BMW E46 Project Car Gets a Shifter Rebuild
It’s time to begin the big tear down and refresh process on the BMW E46 project car.
Welcome back to another episode of Project BMW E46, the monthly 6SpeedOnline segment where I regale you with tales of my $1,500 impulse Craigslist purchase. To get everyone up to speed, I purchased a $1,500 BMW E46 3-series with the intention of making it into a weekend warrior drift car. However, like most $1,500 cars, this one needed some work. After polishing 19 years of neglect out of the paintwork, changing all of the fluids and passing a California smog inspection, it was time to really dig into things. First off, what was that noise? Okay, so my cheap Euro Craigslist find needed some replacement parts, no big deal, right?
Well, in this episode we are going to find out. As my plans for upgrades and maintenance involved dropping the whole rear suspension and driveline, it made sense for me to work from front to back. So, step one was to get the car on jack stands, and, preferably, as high in the air as is possible. I’ve banged my head on enough frame rails to know better.
With the car on jack stands, it was time to handle the initial disassembly.
In order to remove the driveshaft, and pretty much everything else under the car that’s important, the exhaust has to come off. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your outlook, the E46 exhaust is just two pieces: the manifolds, and everything else after that. Yes, from the manifold ends, all the way to the tail pipes is one giant piece. Get handy with the 13 and 15-millimeter sockets and ratchet and it comes off, in one big, and very heavy piece in about 20 minutes. Dragging 80-pounds, and 10-feet of exhaust out from the bottom of the car isn’t exactly easy. Oh well. With that out of the way, quick work with the 8 and 10-millimeter sockets and all of the E46’s under body heatshielding is also vanquished.
Next up is the driveshaft. This should be a cakewalk: Undo the bolts that hold the driveshaft to the transmission, then the fasteners that hold it against the chassis, and then, remove the bolts that mate the driveshaft to the differential. No problem. Well, there were no problems until I ran into problems.
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Like many rear-wheel drive vehicles, there is a hardened rubber flex disc (or guibo) that sits between the tail end of the transmission, and the driveshaft. It’s there to dampen driveline shock and prevent excessive wear to either component. Bolts go through the driveshaft, through the flex disc, and into the transmission end, undo them and go. Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work. The bolts were turning, slowly, but they weren’t coming undone. What gives? Well, it was the flex disc that was giving, a lot. It was so worn out that it was flexing as I tried to loosen the bolts holding it together. I eventually got three of them out, but the other three bolts were stuck.
Well, they were stuck, until I used Mr. Torch. After nuking the flex disc and those stubborn bolts with heat, they came undone, but the bolts, and what remained of the flex disc were junk. Fortunately, Pelican Parts is local to me. They had new bolts in stock, and they were cheap(ish), so no harm no foul. Following that, the driveshaft center support bearing fasteners and differential bolts came out perfectly with just hand tools, go figure.
Huzzah, the driveshaft was liberated! But that is only the beginning of the work that needed to be done. So, now that this “preparation” has been completed, let’s move on to the main show.
Move on to the next page to follow along with this budget build, for better or worse…
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