November 2002 - CrisBrady.Net

Winter approaches. Now it's getting dark at 5pm. It makes it hard to be motivated but I've been pushing myself to get out to the garage.

I admired the round fog lights I've seen on some other cars. They really compliment the round tailights and add a special something to the car's rear profile. I found a NOS (new old stock) one in the Netherlands on a vintage VW site and bought it.

Using some tips from the BMW2002FAQ site, I wired it into my existing rear fog light circuit and to the rear brake lights. Thus it became a 3rd brake light. The 2002 brake lights are 60's technology and pretty feeble. With todays ADD drivers, I need all the help I can get.

Upgrade the stock bulbs to LEDs. Much brighter and nicer now. A little too much glare on the left side of the speedo, I'll play with it some more later.

Almost perfect now, just a tiny bit of glare at the 80kph mark. I'll fix that tonight. I've gotten real good at taking apart the instrument cluster and reassembling it. As a bonus, I fixed the non-working odometer also.

More dabbling. The heater fan didn't work and since it's cold out there .... Out came the console for rebhabbing later. Tracing the heater wiring through the system I found the problem. The connections to the motor were corroded and loose. Fixed that and, tada, I have a spinning fan. Of course it only has off, medium and high. Low doesn't work. And while the fan is working, still no heat. More investigation is needed.

Now it's time to plumb the ti airbox. This was modified in the Alpina style when they raced 02's. BWM created some short stacks from the carbs to the airbox boots, but they are unobtainable. I found some short horn stacks on Ebay to bolt to the dual weber carbs.

The horns I bought were too long and I couldn't fit the airbox. Out came the jigsaw - Oh I wish I had a nice bandsaw in the garage - and that became a non-issue.

The circumference of the horns is smaller than the boot, so I needed to shim horns to get a tight fit. I used some felt weatherstriping to bulk it up.

The ti airbox has a cutout in the bottom to clear the brake booster and the battery has already been relocated to the trunk so we have plenty of room.

All tucked in and almost done. The final step is rerouting the breather hose off the rocker cover to the intake tube on the airbox.

Well, that raised the bling temperature in the engine compartment by several hundered degrees. Next I'll have to insulate the hood to prevent the paint from melting!

Well that's probably it for a while. I have to pull the drivetrain of the 944 as the first part of it's journey back to being a functioning racecar for the 09 season. So the 02 gets pushed out of the shop where I'll just have to drive it. I'll just have to grin and bear it.