wasn’t time for that yet. Figuring out the auxiliary air system was not so simple. I had too many parts and not enough space to fit it all. I consulted the parts pictures on Mobile Tradition website, which showed two different auxiliary air systems, one using electricity to heat it and another heated by the coolant. And I had parts for both. The parts catalog did not present it as an either-or situation and I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how the two systems worked together. I also wondered why would BMW have both systems in one car?
After consulting with other e21 323i owners, it became clear I was right to question both systems working in tandem; it was either-or and that my car used the coolant-based system when I tore it apart years ago. Later, I figured out that the second system was from the spare intake manifold I had. I could have used either but decided to stick with what the car came with, even though it was more complicated. (An interesting side-note: both systems used coolant as a warming agent on the intake system. The system I call coolant based system has coolant run under the fuel pressure regulator (in pic below) and then to the auxiliary air valve. The so-called electrical system uses an electronically warmed auxiliary air valve but runs coolant through the throttle body, I guess to warm the air as it goes into the intake manifold. Why they wanted to do that, I don’t know!)
The electrical system
The extra intake manifold with the electric auxiliary air valve
Once I knew which system I wanted to use, I needed to figure out the routing of the hoses. With that done, it was simply a matter of attaching the hoses and bolting the actual valve to the underside of the manifold. Of course, I wanted to replace worn hoses—and was both easy and difficult. It’s easy to attach new hoses and to source standard sized ones that don’t have weird twist and turns in them. But some were special order parts, further delaying progress because the only way to get them was from Walloth and Nesch in Germany. For some inexplicable “reason” BMW has a schizophrenic policy on US vendors selling euro-only parts. Some euro-only parts can be sourced by US vendors without any drama, but for others you have to show a registration proving you own such a car—and sometimes after doing that BMW still won’t allow them to be sold here. When that happens, the parts have to be ordered from German suppliers or foreign eBay vendors. If I can’t find the parts on eBay, Walloth and Nesch is often the solution, but given their 49 euro shipping charge, I try to bundle parts into a single order, causing even more delays.
The auxiliary air system installed
Planning ahead—and bundling parts orders—has been a challenge for me, given my myopic approach of simply attacking what is in front of me. I’ve been trying to teach myself to think ahead and, in that vein, I realized I’d need to put in the headers soon. The car had came with SuperSprint headers but they were old and rusty.
So, I took them to a header shop and had them welded up and ceramic coated. They look great now. It was nice, too, to do this in advance of actually needing them and not delaying the project while they were getting restored. Score one for the home team!
A bunch of little tasks have been completed, too. For example, the door panels are back on, with the handles, cranks, and arm rests (which were found in the strangest places in the shop). A new radiator and coolant overflow were ordered from Walloth and Nesch; including the 49 euro shipping, they were over $100 cheaper than a US vendor, believe it or not!
The exhaust was just hanging there, without the “doughnut” supports.
Five minutes later (after a week of waiting for the part), it was done. Were it was all that easy!
We all knew that eventually the fuel injection would be installed on the engine and that day finally came. Because of the modifications to the motor, the stock fuel injection wasn’t going to keep up with the fuel demands of the mild cam increase and significant extra displacement. So I Frankensteined together a bunch of Bosch K parts that Porsche used on the 2.7 liter euro 911S; that motor put out about 210 horsepower, so it flowed enough fuel for my motor. I also arrived at these parts in consultation with another C1 2.3 owner who built a similar motor.
Because the parts were Frankensteined together, I did a test fit (which I didn’t quiet finish yet). But first I had to clean up the remaining parts that I was using. The air box got cleaned and painted. The support base that connects the air flow sensor to the air box went into the media blaster to get cleaned up too.
The support bracket before getting blasted.
The support bracket cleaned and on half of the air box
Bolting the air flow sensor on was straight-forward
Before going further, those components needed to be test-fitted. I also needed to figure out what other parts were necessary to install the fuel injection. A couple more things were ordered and the car put away until they arrive.
After every session, the car has to be raised up and a very, very dusty e30 M3 is tucked in underneath. Good company!
Alas, the list of things to be done is still long: finish the fuel injection, figure out how to wire in the coil, install the headers, finish the headliner, install the sunroof, populate the dash (gauges, heater controls, etc.) that was disassembled when it was sent to Just Dashes to repair the cracks. Once that is done, it can be fired up and see if the damn thing even runs. Feels like that is months away. My goal was to drive the car to Monterey this August for car week. It feels like that is slipping further and further into the unlikely category….
by alpinac1_pn9him | Dec 20, 2020 | Uncategorized
A little over a month ago there was the first progress update in two years. Because of the pandemic I had the time to go up to Sacramento regularly and get moving the project along; Stu welcomed this because he didn’t have time to do it yet wanted to see things go forward. The goal was for me to go up at least once a week, which I’ve been able to do since the last post.
Reassembly presents a strange dichotomy. It is sometimes simultaneously enthralling and frustrating. It is enthralling to reassemble a car that was touched by the hands of God, the Alpina factory, seeing what they did—both sophisticated and, occasionally, somewhat primitive.
But the challenge of finding the parts to reassemble the car is frustrating. The disassembly was haphazard and parts show up in the strangest places in the shop, others missing or found after I’ve ordered new ones. At times it seems I’m spending more time searching the internet for little bits here and there than reassembling the car. On top of that, some of the parts I collected 4 years ago turned out to be the wrong ones (and can’t be returned now) or are just missing. On top of that, there’s the steep learning curve of trying to assemble a car you didn’t take apart.
The door locks are great example. They were taken out for painting and the original gaskets were nowhere to be found—probably they deteriorated and were not reusable—and new ones needed to be ordered. New ones were sourced from a local BMW dealer, but they didn’t work—they were round without indents to follow the contours of the lock body. Although the right part number, BMW apparently has consolidated those gaskets with ones from other cars and the “right” part (according to BMW) didn’t fit my car. A search on eBay found the New Old Stock ones that would work but they were in Greece (gotta love the internet!). The vendor had great feedback and several other BMW parts for sale so I clicked buy.
Four weeks later DHL delivered the gaskets and I finally had everything needed to put in the door locks. Getting the lock cylinder into the door was a trick, at least for someone like me who has never done it before. I started with the passenger side. The cylinder seemingly did not fit into the hole in the door; after fruitlessly trying to wiggling it in, I got more and more forceful, pushing it and then finally I held it centered on the hole and hit it with the palm of my hand. It barely went in and fell out as soon as I touched it. But, progress (however slight). A small hammer and gentle taps and it was in, but not by much—maybe a quarter-inch. Hit it a little harder and it went further in. Even harder and it was halfway in. Consistent gentle taps slowly morphed into firmer hits and it was getting closer and closer; it took a mere half an hour to get it firmly planted in the door. Learning how hard I could hit it took time; the fit was so tight it needed some serious force but I didn’t want to wack it too hard and damage the door. Then it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to attach little arm on the back of the cylinder to the lock; adding to the frustration was working in a tight space with no good line-of-sight. But, I figured out what parts of the door innards to disassemble to get room and sight; once I did, it was an easy job. The passenger side took 45 minutes (most of that being the learning curve), but the second one was finished in less than ten minutes. Knowledge is a powerful tool!
Another challenge was figuring out how the bundle of wires was supposed to routed through the engine compartment. I looked at the harness, which had an ugly re-wrap in electrical tape, and it was not at all apparent how to get from the fusebox to the headlights and horns. I inquired on the FaceBook e21 group and I found someone who restored a similar C1 2.3 (really, any e21 would have been fine, but it was great to find someone who did such a great job and documented it with photos). He sent pictures of his wiring and I was in business. I re-wrapped the harness in friction tape and routed it through the engine compartment.
Then I installed the horns and lights and then grills.
Then air dam. And talk about collecting dust! It looked like it had been painted some weird animal print pattern, but I washed it and it was good to go.
Putting the air dam on the car was one of the interesting archaeological parts of the restoration. The air dam has brake cooling ducts but behind the ducts on a stock body is the lower valance. So the boys at Buchloe cut a rectangle out of the valance to allow the air to flow to the brakes. Those cuts were uneven and kind of primitive. Honestly, they looked like something I would do in my garage!
And sometimes it’s just fun cleaning things up and making them look spiffy; the hood latches were old and rusty, so into the media blaster they went. Quickly they were cleaned up and sprayed with lacquer. A serious improvement.
<PICs of old brake line>
When you buy brake line, BMW provides a straight piece of brake line that you have to bend to fit. What really makes it a challenge is that the line takes a very circuitous route from the master to the caliper and the original line was bent when it was taken out and it couldn’t be used as a template. I got a pic of the route, which was helpful but still not specific enough. We went to a junk yard and were gifted a template (the old rusted line from a carcass of a 320i). Using a template made mimicking the route much easier and the finished product looks as good as from the factory.
After that, the rest of the brake system—booster, new master cylinder, and reservoir—get installed. The brake master was one of those problems with the delayed project. Four years ago I ordered a new one but when I went to install it, the fittings where the brakes lines screwed in were in the wrong places. Too late to return it, I had to get another new one, this one fitting just right.
With most of the work done to the engine compartment, it was time to drop-in the motor. Putting in the motor was pretty straight-forward and two nuts later, it was part of the car again.
With the long block in, building it up to be a working motor was up next. The old thermostat manifold was not in great shape and need some heat to take it apart.
by alpinac1_pn9him | Nov 1, 2020 | Uncategorized
It’s been over two years since my last blog update and four years to the day (November 1) since I proudly posted on FaceBook that I bought this car, my first real Alpina. I say first because I now also own a 1981 B7 turbo e12 (www.alpinab7.com). I bought the B7 largely because it is just such a cool car; but, I also partly bought it because this project had stalled to a point that I wanted a cool vintage that I could drive while trying to get the e21 back in on the road.
The pandemic has helped many car enthusiasts, including me, by giving them time to wrench on their project car. Happily, most (if not all) of the attention was focused on getting the B7 in better shape. The car was not well-cared for over the years and, while it was a decent driver-condition car, it needed a bunch of TLC. And the pandemic kept me at home where I could order parts on-line and wrench on the car, giving it the much-needed attention.
The pandemic, however, did not help this project. Stu’s shop was negatively effected by the pandemic, losing mechanics (not because the virus) and forcing him to focus on his day-to-day business and not follies like restoring old Alpinas. He does, after all, have a shop to run, customers to keep happy and on the road, and bills to pay with normal, more profitable work. So, the C1 was the neglected red-haired step child. The C1 had been painted but not reassembled (Stu sold his body shop and the car was moved to the main shop, but mostly sat, waiting for Stu to have free time to put it back together).
I got to a certain point with the B7—sort of a go big or go home point, where the car should just be driven as-is or take a big step in restoration. Regardless of the path chosen, I passed the point of tinkering on it in my garage, as going “big” meant it taking it back to the turbo specialists who would make the fuel injection more reliable—a job way, way above my pay-grade. At those cross-roads with the B7, I turned my attention to the C1, which began with a call to Stu.
I figured the best way to get this project going forward was for me to go up to Sacramento and start assembling the car myself. Before I could make that suggestion Stu says “you should come up here and do the easier stuff yourself and help me do the harder stuff.” I jumped at it and we made a plan. That was a few weeks back and I’ve gone up three times (so far) in the past two weeks.
Our first job was putting the “new” dash in the car. The original dash had been sent to Just Dashes for repairs, which looked great but the fit was tight. With me, Stu, and his 18-year-old shop helper pushing and pulling, we got it in.
Stu worked on installing the new the headliner.
And I bolted up the valance panel.
Much of my time was spent organizing the parts taken off in disassembly, which took a good amount of time. The guys at the body shop took it apart assuming they’d be putting it back together immediately so the disassembly was not organized in anticipation of a multi-year project. Finding everything more than two years later was (and continues to be) a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. While searching for unlabeled, haphazardly placed parts is not particularly fun, the project is: all my past restorations have been mechanical or interior work. Reassembling a car striped for paint is a new experience. And a good portion of the satisfaction of a project for me is the connection, the bond, one gets with a car when restoring it. And I’m feeling a special bond with his project, with its new (to me) challenges; challenges akin to building a car anew.
Our plan is for me to keep going up to Sacramento until we get the car to a point that it can be put on the back of a trailer, driven back down to my house where I’ll finish the work.
by alpinac1_pn9him | Aug 25, 2018 | Uncategorized
As described in the last post, the motor build is mostly completed. There are a few weird odds-and-ends yet to be done, like a drill and tap for a bolt to secure warm-up regulator to the block and such – nothing major. But I realized that the final build specifications were never discussed fully. So here’s a chart and explanation of my build, comparing it to stock BMW and the Alpina build.
Virtually every decision-point was vetted. Twenty-eight hundred cc displacement was chosen because I wanted to use a turbo-diesel crank (it’s a very stout crack, able to withstand the high pressures of the diesel motor) and I always kinda liked the e30 c2 2.7, based on the same crank and big bore. The pistons were an easy decision, given the crank and desire to get at least 2700cc. I didn’t feel the need for a much bigger bore and knew that several folks had successfully used a 86 mm bore on the stock 325i M20 block.
The rods were a compromise. Because the pistons were custom, I could use virtually any BMW rod that fit the crank. If I used stock BMW rods, I would spend money buying them, testing and refreshing them, and lightening and balancing them. If I went with proven, USA forged rods like Carrillo or such I’d spend a fortune. For the same price as used rods plus machine shop work, however, I could get forged Chinese rods that were finished in the USA by a reputable shop. That is just what I did, with 135mm rods from Molnar Technologies. Tom Molnar was the Metallurgist and engineer for Oliver Rods and Cranks for over 20 years; he was the founder of K-1 Technologies and recently started his own shop. I was confident with that background that my compromise rods were built by someone with the necessary know-how.
The Schrick 272 was also a compromise camshaft, but for different reasons. Retaining the Bosch K-Jet fuel injection was the limiting factor. From what I’ve been told, the flap in the air-fuel meter is sensitive to pressure changes in the intake plenum and a higher-duration cam will create too much pressure change for the K-Jet fuel injection. Normally, with the increased displacement, I would build in more cam – and while the Schrick 272 is a “bigger” cam than the stock Alpina 268, it is not monumentally so. Obviously, it’s only 4 degrees more duration than the Alpina cam and 12 more than BMW. In the faux A4S I built, for example, I had 2.2 liters of displacement (S14 crank in stock M10 block) and a Schrick 304. The 304 has significantly more duration than the 264 degree stock M10 cam and is usually thought to be too much cam for the street, with high horsepower but little bottom-end power. But the increased displacement made up for that and the motor was actually very docile and flexible – lots of horsepower but the increased cubic inches (or centimeters, as the case may be) gave it lots of low-end torque. If I could have done that here, I would have. But no such luck and the 272 was the most duration I could comfortably get while retaining the stock(ish) K-Jet fuel injection.
The M20B25 block was chosen simply for convenience – there are a ton of them available and but for the drill-and-tap for warm-up regulator, there are no practical differences. The 885 head is said to flow best of the available M20 heads, so that choice was simple too. The head and intake plenum were mildly ported and matched.
I guestimate the motor to put out about 200 horsepower and 185 foot-pounds of torque. Both numbers represent a gain of 30 horsepower and foot-pounds. The horsepower is an educated guess, starting at the Alpina 170 mark for the 2.3 liter C1 motor and then comparing to the Alpina B6 2.8, which has a tad less displacement (2788 v. 2823). The B6 motor puts out 200 or 218, depending on fuel injection and cam. The Pierburg version of the B6, with an airflow meter similar to the K-Jet and a 260 degree cam, puts out 200. The Bosch L-Jet version with a 280 degree cam, puts out 218. Mine is probably somewhere in between but 200 should be a safe number, given the displacement, cam, compression ratio and fuel injection. (Note that Alpina used considerably less cam duration for fuel injection similar to mine.)
For torque I used the B6 2.8 as a reference point as well. The early B6 motor put out 182 and the later 195. Mine should be in the middle as well but 185 is a safe number.
If these numbers are right, I will be getting B6 performance essentially with weight savings of 57 pounds – all at the nose. (The M20 weight is 258 lbs while the M30 is 315 pounds.) That’s not bad!
A comparison of the C1 and B6 specs can be found here: http://www.bmwe21.net/?page_id=301
by alpinac1_pn9him | Aug 6, 2018 | Uncategorized
The last post – Death by a thousand delays – ended with more parts missing and some health issues for me, causing another delay. But, it turned out the time off from work allowed me to focus on the motor. And I got it out the door and off to Sacramento, to be tinkered with a tad and then, hopefully soon, dropped in the car.
With the washers for the head bolts sourced, I was able to finally install the head.
And then the drive belt and the pulleys.
Then the oil pan was ready to go on.
And then the rest of the rotating mass and the front covers.
Once the motor was assembled, I was able to take some time to appreciate the machine work. Here, the intake ports were gasket matched to the intake manifold.
I made plans with Stu for him to bring his X5 down to my house and pick up the motor and the various parts. That meant next up for me was organizing the other parts. Got a couple or four bins of parts together.
And put the motor on the cherry picker.
Stu came and picked up the motor late one night, and after getting it to his shop, he had a chance to look it over. After looking at the intake manifold, he asked if it was ok for him to smooth the porting out a little. Of course! He also wants to pretty up the front covers and the harmonic balancer on the front crank pulley. Why not! I’m sure these will delay the project some more, but I clearly am not making my original goal of a late August debut at Monterey, so I have another year to get everything done.
For now the garage is empty, but for the greasy old Alpina motor.
When wrenching on that, something interesting was discovered. The warm-up regulator bolts to the block (on top of a manifold that has coolant running through it). When unbolting those for Stu to take to Sacramento, we found the bottom of the manifold is exposed to the sump, with a bore through the block and a nice rubber gasket to keep it sealed. Why? What does that accomplish? The m10 K-Jet doesn’t do that and we can’t figure out why the M20 does – so, is it necessary to bore out the new block? We don’t think so, but if you know otherwise, feel free to let me know.
Next up is pulling the Alpina motor apart and figuring out what is in there and whether the head gasket is blown. Then I’ll clean it up and freshen up the innards.
In the meantime, there’s an empty garage space and nature does abhor a vacuum. Will something come up and take that space? An ’02 project? That amazing looking e12 with the S38 on Bring-a-Trailer? An e30 M3? Or will sanity win-out?
by alpinac1_pn9him | Jul 1, 2018 | Uncategorized
It’s been the far side of two-and-half months since the last post and the motor still hasn’t been completed and the body shell hasn’t really progressed. That’s not to say there hasn’t been progress, but it’s been really slow. Rob Siegel, The Hack Mechanic, counsels that in order to stay connected to a project, you need to do something – something, however small – on it regularly, even if just ordering parts or doing internet research. He says every day. Given my work schedule and life in general, I wasn’t getting the garage much more than once a week. Typically, I go out to the garage, start doing some work and find out I was missing a necessary tool or some part. So not much progress was being made, but I did have plenty of stuff to order and some research to do too! Mostly, there was lots of waiting.
Last we left off, the rotating assembly was installed into the block and it turned smoothly. That was good. To help turn the assembly, I installed the clutch and aluminum flywheel.
Having never work on an M20 motor before – let alone built one – the next steps vexed me. Unsure of how to tackle it, I started taking the front covers and hubs around the timing belt.
This went smoothly until I encountered the screws securing the intermediate shaft drive. For some reason, instead of using allen screws, BMW used standard head machine screws. Given the torque on these, one simply refused to loosen. Worse, I started to strip the head as I tried. I went into the house, had a beer, and thought about how to get that thing loosened. It came to me: An impact screwdriver!
The second delay: ordering a tool I didn’t have, an impact screwdriver.
Once that arrived, it was simply a matter of a few blows with the mallet, a few more, a couple more for good measure, and the uncooperative screw was beaten into submission, first barely turning but with each blow going a bit further until I was able to remove it with a normal screwdriver. The intermediate shaft drive was off and the new one on! For good measure, new screws holding the drive were ordered and installed, too.
To get to the main pulley the main crank nut had to be removed. Simple concept but considering it’s torqued to more than 300 ft/lbs…. I puzzled on that for a while, since my electric impact wrench wasn’t strong enough. Talked to a few friends, thus further delaying progress.
One friend suggested a piece of 2×4 in the oil sump, preventing rotation and a breaker bar with an extension – in this case the handle from my floor jack. With that long of an extension, the worry is the torque is going to tip the engine stand over, not break the nut. But it worked great; first the nut slowly – very slowly – loosened. And with more movement came more pressure from me. In short order, the nut was off.
Next came the oil pump. Wait. Where is the new oil pump? Did I order one? How could I forget that? Couldn’t find one so I searched the invoices for the various parts I ordered. None included an oil pump, so that needed to be ordered. Another delay. While waiting I took the pressure relief valve off the old engine and put it on the new.
Once the oil pump was in hand, I mounted it on the underside of the block. First a test fit, with the drive and then locktite on the bolts. But, since I never worked on an M20 before I didn’t know how the pump (and distributor) was driven. Hence my introduction to the intermediate shaft and the drive off the belt. Some momentum was building, after all the delays, but it was still over a month since the last update here.
The head gasket on the block. The head gasket itself is unusual, a metal one that had to be custom made because of the boring out of the block.
The head on that (thanks Frank for the help).
Then I had a heart attack (I don’t think it was caused by the delays in the project — more likely genetics and my unhealthy relationship with fatty meats).
That’s the bad news. And that my hope for a big push on the project seems unlikely; that’s also the bad news.
The good news is that after a few days in the hospital I have the time to write up the progress. Oh, and the full recovery prognosis; that’s the good news too.
Once at home, I put in the heater control panel (not hooked up, but at least there’s not a big hole in the middle of the dash!), tried to run down the short grounding out the gas gauge (no success), swapped in my extra speedo to see if that cured the problem (it didn’t; likely the speedo cable or the fitting at the transmission), cleaned up wiring issues under the dash, attended to many, many little details, and tried to straighten the off kilter steering wheel.
But there’s plenty to still be done. The interior still needs work: There are no seats, the dash has not been populated and lots of little parts are surely missing or broken, including the heater control unit. But that can wait until after we confirm that the car will actually run. To get there, I have a ton of details that need attention: wire in the coil (replaced by an MSD by a previous owner); finish other electric details, like sourcing and attaching battery leads; and plumb in the rest of the fuel delivery system.
With the wiring in, next was the bumpers. They had been sitting around the shop literally collecting dust. I washed them off and then installed them.
A project like this has a ton of small things that need to be done, like running the wire back through the small channels on the inside of the trunk lid. Fitting the wiring through those channel can be a challenge, but patience and persistence pay off.
But it also has some significant challenges. One was the metal brake line to the caliper on the front passenger side. The original one was bent, weak, and just ugly.
The fuel injection is up next but offers some challenges. With the bigger displacement, the stock 323i/C1 fuel injection won’t flow enough fuel. Four years ago, I bought the necessary parts (I’ll describe those in a future post) but Stu swears he doesn’t have them and I can’t find them in my parts stash. Luckily, Stu had similar ones in his parts stash and we should, soon, be good to go on that front…..
The three of us put in the windshield.
And visa-versa for the intake manifold. 
Shortly after doing that, I realized I made a bone-headed mistake and didn’t install the rear main seal nor its housing. A legitimate question: How could this happen? The best excuse I have is that I haven’t disassembled the original engine, bought a used block and that part wasn’t included – and then, in all the excitement of getting the rotating assembly together, I simply forgot about such things.
Then main pulley had to be removed and that required a puller.
The rest of the front cover removal from the old motor and re-installation on the new one went smoothly.
The distributor went in.
But, wait, where are the washers for the head bolts? Nowhere – not ordered. Another delay. Calls to the local BMW dealers showed none in Northern California, so another parts order and another delay.