MOTOR CHAT

Going back to the brake calipers ....

I just changed both front calipers on my '51 Astra this morning in the snow. Took about 40 min a side. That includes jacking up the motor and taking wheels off. The replacement units were 2nd hand from a breakers down south. Excellent working order. Only £24 for the pair against £150+ new.

The Astra was easy but I've had other cars that needed specialist tools to get the calipers off.

To bleed them I use a one way bleed valve out Halfords. I've had a couple of them over the years. This latest one is aluminium and works well.

Got some new wheels on the beemer , hard to justify but the poped up on E-bay and i could'nt resist, they are BMW M-Sport Parallels, came complete with tyres, centre caps etc, hard to tell from the pics but they are staggered, rears are 9.5x18 fronts are 8x18, rear tyres are 255/40/18 but may upgrade these to 275/35/18 when they wear out.

Nice! M-Parras is probably one of BMW's finest wheel designs and suits the E38/E39's prefectly!
Now you just need some M sport Suspension/seats/steering wheel/bumpers/side skirts .......... or save up and buy a genuine Sport. Last of the line E38 Sports are still a stunning looking car.

You had any issues with the fuel tank yet on your E38? If not do a Google search on E38 fuel tank issues and read the tales of woe.

Love E38's and they're cheap as chips to buy now too.

Greig.

Seen a very nice low mileage late model 728i Sport in black for £1200 ono, was after i bought mine though.

Ah, funny you should mention the fuel tank , a couple of days after buying it i Googled E38 problems, seen the fuel tank issues, ran down and had a look at mine and seen it had been repaired (fibreglassed by the look of it), seemed ok though, a few weeks ago with the car in the garage i could smell petrol, looked under the tank and found a leak , not too bad at the moment though (also read that repairs are rarely successful), plan for now is to patch it up if need be (rarely run the car more than 1/4 full anyway) look out for a good S/H tank (quite hard to find) or just bite the bullet and buy a new tank eventually.

i know it's the Achilles heel of the E38 unfortunately?? with the fuel tank issue???? Also not a cheap job to repair either.

Aside from an auto box service and radiator failure along with plastic impeller water pump failures most of the E38's are pretty reliable cars and capable of high mileages too.

The only other wheels that really suit E38's is the Style 32 wheels again staggered as they should be.

I've read that BMW dealers charge over two grand to replace a tank , cheapest new tank i've found is £760, i'll run the car till it's next MOT, (November), if i've had no other bother with it then i'll go for the new tank then, at least i know i've got that bill coming, will be a bigish job, prop and whole exhaust system will need to come off, should'nt be too bad though.

Loads of seemingly good condition (some even low mileage) E38's being broke for spares on E-bay and elsewhere, wonder how many get broke because of rotten tanks

Just bought road tax. Decided to go for 6 months so I can split it from my MOT which is due in a few weeks.

£118 for 6 months!!

And I had forgotten that I had a couple of advisories on my MOT from last year. Bugger

So i bought this 3.9 Rover V8 for the Escort a while ago.



Sat for a while as i uuuummmmm'd and aaaaaaahhh'd about using this or the Zetec motor, decided it had to be the Rover, made the decision to strip it down last weekend, glad i did now as it's pretty manky inside, not badly worn just typical highish mileage, infrequent oil changes etc, it had two different types of spark plugs fitted (a good indication that the motor was'nt properly serviced in it's later years), inspection showed it's pretty sound, no signs of overheating or liner slip, crank journals, bores, cam lobes all look fine, rebuild will be a straightforward replacement of bearings, rings, timing chain, oil pump etc, going to fit a Viper Hurricane cam, Edelbrock intake and 500 four barrel carb, hoping to use modified Range Rover P38 steel headers (right hand one turned round backwards to clear steering etc), with these mods, the serpentine belt, viscous fan, power steering and air con deleted i've been told it should see around 240 bhp.



Handily my scrap yard owner neighbour has offered me the use of his industrial parts washer, so will be making a few trips to his yard with bits to clean, probably saved a fortune in Gunk.



For Gmac123 and Mrs Gmac here is the pistons in the sink (after the outrage caused by the bike on the worktop), pistons were typicaly heavily carboned up, this needs to come off before new rings are fitted, degreaser wont work on carbon (might but it would take ages), easyest way is in the sink with a Brillo pad.



Piston crowns polished up, as they are being used again they need to go back in the same order so crowns are marked for direction and cylinder number, numbers look random as they are the firing order not the order they came out.



Finaly got a bellhousing for the gearbox, as the gearbox is from a Sherpa van and the engine is from a Range Rover i needed a Rover SD1 bellhousing, these are getting quite hard to find and as a result quite expensive, tried for ages to turn up a cheap one but bit the bullet and paid quite a bit for this one, at least i have it now anyway.



Plan for now (while saving for new engine bits) is to build up the bare block, heads and sump, bolt this to the gearbox, lower the whole lot into the engine bay so i can fabricate engine mounts.

Jimi Im lost, whats the motor going into?

Think its a car