December 2002 - CrisBrady.Net

The first task in December was pulling the motor and tranny of the 944. After hitting the wall at MidOhio in the rain race, the 944 might be considered to be more aerodynamic, if by aerodynamic you mean much flatter on one side. However the impact didn't do a lot for the rest of the car, so it's off to BodyMotion in NJ for some quality frame pulling time on it's frame bench. Think of it as Extreme Physical Therapy for bad racecars.

With the garage now empty of reminders of my 2008 racing season, it was time to tick off some of the things on my '02 ToDo list. While driving to the Delaware PCA Enthusiast Day, where we dyno'd cars for charity among other events, I experienced just a mild touch of frostbite in my toes - a sensation I'm familiar with due to my long experience in standing around on frozen popsicles with sharp pointy things attached to me. No I'm not talking about deviant sexual behaviour but ice climbing, which is deviant manly sports behaviour. But I digress, such feelings or more exactly, non-feelings in my toes aren't the norm for traveling inside vehicles and need to be dealt with. The typical response is to throw some cubic dollars at somebody else and make it their problem. But I feel it is my responsiblity to suffer and document that suffering so that others can feel justified to calling up their mechanic and saying:

So let's journey into the heart of darkness ...

Analysis of the situation (ie, thinking, poking, browsing the 02FAQ site, drinking beer and watching YouTube and FunnyOrDie.com) led me to the conclusion that the heater box needed to come out and be refurbished*

* refurbished - vintage car code word for pain and $uffering

The heater box is contained deep inside the front of the car with the fan and hoses penetrating into a recessed area in the engine compartment. To remove it requires a fair amount of disassembly. I ended up removing the seats (not necessary, but it made life easier), the console, glove box and all the under panels. I detached the heater hoses and pulled the box out from under the dash, only spilling a minor amount of coolant. And here it is in all it's 38 year old glory.

After disassembling the box into pieces it was time to examine and refurb. The plastic bracket holding the heater control valve had cracked. And as this was something important to the operation of the valve - the gizmo that lets hot water into the heater core - I fabbed up a new supporting bracket out of some aluminum.

Bracket expoxied down, and a new coat of white paint with black accents and it was as pretty as a hockey pig with lipstick, or was that a pitbull mom playing hockey, or wait, wait, don't tell me ... if only Sarah were here to save me, she'd know, ya betcha.

New wiring, new hose, hardware all disassembled, lubricated, gaskets replaced, polished and coated with clear coat. The heater control valve is made out of brass. It looked pretty crappy when I got my hands on it, but after some hot-monkey-love (tm) was applied, it looks and functions great. You got to love (some) old engineering. Some things were over-built and made to last. This valve should be good for another 38 years.

Meanwhile, in the other sections of the heater box, I replaced all the old hard rubber grommets with new, cleaned and lubed all the flap hardware. The original foam that sealed all the ducts and flap outlets crumbled as I touched it, so all of that got replaced with some new closed cell weatherstripping from the local Sears hardware store. The crack in the plastic box was epoxied up with JB Weld. Everything was then resealed and the box riveted back together. (sorry forgot to take pics)

If you have followed my ahem, career, as a Porsche mechanic-wannabe, then you know that I just don't really like to just do a job once. I prefer to repeat it at least once, maybe more, until I fully am truly versed at the experience. Such as when putting in the rebuilt 944 motor into the racecar, always reattach the headers first otherwise you'll have to drop the motor again, attach the headers, and then put the motor back in again. Something at the time I considered annoying, but now I realize it was just my brain's guidance at making sure I truly understand a job forward and backwards. This is something I'm sure that will lead to my financial security when I retire from the software biz. I plan to write a blog for aspiring mechanics and watch the money roll in!

Well since I'm a "experienced" mechanic, I decided to test my heater box and it's functions before spending 2 hours installing it into the car. Smart eh? So I lugged in a spare car battery and set it up on the dining room table. Flap movement? check! Heater valve movement? check! Heater fan at 1/3 speed? chec ... err,nothing. Try again? nothing. 2/3's speed? nothing. Hmmm... try touching the fan's terminals directly and nothing happens. <sigh> It worked before I buttoned everything up. Access to the fan is inside the box. Time to pull it all apart again (this is the learning reinforcement part) and drill out the rivets. Visual examination of the fan tells me nothing other than it's old. Well duh! Working on old cars is fun and all that, but I'm not a total purist. I'm not planning on digging my own ore and smelting my iron to repair crap, so I'm not going off onto another tanget and learn how to rebuild vintage electric motors. This has already taken 3 weeks. This is how project cars never get done. So it's off to the internet and some $200 and a few days later I have a brand new replacement fan.

Personally I find it amazing that I'm able to source a brand new Bosch replacement fan (same exact part number) from an autoparts house for something that was built in 1970. Granted a lot of parts are NLA (no longer available) for my car, but a lot still are. BMW deserves credit for stockpiling parts for our classic cars.

Here's the final assembly. All riveted up (for the 2nd but not last time). Hoses attached, new fan in place, gaskets installed, all cables positioned correctly and ready to be installed. Blower fan tests out on all 3 fan speeds. All systems a go!

The cover over the fan is a small tuperware container that I used to keep my ground coffee in. On the forums, one of the bimmer techs said that all 02's originally came with the cover, but he's only seen 1 car with it. They have all disappeared over the years. So here's my nod at bringing the car back to originality.

(looking from inside the car, under the dash) The hole in which the box sits is somewhat exposed to the elements and is prone to rusting around the seal. There was some light surface rust so I sanded it down and hit it with some paint to keep the tin worm at bay for now.

So this should be the end of the story right? Some boring install and down the road we go. But the gods have decided that I really, really haven't learned the Lesson of the Heater Box. After twisting the box into place (having no seats in, remember, really helped my back at least), connecting up all hoses and wiring, it didn't work. The new fan, no workee. Arghh, I know what the inside of the box looks like, merciful gods, please smile upon my labors! No such luck, the humor bone of the gods is excessively large.

So to continue, go back to the top of this page and work yourself down until the part where I have drilled out the rivets and have the box completely apart. I'll wait .... Back now? This time, a little piece of the resistor pack - you can see it on the top of the 2nd photo - broke when I plugged in the cable harness. I got my tube of JB Weld out and 24 hours later I was back in business. This time the gods were busy f'ing with some other poor bastard and forgot about me. An hour or so and I was out and down the road and glorious, non-mouse smelly heat firmly issued from the vents. Ahh, life is good.

While the heater box refurb consumed the major portion of December, a lot of it was waiting for parts that were special ordered. So to keep out of trouble I took the opportunity for a few more items.

Since I had to pull the console out for the heater, I took the time to rework it. It had a hard life, missing quite a few number of screws and bolts, and what was left was a motley bunch, phillips and straighthead screws, metric and american bolts, washers, not washers. It was a bit wobbly to boot. All of that got replaced and enhanced.

The turn signals not cancelling got fixed with a $10 part from BMW Mobile Traditions from Max. That's another tick on the ToDo list.

I had scored a 70's period Blankpunkt BMW Bavaria radio and I replaced the cassette deck with that, including fabbing a panel to hold the radio. Disappointingly, the radio's audio quality was pretty bad, but I crafted a cable for my ipod directly into the small amp the PO had put into the car. The amp was hidden under the console out of sight. With speakers in the side of the console, and more under the rear seats, the sound is pretty decent. But the real music, are the Webers under the hood at full song. That is what's on my top 10 list.

But the god's were smiling on me after all, having a bit of a laugh. While pulling apart the dash, I unearthed these classic cassettes. The irony is too much to bear: Peter Framton's I'm in You and Ozark Mountain Devil's I'm Alive. And for the perfect and final touch, check out the length of the Framton tape, printed on the top. That's Vintage Car Karma.