Well, as soon as I think the car is reliable, something happens... I was on my was home from work last Wednesday and the clutch starts slipping really bad. By the time I got close to home, I almost wasn't sure if I would make it. The strange thing is that when I took out the transmission over the summer, the clutch disk had plenty of material on it. In fact, the previous owner told me it was put in with the new engine right before I bought the car. That means the clutch has a total of 17k miles on it. It's a Spec Stage 2+. After doing some reading online, it seems as if their quality is hit or miss. I won't know what happened until I take the old one out but I'm guessing the pressure plate is somehow not doing it's job. I just received my Exedy Stage 1 clutch kit from Cr3 Motorsports. It may be a while before I swap it out. I'm doing an M52 engine swap on my e30 soon.
I had a SPEC back in the day. Supposed to hold 500lb-ft and ended up slipping if I launched in second gear at only 22psi. Swapped it out for a clutchmasters and all was well.
I finished the clutch job on January 2nd. Here's a photo dump of the Spec. When I took it off last summer, I noticed the bolts on the pressure plate were not torqued down evenly. That still doesn't explain why it started slipping so bad in November. Oh well.... The Exedy Stage 1 is installed now and the car feels better than ever. I also had the flywheel resurfaced at the same time.
I haven't updated this thread in a while. Not much has happened. I installed a Bluetooth radio in January after the clutch replacement and I've been daily driving it ever since.
Lately, it seems as if the car is not hitting full boost anymore. It still runs and idles great however. I smoke tested it last weekend and there is a leak at the throttle body seal and also a very minor leak at the #4 fuel injector. I already have the throttle body rebuild kit and I have injector seals coming from eBay. I can't wait to dig into this thing and fix it. It will be a few weeks though because my BMW isn't even drivable at the moment. It doesn't seem to want to idle anymore. Looks like I'll have plenty to do once the school semester is over next week!
Today I went ahead and replaced the injector seals and microfilters. Overall, it wasn't too bad. The hardest part was getting the old filters out. The car runs about the same now, maybe marginally better. Either way, it should fix the small leak at injector #4. Plus, the old seals were hard as a rock.
To start with are some pictures of the throttle body rebuild I did in May. This included a new shaft seal and spring retainer. This seemed to cure all of my boost issues but now it feels like there is another boost leak. I'm thinking intercooler couplers my be the source of my problem now.
Below those are my trip to Helen, GA which was a really fun time. I think I had a little too much fun because coolant started pouring out of the overflow. I think it was just overfilled. It ran nice and cool on the way home on the highway.
After that, I changed the rear engine mount. After reading all of the threads about that, I was expecting the worst but it really wasn't too bad. I took out the throttle body and battery and it was easily accessible. The hardest part was getting the new mount in.
Lastly, I wanted to take some updated pictures of the car. This thing is still in very good condition considering it is 15 years old and now has 257,xxx miles on the chassis. Lately, I've been thinking about selling the car for something different but I just don't think I can bring myself to do that. This car is so much fun and the handling is truly amazing. I can't imagine what it would do with better tires. At the end of the day, I don't know that I could get much for it and I'll never ever find one like it again. Time will tell what happens but I think I'll keep enjoying her for now.