N62 Z3 Part 33: Chassis Work & 4.8 Installation

Before the engine goes back in I wanted to fix some chassis stuff that had bothered me and the biggest one was the power steering reservoir bracket I installed. So that had to go! Below is how it looked before

That was one of my biggest regrets so let me fix that...

I'm going to paint the shock towers forward as well as the radiator core support, so I started prepping that area for body filler prior to paint

I was still waiting on body filler at this point so I decided to work on another small chassis side project which was replacing the steel line on the coolant bleeder line. This was rusting internally, so I replaced it with aluminum line

I did the one on the engine as well

Back to the chassis though, I noticed on my last few drives a slight "click" when steering and a little bit of play in the steering. Not a whole lot, but enough that I wanted to do something about it now that the engine is out

I diagnosed it as being the heim joint itself having some play between the inner cup and the outer assembly. You could grab the steering shaft and jiggle it a little bit and feel it move and hear it click metal on metal. So, I found a high quality bearing I'm going to install instead of the heim joint. First step was to make a bracket. This is two pieces of 1/4" welded together to get suitable thickness for strenght

Then I marked where I needed to drill and drilled out some holes for mounting bolts on the bracket

I had to trim away the outer two mounting holes on the bearing, they were not needed for this application

Idea was to mount it here

After numerous test fits and tack welds and moving things around I got the bracket where I needed it and did a few more tack welds, removed the bearing and then went to town welding it in. They are not the prettiest welds, but there are plenty there - the below photo is maybe halfway through the installation