So Tuesday right after work I rushed home to start the reconstruction and reassembly of the instrument cluster of the BMW. Job one was to create a clean environment and to keep dust and contaminants out of the gear assembly to prolong to life of the gears I was replacing, especially since the original ones only lasted for 302, 075.1 miles.

So the first half hour was taken up with cleaning and dust removing in the area I was going to work, then I got the baggies with the two gears out, the 1st gear, the big 48 toother (still less than an inch across) went over its pin and merged with the gear under it with no problem, then came the tiny 1/4 inch 12 tooth baby gear that drives the entire works. The hole in the center of the gear was way too small. It would not even begin to fit over the small part of the pin drive it was supposed to go over (see the illustration I so thoughtfully made in photoshop for this explanation), I was miffed, mystified and maddened that the part described was not the one that arrived. I could call and order another one, but they closed at 7:00 EDT and it was 7:07 (just my luck) when this discovery was made. I thought for a bit, did I really want to wait another 3 or 4 days for a teeny tiny gear so that I could finish the job I was on? I hit upon an idea, I got out my Dremel tool and all the bits. I found one slightly smaller than the grooved larger area of the tiny drive-shaft, and I found an even smaller one that was the same size as the top part of the drive-shaft pin.
Making the larger hole was easiest, I first wedged a jewelers screwdriver blade into the hole, then locked that in my bench vice, then very slowly and carefully bored out the hole about 3/4 of the way (3/16th of an inch) into the gear. Next step, I had to flip the gear over, change the Dremel tool collett for a smaller bit size and bore out the other side. This was more difficult because I could not use the vise to hold it stationary while I worked (tiny brittle plastic gears in the jaws of the vice, no way) I improvised with a pair of 45° angle needle nose pliers, and worked with patience and my eyes about an inch away from the rotating bit, to keep it perpendicular and centered. With a bit of anxiety I carefully slipped the gear over the pin and delicately tapped down over the grooved shaft until the pin came out a millimeter from the top of the gear. It fit perfectly, I then hand turned the whole affair and watched as everything performed the jobs they were supposed to perform.

Back Home @ 8:57, after a test drive.
That done I cleaned the inside and out of the plexi and plastic gauge housing and re assembled that . Then came the reinsertion into the dash, the reconnection of the electrical components, just after 8:30, two hours since the physical part of the job began, I was once again on the road and the odometer was ticking off the tenths and miles as designed. Now, what to do next? I have front suspension upgrades to perform, and the e-brake to get operational too. More body work and sanding and finally a paint job. looks like a gear-heads work is never done.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
|

First day back at work after Vacation. It was good to be back, I did a lot of stuff during the break. Work was just like I remembered it, and after work was the traditional visit to the Chatterbox before heading to the bowling alley for week 4 of 12 in the Chatterbox League.
Joining me at the Box were Mike Wilson and Rich Culy (along with the Commish, Deanne, Rick H. (the Judge) and the background noise of Bill Brooks and Jack and Joan), Listening to ''A Ghost In The House'', by Red Light Driver (Play Count: 2)
I had a decent night in the Kegling Arena (157,189,157), as did my team collectively (we took all three games and the 8 points that comes along with that kind of thing). We moved up from 11th place to 5th while team Four of Five plummeted further into last place. After that contest was decided several of the Kegler crew headed to Rockets to launch spheres at each other in a contests of pool. My teammate Kristi Wright came along as did Rich Culy , Jill Ewing, Chris West, Davie Sherry and David Andrichik (the Commish). The whole time I was a bit distracted, in the trunk of the 'Vert was a box of BMW parts from Bavarian Autosports to continue the augmentation of the Blue Frankenstein, and I knew that by the time I finished the pool games and watching Brett Favre take apart his old team I wouldn't have time to tear into the priority project. What was the priority project? Putting the two tiny gears back into the odometer of the Bimmer so that the miles could once again go rolling by as I enjoyed the ever improving company of my project car.

I've waited over two years to put these guys into the instrument cluster above, I guess one more day won't kill me.

Listening to ''Drive She Said'', by Stan Ridgeway (Play Count: 1)
Chuck Pace ©2009 
|

Parts and Pieces: Part 1 (of many)
You say your old car is a piece of junk. That is usually not true in the purest sense. Many components are still valuable, probably most even, it's just that as collective they are not playing well with each other. Rebuilding any old car, say circa 1986, you are going to run into some parts deficiencies. You can't just walk into an Auto-Zone or O'Reiily Auto parts and say hey I need four stabilizer bar linkage isolator bushings, and two control arm bushings for my BMW E-28, and expect them to look at you like you didn't just say that in German. They will give it the old Yankee try on their computer, after you explain that an E-28 is a BMW 5 series body with one of 5 different engines and a couple of transmission options produced in Germany from 1982-1988. They will even show you the near misses as they work down to the part or parts that they can special order but none of the local stores seem to have it right now.

When I joined the BMW CCA (Car Club of America) three years ago I started getting their awesome Roundel Magazine monthly, this publication is on par with an Automotive magazine on store shelves, but is exclusive too and for BMW's and their owners. It was there in the pages of the Roundel that I have found several parts places that stock parts for my antique Ultimate Driving Machine (ultimately, ultimate driving machines have evolved as the ultimate bar as ultimately been risen several times in the past 24 years). The first choice for parts for any of my searches is Bavarian Autosport in Portsmouth New Hampshire, they have been compiling and remanufacturing and specializing in BMW and Mini parts for over 30 years. I will be expecting a package from "BavAuto" (as their license plates and other exclusive pasts and pieces proclaim them to be) today when I get back to work after a week off, where I did my fair share of crawler-ing and noodling on and under the Blue Frankenstein.
Two of the pieces in todays expected package are no bigger than a quarter apiece, but will result in untold happiness for me, they are the odometer gears that broke in my 85 E-28 right after I got it back on the road after 2+ years of parts searching. The odometer died at 302,075.1 miles and I have since then put at least 500 miles on it since then, so I've moved to odometer up manually (once I got the instrument cluster out of my dash) to 303,303 miles, since I do so love the palindrome in all it's guises.
Above: The E-28 instrument waits in the passenger floorboard to get "Geared Up!"
There are other pieces in that box too, including two control arm bushings for the right front suspension, and they were less than $13 apiece form BavAuto, way less than the $33 apiece I could have gotten in a week on special order from the local parts chains.
The neighbors have been asking, What's he building in there.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
|

So I'm getting out of the garage for a few minutes, other things have been going on besides car concerns after all. This year is steam-rolling by with no one at the brakes.

One Chatterbox bowling league has ended and another resumed since I last bragged, or moaned about my Kegling abilities or shortfalls. Another 'Nothing Better To Do' league started as well, I still am a floating alternate (one of three for a single spot) in the NBTD league but have bowled twice in three weeks, and very likely will be on the hardwoods again tomorrow. I started the NTBD league on fire with a 519 series (on fire for me) and 173 average. In the Chatterbox league the next night I didn't fare so well, coming in at a 143 average. Now I don't believe in sand-bagging to establish a low average and higher handicap, which should be evident from the next two weeks scores. Week two I averaged 165 with a 496, and our team lost all 8 points in the contest. By week three my average for the night was a walloping 178, and my league average after 3 weeks 162, putting me in 4th place for regular league bowlersso far in this young league, and 6th counting Chris West (subs) one week 187 average to lead all keglers, and Jon Robinson's (subs) 3 week 184. Last Monday I was well on my way to a 600 series, starting with a 203, following with a 191 and ending a little weaker with a 1mumble,mumble.
My second series in the NTBD league (week 3) I averaged 183 for the night and now have a 178 average there, if I bowl again on Sunday my Monday scores will probably still be a bit under my Sunday efforts, since my arm is much more tired after Sunday's efforts. Ve shall zee., vot ve shall zee.

Chuck Pace ©2009 
|

About 3 years ago my daily driver BMW rolled craps on me. I was driving home, and nearly there, headed east on I-70 exiting onto Post road, down shifting from 4th to 3rd gear the shift lever went limp in my hand. Still rolling up the exit ramp, the shifter, loose and disconnected in my hand I tried desperately, several times, to engage a gear that was obviously not there. Like trying to pick a lock with a limp spaghetti noodle the effort was futile. Still on an incline, ten yards from the top of the ramp and it's downhill grade to a service station the car came to a complete stop, all inertia gone. With no transmission gear to engage and no working parking brake to hold the car, I held the car in place with the foot brakes and called Jenni on my cell phone. I told her to bring the truck and stop and get a log chain at the Home Depot, across the street (at the moment for me, at least a million miles away) and come and rescue me. Holding the brake for twenty or thirty minutes while she drove and shopped and circled around on the Interstate my legs were trembling and weak when she arrived. Together (me still holding the car on an incline with my feet, her dragging the chain and hooking the vehicles together) we got the car up over the incline and eventually home, with only a few head snapping jerks and yanks.
Thus began my quest for an aluminum rod with two perpendicular shafts to connect the shift lever to the transmission of my 1986 BMW 535i. A quest over 2 years in the searching. The Blue Frankenstein was sidelined while I searched the internet, Dreyer and Rinebold and E-Bay stores for the necessary piece. Apparently very few 3.5 liter BMW engines were coupled with the manual transmissions of the 5 series automobile from 86 to 88 and imported to the United States.

Here I quote myself from a post from my Blog archives: Other than that Mrs. Lincoln..., 10/13/2006

At just before 8:00 I jumped into the Bimmer, for a ride to remember, as I got to the interstate I noticed the car would not go into 5th gear, so I drove home in 4th. At my exit at Post I down shifted, or at least tried to, that's when the shifter disengaged from any mechanical relationship to the transmission, and became a flippy floppy knob on an aluminum stick, Joy, Joy! I will take that frustration to the bowling alley tonight and try to smash some of the pins.

And again from another Blog Archive: Biting My Tongue, 11/02/2006:

I tore into the BMW on Sunday, when the weather was nice and the sun was out. The shifter and center console are are all in the back seat, the actual shift mechanism is still in the vehicle, but that is where my problems lie. The lever on the bottom of the shifter is snapped off, and I could not find the connection point to the tranny, but I wouldn't be able to do anything with it even if I had. I'm going to have to call Edwards and have them put on a new one, or a used one or something. Maybe I can find one at Brothers and put it on myself, maybe pigs can fly. Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday.

About a month and a half after the "shiftless" incident Jenni and I bought a newer BMW 5 series on E-Bay, and drove it for another year and some months before a tragic accident of my own doing had me rear-ending Jenni (in our own truck) and "totaling" the vehicle. The insured value of the Mädchen was not high enough to repair the damages, and I could not keep the vehicle and repair her both, therefore we accepted the insurance pay-out and a concentrated effort to rebuild the Blue Frankenstein was again underway.
Above: The Blue Frankenstein's nose after a tangle with a fence or something worse. Prior to my ownership. Chuck Pace ©2006

Stay tuned for part 3: Abby Somebody, finding unwanted parts.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
|

So, do you watch those makeover shows? I do, sometimes. I watch the ones about older, saggy, unexceptional men and women who have low self-esteem, bad habits and poor work ethics and still have good enough letter writing skills to get someone to rework them into something (slightly) less hideous (hmmm, maybe I should start writing some letters). I watch the mass marketed ones too, the biggest loser's and the lot. These fall into the Reality TV genre's I guess, but I watch very little of that (other reality crap) usually, but these are kind of different. In the shows I like to watch people have to work for something other than greed and money. Self improvement and awareness are keynotes in the makeover shows I like to watch. I like the HGTV rebuilds and the pimp my ride and auto resto shows too, but those are primarily on the west coast, so I'll never see that kind of stuff here in the boring mid-west (I could send my share of letters and photos to those shows, I tell ya). I have watched the Extreme Home makeover shows for years, and was delighted to meet Ty Pennington and his bud's while they were in town last year.
Still, I am only one man, living the true reality of reality. I have no producers, directors, camera-men or corporate giants behind me shoving the latest, coolest most efficient and green items into my lap so that I can upgrade my junk! Hell, most of my junk is just that, junk. Still I persevere.
I have a budget that would rival none of those I have mentioned, they spend more on catering in one episode than I can for upgrades and repairs in an entire year of scrimping. I have to wait for a really good bonus from work (off the sweat of my own labors and toils; there are no atta' boy bonuses, nor do I expect them) to buy a few parts for my old car, or to replace dying or decaying pieces of my crappy 17 year old mass consumption house.
That is why, when asked if I've got the old Bimmer finished I say I'm still working on it. I think a true car guy is always working on it, even when it surpasses most others' expectations that guy is still working on it. I'm not that guy. I dream of being that guy. I could soo be that guy with a little better budget...
My daughter got married in September of 2005, by Thanksgiving of the same year they were headed to Florida to live. Her then husband (retired) left behind a beater of an old BMW, a 1986 535i with over 290,000 miles on it. In April of 2006, after another Automotive tragedy (My Lebaron Convertible bursting into flames as I drove to work) I learned that the BMW was mine if I could get it to run. It took a $78 BMW battery to get it to start, that is what I tell people it cost me to own this monster. Of course there was a lot more money sunk into the enterprise of driving a 20 year old foreign auto with any regularity.

The $78 Car I dubbed the Blue Frankenstein went to the shop a few times for minor inconveniences, (like not running at all) but for the most part it was reliable for a year and a half. That was before the shift selector lever to the transmission linkage snapped while I was driving home one night, as luck would have it (and this was a lucky bit of luck in and unlucky happening) the car was in neutral when the shifter broke. After that the car sat for 2 1/2 years until I could find the elusive part, that even Dreyer and Reinbold BMW in Indianapolis said was unavailable. The Story Continues tomorrow.


Chuck Pace ©2009 
|