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  • The Hack Mechanic

    Rob Siegel has been writing the column The Hack Mechanic for BMW CCA Roundel magazine for 35 years and is the author of eight automotive books, five of which are centered on vintage BMWs. During the past 40 years, he has owned nearly 70 BMWs, nearly 40 of which have been 2002s. He lives near Boston with his incredibly tolerant wife Maire Anne and as many cars and guitars as he can get away with. Rob says "I REALLY AM just a 2002 nut like you, except I never shut up."
    Freeing Stuck Rear Brake Adjusters

    Freeing Stuck Rear Brake Adjusters

    One of my least favorite jobs on a 2002 is adjusting the rear brake shoes in order to lessen the brake pedal travel. In principle, it's easy—you just pull off the rear wheels, take a 17mm open-end wrench, put it on each of the two adjusting nuts on the backing plate behind each brake drum, rotate the drum, turn the adjuster until you can hear and feel the shoe rubbing against the drum, back the adjuster off a tiny bit, do the other adjuster, then move to the other side and do the same on the oth

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    thehackmechanic

    Front Strut Replacement The Hack Mechanic Way

    Front Strut Replacement The Hack Mechanic Way

    Front Strut Replacement   Overview Okay. It's time to replace your front struts. Maybe you're doing it as part of a shocks-and-struts job. Maybe you're updating the entire suspension—shocks and struts, springs, and sway bars. Maybe you're doing a full front end refresh including ball joints, tie rods, center track link, and idler bushings. Maybe you're doing an undercarriage refresh and are sandblasting and repainting the subframe and strut housings at the same time.   W

    thehackmechanic

    thehackmechanic

    Chillin' Louie: To Coldly Blow (Part IX: Firing it up, buttoning it up)

    Chillin' Louie: To Coldly Blow (Part IX: Firing it up, buttoning it up)

    Okay, with the compressor and bracket, condenser and fan, evaporator assembly, receiver-drier, hoses, and wiring installed, it was time to fire it up, then button it up. Similarly, with the project itself complete, it's time to button up this series of articles. As such, this is a long piece that touches on a number of topics.   Leak detection   There's a whole chapter in my a/c book devoted to leak detection, and specifically to the use of nitrogen or other dry inert gas to

    thehackmechanic

    thehackmechanic

    Chillin' Louie (Part VIII: Wiring)

    Chillin' Louie (Part VIII: Wiring)

    With all the major components installed and the hoses made, the next task was wiring the system up. This will be a short one (that's not an electrical joke :^), as in a car like this, the wiring is trivial.   Wiring diagram   Someone (Conserv, probably) had posted a copy of the Clardy wiring diagram. It is below.     More general, and probably more useful, is the diagram I have in my a/c book:   Generic wiring diagram from Just Needs a Re

    thehackmechanic

    thehackmechanic

    Chillin' Louie (Part VII: Hose Fabrication)

    Chillin' Louie (Part VII: Hose Fabrication)

    The tool you need   Way back in the introduction, I told the story of Ed Ellis ("Ellis The Rim Man" to you Bostonians) making the hoses for my E9 3.0CSi 22 years ago by the curb on Comm Ave. I watched as he crimped on one end, cut the hose longer than it needed to be, put it through whatever holes in the body it needed to pass through, threaded the other fitting onto whatever component it needed to attach to, test-fit the hose into the fitting, trimmed it to length, "clocked" the fitti

    thehackmechanic

    thehackmechanic

    Chillin' Louie (Part VI: Hoses, Holes, Grommets, and Bulkhead Connectors)

    Chillin' Louie (Part VI: Hoses, Holes, Grommets, and Bulkhead Connectors)

    Punching holes in the nose   Before we make the hoses, we need to punch holes in a few places.   The easiest ones are in the nose where the condenser lives. Hoses need to run there from the compressor and to the receiver-drier, so holes need to be cut. That immediately leads to two questions: Where and how big?   There's a very useful table in my a/c book. You should buy the book anyway (seriously, you really should buy the book anyway), but I'll reproduce it below:

    thehackmechanic

    thehackmechanic

    Chillin' Louie (Part V: The Clardy Evaporator Assembly)

    Chillin' Louie (Part V: The Clardy Evaporator Assembly)

    The Bigger Picture of the Evaporator Assembly and Console   This whole thing started because a) I did some work on the bone-stock Clardy system in my friend Jose Rosario's 2002 and was very impressed with how cold it blew after shooting just one can of R134a into it, and after that b) I happened into a full-up Clardy system at The Vintage in 2017 for a price I couldn't pass up. As I say in my a/c book, whether you're doing an installation of a system like the one I bought, or a rejuven

    thehackmechanic

    thehackmechanic

    Chillin' Louie (Part IV: The Condenser and Fan)

    Chillin' Louie (Part IV: The Condenser and Fan)

    As I and many other folks have said, part of the recipe for upgrading performance of any vintage a/c system in any car is to replace the old-school serpentine-flow condenser and fan with the largest modern parallel-flow condenser you can fit in the nose, and the largest fan you can fit on the condenser ("big enough to suck a schnauzer off the sidewalk" is the way I've often put it). In this series of articles, I've been light on theory, as you can read about how an air conditioning system works

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    thehackmechanic

    Chillin' Louie (Part III: The Compressor, Bracket, and Injection Belt Cover)

    Chillin' Louie (Part III: The Compressor, Bracket, and Injection Belt Cover)

    In the previous piece, I installed the tii-specific a/c crankshaft hub that has a compressor pulley behind the cogged gear that runs the injection pump, and explained that what that means is that the next steps are to:   Install the compressor, bracket and belt, and correct any belt alignment or tension issues. Modify the notches for the belt in the plastic lower timing belt cover if they already exist, and create them if they don't. Then put the injection belt back on a

    thehackmechanic

    thehackmechanic

    Chillin' Louie (Part II: The tii-Specific a/c Crankshaft Hub)

    Chillin' Louie (Part II: The tii-Specific a/c Crankshaft Hub)

    In last week's introduction, I talked about how a/c helps extend my enjoyment of my vintage cars through the hot summer months, how I bought a used full-up Clardy system and a tii-specific crankshaft hub with a compressor pulley on it, and how I realized that, with summer on us, there was no reason to NOT start stuffing this stuff into Louie my '72 survivor-ish tii. So in I dove.   In my a/c book Just Needs a Recharge: The Hack Mechanic Guide to Vintage Air Conditioning, I say that one

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    thehackmechanic

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