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.

And visa-versa for 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?

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.

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.

So, the first delay: buy a used housing on eBay and wait for it to arrive; once it does, remove clutch and flywheel, install housing and seal, reinstall clutch and 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.

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.

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.

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 distributor went in.

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).

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.

Some good progress was made, but it took a long time and had many delays.

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.

With the crank in the block and the pistons and rods assembled, next was putting them into the cylinders.

First, rods needed to be separated. The bolts were torqued down pretty good and I needed a little help loosening them. An impact wrench does the trick.

Then, on goes the ring compressor.

And placed in the block (with rod bearing installed and assembly lube applied. Also, make sure the crank journal for that cylinder is at the bottom of its stroke, so the con rod doesn’t ding it (don’t ask me how I learned that lesson!).

And placed in the block (with rod bearing installed and assembly lube applied. Also, make sure the crank journal for that cylinder is at the bottom of its stroke, so the con rod doesn’t ding it (don’t ask me how I learned that lesson!).

Torque the rod bolts.

Meanwhile, the reassembly of the body has stalled, waiting for a new headliner. The head, too, is MIA, still at the machine shop waiting for “the end of the week.”

Up next: oil pump, flywheel and the head getting back for the machine shop and then mating it to the block.

Avid readers will remember that the body work was chugging along, accomplishments each week to keep the momentum going, but the machinist seemingly was making no progress. For months he kept promising to be done “by the end of the week.” And then, about a month ago, “by the end of the week” turned into promises to finish “tomorrow.” The “tomorrow” promise went on for weeks.

Well, tomorrow finally came. About a week ago. For the lower end. Which was picked up and carted off to my garage, leaving the head behind to be completed, yes you guessed it, “by the end of the week.”

Since I knew assembling the lower end would take me a couple of weeks, I have not called the machinist about the head. Instead, I started chugging along.

Before assembly could begin, I needed to (wanted to?) paint the block. While I asked the machinist to do that about a month ago, I saw it was unpainted when I went to pick it up. My friend helping me advised, correctly, not to say anything. Rather, we took it home, I taped up the openings and primed and painted it, black.

Then I tried to figure out which way the end caps went (internet research helped as it wasn’t obvious from trying to fit them).

According to Stu, it’s best for the project to keep momentum. So, while there was certainly time to finish the body and paint work since my last update in early December, he chose to do a little each week (holidays excluded), slow but steady. This approach was perfect, as the motor parts were languishing in the machine shop, that turning into it’s own little comedy.

While it might have been a little overly dramatic to call the comedy with the motor a tragedy, I tried to appreciate the humor in the situation. For background, when I dropped off the block and attendant parts in November at the shop, the machinist said he’d be finished in about two or three weeks, as he reeled off a list of projects that sound like they wouldn’t be finished in twice that time. I was in no real hurry, as the justdashes.com was not going to finish my dash until mid-January at the earliest. That meant the body would not be ready for many months. So why rush on the motor?

Who knew that meant that more than three months later I still wouldn’t have the motor back from the machinist?

Now, to his credit, after 10 weeks of saying his work would be finished by the end of the week, the most recent time I called he said it would be done “tomorrow.” That was three days ago. But, progress!

Real progress: the slow but steady body work.

As previously reported, the hood and trunk were painted in November and in early December Stu finished rust repairs and priming the body. That continued a few days a week.

Almost a month ago, progress was slow but hopeful.

The car had been taken to Sacramento and the shell stripped down. Motor parts were ordered, acquired, and taken to the machine shop. I wrote about both tracks progressing, but slowly.

Since then one track is completely stalled, the other chugging along.

Stalled is any progress by the machine shop. He’s busy building another motor – this a 4 cylinder air-cooled Porsche variety. What’s taking so long isn’t clear, other than, well, it’s taking a long time. Frustrating.

Body restoration, however, is humming a long. Disassembly and repair continued. The torn spare tire well was touched-up. The rusty, torn piece was cut out.

And some sheet metal welded in and made to look pretty.

And blended in.

Rust was found hiding under the rubber trunk gasket.

And welded up.

The engine compartment continued to be cleaned up.