For the benefit of Chris

...who expressed skepticism when Emily told him that I'd spent five hours tidying the garage (I think the exact words were "pics or it didn't happen": here is a pic.

It won't last though - the chassis and the rest of the kit, all being well, are but an hour away. I've just managed to extract the ABS sensors (for the traction control) from the front uprights, which are going back with Peter for exchange for some new ones, so we are (just) ready to get started. I've broken one of the rear sensors, but Ebay can replace it for £25 or so, so not a major setback. I'll be more careful extracting the other.

A bit of light progress

Today's main achievement: finished de-rusting, wire-brushing and painting the caliper brackets. They look great, something which cannot be said for the kitchen after I've spent this evening working in it (it's warmer than the garage...)

Also spent much of the evening dismantling a caliper. Three of the four looked OK, but one was missing a dust boot, which means dismantling it, checking for damage, and replacing all the rubber seals, and maybe the piston. After careful use of compressed air to blow brake fluid around the kitchen, but not achieve much in the way of piston movement, the hammer and the clamp were deployed. Eventually (after a couple of hours) the piston came unstuck, and I was able to inspect it for wear:

There are a couple of very small marks (they seem convex, so I think they may be bits of rubber seal where the piston has sat in one place against the seal for a long time, as opposed to concave scratches), but I don't know if these are serious enough to prevent re-use of the piston.

The caliper itself looks OK, with no obvious marks to the bit where the piston slides in, so I think that should be fine to reuse.

Some progress on the wiring and missing parts: the engine seller has promised to post the missing bits (but has not actually done so), and some better progress on the chassis and kit, which will be arriving in two weeks time.

There is an awful lot to do if we are to be finished preparing all the donor parts by then...

Dismantling bits

This was a week mainly of buying tools and dismantling bits. The cycle was essentially:

1. start undoing some nuts
2. get stuck
3. read the Haynes manual
4. undo some other nuts
5. round them / fail to undo them or otherwise get stuck
6. buy tools

I now own an extraordinary number of sockets (regular 6-sided, regular 12-sided, impact and TORX), wrenches (the 2 foot breaker bar is easily the most useful tool purchased so far). Currently I'm at stage 5 of the cycle, planning a visit to MacKays tomorrow to buy a Dremel so that I can get the last brake disc off, the retaining allen-head bolt being both completely rounded and inaccessibly sunk.

Progress this week includes: removing discs, callipers, etc and de-rusting them. Latter process is still on-going but is looking promising. I've yet to decide how to proceed with the calipers - the options being to do nothing to them (free), to buy a caliper refurb kit and refurb them myself (£50, assuming no fatal errors), or to get them professionally refurbed (£250ish). Also, removed the diff (it's quite heavy) and driveshaft.

Having reached the limits of my socket set (more sockets are on order to remove the hubs), I started pulling bits off the engine, including this mysterious pair:

They are completely self-contained - no wires, no other hoses, etc... which is a little odd. Any suggestions?

Engine arrived... what now?!

After a few false starts, the engine, along with most of the bits the guy selling the donor parts had agreed to send, arrived. Here it is, undergoing an inspection by the chief technician:

She has not yet produced a final report but things appear broadly in order. Less in order are the missing fuel pump (easy to buy, but expensive), missing receipt (needed for registration, but ultimately this should be easy to arrange...), and, worryingly, missing wiring & plugs for the dash. This will be hard to source if I can't convince the seller to send it.

The crane looks like a decent buy so far - hasn't collapsed and seems up to what we need it for. There are a lot of wires coming off this engine and I need to figure out what they are all for...

Finally, tonight I was able to get started on disassembling the rear axle. As you can see from this pic of the front end, the donor bits came packaged in a protective layer of mud:

which had to be removed before much could happen. With a bit of the mud out of the way, the rear callipers are off. Tomorrow I'll attack the discs and continue working my way in towards the diff.

Buying tools, waiting for bits

Title says it all really. Various tools and Haynes manuals ordered, and, slightly more interestingly, some seats:

3.5 kg each, and after speaking to the bloke on the phone, he even agreed to put heated inserts under the padding (presumably fibreglass can take the heat... it is glass after all, I suppose). Quite pleased with these.

Chased up the bloke with the engine a bit - he says he's currently trying to hire a trailer so he can get a mate to deliver it to save money on a courier. So, hopefully delivery next week should be doable. We'll see...

Garage preparation continues

Table finally gotten rid of. After attracting no bids on Ebay with a starting price of 99p, a friend eventually took it off our hands. It took us about an hour to manoeuvre it in through her narrow doorway / hall / etc into the dining room, but the garage now has a Seven-sized space in the middle.

I took advantage of this to assemble the engine crane. Despite low quality instructions (the step-by-step instructions stopped midway through a paragraph about 3/4 way through assembly, and the diagram was photocopied to the point of being unreadable), this was fairly straightforward, and involved only minimal use of the hammer to make bolts fit (twice), one trip to the kitchen to apply plasters to a minor injury (thumb crushed between spanner and crane = bleeding thumb), and two small and unimportant looking bits left over. The latter look a bit like narrow washers (or maybe rings), but broken in one place and twisted so that they make a slight spiral (the ends just touch but don't overlap). Any ideas?

A few more tools to buy while the sales are still on, then we're ready to start. The bloke selling the engine has been in touch. Apparently he's been ill, but intends to ship by start of next week, which is either reasonable, or he's stalling while he leaves the country with my £900.

To be honest, I won't be spending much time in the garage until it warms up a bit anyway, so I can live with the delay. Also: Q-plate vs donor car registration (probably around M reg I guess)? Which is preferrable? Need to decide. Former may imply laxer emissions checks etc, but latter may improve resale value?

New wheels

The wheels showed up at work yesterday, and I promptly got an email asking me to remove them from reception ASAP. I think it's probably for the best that I'm not planning to get the chassis or engine delivered to work. This would not make me popular with the receptionist. Hopefully she won't object to the engine crane arriving next week...

They look pretty in pretty good condition for what I paid (£200), with some moderate kerbing but nothing too severe. They could easily be refurbed to look like new, though I'm not sure I'll bother.
Tyres are in very good condition (about 5mm of tread all round), though sadly not matched so I'll have to sell these as I don't fancy the handling that might result from differing levels of grip at each corner. Three are the same, so I could just replace one - we'll see how in-budget I am at the end...

I think these are original BMW wheels, though it's hard to know really. They have BMW written on the back though. I've weighed them and they come in at 17.3 kg with tyres. Assuming around 10-11 kg for the tyre, that seems pretty good.

Also: we now have a tidy garage, modulo the presence of a dining room table which needs a new home. It will be going up on Ebay shortly.