In this week's update I spent some time cleaning up the car, and making it more visually appealing.
The first thing I did was install a set of gloss black kidneys as well as wrap the bottom piece of silver trim in the front bumper gloss black.
Please excuse the crappy photos, I could not have chosen a worse time to take pictures (very harsh light):
The black kidneys look 100x better than the OEM chrome ones, and the black trim looks much better than the silver trim as well. Maybe I'll wrap the window trim this week.
Anyways, next I installed the low pressure fuel pump with the help of a different mechanic, these guys don't do much performance work but they know so much about these cars. Without the lock ring tool we did the lpfp installation in about an hour and a half (much easier with two people vs by yourself).
I had a little less than a 1/4 tank, however our E61s have 18.5 gallon tanks, maybe even 19, so we used an old lpfp attached to a hose and some long leads (safely away from any fumes) to pump out the rest of the gasoline before I stuck my entire arm in the gas tank.
Having the new lpfp is so nice. The car is making great power, the rail pressures are higher and more consistent, and my confidence is overall boosted. My old pump's performance was sporadic. It would spike from 60-100lbs, this one is much more consistent and makes more pressure. Thank you
http://www.eurotuninggroup.com
Lastly, I decided to clean up my MHD situation. Previously, I had just plugged in the phone via the OBD and balanced it on my leg, however under hard driving this is obviously not a great solution.
First I disassembled the trim:
My DIY snake:
I needed a way to ensure the OTG cable does not become dislodged from the OBD cable, and I did not want to glue anything, so here was my short term solution using high temperature electrical tape:
Much cleaner!
I don't like how far out the OBD portion sticks out. Maybe I can modify the cable to have a smaller OBD housing or find one already available. The OBD end has a few strips of Velcro on it as well as that piece of black trim right on top of it, so when it's not plugged in it's neatly adhered to its little "ceiling".
Lastly, I wanted to clean up my side indicator housings. Eventually I will replace the entire housings as well as the bulbs, but for today I just sanded and polished:
One of those little clips that holds the side indicator housing into the car fell off in the car. I didn't want to spend 30 minutes disassembling components to even have a hope of finding it, so I took a heat shield from my E92 (that I never put back on during a turbo swap) and cut a small portion of that to be used as a clip. Worked out better than I expected.
I am looking into wheels, coilovers, and wrapping the entire car, but in the short term I will be wrapping the window trim and possibly modifying my transmission cooling system.