[drwillb]

She's come a long way but now we are in full house makeover mode so my garage has been completely hijacked and I won't get it back for another week. I'm very nervous about my June 9, Watkins Glen deadline now. I'm confident I can get the rear end bolted up in one weekend but I need to find a driveline shop in north Jersey for the driveshaft work.

Here are some updates:

1. I did the suspension then the bodywork. Turns out this was the wrong order. If I had done the bodywork on the first weekend then the stock wheels would have fit over the stock brakes and inside the 1M fender. By doing the suspension first, the stock wheel did not fit over the M3 caliper and the APEX wheel did not fit inside the stock fender. I wound up renting a car for a week so I could get around.

2. Another reason for doing bodywork first. The 1M fender liners need to be fitted before the struts go in place. I did the struts first so I then had to cut a slit into the liners to get them around the struts. You can barely notice it once they are in place, but I hate cutting up brand new parts.

3. As posted above, the M3 caliper dust boots are a total bitch without a special tool. I'd say they're nearly impossible without it.

4. I elected to go without headlight washers. I've always questioned their value and it just uses up the washer fluid more quickly. As per TUN3D's build, I looked for the plastic plug for the washer pump at Lowe's and Home Depot but couldn't find one. I remembered I had some black RTV silicone so I went about blocking the washer pump filter with this then let it set 48 hours.

5. I put in fresh M3 tie rods, inner and outer. First, the stock tie rods are long enough to work with the longer M3 control arms. There's plenty of meat left on the threaded end once you wind them out to reset the toe. The M3 rods are definitely longer and I was worried I wouldn't be able to get correct toe before running out of rod. Below is a picture under the car with toe set to zero. Overall, the tie rod ends on the M3 parts do look a little more robust.

6. While torquing down the strut top nuts, one of the studs broke its weld and became a spinner. This was on my brand new Vorshlag camber plates. I kinda knew what I was going to run into in trying to fix this but it was actually a much bigger pain in the ass than I expected. Vorshlag customer support was excellent. I had a replacement part in 2 or 3 days. I should have waited for the weekend but I had an alignment appointment set up at the shop I use, so I decided to tackle the project on a Tuesday night, at 9pm. Bad move. Because the one studs was spinning, I couldn't remove one of the nuts holding the strut in place. This meant I had to disassemble the strut inside the wheel well to then gain access to the underside of the studs and then grind off the head of the offender. Then, reassemble the strut and bolt everything backup. Piece of cake. Done at 1:30 am. It should have been much easier and quicker but the allen socket at the top of the stud had gotten fouled when the stud was welded to it's bracket. I tried all my metric and SAE allen wrenches but none worked. I also tried vise grips on the stud but that didn't hold. Time to cut.

That's it for now