Atacama Yellow 35is build thread

[Silverstar]

Given the price of electricity now and lacking the desire to use an open flame type heating device I’ve bit the bullet and bought an integrated ie no separate condenser wall hung air source heat pump / air conditioner…

With temperatures here is the winter at freezing or below and with several big overhaul / upgrade projects on the Yellow Peril the prospect of snapping plastics and fingers in the cold weather was too much.

Plus on the 5 days of the year where the temp here goes above 30c then it would make a nice place to chill.

Bought this unit for £775..I’m not able to cope with connecting a unit that has a separate condenser so too the risk on this baby.

For around 800 watts of power it generates a theoretical 2.8 k watts of heat..

I have to stay with the outside at -11c and the inside starting at -7c it seemed to take quite a while to warm up..but with 24 sq metres of concrete and over 60 cubic metre of space I guess that would be a challenge.

Today at -2c and with a run at it we hit 11c after 3 hours which felt positively toasty.

Quite noisy from the fans..so the music needs a couple of notches up….

Maybe a second unit will help get the temperatures up higher.

 

[B21]

Given the price of electricity now and lacking the desire to use an open flame type heating device I’ve bit the bullet and bought an integrated ie no separate condenser wall hung air source heat pump / air conditioner…

With temperatures here is the winter at freezing or below and with several big overhaul / upgrade projects on the Yellow Peril the prospect of snapping plastics and fingers in the cold weather was too much.

Plus on the 5 days of the year where the temp here goes above 30c then it would make a nice place to chill.

Bought this unit for £775..I’m not able to cope with connecting a unit that has a separate condenser so too the risk on this baby.

For around 800 watts of power it generates a theoretical 2.8 k watts of heat..

I have to stay with the outside at -11c and the inside starting at -7c it seemed to take quite a while to warm up..but with 24 sq metres of concrete and over 60 cubic metre of space I guess that would be a challenge.

Today at -2c and with a run at it we hit 11c after 3 hours which felt positively toasty.

Quite noisy from the fans..so the music needs a couple of notches up….

Maybe a second unit will help get the temperatures up higher.

I’ll try it again now it’s warmer outside…I suspect it was a very demanding case..the efficiency drops off quickly as they pass 0c…

It’s an awful better than no garage….

 

[Beeacon]

Did you put insulation underneath your ground slab? That concrete base you poured will behave as a big heatsink, and will take a while to heat up to a decent ambient temperature.

 

[B21]

Did you put insulation underneath your ground slab? That concrete base you poured will behave as a big heatsink, and will take a while to heat up to a decent ambient temperature.

No I didn’t…in part because I didn’t really think about it and in part because I pondered fitting a 2 post or 1 post lift and there were dire warnings about structural integrity of the concrete for bolting said devices down….so it’s severely addressed that issue …8” plus concrete RC30 plus 2 layers of mesh…

I did think about an under floor heating system driven off an air source heat pump…but with the budget if it ever existed busted and SWMBO increasingly suspicious she’d ever see me through the whole winter I passed.

Have to say the floor feels super dry and doesn’t ‘feel’ cold, but as you say nearly 8 cubic metres of concrete will take some heating..

 

[The.Analyst]

So when is the actual work on the car going to start?

Looks like a great workshop

 

[B21]

So when is the actual work on the car going to start?

Looks like a great workshop

Today is the day

 

[B21]

Following on from various musings on age and effectiveness of the the boot rear has struts, as an easy intro to getting on with more challenging matters like the replacement turbos I thought I’d tackle an easier task to get settled in.

So bought some front and rear gas struts which are allegedly BMW ones minus the BMW logo..

So it’s another one if those be brave matters..a flat bladed screwdriver levered against the hinge and out pops the strut end.

Bit of a shock on how the lid suddenly felt very heavy with one of the old struts removed.

Put the new strut in and when replacing the second no such drama…I assume the new strut had more resistance than the old one.

So with two new struts the boot definitely is less likely to ‘flop down’..but as it goes over centre it still will drop down hard..not just as fast or hard as before..

So yes it’s an improvement but not a night n day event..

Decided to quit whilst ahead on the front struts as they are slightly more involved with a plastic shield on one side and plumbing for the windscreen jets.

TBH the front doesn’t feel like it needs changing but since I’ve started I’ll finish..

 

[B21]

Started work on doors…two jobs…fit Audison uprated 100mm drivers in doors with matching tweeters and…

Get door pulls skinned in carbon fibre to match the rest of the upgraded interior…

 

[B21]

Bit of a shock, couldn’t find the Audison door speakers for love or money….turns out I bought some Audiotec Fischer versions instead…

These puppies have some very large cross over filters..not sure how they are going to fit inside the door panels…I’ll cross that bridge later when the door handles come back from being carbon fibre’s…

Designed to be used with stock systems or DSP aftermarket you have to change some jumpers on the board for DSP use plus setting the level on the front switch to 0db…

 

[B21]

Getting ready to fit the new Audiotec Fischer Helix 6.6 in woofers in the footwells…

Interesting that the 677 woofers turn out to be the same as the 676 woofers..unlike the 100mm speakers which are definitely nastier on the 676 compared to the 677.

Slight issue is that the new woofers outer rim just kisses the screw holes in the plywood adapters we have made to allow normal round speakers to fit in the odd shaped BMW speaker recesses…

So just had the screw holes counter sunk and now will have to fit the plywood former first to the bulkhead then screw the speaker onto the former..fiddly..

 

[B21]

Been chewing over dash cams, in the end I’ve gone with a Garmin 57 for the front camera a Garmin Mini 2 for the rear.

Front camera will mount behind the pax side of the mirror and the back will peek through the pax rear roll hoop through the mesh. I’ll need to fabricate a small pedestal to mount the rear camera..plus the image will be inverted ..but that can be corrected post processing.

The 57 camera has a GPS so that provides speed, time and location data that the Mini 2 piggy backs off.

Power feed is always an issue…I’m taking out the front smokers ash tray so I’ve retrieved the power socket from it and will use a usb power plug to power both cameras..unfortunately the sockets lose power when the car is shutdown..I’ll just live with that compromise.

The cameras are really dinky..

 

[B21]

Just about now stripped all the front dash and door trims to get access to spaces for threading dash cams, woofers, MMI box and new carbon fibre inlays..

 

[Nanu]

By the time you're finished, other than the colour, will there be anything left on the car that is original e89?

 

[B21]

By the time you're finished, other than the colour, will there be anything left on the car that is original e89?

Main body shell, almost all the wiring, all the interior save cosmetic dash trim, most electronics save EKP controller and amp, engine castings, intervals, all the glass, radiators….quite a lot really

 

[B21]

So put the Mr 12v Volt MMI box in, as advised test before fitting…

Managed to damage the multi way connector on the harness to the head unit..

I have a cunning plan to fix that ..

Followed AnnubisZed excellent video..and voila ..nothing…

3 or 4 hours of poking around in increasing despair and calls to various folks ..nothing..

I then loaded the latest version of firmware..rechecked and rewrote the ‘6 cd player’ option to the vehicle order


AND jiggled the new CIC controller cable hard (out of all proportion to all other connections) and …voila..

System came online ..

Seem to be having some video glitching but called it a day at 21:00..

Will play with it in more detail today..

The initial look at the CarPlay looks pretty good and gives the car 21st century connectivity/ apps in its classic idrive system…bravo..

 

[B21]

So after a day of testing the CarPlay side works well, subject to some bugs with audio stopping haphazardly when changing apps but…the big issue is that the CIC display glitches very badly when accessing BMW side of things..so MMI display is rock steady and clear..the BMW native side is pretty much unusable ..I’ve checked , removed and re-inserted all connections..if I restore the the normal wiring the CIC display is normal.

Weird…any ideas?

Here is it glitching..

https://youtu.be/NJYU57VTbpc


Here it is in CarPlay mode working well…

https://youtu.be/8X1Jz-xqp5A

 

[B21]

Had a very bad glitch with native screens glitching horribly…spent hours swapping cables and various things to no avail…after long chat with Mr12 Volt support and various suggestions a factory reset via the system screen seemed to resolve it…

Now considering locating the box somewhere more accessible to allow for firmware reloads and hard resets etc..

 

[B21]

Well my euphoria rapidly disappeared…..

Seems as the box heats up the worse the glitching gets..

Confirmed by putting box in fridge then monitoring temp and observing the glitching…

 

[B21]

Chinese through the towel in…but in the meantime..doubtful of getting a resolution I bought a second Mr 12 Volt box to sort things out one way or another…

So box arrived today and plugged it in…

No video glitches ..some strange failures on audio handover when flipping between native Bluetooth media streaming and onboard CD and CarPlay…but I’ll sort that out..

Software has been updated and in the process there is now no opportunity to remove the Mr12 Volt boot logo and replace it with a BMW logo….heh ho..

Looks like I’ll have a brand new MMI box to sell if anyone’s interested ?

 

[Chippie]

Software has been updated and in the process there is now no opportunity to remove the Mr12 Volt boot logo and replace it with a BMW logo….heh ho..

Yes mine is the same.