Washing the Engine Compartment

Taking advantage of the mild January weather I decided to roll the 320i out and pressure wash the engine compartment (pictures). That will make working on the electric conversion much easier (no grease!). The engine compartment will also need some painting since it will be shown off at car shows or to anyone that is interested in the conversion. I also took this opportunity to clean the grease off the transmission. Though this cleaning process I also got a good look at the engine compartment and what has to been done. The first modification will be to cut out the 12V battery mount. I probably will still have a small 12V battery somewhere but no need for the big cell that was part of the ICE. The old battery mount interferes with the area where the new batteries are going to be mounted. There is a bunch of heat shielding that also has to be removed. I have to decide if I am going to replace the fuse box. The fuse box is in the engine compartment and it has the old-style Bosch fuses - the ones that are not encased in glass. The old-style Bosch fuses are problematic and having the fuse box under the hood leads to corrosion problems. But moving the fuse box to inside the vehicle will require a lot of re-wiring.
Moving the 320i outside the garage is easy because the garage is sloped and so is the driveway. The problem is getting the car back in the garage. There is a 1" lip on the garage floor that is very hard to push the car over. To get around this problem I used an electric winch to pull the car back into the garage. That worked really well. The winch was connected to a rod that I had drilled and lagged into the garage concrete floor. The process of winching the car back into the garage will prove to be handy later in the conversion.

Comments   

+1 #1 Tim Catellier 2014-01-22 21:33
Ed,
It might be worth exploring the possibility of replacing the fuse box and leaving it in place with a water tight one. Perhaps a marine grade item. It might be a lot easier than running new wires to the interior to relocate the new fuse box there.

Tim
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