Friday, February 13, 2015

The Snorkel Cover

The round cover on the snorkel box had been drilled by a PO ,covered with black goo, and then drilled again for the purpose of installing a metal bracket. Whatever function it served had been deleted by the time I acquired the car.


I took the bracket off and it now looked even worse, if such a thing is possible.


 Ebay.de came through again and I found an NOS round cover. Looks better now even though some day I have to get rid of that non-standard air hose below it.


UPDATE:

I found out that the stock air hose was still available from my local BMW dealer and only cost a few dollars so I ran downtown and snagged one. They remarked that there were only six of these hoses left in the USA. Much better. From Sweden, of all places, I acquired the rubber fitting that snugs the hose into the air box. Last step was to remove the entire assembly and give it a fresh coat of paint.



Thursday, February 12, 2015

Keys

Naturally I was happy when I bought the car to see that it came with an original vintage BMW key.


However, there was only the one key so I immediately tried to make a copy. All I could find was a Volkswagen-type key blank that was similiar enough to work. But it didn't work well and I never used it unless necessary as I didn't want to damage the tumblers in the igintion.


Recently I saw on Ebay.de a key blank for sale that looked like it would work. Total cost for getting it here was 11 Euros so I figured I would take a chance.  Sure enough, I was in luck, and now I have a proper spare key. It was difficult to find a shop that would cut this key since it's magnetic and requires a special machine to cut, but I found a kiosk in a local shopping center that had the right equipment.

 
Perhaps my imagination is to blame but the new key seems to work better than the original! 




Saturday, February 7, 2015

The Other Door Switch

Having already replaced the door contact switch on the passenger side, I decided to have a look at the driver's side and see what kind of shape that switch might be in. I mean, since an NLA switch could be had online for $3.95, what was the downside?  I found this.


Clearly, an abundance of overspray at some time in the past had rendered the ground inoperable so a PO had rigged bare copper wires as an easy fix. Not acceptable.

I quickly bought the new switch - which I wasn't sure I could even get until I looked - and put it in, after a little shine of the aluminum casing with 0000 steel wool.


It's a bit of an archeological dig when I start taking bits apart on the doors, as I discover the various layers of prior resprays and under all the paint, the original Tampico color.  And I have to wonder if the machine screw is original or a hardware store replacement.




Tuesday, February 3, 2015

And Capping It!

I found this factory photo of a 1966 NK 2000 engine, courtesy of the Brit '02 forum.


It clearly shows the rubber cap that is supposed to on top of the throttle linkage under the air filter housing. Of course, this item in my car had been removed at some time during the dim past.


So I ordered one when acquring a new inllet hose for the heater valve (more on that later) and happily added one more stock accessory to the engine bay.  Whether or not it ever served a real purpose is more difficult to decide.