damn george.. i feel like a little bitch for feeling tired and complaining with the 4-5 cars i've been working on the past few months. lol
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damn george.. i feel like a little bitch for feeling tired and complaining with the 4-5 cars i've been working on the past few months. lol
Condolences to you on your grandfather, sounds like he was absolutely cut from a different cloth.
Super jelly of the M3 tourings, they all look well sorted and proper with the pictures you provided. Good luck on your future endeavors, I’ve been stalking this thread for a while and always look forward to your updates! [emoji1417]
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Thanks guys, he was a good man for sure.
Shawn, these are just the exciting jobs worth mentioning... There are currently (4) touring conversion projects in various states going now, plus the normal every day cars. It's a lot of work, I live in the shop when I'm not spending time with my wife.
Good updates. Sorry for your loss. Welcome to the new family members.
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The shop has been out of control busy and I am trying to keep my head above water. I am incredibly lucky to have all of these people believe in me and what I do, this is a good problem to have as long as I can manage it. I am doing my best and am already implementing changes to alleviate these issues in the future. But still the work must go on....
A future project parts car got dropped off. Semi drivers don't like coming to the shop as the roads are tight, so I met this driver at a nearby grocery store. When I rolled up the tractor was still attached to the trailer and I was wondering how they were going to get it loose (they had the tractor off before I could snap a pic). Then used the flatbed to get the car off the nose of the trailer. They couldn't get the flatbed square with trailer so it was a bit sketchy, but as the tow driver said "I've done way worse things" lol.
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The ti came back so I could fix the door panels. The E36 chassis has an issue with the door panels literally coming un glued and then no longer stay attached to the doors. I repair them with a large tube of windshield urethane and lots of tape, lol.
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My mom has been driving a '05 X3 since '06, it was a demo car that was also a CPO, since she bought it aside from the random oil change I am the only person who has worked on it since then. But even then it was finally to the point she was going to have to spend some real money on it to get it back into shape so it was decided to get a new car. Naturally she picked a BMW and a X3 at that. This is a 2019 X3 she got from BMW of Grapevine. It is I think as loaded as one can get but because it is a ex******er car there are massive discounts. I drove there and back and the new X3 sure is a sweet ride.
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Cisco brought his E46 M3 in for a clunk noise. It was determined he had a failed strut mount and yes he did, the center fell out when the strut was disassmebled. We installed Ground Control street camber plates, reinforcement plates and then add a TMS front sway bar.
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Next is a project I have been working on since May, it is a 2000 323iT with a S85 V10 swap. I've been keeping it quiet in case it didn't turn out like I hoped as the customer has been fairly discouraged by the lack of progress over the years. To this point it has been (3) years in the making, it was running and driving then became a crank no start. After that everyone he spoke to wanted nothing to do with the project, but I took it thinking it would be simple. While the diagnosis was simple, the fix was not. The car uses a stock DME so it would be emissions legal. To use the stock DME a CAS module emulator was installed. Somewhere along the way that failed and the company who built it was no longer accessible. The company restructured and I was able to get someone to there to get it going. What they did was remove the emulator and with software they were able to program the cars EWS and Key to the DME, pretty cool stuff. Now with it running and driving again we have a large list to go through to make it a nice driving experience. More on that to follow. Here's a link to my IG page with video: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4KvRJEph6Q/
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Juliann, brought in her S54 swapped touring. This is THE car that started it all for me. Her car was originally for sale on the forums back in 2010 iirc. I had just bought a motorcycle and was not in the position to take out another loan or I would have bought it. Fast forward about 7yrs and JAWillis and I are scoping out a core S54 in town here and find out it is from that wagon. It had dropped a valve and she elected to replace the entire engine instead of fixing it. JAWillis ended up with the engine and it is now in his touring, how is that for small world. Anyways fast forward another couple of years and she runs across me on IG and we started chatting as she knew I was involved with her old engine. One thing leads to another and she's dropping her wagon of for some maintenance. We were going to just bulletproof the vanos but once we started looking over the car it needed a bunch more work.
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The RACP had started to tear so we went ahead and pulled the whole back end out of the car and installed CMP reinforcement plates. Juliann is an experienced chassis fabricator so we worked a deal for her to do the plate install and it turned out great.
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While in there, we replaced the subframe bushings and installed SDW RTA Ball Joints.
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Her swap was one of the firsts and was done by an enthusiast who cut a bunch of corners. The car worked ok, but it just wasn't refined. So with it apart I fixed all of the evap system hoses and connections, fixed some random wiring, coded her instrument cluster and removed the warning light "fixes" lol.
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She was concerned about the Vanos since her previous valvetrain failure. When I pulled the V/C off to go through the Vanos system, I found she got very lucky. There was a broken Vanos pump tab and luckily it was stuck in the disc. We sourced her a new (used) hub, drilled her old disc and rebuilt the Vanos unit. Finished it up with a valve adjustment and got the engine back in order.
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Finally, I acquired another wagon today. You may remember I bought this was wag last year, then resold it back to the previous owner. He then later passed away and the family was having trouble selling it. They wanted it to goto a good home and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. My buddy rode down to San Antonio with me in my ZHP and we picked it back up. This bring me to (5) tourings... I think I have a problem lol.
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Interesting updates as usual. That red touring looks good, congrats. I don't think you shared that story with us before.
Alfredo, You are right.Quote:
Originally Posted by fredo
Last summer I had been watching this wagon on CL. It had a bad transmission and the owner was asking $4500 initially. After months it dropped down to $1500 and Larry and I went down to scoop it up. Turns out the owner had been following the discussion about it on E46Fanatics and recognized my name vs my login their. He was a bit defensive because he thought we were just a bunch of vultures. We ended up making a deal on it and became friends. I brought it back to Austin and we stayed in touch as he also had an E92. Once he found out all the work I did bringing the wagon back to life he asked to buy it back from me. We made a deal and he came in got it. We continued to stay in contact and I helped him from a distance with some issues that it had. A few months go by and he unexpectedly passed away. His wife contacted me to try and help her sell it. We didn't have much luck but finally they had to do something with it. I'm not really in the position to be buying more cars right now, but the family wanted me to have it and made me an offer I couldn't refuse... so now I have (5) E46 Tourings, lol.
Hey George, great projects you have in the shop! Love your comment about 5 tourings.... yeah, you definitely have a problem, but a great problem for e46 chassis fan.
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+1, lots of cool stuff!
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Amazing story! Thanks for your updates, very interesting and motivating.Quote:
Originally Posted by GeorgeH