Getting fit.. The nerd way
Since as long as I can remember I have wanted to know how things work. Everything needed to be understood. To give you an idea of how long I have been this way, as a 4 year old I would run and hide if the power went out, not for fear of the dark but for fear that mum will find out that I have disassembled every torch in the house to understand how they work.
So with a desire to understand how things work, and to hack other things to be more than they ever should have been why is it I ignored my most important machine.. my body.
Flabby?
I don’t think I have ever been “fit”. I was never healthy in School, and in my early 20’s whilst I was a skinny guy I had a horrific diet and did no exercise (You know you have a problem when your storing red bull and V under the computer room floor). I then met the girl of my dreams, and settled down a little (no kids, just a cat). This settling down had the unsettling effect of my weight going from 75kg to 100kg. The scary thing is I don’t ever remember it happening, it just did. I look back at photos from when I was holidays and think, “wow dude you had a serious set of man boobs”.
It was with this in mind that a few years ago I procured a 2nd hand mountain bike and started to ride. At first I rode up the road and turned around, I was lucky to do 2km a week. Eventually I pushed that to 6km a week and now I do about 100km a week.
Motivation through tech
When I started riding I took my GPS with me and used the collected times and distances to track my progress in a spreadsheet. Eventually I started using a program called Ascent, which I talk about in a previous blog posting. Now I have kicked it up a few notches and use strava.com to log my rides (more on that in another post).
One of the big issues with exercising is just like the weight gain and fitness loss it is really difficult to see gradual change early on. I made it a science, and logged everything to the point now that Strava.com can show me the times I ride, the distance, the vertical elevations and total ascent along with heaps of other metrics like wattage.
Diets are a waste of your time and money!
I tried a few different diets and programs over the years, and honestly I found them all a total waste of time. Sure some of them will help you loose some weight, but your not learning anything. You don’t learn about food and energy until you start being a little nerdy with it. To understand and track my food intake I use a program called myfitnesspal (its actually a website with a iPhone app). This process has opened my eyes, to the point where I now am a little embarrassed that I thought a foot long subway sub, 2 cookies and a coke is the healthy option. The cookies alone account for 1/3 of my daily calorie intake!
So out went the diets and in came science and knowledge, by understanding that I had to understand what fuelled my body the same way I would fuss over the octane levels of the fuel I put into my car before a trackday I came to understand that half the problem was easily fixed.
The moral of the story
I now try to think of my body like a machine, and I am now starting to see the rewards. I feel heaps better, I am able to do heaps more and I am only just now starting to scratch the surface. 8 more kilo’s to go, and I am constantly moving the goalpost on my fitness goals.
I try to understand what your eating, and what effect it has on my system. I have started to experiment with cutting out some foods and replacing them with others (I cut back Wheat and now have a more Asian influenced diet with wholegrain rices and the like).
I am now having a blast setting goals and measuring them with real metrics. Whilst I am no athlete and certainly not the fastest guy on a bike by any stretch of the imagination the results are starting to blow my mind and totally shatter my previous thoughts on what I am capable of.
International Lighthouse Lightship weekend with the radio gang
So earlier in the year I got my foundation amateur radio license. I always had a bit of fun with CB when I had my 4x4′s, but the audience is limited. A mate of mine introduced me to the Manly Warringah Radio Society (MWRS), a great group of Amateur Radio / Electronics enthusiasts who meet once a week in Terrey Hills.
Anyway… I digress. I stumbled across some videos on YouTube a few months ago of the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend and was instantly keen to participate. The MWRS put together a contingent to participate in the lighthouse weekend by activating Barrenjoey lighthouse.
So as August rolled around I volunteered to assist in the clubs efforts, and found myself hiking up to the lighthouse on a saturday morning. Together we had a few antennas strung up, and I managed to log about a page full of contacts from around Australia.
I heard a few of the old timers have a laugh at me as I slowly came to grips with the operation of the radio and my inability to hear callsigns amongst the static. In my efforts to concentrate I even asked a guy coming in from Canberra if he was a lighthouse (blush).
Anyway… I made a video from bits of the weekend and threw it up on YouTube. Have a watch!
Schultz update: Why the F**K is fuel coming out of the vacuum line into the plenum.
It’s been a while since I have updated the blog on Schutlz progress. I guess the first reason is timing; I have been a little busy with Uni assignments, work commitments and a few other and I guess its always hard to document confusion.
A few weeks ago I proudly proclaimed, “I think its ready”, and not 10 minutes later we noticed steam coming out of the exhaust. With the oil under the oil filler cap looking milky we instantly had concerns for the health of the head gasket.
When water and oil mixes under pressure it makes this horrible mayonnaise coloured goo. This would have been a major disaster for us, with the engine having to be pulled apart and the gasket replaced. Whilst the cars old, its engine was rebuilt 10 years ago and we think it has only done 20,000 – 30,000 km’s since then.
So I took the role of Dr House, quizzing Marty on what else this could be caused by. We both had the feeling that perhaps there is water leaking into the engine from a water gallery or a hose.
Adjourning with our tails between our legs we pushed Shultz back into its home, and went off to ponder things. Marty, who was kept awake by Schultz cries of pain from outside his front door was thinking things over and shooting SMS messages with ideas over to me. I sent him messages back with very helpful “maybes” and “sure” and “lets not be too hasty”. Who says denial is a river in Egypt.
We got together again a few weeks later with the idea to start to chase hoses, with the idea to find out what they are all carrying and if any of them are leaking water into the intake plenum. Marty had found water in the intake pipe during the week, and it was out best lead so far.
I won’t go into all the details. I don’t have to. I can summarise what we found easily… Schultz is a shit fight. We found fuel pouring out of vacuum lines (dead fuel pressure regulator), we found water hoses and vacuum lines going into weird connectors with springs and we found that the more “crap” we removed from the motor the better it ran. Removing these weird hoses, removing bits we couldn’t see where needed and generally cleaning things up has reduced the steam coming from the exhaust significantly.
So, for the moment we are thinking we may have sorted the issue out. We will flush out the whole cooling system in the coming weeks and see what happens.
I mentioned in a earlier posting that the brakes were very spongy, so we removed the brake master cylinder for investigation. After prodding and pulling the piston (narrowly missing copping a eye full of brake fluid more than once.. seriously.. be careful!) we cant see any issues. Marty dropped it off at a mates brake business, and it has been tested and verified as working. So we will put it back in soon, with new rubbers and fluid. It may be a vacuum issue that is causing the brakes to be soft, we will add it to the list.
So… I need to sort out my next few weeks and get down there so we can keep going!
Schultz gets switches!
We are slowly running out of jobs to do on Schultz.. Today Dallas G, Marty and I fitted the OEM switches up onto the dash where the air-con vents used to live. (We will need to use a little hot glue to secure them straight, but will do that later. )
Last job to do is sort the brakes which we think they are a little squishy and get some new seats. Any E30 brake experts out there?
The electrics in this car so far have been fairly easy to sort out, the only major issues have been things added to the car since it rolled off a German production line in the mid 80s!
I should add at this point that I wish I had a laser cutter and an inkling on how to use it. 
Marty did a top job with the Dremel tool, but this project needs more lasers.
Volvo S60 Australian Advertisement song
Okay I spent ages looking for this song, and shazam on my iphone let me down. With my policy of “if I cant find it on the internet when I get the answer I have to put it on the internet” the music on the Ausie Volvo S60 add is Dash & wills – Out of control. It’s kinda poppy and not normally what I am into but I have visions of cars sliding around when ever I hear it.
Schultz progress! All those tricky jobs.. DONE!
Having the HVAC system out gives us some serious leg room!
After a very long break between workshop days we finally got a chance to get stuck into Schultz. With some help from our mate Dallas, Marty and I started to tackle some of the jobs we had been avoiding.
First up we decided to tackle the remains of the HVAC system, which we had tried to get degassed over the last few weeks but the guy we called never showed up. Marty was mucking about with the gas lines and filler point, and after pushing the centre of the filler valve we quickly realised that the system was empty. This made our day, and we quickly where able to start to remove the piping from the HVAC box bolted to the firewall. With some man handling, and exploration to find the bolts that hold the unit into the car we had it out and disposed off.
With the confidence that one big job was done I got stuck into the alarm system, starting at the control box / speaker and working my way along its wiring harness. I was shocked to find that the alarm was not an imobiliser at all, and just had
Chasing the Alarm System from its source..
connections to the indicators, ingnition (to pick up when the car was on), sensors (which we ripped out) and the battery. I was shocked that with in about 15 minutes the alarm was sitting in a garbage bin and the car was working perfectly. So yeah it was news to me that old alarms (this one was stamped 1994) where just alarms, and would not stop you starting the car.
Another big scary job… ticked off. Next was to go through the spagetti of wiring that was left from the dash removal. Marty and I quickly figured out what much of the wiring did, and disposed of it all just as fast. Wires for the old stereo system where found and removed. There was one harness that just had a relay on it that we couldnt figure out so we unclipped it from the harness and are keeping it for that “ohh thats what it does” moment that may come later.
So to my surprise we had the HVAC system mostly out (bit of work left to do under the bonnet), the wiring under control, the alarm out, the rear bumper bar back on, the charger mounted into the boot and the horribly installed aftermarket power window system figured out.
Sight for sore eyes, 1 alarm system junked!
I had hoped we could cover the cracked dash with fabric, but the stuff I purchased was just too thick. Marty has used some speaker cover fabric stuff before so we will get some of that for next time.
So next step is going to be good fun.. Rewire the dash, install the dash, clean up the switches, and then start looking at the performance side of our new toy.
We still need to figure out the seat-belts and seats, with the ones that the car had being worthless.. I think we may need to head off to a wrecker for that.
Cat Cafe’s – A 2 minute guide
Normally in a cafe you expect to see nothing more than a menu made up of tasty treats and cakes you wouldn’t tell your doctor about, but this is no ordinary cafe.
Cat Cafe’s or as they are called in Japan Neko Cafe’s started in Korea and spread into Japan like wildfire to fill a trend of loneliness perhaps left by the growing trend to not have children or work far from home and family. Many suggest that the Japanese are now starting to turn their backs on the traditional cycle of marriage and children and that pet ownership is on the rise and the fertility rate is at a record low with the average woman only having 1.2 children. However with long work hours or a pet-free apartment they turn to the concept of pet rental for their dose of companionship.
When I talk.. Cat's listen!
Cat Cafe’s are easy to find in Japan and all follow a similar process for visiting guests. The process is generally as follows.
1. Upon arrival you will be given a lanyard with a number and bar code, this is your identification whilst in the cafe and tracks how long you have been there and anything you buy. Normally you a charged for how long you stay, and any drinks and food are then added to the tab.
The fee system varies from place to place, but you find most are around 1,000 yen or more per hour.
2. After receiving your lanyard you proceed to remove your shoes and put them in the lockers provided. You then put on the supplied slippers and thoroughly wash your hands in the sinks provided.
3. It’s Kitty time. Head on into the cafe where you can find a seat or play with the cats. The rules are simple, respect the cats. Don’t pick them up, don’t wake them up and don’t freak them out. You can generally buy small boxes of food (Shredded chicken) which can be fed to the cats.
Nom Nom Nom
4. Order food from the staff and present your lanyard / badge for scanning. (Not all serve food, but most do)
5. When you leave you present your lanyard for payment, before going out and putting your shoes back on. Used slippers are normally put into a dirty bin to be washed.
Finding a Neko cafe is fairly easy and you will probably stumble across a few with out realizing. Just keep an eye out for signs with cats on them to start with! Ask your hotel or city tourist information centre for an idea of where one might be and they can no doubt suggest a local one or try one of the following websites.
Schultz goes on a diet
I recently spoke to Marty about registering Schultz and we both agreed that registering Schultz is just going to be too hard, and the money would be better spent on mods and maintenance. This was the original plan, so we are full circle.
So Marty used his contacts in logistics to get Schultz was shipped to his new home at Marty’s. This meant we can start to race prep Schultz, which starts with us getting rid of everything we don’t need.
We enlisted the help of our mate Dallas and got stuck into Schultz, starting from the back and working our way forward. I am not going to detail each step, as until you get to the dashboard it is not that much of an effort.
Dallas set up a GoPro Digital Camera to take a snap shot every now and then so we can make a time lapse video (cool huh).
It looks like when Schultz was built the first thing they did was put down the electric cables, then put down some rubber sound deadening and then the carpet. This means its a little bit of work to get the carpet out and you have to be careful using knives as you don’t want to slice through wires (I almost did!).
The end result looks like this
Schultz certainly has some surprises for us, over the years his wiring has been turned into a mess of cables and spagetti! So that will be our next challenge. See the big black boxy thing in the middle of the dash, that’s the heat exchangers for the air conditioning system which we will need to get removed. We need to get the AC system de-gassed, and then figure out how to get the thing out!
There is a little bit of sound deadening left in various places, that will have to wait until later when we can remove it using dry ice.
To remove the dash I used the following site as a guide – > http://home.comcast.net/~cdeegan9/dashboard/dashboard_5.html
Schultz also had a tow bar, which we wanted to get rid of. It is installed between the car and the rear bar, so we had to remove the bumper bar, and then remove the unit. The problem is it looks like when they install them they replace the stock bumperbar brackets with the ones that bolt the towbar to the chassis. You can see the 3 bolt holes on each side of the car in the photo below.
So marty got the angle grinder out so we could cut off the brackets and reuse them.
Removing a e30 Steering Wheel
Schultz is a 1984 E30, so this how-to is for that model of car.
Generally a good idea to disconnect the battery when you mess with the car.
Step 1. Leave the Ignition in the OFF position. Using a small screw driver remove the BMW cap / logo. Be Gentle!
Step 2. You will see the bolt holding the wheel on. Using a texta / marker make a mark so you can realign the wheel with the spline later. Then use a 22mm socket to remove the bolt.
Step 3. Switch the Ignition to the ON position. This unlocks the wheel.(Don’t start the car, just turn the key to ON.. )
Step 4. Give the Wheel a bit of a yank, it should should come loose. You might need to give it a wiggle to help it off. If your pulling hard your doing something wrong, re check the ingnition is set to the ON position.
Step 5. Profit! Wheel is off.
This is the locking pin that moves in and out as you move the ignition from off to on. Here you see the locking pin up, which is what happens when the ignition is in the off position. When you turn the ignition on the pin drops down. The pin is solid steel so your not going to be able to get the wheel off with out having the wheel unlocked (ignition on).
With the ignition in the ON position (Engine off, remember you unplugged the battery) the locking tab goes down.
Namebench… I just sped up my DNS by 130%
Just a quick post about a app called name bench.
Try out namebench. It hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use. namebench runs a fair and thorough benchmark using your web browser history, tcpdump output, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation. namebench is completely free and does not modify your system in any way. This project began as a 20% project at Google.
http://code.google.com/p/namebench/
I ran this and found my DNS server pointing to OPENDNS was 170% slower than a local ISP DNS (ironically not my DNS, I am with BigPond but TPG have a faster DNS). I cleared my caches, pointed my DNS Server to the suggested forwarders and the numbers stack up.
The first pass returned me the following results.. My DNS (which forwarded to OPENDNS) didn’t go too well.
I configured the top 4 servers as my DNS forwarders and walla nice and quick. It wont be as fast as going direct to the TPD server as my home bind server has to do a 2nd lookup, but it works nicely.
Anyway.. worth a crack.
The reason I started looking at this is I believe some downloads (ie, from Apple iTunes) might be slow as the remote servers detect my location as being in the US (as I was using openDNS). I am keen to see if this improves performance.
http://lifehacker.com/5721188/fix-itunes-and-other-slowdowns-by-ditching-third+party-dns-servers
Zen and the Art of Apple Time Machine Backups
Seagate Momentus XT (lets hope this one lasts!)
Whilst in the garage swearing at my carpentry shortcomings my wife yelled out that my Apple MacBook was making “funny noises”. Upon investigation I found the screen was covered in text, most of which suggested the drive (source of funny noise) was dead. On a public holiday, when your having one of those days its not really the ideal thing to happen.
The drive in question was one I upgraded to about 9 months ago as the stock 5400 drive was running out of grunt and space. I plugged the drive into a external dock to make sure it was actually the drive that was the cause of the problems and recreated the same funny sounds (head crash I think). I was a little pissed that the drive only lasted about 9 months, but figured my obsessive backup routine would mean no harm would be done.
The dead drive was a Seagate Momentus 7200 (ST9500420AS) which had gotten good reviews, however drives fail so no use getting to upset. Looking at various replacements I noticed Seagate have a Momentus XT, which is a hybrid drive. 500gb of platter disk with 4gb of SSD cache for higher io performance of commonly fetched data. The drive was only about $140 from MSY, so I figured it was worth a shot. The reviews suggest the drive gives you very close to SSD performance which is a bonus.
MSY in Ultimo had the best price, and they had two drives in stock so a mate and I trekked out there today to pick one up. He was looking for more space and speed and liked the spec of this drive too.
Upon getting home I started to think about how to recover my data, I use a 2TB USB drive connected to an AirPort Extreme for my backups. The set and forget capabilities of this system are awesome and I always felt assured that my data was easily restored. (I also do selective offsite backups).
This is where the fun started.
Restoring from Snow Leopard install disk
This was not going to happen sadly. I had excluded my system folder from backups thinking that it would not be needed (stupid eh) for a recovery, that few gig I saved by not backing up has caused me all kinds of issues. You simply cant restore the whole OS unless you have a full system folder backup, so I had to do a clean install. My mate found the installer wouldnt see his full backup as the timemachine spareimage was not in the root of his time machine drive.
Opening the spareimage file
After reinstalling the operating system I found I couldnt open the sparseimage file. The system threw a scary message about the resource being in use. The same drive connected to my airport extreme has a backup of my wifes mac which opened fine. I plugged the drive into the mac directly and found a repair sorted the issues, I kept it connected for a faster recovery.
Manual recovery
So this is a fresh install, so time machine on my mac doesn’t know about this old archive sparse image. Here is a tip, if you hold down control whilst clicking the time machine icon in the tool bar it lets you open “other time machine disks”. I tried to manually copy the files out of the sparseimage but found that it caused weird permission issues, so this is probably your safest best. Selectively recover your older data, in small chunks as in my experience it threw up all kinds of errors when recovering the library folder in my system profile.
So the idea of this post is just to give googleers some help if they have the same issues….
Tips for Time machine.
- Keep your time machine backups on the root of the drive.
- If you cant open your time machine image file try connecting the drive directly to your mac and do a repair of the disk.
- Backup the whole volume. If you exclude the System folder your auto restore wont work.
- Just backup everything, I excluded my downloads directory and my virtual machine directory which now I am regretting.
- Time Machine will do it’s best to figure out the permission mismatches, but you would want to do a file permission repair after the restore goes through.
As for the drive, well too early to tell if its better. I will time some reboots once I have finished restoring my system. However there is plenty of tests on youtube.
Show some restraint!
When it came to moving schultz legally we had to jump through some hoops, the first of which is blue slip. To get the blue slip dear old schultz needs some work, which we want to do at Marty’s house as he has a big garage.
So to move the car to Marty’s house we need a pink slip, which we cant get until we fix the driver side seat belt which was frayed.
I rang everyone for a new seatbelt, from wreckers to BMW the answer was no. I didn’t understand why no one could recondition seat belts, everyone told me it couldn’t be done until I found a company in western Australia who specialise in it.
I ripped them out and have shipped them off to seat belt solutions.
Information wants to be free….
So everyone has an opinion on wikileaks… Governments are freaking out, governments in opposition are getting excited. Last week Malcolm Turnbull seemed very relaxed when a journalist asked him if he was nervous, but on the flip side we have seen Julia Gillard label the organisation illegal before back-pedalling to explain that it was based on an illegal act (I thought she would have known better being a lawyer and all).
My opinion on wiki leaks is pritty simple.
- The organisation is a modern news agency. They use the power of the internet to get information and spread it. Unlike a traditional news orgsanisation who needs to investigate and research they just wait for the information to come to them.
- The collateral murder video was horrific, but they where brave to get it out there and I think all our governments need to be accountable.
- I think that they probably need to come up with a stronger modus operandi that explains in more detail who they are, what they do and more importantly why they do it, but that is for them to come up with.
Traditional news agencys are the ones who have been loving this information. They have received through wikileaks several times more than they have found through their own research.
However it is interesting how governments and those embarrassed by these leaks are all after Assanges scalp…. maybe its time to download the insurance file.
Schultz Spec
General Specs
Series: E30
Body: Sedan
No. Doors: 4
Seat Capacity: 5 Standard (2 Soon)
Transmission: Manual Getrag Gearbox with Excedy BMK-6370HD clutch
Drive: Rear Wheel Drive
Fuel Type: Petrol
Release Year: 1984
Country of origin: GERMANY
Dimensions
Length (mm) 4320
Width (mm) 1640
Height (mm) 1380
Engine
Engine Location Front
Engine Size: 2.7Litre (M20B23 head, M20B27 bottom end)
Engine Cycle: 4 Stroke
Engine Type: Piston
Cylinders: 6
Induction System: Aspirated
Fuel Delivery: Multi-Point Injection
Method of Delivery: Electronic
Parts / Consumables
Spark Plugs: NGK ZGR5A
Brakes, Pads, Oil and Spark
Before embarking on the trip from my place to Martys garage south of Sydney I wanted to see if we could get the brakes a little more responsive and give the car a good going over. Breaking down in one of the many tunnels on the 70something km drive would not be fun.
Marty (and family) came over early this morning so we could get started. While our ever patient wives headed to the beach with the kiddos we started on the rear brakes. The good news is the rear calipers have enough meat on them to have them machined, and after taking the brakes apart and grinding the pads up on comcrete the car was pulling up much better. Putting your foot down hard throws you forward in your seatbelt which makes me much more confident the trip will be a safe one.
Next on the menu was to fit the battery charger properly. I recently replaced the one in my Skyline thinking it was broken, but from what I can see it works fine. (It wont charge a really dead battery, which is common for those chargers and why I thought it was dead). So we installed it into schultz and I ran the cable through to the cabin and into the back seat area. Eventually when we have the rear seats out we can mount it onto the rear firewall.
Schultz never ran quite right, it missed and stuttered badly and the idle was really high (2000rpm). We decided it would be a good idea to change the plugs as they may be old and busted. I generally do a little home work to make sure the plugs that you take out are actually the ones the car should have. We spent about 10 minutes googling the plugs and BMW e30 stroker and came up with a few sites using the same plugs we just pulled out. So off to sparts to pick up some new ones.
Once installed the difference was massive. Schultz idles and runs much smoother now, the miss we had before seems to be gone too. Marty adjusted the idle down to 1000 rpm and it now idles and holds nicely. It is very smooth and has very quick pickup with out grumbling too much.
When we took Schultz up to the service station to get fuel we found it was groaning a bit on turns, sounded like the power steering system wasn’t happy. The system was significantly down on fluid, so I used my oil suction gizmo to suck out the old stuff and topped the system up with fresh fluid. A quick test and the system is now groan free.
So whilst this is all boring maintenance stuff at this stage it is significant because it shows the car is in good condition. Some tender love and care and he is getting to a point now where we can start to get serious.
One thing that I thought was odd was how the economy gauge responds to pressure changes. I dare say the sensor is busted or not reading properly, but the way is swings around as you rev the engine is mesmerizing (simple minds are amused by simple things right)
Photos are here -> http://projektschultz.straylight.com.au/?page_id=25&album=StopSparkAndStuff
Battery Isolation Switch
The battery constantly draining is a massive pain in the neck. Marty has a theory that the alarm is killing the battery as it is trying to charge its own internal backup battery (which doesnt want any part of it!). So whilst we have to rip out this bloody alarm the first thing to do is put in a switch so we can for the moment get the car around and preserve the brand new car battery we purchased.
I dropped past battery world the other day to pick up a new charger for my Skyline and saw a nice battery switch (see previous post) and some pre terminated cables. I picked up some new cables and figured I would be able to find a place to mount the switch.
To get the car home today was a total pain! The battery was stone cold dead, so despite trying to get it charged from the rav4 it wouldnt take. I had to remove the battery, drive home and leave it to charge for a few hours then drive back to the mechanics fit the battery and get it started.
When I got home I decided to install the battery switch so we don’t have to replace the battery prematurely. Took about 5 minutes to quick fit it, in the dark!
Post mechanics the car is driving brilliant! Clutch is smooth, pick up on the motor is awesome and for some reason the dash lights have just magically started to work. I think Schultz is telling us he is happy! The brakes are still spongy but the rotors look horrid so its not really much of a surprise.
Grapsing the Clutch.
One of the problems in moving from Japanese car’s to German car’s is learning a whole new range of motors and components. If I ring a clutch company and say I need a Clutch for a ECR33 Skyline with a RB25DET engine they should just hand one over.
Schultz on the other hand is proving to be a little more complex. What we know is Schultz is a 1984 BMW E30 323i, with a BMW 325e bottom end. This strokes the engine out to 2.7litres. However things get a little more complex when we try to figure out what Schultz needs in the clutch department.
My digging has revealed the following
Schultz has a 2.3 LM20B23 motor, which wiki tells me
This motor was only used in 3-series models. The 323i began as an E21 model in 1977 and was phased out as the E30 models came into production. It initially used the same head and block as the carbureted 2.0 liter but used a longer 76.8 mm (3.0 in) stroke crank. It also featured Bosch K-Jetronic Injection. So equipped the E21 323i produced 143 hp (107 kW). The E30 version featured the revised “731″ head with larger intake ports and used L-Jetronic instead of K-Jet. Early E30 323s made 139 hp (104 kW) but later versions got updated cams and power rose to 150 hp (110 kW). The early E30 323I, had more torque and was quicker. The 2.3 liter motor was superseded by the more powerful 2.5 in 1985.
Applications:
1982–1985 E30 323i
So Schultz should have a M20B23 head, bolted to the M20B27 bottom end. The M20B27 is the motor from the E30 325e. Which is natively a 2.7 motor.
So to try and make some sense of the madness I have been playing with the Exedy clutch finder. The guys at Warringah Brake and Clutch suggested I try Exedy as they might have more info on what clutch this thing actually uses. So based on the 323i I could use a Exedy BMK-6370HD clutch. However the Exedy website doesn’t allow me to find the E325 to see what clutch suits the M20B27 engine.
Confused.. I am.
Spoke to Exedy and the deal is that we need to find out what kind of flywheel is in Schultz. The 325e uses a dual mass flywheel and the 323i uses a single. If he has a dual mass then we can convert it to a single and use the BMK-6370HD. Worst case I might just take the whole lot down to warringah brake and clutch and see what they say (They are great guys, and said they are happy to help).
So sounds like it is time to pull the gearbox out.
As a post note, I had no idea what a dual mass flywheel is so I googled it.
The flywheel is effectively a weight which is fastened to the end of the crankshaft of the engine. The power from the pistons tends to be created in “pulses” and the weight of the flywheel smoothes out these pulses by providing inertia to the rotating engine. As well as providing a weight the flywheel has a gear around its circumference on which the starter motor operates and is a convenient means of attaching the clutch which provides a variable connection to the transmission.
Modern diesel engines generate high torque and as a result they need extra smoothing out or “damping”. To help with this process a DMF (Dual Mass Flywheel) is fitted. This is effectively two flywheels that transmit the drive through a number of springs which cushion the drive to the transmission.
Clutcherific Sparkiness
So Schultz has been up at the mechanics for about a week now, the clutch has rocked up and been fitted and we are just waiting on a replacement rubber drive shaft coupling to arrive from Euro Spare Parts. I was impressed they had the part in stock, for less than half the cost from BMW.
The battery draining issue is a bit of a worry, so we are going to fit a kill switch as an initial stop gap measure to stop it draining. I went past battery world to pick up a battery isolation switch. They had a really nice simple unit and pre-made cables that should do the job. The cable I got was a little long so I will go past tomorrow and swap it over for a smaller one.
Marty and I had a chat about our plan moving forward, we are going to get the car down to his garage so we can clean it up a little more. We need to sort out the seats, fix up the electrics (pull out the alarm system) and more.
Marty has an idea to clean up the door skins, which will give them a nicer look and keep roaming hands around from the sharp door innards.
Schultz do not go gentle into that good night!
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
So I spoke to my mechanic today and asked him about the clutch. I want to get the old one pulled out so we can figure out the new one, which he agreed to do tomorrow. So my first plan was to get Schultz up to his workshop after work today, but upon getting home and trying to fire him up I got a big fat nada. Looks like the alarm drained the battery in only 10 days. So I pulled out the trusty charger and left it for a few hours.
At around 9pm I gave him a go and found he started but ran horrible, like really horrible. Then he conked out.. No fuel! So I ran down to the servo got fuel and fueled him up a bit. Started up nicely and idled pritty well for a cold motor.
I drove it up to the workshop so in the morning I could just drop the keys on my way to work, he drove ok but the brakes are sketchy and the dash lights are busted. (adds to list)
Anyway I guess this post is just a marker for the start of the adventure. Pritty soon he should be moving under his own steam with out the godawfull screach!
