Weathering the Storm

What a week it has been!  The cold!  The snow!  The ice!  Oh, the ice! Some people dubbed this week’s weather “Snowpocalypse” and “Ice Storm 2011”.  No matter what you call it, we hope that everyone is staying safe and warm!
Because of the weather, we were waiting on parts to arrive, but now we’re back on track!

This 1991 BMW 525i was in for a new radiator:

Last week Reggie was working on the head gasket on the 1992 BMW 735i. The newly rebuilt cylinder head had just arrived at the shop, ready to be installed.  Below, it’s in the engine bay mid-assembly:

As seen from the driver’s side of the car:

Reggie adjusts the valves to spec:

This is a job in which a third hand would come in quite, well, handy.

Once that is finished, the valve cover is put back in place:

Again, a view from the driver’s side of the bimmer:

Reggie tightens the last 5 bolts (there are 12 total) on the intake manifold:

In this case, a third arm would be quite helpful, especially if the third arm were like Gumby and Inspector Gadget’s Go-Go-Gadget Arm combined:

Last week Reggie spent some time working on the 1986 BMW 325 swap project, specifically the wiring harness.  He also installed the dash and worked on the interior wiring.  Let’s take a look!

Here is the dash with the vent removed…

…so that these slick gauges can be installed:

First a little prep work before installing the dash:

Then it’s time to install the dash:

Plenty of reference photos were taken at the beginning of this project, and they proved quite useful:

Soldering two wires together and warming up the heat shrink tubing that protects the new connection:

Unfortunately, that’s all the time we’ve got for today’s installment.  Have a great weekend!