My FD Project

[rlacasse1]

A small amount of progress has been made today.

This fell out.......



Followed by this............



The reason the harness is out is so I can replace the loom. The loom is dry and brittle at this point. Anybody have any good recommendations on what to replace it with?

Also, I cleaned up the rotors. I threw them in the electrolysis tank for 2 days and then everything basically wiped off.

[rlacasse1]

Well, I got some more knocked out today. I was able to strip damn near everything out of it. All I really have left to do is remove various plastic clips that once held the wire harness in place, and pull the heater core and A/C, since it's going back together without A/C anyways. After that I will powerwash it, drop the subframe, and the begin to prep it for paint. It feels nice to finally have her back on all four so I can clean out the garage. The last pic is the shit hole as it sits at this point. I need to clean it pretty badly. And I probably shouldn't be using my buddy's M3 for a table like that. lol

[green-lantern]

Keep it up, you've got a bunch done.

[rlacasse1]

Well, it's been awhile since I've updated this.

I spent the last two days completely stripping down the front body harness so I could put new loom on it. This is where I have her at now.



As you can see there about 15 billion zip ties. I used them to hold the basic shape of the harness, and more importantly at junctions in the harness to make sure I keep the branches at the right places.

Next up i will start removing the plugs so I can actually slide the mesh loom over the harness.

[rlacasse1]

Quick update.

Since my last post, I got busy with removing all of the plugs, fuse boxes, and relay boxes on the harness. The reason for this is because I have to remove them to get the new harness material to slip over the wires. I'm wrapping the harness in a mesh wire loom.

To remove the plugs, I first numbered each one and labeled which wires went where on diagrams that I drew. Below is an example of one. I'm sure this info is probably out there somewhere if I had bothered to look hard enough. But, I wanted to do it this way.



There's the harness with the 56 (I think), plugs and fuse/relay boxes removed. The plugs definitely aren't as hard to remove as you would expect. Once I got into the groove of removing them it didn't take a lot of time to get them off.



You can see that I have already begun to wrap the harness with electrical tape. Mainly on the ends where the harness is in the cabin. I'll continue wrapping the harness with electrical tape to help keep the harness' shape. Then later on will come the mesh loom.

More to come!!!

[green-lantern]

That's one thing I don't think I'd have the patience for. Seems like a lot of work with little reward. Was the old loom in that bad of shape?

[rlacasse1]

It was super dry and brittle, and looked nasty as hell. I didn't want to go through the effort of cleaning up the bay as well as I'm going to, and then throw in a junky old harness.

It's really not that hard once you get the hang of popping the pins loose.

[rlacasse1]

Finally got back to working on the car. I had planned on updating this thread with a completed harness, however, I decide the tape I was going to use at the intersections of the harness was simply not durable enough, so now I have better tape on the way.

Although the harness has been a fail, I did have a majorly successful day on the car itself. I had a buddy come over and we went to town taping up the car, covering it, and then stripping the bay. We have quite a bit to do though before I start spraying here with primer.

First I had to get her home all cleaned up and then center her in the garage. That's my friend you're seeing.



Then got her up in the air. These stock BMW wheels work perfectly for stands under the rear wheels of the car. She's all taped up and covered too.



Getting her down to bare metal.



And this is where she sits. I still have a couple long days of stripping and then the primer goes on.

[rlacasse1]

Car has been partially primed. I need to finish priming it then spray the black. Then I can move onto cleaning up the bottoms of the frame rails and the fender wells so they can be coated.

[J-Groove]

Excellent progress!

-John