Vintage Preparation

In a few weeks, Vintage will be held in North Carolina. It's an annual car show that caters to vintage BMWs, which means that the largest participant group is 2002 and 1600 owners. a few years ago, I threw together my newly bought 1600 (with a lot of help from local 2002 friends) and was able to make the drive to North Carolina to attend the show. Since then, I've been 2 for 3 on Vintage attendance.

So, since I've installed a new-ish M42 with a few weeks to spare, i spent this weekend doing a few preparations for the trip. I'm sure that I'll be irresponsibly fixing something the night before, but I'm doing what I can now to hedge my bets.

After I successfully test-drove the car sans hood, I bolted on the hood and took the car to work. On the way home, I noticed the temperature rising. I opened the hood and felt a lot of hot air coming out. The quiet 12" electric puller fan was just not cutting it, so today I swapped it out for a 16" fan that I barely fits in front of the radiator.



To squeeze it in there, I had to make a new mount for the radiator.









I don't currently have a voltmeter in the car, but I need to monitor the charging system. It so happens that I recently bought some digital voltmeters for my wife's E30. I cut a piece of scrap sheet aluminum and filled the space left by a missing dash chrome panel. It's missing because I need all four of them and they cost $75 each.

The final product doesn't look all that great, but it's functional. That's pretty much my car's theme at this point.









Then I washed and waxed her, which is kind of like vacuuming pet-stained carpet.

Whatever.....I love this car.