The Alpina's East Coast Close Up

The last post was largely bereft of Alpina content and instead focused on a personal story about my car hobby. This is was mainly because the car  had been on the West Coast for the better part of a year so I had nothing to write about the Alpina. Well, the car arrived just around the time that last blog post went live and in time to get it ready for two local car events: the Lime Rock Park show at the end of August and The Vintage at Saratoga, an early Fall BMW show in Saratoga, New York.

August, the worst month of the East Coast dog days of summer, was mild and perfect weather for driving a vintage car without air conditioning. While the Alpina was in California, those fun-drive duties fell on my 1972 2000 touring with a hot rod motor and bright Inka orange paint.

But on a random day in early August that changed when the truck dropped the Alpina off near our new house in Connecticut.

Recall, when we moved east the Alpina stayed in California to get the fuel injection fine-tuned and a few other small but crucial items (the speedo drive in the transmission, low oil pressure readings on my newly installed VDO gauges, new tires, and such). Most of these were addressed while in California and the car ran smooth with good air-fuel ratios on the drive home and the speedo worked too! The oil pressure problem, however, remained: the gauge read low and the idiot light flickered on warm idle. Not so low that the car shouldn’t be driven, but low enough that it bothered me. And another problem appeared: the voltmeter ran low also.

When the car arrived in early August, I had my sights on the two nearby shows. Given the work I wanted to do—figure out the oil pressure and voltage problems—before the shows and my recovery from rib surgery, I had a narrow window to get the car in shape to comfortably drive the 100 or 200 miles to these venues. As it turned out, I missed the Lime Rock show by misdiagnosing the voltage issues and that was disappointing.

How did I misdiagnosis it? Well, after the Alpina was dropped off, I drove it around the semi-rural area in which I live, using it as a grocery-getter and just taking some fun drives. I even ventured to the nearby small city to pick up my son when he took the train up from New York City. On these drives, the oil pressure idiot would flash at warm idle and the digital voltmeter showed weird, changing readings. This vexed me because the oil pressure situation was present before the move east, but I didn’t remember any voltage issues.

Regardless, I tackled the oil pressure idiot light first. I switched from 150 PSI gauge and sender to 80 PSI because the 80 PSI VDO oil pressure sender had a higher idiot light trigger point (1.1 BAR compared to .8 BAR for the 150 PSI sender). I did this because my main concern was the idiot light coming on. While the running oil pressure was lower than on other cars I had it wasn’t so low that it caused serious concern. Assuming the idle problem was fixed by the higher trigger point, at some time in the future I could shim the oil pump to get it to increase pressure overall if I wanted it to be ideal. Once the new 80 PSI components were installed all was good: no idiot light on idle and the pressure remained a tad low but acceptable throughout the rev range.

Even though diagnosing the solution was easy doesn’t mean installing the new bits was easy. To have senders for both oil pressure and temp, I have an adapter off the block that needs an elbow to fit the pressure sender. Because I like to over torque things, I kept breaking the elbows when installing senders. But the third time was the charm and the system was working.

Next up was the low voltage. I messaged a DIY guru I know who is very good at electrical diagnosis and is silly enough to reply, describing in detail what the car was doing:

“Here are the symptoms: the voltage starts out at 13.1 after being on the tender overnight. Every 5-10 minutes or so it drops down .1 volts, so that when I've driven 20 minutes or so it is down to 12.7. If I stop then and restart it, sometimes it has some difficulty cranking and seems not to want to catch. It eventually does, however. Assuming that is an electrical issue, I am theorizing that it doesn't have enough juice to produce a big enough spark to catch fire. After 2 or 3 tries, it does catch. Voltage is in the low 12-volt range then but once the revs are up it got back to 12.7. If I turn on the lights and wipers it went down to 11. Turn them off, back to 12.7. Never seemed to get lower than that while driving with no significant electrical draw (engine and stereo head unit--no amp or subs). BTW, this all measured on a digital voltmeter running off a wire under the dash, likely cigarette lighter.”

The reply indicated the voltage regulator and alternator were the first places to check but also suggested that testing at the battery was best place to measure, just in case something was wrong at the digital gauge. The regulator brushes looked fine. I scoured FaceBook marketplace and craigslist for the NIB alternator upgrade but couldn’t find anything nearby. Meanwhile, I ordered a new multimeter because my old one got lost on the move. After getting the new one I message the guru again:

“Tested at battery before starting and it was 12.5. Started it and it was 13.7 again at the battery. The gauge read lower at both before starting and running. I then measured the lead to the gauges (both digital voltmeter and VDO gauges). It was actually running 0.5-1 volt lower than either reading at battery (it is switched). I read unswitched at the VDO gauges and it was .1 off of battery reading. Oh, and idiot light comes on and goes off appropriately. I interpret everything to be fine with charging system. Do you agree?”

The guru agreed and I rewired the gauges, running the main power from the battery, through a relay and to the gauges. This seemed to cure both low voltage reading and the low(ish) oil pressure reading. So, it turns out, I missed the Lime Rock show because I misdiagnosis the problem and incorrectly thought my alternator was bad. I also wonder if the 150 PSI gauge and sender were fine but just didn’t have enough volts to run at full power, especially since the running PSI now seems fine. I see no reason to change back to the 150 PSI setup, so we may never know the answer.

But I had the car sorted out for The Vintage at Saratoga. The 3-hour drive went great. The event was a blast and there were lots of great cars. Because it was the 50^th anniversary of the 3-series and the e21, they positioned our hero in the prime spot, the front of the Saratoga Auto Museum along with the only other e21 there that day. That car is a very, very nice Polaris silver 323i owned by Joe Spretty that was recently featured in Bimmer Life magazine article celebrating the e21’s 50^th. Joe and I spent hours getting to know each other and comparing e21 notes. I also got to meet other e21 and 2002 folks I “know” from FaceBook and other such place. It was great to put faces to names, get to know people in real life, etc. A good time was had by all.

After The Vintage at Saratoga, I had some fun drives getting groceries and such but Fall soon turned to Winter—and the little car time I had turned elsewhere. I listed the 2002 touring for sale and got some real interest (although winter and gummed up Webers delayed a sale). Selling the touring was motivated by another car purchase, a Euro-spec (Japanese market) e36 M3 evo. For the third time in my life, I’ve pivoted away from 2002s, the chassis I’ve owned on and off since since 1976. I’ve had several different ones until 1989, swore them off for more sophisticated hardware until 2001, and then bought a Sahara 1973 tii in anticipation of the year 2002. That morphed into the first Inka touring that I built to Alpina A4 spec. When I sold that, I. pivoted to Porsches for a decade or so and then, after buying our hero here, got a Fjord 1974 tii simply because it was a good car at a great price. That again morphed into an Inka touring, the car I just sold.

Limited garage space and my insistence that I’m a driver not a collector dictate that I can only have so many cars (3 really is enough, dammit!). That, plus I have limited time and diminishing physical ability to work on cars, brought me to something more modern. With the e36 M3, I’m trying to thread the needle between analogue and digital cars. On either side of it, I have our hero, a pure analogue car and on the other side the Sunset Orange F31, a decidedly digital car. Two analogues and one digital felt like too much work and not enough comfort.

So, the touring was leaving but first I had to get it running right. Diagnosing and curing the touring’s rough running and a few fun little projects on the M3 kept me busy over the winter and from working on the Alpina, who just sat dormant again. But soon enough Winter turned to almost Spring, the touring got fixed and left the fold, and The Vintage in western North Carolina began to call….

Prep for The Vintage was not too complicated, as the punch list is getting shorter and shorter. Since the drive there will take two days, I thought I should have fully operating headlights. The original quad headlights were replaced at some point with Hella Big/Little headlights, similar to those on the euro e28 5-series. The big 7” headlights worked fine but when I’d connect the little 5” high beams they never worked right—and they made the big 7” headlights do weird things. The city (or parking) lights in the 7” headlight would illuminate and the little 5” light would light up about half as bright as it was supposed to. The 7” headlights would dim also. And at times they’d flicker, like there was a loose connection. Tinkering around with the wiring eventually revealed the problems: the ground wires were not properly grounded and wire triggering the relay for little high beams had a loose crimp connector inside the fuse box. Splicing the ground wires and correctly attaching them worked wonders and a small bit of extra wire and some soldering sleeves solved the fault connector.

The lights now work great. I also finally put the underdash trim in place and washed the engine bay, signs that the restoration is nearing completion. Installing the underdash trim, obviously, is a small step but it is also hugely symbolic. I'm done with the wiring and other work under there; I'm buttoning things up because the constant work is finished. To paraphrase: one small step for my e21, one giant step for its restoration.

And that’s the big take-away: the punchlist is getting short, the restoration is nearly complete. They’ll always be little projects here and there—the rust in the frame rail still needs to be fixed correctly and the diff is whining—but the bulk of the build is almost done….