Maytag: The Alpine '87 529i

[Karl Grau]

Looking good!
(And the Seahawks play at night so you have an extra 4 hours )

[tig]

Looking good!
(And the Seahawks play at night so you have an extra 4 hours )

Who thought it was a Good Thing that the 'Hawks play Monday Night and then have to travel 3000 miles to play in NE...the week after NE has a buy week?

Any-hoo. Before:


After:

[davintosh]

Looking good, sir.

Do you make house calls? To Germany?

[Foonfer]

After turning my envious tone down a couple notches, I'll have to ask: How did you get to remove all crud from the wheel wells/strut cavities and leave them SO.SO.CLEAN???? Jeez that's just beautiful.

[Mike W.]

Wait a minute, the before picture is better than 99.999 of the cars on the road and better than anything I've ever had, and the after looks like you could eat off it. That's appalling.




Nice work Charlie.

[MicahO]

Gorgeous and clean. Outstanding work.

Reiterating other's questions: What's the secret sauce? Purple Power and patience? You were in the garage, so I don't think you were blasting a power washer inside?

[Chimi-Changa]

Beautius Maximus!

Now I know why it's called the Maytag. Clean is the Word.

[tig]

Wait a minute, the before picture is better than 99.999 of the cars on the road and better than anything I've ever had, and the after looks like you could eat off it. That's appalling.




Nice work Charlie.

Recall that I did a 5-speed conversion and replaced the diff with an LSD (actually two). When I did that I did a 'light' cleaning, so this time it was easier.

Reiterating other's questions: What's the secret sauce? Purple Power and patience? You were in the garage, so I don't think you were blasting a power washer inside?

I use Oil Eater.

https://www.amazon.com/Oil-Eater-AOD1G3 ... =ceklog-20


1:2 dilution in spray bottle.
Spray on and let sit for 5-10 minutes.
Scrub with nylon brush.
Rinse.
Repeat until clean.

Usually takes 2 or 3 turns. Sometimes I'll use a brillo-based sponge if there's a tough spot... but lightly.

No way of doing this without a lot of elbow grease and getting absolutely disgustingly covered in muck, but that's part of the fun.

I've gotten good at using the hose under the car in the garage with little overspray. My garage floor slopes out nicely so I can keep it pretty contained.

[BDKawey]

Is this car brand new yet or...?

haha. extremely nice work. sat here and rand through the thread on a slow afternoon at work. how'd you enjoy doing your trailing arm bushings? i need to get to that this winter, subframe bushings were done the winter of 2015 so those are fine, im a dummy for not doing the trailing arms

[John project car]

See, THIS is what I'm talking about:

http://www.carsforsale.com/used_cars_fo ... 3287003_26

That looks like a pretty stinkin nice car for $2k.

I'm sure it literally stinks too. I drove one once and not only did it stink and belch black smoke but it shook like hell. But...

I have often thought an old Merc would be a good car to drop a blown big block into . Nice sleeper . Trouble is the seats and suspension came out of a school bus with ride and handling equal to a 1970's pickup but not a nice ...... .

[tig]

Three years ago today I bought Maytag and got her home. That evening I posted the following on this thread (page 2). Heh.

Let's start with what we know of the history of Maytag...

She was built in July of 1986. VIN WBADK8307H9707185.

(Note, for Vlad I had found a site that gave me all of the options in addition to the build date. But I can't find it now. Tried searchy with no joy.)

She's a 528e automatic. White with tan (I think) interior.

According to the PO she was purchased in Dallas by a lady. The PO, an American Airlines 777ER pilot, purchased the car in 1994 with 87K on it and shipped it to Los Angeles.

It was in LA until August of last year when he drove it to Seattle where it has basically sat since.

My wife and I (more on her involvement later) picked her up today with 202,305 miles on her. I paid $2k after doing an exhaustive inspection and an extended test drive around Edmunds, WA.

The timing belt was replaced at 199,000 miles. The PO had said it had been done last year, but the tag the mechanic left inside the fuse box says 2009. This means I need to replace the timing belt asap. Fun.

The car is amazingly straight. The body is actually in better condition than Vlad, with fewer little dings. There is some evidence that the front passenger door has been repainted. The paint will polish up very nice.

There is no rust anywhere that I could find. There's some moisture in the trunk just under where the factory radio amplifier is mounted, and a bit of mold where a jacket has been sitting.

The interior is in fantastic shape. There are two tiny cracks in the dash, where all E28 dashes start cracking. The vinyl on the seats is in tip-top shape. The carpet is pretty dirty and the floor mats are shot.

The suspension feels great. The shocks are not worn and the rear-subframe bushings do not feel worn. The dog-bones are shot and need to be replaced.

The rear tires are shot; they are rotting. The fronts are basically new. The chrome bottle caps are pretty tired, but they'll clean up nicely.

It's got an idle issue (hunts high).

Everything electric except the headrests work. AC blows very cold. The heater fan makes some noise and will need to be taken out and cleaned up.

It has some ancient aftermarket alarm on it. There's only one key and no keyfob for the alarm, so it will need to be ripped out.

Julie (my wife) insisted on driving her home. It's about 30 miles from Edmunds to Bellevue. I followed her in Vlad taking pictures...





Here she is at home next to Vlad...














More to come...

[tig]

I think I goofed.

With the help of my son who's back from College this weekend, I got the TAs installed.

I figured it'd be straighforward putting the hub flanges in while the TAs were on the car. I was wrong.

I don't want to whack them in with a hammer for fear of damaging the bearings. And I can't get my hub-helper thing around the dust shield to press them in.

I think I have to pull the TAs off again and take them to a shop with a press. What do you folks think?

[davintosh]

You don't have a press?

I haven't done that particular job, but it seems like it'd be far easier with them off the car than on. And a hydraulic press can be had for ~$150. Little reason not to have one in your garage.

[a]

I did a rear hub R+R to replace the ABS ring IRRC, I used a steering wheel puller some prying and tappage to pull the stub axle . Light tappage, hard wood were all I used. In situ. Install was a piece of cake compared take apart. The Rear wheel bearing is a pretty stout piece of metal and is a precise push fit. That is the shade tree way . Maytag is quite a work. Gonna be better than new. Great job !

[tig]

Laying it all out there. Full transparency. I have no shame. Or I should be ashamed.

I am an idiot.

First, after polishing the mating surface of the hub flange and then freezing them overnight I decided to try the hammer method.

It worked great; it went in relatively easily and I felt good that I wasn't destroying the bearings. I got the axle flange on and everything tightened up.



Then I said to myself, let's look at the other side and make sure the brake lines line up and all that...

Then I said: "Charlie, you are a fucking idiot." Why? Because I had put the fucking dust-shields on the wrong side of the car!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had my son helping me last night, and I'm going to blame the fact that I was so happy that he was with me that I was distracted.

This meant the hub flange I just pounded in had to come out. And this meant that my brand new bearing was going to get destroyed because you can't pull the bearings without destroying them.



One step forward, two steps back, or something like that.

Now to order another bearing from Blunt (he LOVES me). At least now I know how to do it with the TAs on the car!

[davintosh]

Sounds like something my son & I did a couple of years ago when doing the bearings on the X5. I've had more expensive lessons.

http://www.mye28.com/viewtopic.php?f=2& ... &#p1159542

[tig]

This arrived:


Also got the replacement bearing. Blunt rules.

Need to get the rear suspension back together tomorrow so I can get Maytag off the lift... I need to put Julie's snow tires on because it's gonna snow!

[tig]

How does one install one of these lock rings in the rear hub?

I butchered the first one following instructions I found somewhere to use the socket to tap it in. Maybe my socket is too beefy?

[tig]

Hubs are assembled. All that's left is to install:

-shocks/coil-overs
-diff
-half-shafts (after figuring out how to seat the lock nut...see above).
-exhaust





The BC Racing coil-overs have goofy lower-mount points. I can't tell which end to stick in the hub. The long side is too long (the shock sticks out). The short side doesn't seem long enough; it fits but makes me nervous. Anyone dealt with these? I have an email into BC Racing...

[ovide]

Looking good, sir.

Do you make house calls? To Germany?

If he does, please make a detour via Franeker!

[tig]

Got a buddy to come by and help me get the shocks attached and diff installed.



Put the wheels on and dropped the car off the jacks to see how it sat...

I had adjusted the shocks 1" higher than how the PO had them thinking that might be close to what I want. He must have had the car slammed because I need at least another 1" in height. Way tooooo loooow.




Now gonna take the wheels off, undo the shocks from the TAs and extend them another inch and try again...

[waynet1]

That looks pretty damn close to stock ride height to me.
Have you measured it?? I think Bently gives the measurements.

[tig]

That looks pretty damn close to stock ride height to me.
Have you measured it?? I think Bently gives the measurements.

This photo was taken from below the car. Trust me, it was tucked.

I re-did it and now it's about right where it was with the old rear suspension. Once i complete the front, I will use that as the baseline.

The car is now back on 4 wheels but I forgot to bleed the brakes so I can't yet drive it. I need to put winter tires on the other cars before I dive into the front.




Oh, and in other news. The SOUNDERS WON THE MLS CUP!!!!!

[waynet1]

That looks pretty damn close to stock ride height to me.
Have you measured it?? I think Bently gives the measurements.

This photo was taken from below the car. Trust me, it was tucked.

I re-did it and now it's about right where it was with the old rear suspension. Once i complete the front, I will use that as the baseline.

Well did you check the measurements? Looks way too high to me now.
Looks like you're ready for the Baja 1000.

[tig]

Maytag has a stock suspension on it. It looks high because most E28s no longer have stock suspensions.



Vlad looks great, I think, but is a tad low for a car I want my wife & kids to be comfortable driving. So Maytag will be a bit higher. Right now Vlad measures like this (it's probably better to measure from center of wheel, but that's really hard to do with one set of hands and without removing center caps):

Front (25"):


Rear (24.25"):


Maytag, Front (25.5"):


Rear (25.5"):


I think the rake on Vlad is about tits. For Maytag I'll shoot for Front of about 25.5 and Rear of 25. I have the correct rake # somewhere, and believe it's supposed to be measured from jack-point to jack-point.

[geordi]

Glad to see Maytag still getting lots of love.

[Eta power]

Both cars look fantastic, as usual!

[Karl Grau]

I think the rake on Vlad is about tits. For Maytag I'll shoot for Front of about 25.5 and Rear of 25. I have the correct rake # somewhere, and believe it's supposed to be measured from jack-point to jack-point.

I will never understand why Americans are so afraid of the 'Metric System'.

[tig]

I think the rake on Vlad is about tits. For Maytag I'll shoot for Front of about 25.5 and Rear of 25. I have the correct rake # somewhere, and believe it's supposed to be measured from jack-point to jack-point.

I will never understand why Americans are so afraid of the 'Metric System'.

Metric this.

[davintosh]

I think the rake on Vlad is about tits. For Maytag I'll shoot for Front of about 64.75 cm and Rear of 65.5 cm. I have the correct rake # somewhere, and believe it's supposed to be measured from jack-point to jack-point.

I will never understand why Americans are so afraid of the 'Metric System'.

Metric this.

There. Next?