Seemed like a good idea on paper....

Really enjoy seeing updates on this car, thanks for sharing

Thanks! Winter here gets ridiculously cold so it slows down progress BUT I am slowly making progress on it. This weekend is supposed to be less cold and miserable (it's been -40 with the wind the past week) so I should hopefully get washer fluid lines run so I can then focus on engine installation.

I have the bits and pieces for running the washer fluid line from the trunk to the front, I just need it to be warmer so I can get things installed. Still need to sort out what I need to wire it all into place and the bracket/brace to hold the washer fluid reservoir. I have a few ideas for a bracket, but may require actually purchasing some sheet metal to make it happen since majority of the stuff I have is a bit flimsy and ideally I want the bracket to be able to support the weight of a full container and be rigid enough that it won't slosh all over. 

BUT with the lines run, I can at least get the engine and transmission back into the car and go about getting everything else hooked up and measured. 

The engine AND transmission are in their home! Now the hard part of everything else...

I suppose a giant word wall update is in order.

Engine/Transmission is in.

Modified the hood slightly for access to washer nozzles.

Washer fluid run from the trunk to the front.

Lots of grinding on the exhaust completed (still a bit more to do).

Grinding on intake pieces completed.

RH CV shaft installed.

Battery pulled (needs to be replaced).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plan of attack for this weekend:

Finish grinding exhaust (more to clean up how it looks).

Paint exhaust (heavy coat for 'visible' areas, light coats for covered areas)

Wrap exhaust.

Install exhaust.

Install LH CV shaft.

Scuff amd prep valve covers.

Paint valve covers.

Coolant hoses.

Transmission fluid (pray for no leaks)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slowly coming together, I have a list at home that never seems to get any shorter no matter how much I think I accomplish I always have something else to add. At least I am slowly running out of things I need to 'buy' to get it finished at least (Battery, o2 sensors are the last big ticket items, the rest is small stuff, hose clamps etc.). Lots of cleaning and detailing to do in the engine bay as well. It should photograph well for a couple pictures at least!

New video will be up later but I did get a fair amount accomplished this past weekend.

• Swapped new plugs in, very straight forward, put a bit of silver anti-seize on the threads and make them snug them down.
• 6 quarts of transmission fluid poured in. Nowhere near full but was enough to verify the pan doesn't leak. Thankfully the pan does not leak so all is well there.
• A bit more grinding on the crossover pipe (feeds both sides of the exhaust to the Turbo), got it cleaned up and a couple coats of paint on it. 
• Crossover pipe installed. I had originally wanted to wrap the pipe with exhaust wrap but after a discussion with a friend we came to the conclusion that because of how low it sits, it had a higher probability of being snagged by road detriment and becoming a hazard. The installation process was involved as well, requiring some pipe bashing, colorful words and removal of additional engine bay pieces, it lost a lot of the paint from scraping on other bits and pieces, but it's in and mounted in place.
• Turbo bolted to crossover pipe. This was also a bit of fun since only 2 of the 4 bolts are easily accessible, and putting a gasket in this time resulted in a bit of frustration due to turbo          orientation, but its in and tightened down and hopefully won't leak this time.
• Washer fluid hose on the hood side, straight forward. Was able to reuse OEM pieces to cut back some cost, added zip-ties to the end of the nozzles to assist in keeping the hose on. (vacuum hose, mostly insurance due to age)
• Did a bunch of grinding on the pipe that goes from the turbo to the engine. Mostly cleaned it up so I could paint it and put heat reflective tape on it.

Did some general cleaning on a few parts, got the valve covers soaking to take years of poor maintenance off them internally

Slowly but surely the lists and piles of parts is gradually getting smaller, still a handful of things I need to purchase, but the 'large' projects to get the car back on the road are getting to be fewer and fewer, hopefully be starting the car soon!

This year marks 13 years of owning this car, and this reassembly journey is definitely living up to the luck of the number.

Firstly, nothing is fitting without a fight. To fit the down pipe I had to removed the CV shaft that has turned zero km's and had to fight it off. Now when trying to reinstall it, for the life of me I can't figure out how I got it on squarely last time. While fighting to get it installed I notice the ball joint boot looks in bad shape, check the ball joint and it feels crunchy so I guess it's time for new control arms, and may as well replace the strut rod bushes I've never touched since they are probably due. Also the CV shaft still isn't installed.

Picked up some hose to make heater lines since I would need to cut up the OEM hoses to add tees for coolant too and from the turbo. Well, as it turns out, due to packaging constraints, I need to use the OEM molded hoses to clear the upper intake plenum, so I get to pull them off the parts car and cut them up and reuse them.

While I am at the parts Concorde, I also need to pull the 'reservoir to pump' power steering hose which I am kicking myself because after hours of searching, I can not find that hose anywhere and since it travels a funky route with sharp bends, I can't use generic 3/4" hydraulic hose. 

It *might* make it out by my self imposed deadline for the cruise, but that's only so long as the weather cooperates and I can get the heater hoses off the parts car this weekend. 

Still need to drop the fuel pressure and install the rest of the exhaust after the large welds are ground down so I can fit band clamps over the ends. 

It just wants to fight all progress, I just want to drive the car.

Not a fan of YouTube forcing people to the website to watch videos, but I guess thats for ad revenue....

Getting a lot done tho, should be creating and uploading the latest video later today.

A week behind on my video posting. I have A LOT more accomplished now. 

Car is *almost* ready to fire up!

I need to change the position of the gauge on the pressure regulator so I can see it better to get it to 42psi, and need to check starter power cable voltage and possibly replace the starter. Everything I repaired on the harness works since the solenoid kicks in, starter just doesn't spin. I tested the starter this morning at work and first test it didn't spin, second test it spun but had a high ripple, so it may still be the starter... I hope.

New one is coming, I may retest my spare starter again as well in hopes that maybe it will get my car running and I can get the car finished and out to enjoy it.

Well...

Put the replacement starter in place (fought in excess of an hour) and.... Nothing. Nada. Not even solenoid noise. So I have started the disassembly of the engine bay to fight out the main power harness to check continuity. Could I have left it in place and checked voltage? Yes, but I'd still need to remove the power harness if something is wrong with the cable since down by the starter I needed to use the camera on my phone to verify that the power cable was in fact on the stud on the starter.

Thankfully, everything else seems to be functioning 100%, I was able to check all of the LED bulbs I installed in my tail lights and I got everything working (reverse lights included) and swapped over the interior to LED bulbs as well. 

There are a few other things I can tackle while I avoid the frustration of the car not starting. I think I am about 3psi off on my fuel pump (can't check without power tho), and the front suspension bits need to be tightened down, and the shop could use some cleaning / organizing, so I have things to do..

I just read through this and wow, what a journey. Getting to the end and finding out that you are in the last stages is great! It is like binging a series to find out the the final episode airs tomorrow! Keep it up. 

In reply to singleslammer :

Thanks! I do hope the final episode is a ways off since I hope to get this thing on the track to use and figure out further short comings overall. As I work on things I am making mental notes of places I can see (based on some of the crazier builds here) that I will need to monitor as  potential weak points.

It's such a weird car overall. I can only hope to get it to a point that it is reliable enough I can hand the keys over to another driver so they can try it out. It's surprisingly capable with only a few changes from OEM, and most of the parts I have put on are still technically OEM parts. 

Well, I got the starter figured out, the solenoid wire broke under the poly loom, so it was an easy repair once I could look at the car and not get overly frustrated with it. 

It starts! Well not really, it turns over and struggled to fire but I assumed that was going to happen from a combination of old fuel, dry fuel lines etc. It finally did catch but I need to have my foot on the throttle to catch and run and it sounds like its not firing on all cylinders, *hopefully* its the fuel pressure being too low. 

And for what its worth, only 2 leaks! One is a faulty clamps on the power steering pump, banded internally and the banding butted against itself and didn't properly tighten up. The other is the oil pressure sensor connection area it looks like, so its getting closer, almost there tho.

The biggest issue I've had to overcome was looking at the car in disgust and just hating that its been 3 years off the road because of me trying to make someone else happy with my car. I love the colour, and its the colour I wanted and obsessed over but, there are flaws, there was a lot of wasted money put out on materials that were never used, was supposed to be a learning experience and I was going to spray some primer, some colour, some of the clear but that never happened and now I look at the car and it just starts to piss me off more and more because there were times I no longer had control over what was happening and I was being pushed to do things the way someone else wanted it done and it frustrated me. I eventually but my back up and began the process of taking over control of my car but there was already a great deal of 'damage' done in the figurative sense that I have had the pleasure of having to reverse it all and discovering more questionable things done over time from someone I used to trust and look up to.

Car starts and runs and is roughly about a weekend of work a way from  being driveable.

Unfortunately there was a fire in the basement at home. Everyone is fine and safe, majority is smoke damage. Luckily the house is still standing, and insurance will be covering us for a lot of stuff, just the process. Thankfully the shop is not attached to the house, but unfortunately, a lot of stuff has been relocated to the shop for safe keeping while insurance goes through the house for cleaning, antiques and such mostly, so the car is slightly boxed in from working on it for a little bit. 

I'll keep everyone updated as things progress, I'm now 'living' in my sisters basement so I can try to have a semblance of normalcy right now. 

Ugh man that sounds bad but glad the damage isn't nearly as bad as it could have been.  

Well... things have not progressed very much on the car.

I *did* have it running decently for a bit, even drove it out of the shop under it's own power for the first time in 3 years, then it started sputtering, coughing and running like garbage.

Sadly, it just wasn't to be just yet it seems. Hopefully I can arrange to get it on a trailer to town for the winter so I can get the last few things squared away while I have a heated garage to work in.

Insurance is putting us into a house in town for winter, which luckily has a garage that is big enough for me to work on it there and get it sorted by spring, it's soooo close then I can hopefully get it to Gimli at least to get some laps in and enjoy the car for awhile and get a plan on building the spare engine and cleaning up the stand alone harness's to get the Dominator installed cleanly / properly.

So after looking closer at the garage space in town, it would be big enough to store the car and do a few small things on it, (Oil change, basic maintenance go over) but needing to replace all of the lower front suspension pieces and crawl underneath to reattach the exhaust and possibly drop the fuel tank to replace the pressure gauge, there just isn't enough space overall because it is a larger car. Also being a non runner and 30 minutes from town means getting it loaded onto a trailer would be a chore trying to get friends to come give me a hand getting it loaded onto the trailer. 

Thank fully, there is space for the much smaller BMW to fit inside AND receive some of the work it needs to have done on the front end. It means it is another year my car sits but once power is properly restored to the house (shop power at the farm comes from the house) I can go and spend a weekend with it and try to get the fuel system sorted out and install my passenger side mirror and the other little projects I want to get sorted out for it. 

Soon it will be on the road then *hopefully* get it on the track so I can get seat time with it.

So, part of me wants to get the car running as is. Part of me wants to ditch the turbo and go to ITB's instead.

The car utilizes a split plenum common on modern vehicles, a composite upper common air area and an aluminum split chamber lower portion. I could conceivably cut apart a spare composite plenum to take measurements from, I'm spitballing ideas and I really want ITB's on something... I should probbaly just get the car back to running with the turbo, then go from there.

I do agree with a few friends that I should run a secondary fuel line and mount my regulator in the engine bay vs. on the tank, would make pressure adjustments a lot easier...

I guess I'm just over thinking a few ideas, I really want to get the car back on the road so it can be enjoyed.

Well, another update is due. Car is locked in the shop at the farm with a car cover over it. After I get everything to repair the BMW's front end, I hope to get parts on order for this.

Needs a few front suspension bits as well as going to replace that gauge on the fuel pressure regulator, and going to check RA for 6 new coil packs as well since at 385,xxxKms, if one has failed, the others can't be too far behind... I may grab my spare upper plenum to see if the 2.5 bar map sensor I picked up fits or if it needs modification to fit (same idea as the OEM sensor) in case it needs some filing so I can practice to avoid bits of plastic in the engine. 

Hopefully by the time spring rolls around, I can have a weekend of wrenching with a friend and get her running properly. Going to be a loooooong winter tho...

Crikey. nearly 4 months and zero progress on this thing, jeepers.

So the car is presently still in the same location, haven't made any forward momentum on it at all. There is also waaaay to much snow around the building it is in right now as well. I do plan on going out there possibly next weekend to make sure nothing of importance is on the floor of the shop since there is always water on the floor when it starts melting. 

I have narrowed down the few things it needs (hopefully) to be back to running. 6 coil packs, swap and wire in the 2.5bar MAP, replace the fuel pressure gauge (hopefully to properly adjust fuel pressure) then let her run and hopefully get everything bled (cooling system, top up transmission fluid) THEN trailer it to town to get the lower front suspension replaced and aligned and *hopefully* enjoy it for a long while and slowly start the build on the 4.oL stroker engine and the aerodynamic package idea I have for it as well. 

This concludes this thrilling update. Until next time friends!

Well, some progress happened.

I ordered / received parts for it. 6 ignition coils and both lower control arms and strut rods, and possibly soon I can spend some time working on it and they *finally* hooked up the power to the shop so I can work past sundown if I have free time. Also purchased a fuel pressure tester so I can figure out what my pressure is at my rail and get the car to stay running. Still need to splice in the Hyundai map sensor I bought (OEM turbo Genesis also has the air temp on the map sensor, rated 2.5BAR so maore than sufficient) and hopefully be able to run 7psi past 3500rpm.

I am excited to be driving it again. It has been way to long.