Beiträge von Stuart8er

We get asked this question on a regular basis and 9 times out of 10 there's nothing wrong at all.
It usually goes something alone these lines;
Customer (not happy); "Hello, I've recently bought a gearbox from you/had a gearbox rebuilt/repaired/uprated by you guys and it's now got this horrible rattling noise that wasn't there before you touched it"
Us; "Does it go away when you press the clutch?"
Customer (a little suprised); "Yes, it does, so there must be something wrong with this gearbox"
Us; "So there's no noise at all in any of the gears when the car is driving?"
Customer; "No, there's no noise all at when it's driving, you can only hear it when it's stopped and idling"
Us; "While the gearbox was out of the car did you replace the clutch"
Customer; "Yeah, that's how I know it's the gearbox that's making the noise, I thought while it's out I may as well put a new clutch in, so it must be the gearbox because the clutch is brand new"
Us; "The clutch you put in, did you go for something like an AP `fast road` or `competition` or a similar make of uprated unit?"
Customer (now thinking that maybe we do know what we're talking about); "Er, yeah I did...."
Us: "Then you'll be pleased to know there's nothing wrong with your gearbox or your clutch, but, probably not pleased to know that there's nothing you can do about that noise, not without putting your old clutch back in because what your hearing is gear chatter."
When you fit a heavy duty clutch, and even more so with a solid paddle clutch, that rattling sound you hear is gear chatter, you can hear it now because you no longer have the soft springs that are fitted into the OEM clutch friction plate, the reason they're used is to damp the engine pulses out.
When the gearbox is under load (driving) the gear teeth are running reasonable tight up against each other so nothing can rattle about, but when it's just sitting idling you'll hear it because the gears need backlash to allow the oil to cushion and lubricate them and those engine pulses are now making the gears rattle against each other.
While it won't be relevant here, the other thing that makes gear noise 10 times worse is when people fit nylon type suspension bushes as this does pretty much the same thing.
The soft rubber bushes fitted by the manufactorers are there to damp out noise, no other reason, replace them with hard bushes and say hello to all the noise that Mr Ford/VW/BMW etc didn't want you to hear (TVRs have got to be the worse for this because of the amount of racket they make in the first place!).
In answer to a previous sudgestion about checking the spigot bearing, it's unlikely be this unless the car has become difficult to select 1st or reverse from a standstill and doesn't like to change gear at high RPM.

Ahhh, the Raleigh Chopper, takes me back to my childhood.....
Here's a good one.
I used to have a friend that lived at the top of the hill (that I lived at the bottom of), we both had Raleigh Choppers.
We left his house one sunny afternoon with him riding in the road and me on the pavement.
I've swung my bike of the pavement down a ramp to ride side by side on the road (like my friend, the good responsible kid!) and as my bike has swung back upright I notice that my friends arm is looped over mine?
It soon dawns on the pair of us that my R/H handlebar has surfaced up inside my friend L/H handlebar and there's no way these will come unlocked untill one is lifted off the other, or the inevitable happens.....
And we're picking up speed, quickly, looking at each other, then the ever quicker moving road.... then each other, then the road, then each other.... both trying to work out who's going to do what.....
After a couple of futile attempts of clashing into each other trying to free the locked arms and handlebars it happened.
Apparently my dad was quite suprised to see the pair of us pass my house at about 20mph in a twisted ball on arms, legs, sparks and bit of Raleigh Choppers laughing like a pair of demented idiots.
You live and learn

If they worked that well every car would come with them straight off the production line and the manufacturers would be able to boast better power and fuel economy figures to sell cars with.
On older engines (and this probably means going back to sometime around the 40s), back before the days when `swirl` and `tumble` became the commonplace terms relating to intake charge and head design, back when just getting a reasonable amount of cool air into the engine was an achievement in itself this kind of thing may have helped to some degree (though I doubt 20-30% would be even close), but this would more likely be by fluke rather than by design.
So no, it's simply not relevant in modern engines and fitting one could either do bugger all that you'd notice or just as easily make a complete mess of the intake charge and therefore make a less efficient engine.
For these to be sold as `specially formulated for your car` is nothing short of an outright lie, there's no way these are going to work (or be specially formulated for) a engine that has either been designed to tumble the intake charge or one that has anything close to well designed intake swirl already happening.
If ever you see these kind of things for sale (the Ebay electric superchargers and fuel `catalysts` spring to mind), goodies that promise everything and cost next to nothing, ask yourself a simple question, why dont' Ford, GM etc fit these wondergadgets for us all to enjoy?
I would also like to point out at this time;
The rumor that 8Tech has secretly installed these in his redesigned intakes is nothing but a vicious, and totaly unfounded rumor put about by people with nothing better to do with there time but write on internet forums

Find a garage with an inspection pit and stand under the car looking at the engine and transmission mounts while a driver moves the car forwards and backwards above the pit. The car only needs to be moved a metre or so.
If this shows nothing but you still believe you may have a broken mount you could try taking up the drive with the handbrake on or the wheels lightly chocked to stop the car from moving but please be very careful if you do it this way as this puts a lot of load into the suspension systems.
If you can't or don't trust the driver with the wheels chocked but still need to simulate `load` get the driver to lightly`tap` the throttle when he moves the car, just enough to make the car hop/jump a little (don't let him get carried away with it!).
What you're trying to do is load and release the drive train, this way if a mount has failed you will see (and probably hear it) straight away but make sure the driver knows what you're trying to see and what you will do to him if he `tries to help` any more than you've requested!

Interesting just how divided opinions are, personaly if it were mine I'd go for a silver-titanium respray, that'd tone it down just enough for me.
I'm not a fan of spoilers, splitters, scoops and the like and I couldn't even bring myself to buy an Evo or an Impreza, as good as they are to drive (if you get a chance to go play in a late Evo do it, I challenge you not to be impressed). But I just couldn't drive around in something with that amount of plastic stuck on it as a day to day driver, perhaps it's my age, and yet I like the Koneig, it's hard to explain but when your standing next to it it doesn't look quite so `Magnum PI` as it does in the pictures.

I'd have bought it myself, if it wasn't for the tax man, the mortgage, the bills, reality in general

It's a real stunner.
I wouldn't normaly bother posting a `for sale add` but I've seen this car in the flesh, it belongs to a customer of ours and having seen it parked up next to my 850i I can honestly say my car looked like a pretty sad in comparison.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1993-BMW…ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Working in the transmission industry this a question we get asked from time to time and the answer is always the same.
Sell the car you have and buy the car you want.
Unless, you're prepared to take on the kind of job you wish you'd never started in the first place and have been sensible enough to work out a budget, and them double it.
Or you have enough money to pay someone else to do it for you.
Or you love spending days pulling your hair out because something just isn't going the way it should.
Even on a pretty basic car it's a killer of a job (and you WILL need a complete donor car to be able to do it) and you'll need to be prepared for more work and money than you'd initialy bargained for (new clutch, controls etc, while you're there you may as well replace or recondition any `service items` that may need to come out again otherwise, oh, and pay for replacement items that have been found wanting when you've removed them or have got broken on removal).
The problem with doing the job on an E31 is the level of complexity in the car itself added to the cost of the donor, lets be honest, who's going to sell a manual E31 for peanuts?
By the time the money is spent and the job is done you'd have been able to sell your automatic, buy a tidy manual car and have any mods done to bring the manual car up to or above the spec' of your current automatic, and without all the hassle.
I'm not trying to put you off the idea completely, but if you're going to do it you really need go into this kind of job with your eyes wide open, because if you don't sooner or later they will be

Yeap, it had to happen, I'm at work today and the man on the radio says that the UK insurance industry think that 18/01/08 is the date you're statisticaly most likely to have a motoring accident in the UK.
Ha ha ha, statistics, statistics, statistics, thought I...... and then the phone rang, it was my wife, "er, Stuart.... er..... the car's just been hit....."...........
On the the plus side I could actually look out the window and see the 850 sat there while we were talking on the phone, because it was sat outside work it survived the day just fine (so far).
On the downside some old guy had passed out while driving down my street and after bouncing off one car (it just had to be the hairdresser visiting my wife!) then plowed through the wall next to my drive and straight into my other BMW (that was sat on the drive)
It's bye bye old car (the whole side's wiped out), it's a write off
I'll be sad to see it go as I've had it over seven years and it's never let me down, it's sailed through every MOT and cost me nothing to run other than tyres, a rear silencer and brake pads
After three years of ownership I'd already figured it owed me nothing so I stopped servicing it and waited for something to go wrong to give me a reason to get rid of it.
So even though I'd not serviced it for the last FOUR years, (not even changed the oil, just topped it up when the top end started rattling ) it just refused to die, it's been absolutely bullet proof.
On the back of my owning this particular car four of my mates now own BMWs, mates that had never considered one before, simply because they were so amazed that mine still drove like a new car, (despite the abuse I'd given it) and this is with 225,000 miles on the clock
A truly remarkable little car, if any other car I ever own can manage half of the abuse that car was given and still start first time every time I'd be delighted.
So what's my now dead BMW? just an E36 318i, would I recomend one to a freind, yep, I did, and four of them are now BMW owners

At last, it's good to be back, I'd set my home page to Ebay while the site was down with obvious results, yep, more stuff I don't need
By the way, Friday before Christmas I left work at lunchtime and driving up the A5 into Dunstable what did I see in my rear view mirror, another silver E31 right behind me, was it anyone from here?

Martin, you have the option of swapping the LSD and new final drive ratio into your diff case so the cooling issue isn't really a problem, leave it on if you want to.
There's always plenty of diffs around and it's just a case of getting on the phone, it's only a matter of time before you get lucky, for example (a couple possibles on Ebay right now);

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BMW-535i…geNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem
Potteries Vehicle Recylcling (Stoke-on-Trent, 07805 989237) it's an F reg' 535i they want a ton for the diff so it's worth a call (it may or may not have a LSD but if they don't know and it has that can only work in your favour, if they've got it off the car it's got to be worth checking).

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BMW-E34-…geNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem
Midland BM (0121 544 9444), it's not got an LSD in it but it could be the ratio you want and at 90 quid could also be worth a call.

If the holding trick with the buttons doesn't work (three seconds at the end of upward travel should recalibrate the windows but the manual only specifies the front windows and sun roof be done after disconection of batteries) you'll need to see if there's something physical causing it to stick, get your head in there and have a good look.
There are two possible causes, a physical problem or an electrical one (obstruction vs conection), if you can work this bit out you're half way to fixing it.
To rule out obstruction (and without enough pressure to damage anything) try to `help` the window past the point where it's sticking.
If that gets you nowhere can anyone advise if there's a way of `tapping` into the electrickery to see if the stop sensor thinks the window is has reached the end of it's travel and is activating too early?

As far as I know the LSD is usually included as part of the `Sport` pack, though I could be wrong.......
The Quaife ATB is not a complete differential, it's just the bit inside that the crown wheel bolts to and the output flanges fit into (if that makes any sence).
If you supply Quaife with a complete rear diff' they'll either build the ATB into it for you or send you to a transmission specialists like ourselves (it'll be someone that Quaife have worked with for years and trust to do a decent job). Either way they'll be a labour charge and the cost of the bearings, seals and spacer, as well as the cost of the ATB.

Very classy, if only his mate had convinced him to get the interior reupolstered to match

As promised I made a couple of calls today, the first was to BMW to see if the rebuild/service kit for the LSD for the E31 size diff was still available. It's not, the bad news is the only option now is a complete replacement LSD unit at... one thousand and seventy six pounds, plus VAT
I also had a chat with one of the guys at Quaife and it turns out that all Quaife ATBs for BMWs are now on an exclusive to Birds Garages, Quaife used to list it as a `BMW 850 fitment` ATB (QDF10N) at six hundred and ninety three quid (plus VAT) in the old catalogue but a call to Birds and we're told it's now at eight twenty nine (plus VAT), shurely shome mishtake .

The 535 Sport diff hasn't been fitted yet but I'm certain it's the right one, (I'll be very, very supprised if it isn't, but it wouldn't be the end of the world as it only owes me 50 quid so there's a potentialy tidy profit to be made there!).
As a rule of thumb if your unsure that the diff your looking at is right for your E31 just pick it up, all other BMW diffs are light by comparison, these are bloody heavy it the full size diff as fitted to big power E34, E31 and E32 cars.
I've a theory (that the more I learn the more it seems to hold water) in that BMW traditionaly use three diff sizes at any given time based on the power output (and weight probably has something to do with it) of the cars in the range.
You've one for the small cars (sometimes fitted to the mid size but with a small engine option), a medium size diff for mid size cars, (and small cars with big engines or big cars with very little engines) and then the big diff for the big cars (and mid size cars with a big engines), the M and Sport (with LSD) cars will always have there respective `big` option at any given time.
Where it gets confusing is where models crossover any given time line but if you look at, for arguments sake and because it's relevant to us, the E32,E34 and E36 you've probably got the three common examples.
Taking the E36, E34 and E32 models is a pretty good base line as they were delveloped within a simlar time frame and made up the three basic size cars that BMW usually have for sale at any given time (excluding the niche market sports cars). When you take into account that the E31 was developed along side the E36 it puts it into the `big diff` group, and it is.
If I'm wrong I put my hands up, but as I said, it's only a theory and it seems to work out about right.
If anyone knows better I'm sure we'd all be interested to know?

Hi Paul,
I've a complete L/H door lock assembly (loom, controler, the lot) from a late keyless entry car.
I bought a (late) door to swap onto my damaged '91 car and the door lock and even the loom were completely different, having eventualy just used the metal work and glass I've everthing else still here.
If the problem still exists get in touch and you're more than welcome to borrow the lot.

With or without the MF controls I'd like to change to the smaller wheel purely because it's much nicer to drive with.
Having owned an old E36 for 8 years I've kinda gotten used to the smaller size wheel and can't see that fitting one into the E31 is going to make the steering noticable heavier.
Even if it does I'll happily live with it as it'll also mean less of a stretch when steering with the palm of your hand, so I'm well up for it.
It looks from this thread like the guys with later E31s are pretty well sorted but can anyone say for certain what E36/E46 year/model steering wheels will fit the earlier (pre Sept' '94) E31 steering column?

I've just taken a look at the manual and you're not going to like this, it appears you'll need to remove the rear seat before you can get the trim panel off
Time to dig out the tape, I recon' that'll be a job for tomorrow mate.

You need to get the trim panel off the inside first then if the glass was going all the way up previously I'm guessing you're looking for a loose screw as this may have allowed the window to slip.
Try and spot where one of the 10mm head screws looks as though it's moved and left a tell tale sign of where it should be and adjust it back into position.
Ideally you'll need to take some time and read the manual (there's three million adjustment screws) but under the circumstance a roll of gaffer tape wouldn't go amiss!