yes...my federal return covered the exhaust. Not that I needed it though as I was going to use my second bonus check to cover it. Speaking of the exhaust..this came up after you left Jon. Do we need to weld the two pieces of the exhaust together or does the AP exhaust just sorta slide together and be happy?

 

I would have to say the fronts are easier then the rears. That being said though the rears we not much more difficult..

I would say the biggest pain in the butt with the rears was getting the adjuster extension for the dampers through the hole. Other then that it was fairly easy. It just sucked a little more because you had to insert the damper/coil through the bottom so you were laying on your back the whole time.

Plus then there is the whole "push down the rear spindle to line back up with the bottom of the damper" issue, but luckily John was there and was able to bring out the inner wookie and move it into place.


I'm still baffled by the whole preload thing though. Like Doc said it just don't make any sense what so ever.


And speaking of which, Doc did you make it home safe last night? It was rather shitty out on 76, and I would assume 80 as well.

 

I would think that it would slide together and you have an exhaust clamp you put around it. Check your box to see if you have either a U type exhaus clamp (big u bolt with a slip on piece) or a ring type (kinda like a hose clamp, except heavy duty)

 

Well, I'm assuming the car didn't go for a test drive either with the snow. I know I drove home from after Hockey in Kent on 76 to 77S and it was awful by summit racing, etc. 20-30mph with crappy drivers flying all over the place.

But my point with the test drive is that we don't know if the pre-loading worked, correct?

 

Nothing like that. Only bag with parts in it is the brackets probably for holding it in the tunnel. No instructions either.

 

Didn't finish the wiring. Gonna work on that the rest of this week. I might do some of the prep work running the sender wire and getting grounds set up but I'm gonna try to wait until Wednesday night, when it's a little warmer, before doing a coolant swap and actually cutting the rad line and putting in the adapter.

The rears were definitely more of a PITA just because we had to strip out the rear carpeting in the trunk and run that silly extender all the way up. On the left rear I'm still not sure how Brian got the camber adjustment bolt off since my exhaust runs almost right up against it. I couldn't torque it but hopefully I can get the Enger guys to do it when I bring it in for its alignment.

Also I put back the rear sway bar wrong. Luckily the person who moved it (Brian) noticed just as he was leaving that I didn't put it back correctly. That woulda sucked.

I think it's brake pad swap tonight and maybe change my oil tonight or tomorrow. And I'm gonna swap over that ground line on my coils to where Jon put his to see if it helps my starting issue. And of course I'll enjoy the sweet smell of exhaust fumes.

 

That is what I have seen on other AP's, but I wasn't sure if it was a midpipe connection or what. But from what I have seen its a slide on with a clamp.

I think if it was welded, it would make installation and removal a whole lot more difficult.

 

I am off all week Ryan so if you want me to come down mid week and help with the wiring of the gauges I'll be more than glad to. Isn't it supposed to be like 45 one of these days?

 

Wednesday night it's supposed to be in the low 40s but I'm just alloting enough time to do the coolant change then.

I've got a full week to work on it. Really besides that and the coolant/oil changes there's nothing else I have to do on the car to have it ready to go next week. If I'm still struggling on the wiring I'll let you and Jon know and if either of you are available we can work on it Saturday.

Honestly though I'm pretty sure I can manage. I'm just delaying because I know it'll be a learning experience.

 

Gimmie a ring. *shrug* I enjoy that part of working on the car. No matter how much I say I hate working on car stereos...it is what I enjoy the most.

 

Will do.

And for Doc (or anyone else) here's the Bimmer event at MidOhio that the group I went to Sebring are attending.

http://www.nohiobmwcca.org/events/ev...px?EventID=225

It's $435 and that's good for the 23rd and 24th (sat/sun). They do another HPDE at MidOhio in August that if you do both you get a discount. If you sign up for both it's $600. I'm going to ask them if they'll give me a discount if I wait until after this event to sign up for the NL one. No idea whether or not I'll be free that weekend or if I'll like this group enough to do a second event.

I'd recommend staying down near midohio both Friday and Saturday night. I am going to look into just camping out there even though it can still be kinda chilly at night that time of year.

I'll put the info up at C6C under their event listing and in our social group area so it's easy to find.

 

tnx rk

 

I took this pic for ya:


I found this on the web:

 

Well your pict helps. I guess those two brackets aren't for mounting to the car then. Cool deal

 

Only way the exhaust "mounts" to the car is with the hangers on grommets.

 

RK - in my excitement to go watch the chinese acrobatics show. I forgot the exhaust polish you were going to loan me.

I think I'll hold off until spring to pull the trigger on that.

 

You also left your midpipe and engine cover behind

 

Midpipe - although shiny, I don't think thats the kind I want.

And the engine cover is pointless. I don't care what you say.

 

Hey Jon - is my memory right and did you ground your coils to one of the bolts connecting the front strut tower bar? Or was it a different bolt? I can't believe I forgot to ask.

Also any reason why I couldn't just run that ground back to the negative terminal of my battery? Wouldn't that work just as well? I'm pretty sure the wire we cut is long enough to get back to that.

 

You should never ground to the battery...you should always ground to the unpainted frame or body. Don't ask me why...that is just what you should do.

Jon - BTW...Im sitting here watching Diggnation as it streams from TVersity to my 360.

 

If you look to the right of the master cylinder you'll see a couple other ground wires bolted to the frame. Just use that.

You want the shortest travel/least resistance.
Resistance is bad.

Bastard

 

Next time Im down there I'll have to stop over and take a look. I don't understand what is going on with your pc. I literally just had to stop the sharing in WMP from my default setup to get it to load up. Were you trying to connect to it via the "Connect to Media Center" option or were you just going into "Watch Videos"?

 

Going outside to screw with my ground now.

FWIW I had issues with a Vista update. For whatever reason it caused my PS3MediaServer (which is better than TVersity for the PS3) to lose it's admin priviledges. Took forever to realize that a right click on the icon and a 'run as admin' selection would fix it. My PMS was running fine but it could never find my PS3 on the network and complained about establishing the correct port.

No idea if that'll fix your issue but figured I'd throw it out there.

 

Never really got that far.
I was in the settings trying to get TVersity to see the 360 (with it on auto-detect and manually telling it 360).
Under the status screen, it only recognized my PCs "media center".
If we can't figure this out, I may just use an XBMC LIVE (linux) PC so I can view HD content.
Only issue with that is my Onkyo receiver has all 4 HDMI ports occupied, so I would love to get it to work with the 360 so I don't have to worry about connecting yet another video input.

 

TVersity won't see the 360 until you get TVersity configured with content and then fire up the 360.