Bringing shame on all Seven owners

This week's progress has mostly been a mixture of sorting out interior panels, attempting to start the engine, and shaming all real Seven owners.

Firstly, the propshaft arrived and went in (actually I think this belongs in the last entry, but I forgot to mention it). Grease has been applied, bolts marked with a pen so I can see if they start to come loose, etc. I also obtained (finally) a short-shift gearstick from a Z3M and various (new) gear linkage bushes, with the result that the shift is now nice and precise, with a pretty short throw. The only downside is that to take the edge off the notchiness revealed by the short throw, I need a weighted gearstick knob. Since interior bling is the kind of thing that appeals to the more chavvy BMW owner, these tend to come with neon lights and a hefty price tag  (£70 for a secondhand gear knob!), both of which I would prefer to avoid. I'm still looking for a good one.

Now that I'm done with the transmission tunnel, and don't need further access to it, I've attached the panels behind the seats and around the tunnel - although I'd drilled the rivet holes, the panels still needed some adjustment - filing off rough edges, making the fit a little better, making holes for switches, and wires, etc.

Interior panels in place.

At the weekend, Nick (who formerly worked for an ECU tuning company) kindly came round and had a poke around the engine with a laptop attached. After several trips back and forth to fetch various bits, we got the laptop connected, and broke his kit car - one of the front wishbones snapped almost completely off. Fortunately it was bad enough that we noticed when we stopped, but not so bad that we crashed mid journey. Still, while it's off the road, it's probably a good excuse to drop an S2000 engine in it (it's currently got a Fiat 132 engine, which is a little lacking in poke). Shout if you need a hand with this, Nick.

The report we got out of the laptop was in German, sadly, but we managed to find the words EWS (if that's a word) and cam position sensor. We hooked up an oscilloscope to the cam sensor, and despite swapping it over for a new one, didn't get a convincing reading from either. It's not obvious what the problem is here.

The EWS is the immobiliser, which suggests that the engine seller wasn't very honest when he told me it didn't have one. This is a bit of a pain, as the ECU won't drive the coils without the presence of the immobiliser unit to which it's coded, which of course I don't have. Since most BMWs of this era (especially the more expensive models like the 328) would have had an immobiliser, I was concerned that it would be a huge pain trying to find a replacement ECU. Fortunately, I got lucky on Ebay and found an ECU from a manual 328 without immobiliser for £40 (usually they go for over £100). It's in the post.

The plan is to swap out the ECU and hope that solves the immobiliser issue. I'm not sure what the cam sensor issue is, but it shouldn't prevent engine start (I assume it will disable the VANOS dual cam system, but that's not critical).

Finally, in a move that will embarrass all proper, hardy Seven owners, I wired up the heated seats. It's against the no-frills tradition, but then again it's a car without a roof... I think they're probably a good idea. There's still a little wiring to be done, but they appear to be working.