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Hit By A Truck


Rob Peters

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Well, not reallh but my body feels like it.  Our youngest son has a very nice North Carolina 1997 BMW 328i that even though it has about 140,000 miles on it.  He has had it a couple years and completely reconditioned the interior.  It had been an automatic transmission but last year, over the winter he swapped it over to a 5 speed manual. 

The issue this caused was the rear end was not geared properly for a standard transmission.  He was able to pick up a used differential/rear end from a u-pullit lot.  While it was up on jack stands and since we had to pull the exhaust to get to the bolts on the drive shaft we went ahead and did some exhaust work. 

We started on this the first thing this morning and just finished up about an hour ago.  This is the longest I have crawled around under a car (11 hours) and if nothing else, it has let me know maybe I am getting too old to spend that much time laying under cars.  As anyone who works on cars can attest to, when you get into the final stretch on a car project, some of the pain starts to ease and it feels good to get it down off the jack stands.

I was way too greasy/dirty when my son said "Let's take a test drive" so I told him to go ahead and do the test drive by yourself and I will clean up all the tools and put everything away.  Prior to the rear end swap today the gearing was so off that you could pull away from a dead stop in third gear without any issues.  Back to the test drive.... I really didn't need to do the ride along on the test drive because the smile on his face told it all.  All was good in BMW-Land.

I can tell you after a long day like this........... long showers are really underrated.

rob

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Rob you need to have a Hot tub like Joe T installed on projects like that!!! I know he is too far away to indulge. Next time plan for that first!!!    And then like Ron says, plenty of 🍺:2beers:

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37 minutes ago, cny first gen 71 said:

That job is a pain doing it othe ground on a normal car I can imagine how much of a pain it is in a BMW, hats off to you Rob!

Steve,

It amazes me the engineering they put into the BMW.  When he did the tranny swap, they are so far advanced that much of what was needed was already part of the original car.  What I am talking about is the hydralic slave clutch taps right off a fitting on the original brake reserviour.  All bolt holes are the same.  The major thing he had to do with that was modify/change the drive shaft.  

rob

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  • 3 weeks later...

E36 Bimmer is an awesome car, an enthusiast favorite! You mentioned the clutch line coming off the brake master cylinder and it reminded me of some of the Volkswagens I've worked on in the past. Those are the same way.

It's quite a bit of effort doing exhaust work in the air with a lift, say nothing about on the ground under the car! You still got it Rob! Most of the German makes are not easy to work on either. I still have a whole drawer full of specialized tools for my VW that I never use anymore.

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