As others have said, thanks so much for this awesome DIY and to everyone who contributed on top of it. With this I was able to get the capture installed relatively easily (fan shroud aside!)
Just going to cover a few things in more detail in case there are people out there who still want to try this (this is the last year for the F8x)
Maneuvering the fan shroud out of the way was BY FAR the most difficult part for me. Hoses and clips and plugs and all that was easy, but then physically moving the fan was practically torture, even after managing to unclip it quickly and easily. The whole CBC install probably took me 5 hours, and fully 2 of them were spent dealing with this darned shroud.
Some notes/tips on the fan shroud piece:
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WEAR MECHANICS GLOVES for this part. You don’t need them for much else really unless you like keeping your hands clean.
- a flexible driver shaft that can get into the right places is a godsend. It looks like this:
... and attaches to your drill. You can remove the handle on this DeWalt model to make getting into tight places even easier. A regular cordless driver/drill produces plenty enough torque to handle those small T25 bolts that hold the two plastic shields in place. That’s 3 bolts for the long shield in MR RIZK’s notes that some M cars have, and 2 for the smaller shield at the bottom which all M cars have. In particular, the "long" shield's middle bolt is hard to get to, but with the tool above, it's simple.
- At first I tried to get the shroud up and back to get to the crank pulley from below like Rotzy but I couldn’t manage it despite being generally competent at this stuff. There just wasn’t enough clearance. So then I removed the oil cooler.
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Removing the oil cooler is really a good step and I recommend it by default if you're doing this for the first time. Not only does it let you clean it, and not only does it get some hoses out of the way making (above) shield removal work easier, but it also allows you to pull the shroud down, because accessing the pulley from the TOP is much much easier. Others have mentioned this too. I really think it’s worth it and it’s only an extra 3 bolts to remove.
- Dropping the shroud down is no cake walk even with the oil cooler removed. Definitely use the piece of cardboard referenced earlier in the thread and wedge it between your radiator and the shroud BEFORE you try and pull it down. Not only does it protect your radiator, but it will also make sliding the fan down easier due to less friction. Here's a top down picture of my car after the cardboard was in and as I was pushing the shroud down:
- The driver’s side folding tab can actually be removed which makes everything much easier. It has two press in hinges for you to reinstall it when reversing the procedure.
- You do not need the fan shroud all the way down to work on the pulley. Here’s a picture of how far I got mine down. (
No the car is not being supported by the wood, there are jackstands back there - the wood is a failsafe)
- It took me tons of wiggling to get the fan to drop far enough. The main thing was to move the coolant pump as far out of the way as I could. Free the driver’s side of the shroud before the passenger side, because that side has the hard lines which you can’t wiggle around; drop it down on that side as far as possible, then drop the passenger side as far down as you can, which will be further than the driver’s side, once you get past the pump.
Once at the crank pulley, indeed be patient. I spent a full 90 minutes on OEM bolt removal and CBC installation because I wanted to be absolutely sure the pulley didn’t move or fall off - so I took my time and worked slowly. I removed my gloves for this part so I could feel everything precisely. I babied all the bolts - first slightly loosening all 8 of them in kitty-corner (diagonal) fashion with a breaker and then hand loosening and removing the exact same way. I was able to remove all 8 without the pulley budging. I used a small telescoping mirror with a small circular head to know which bolts to target. Here's the crank pulley with all 8 bolts de-torqued but still fully in place:
...and after the bolts were hand removed VERY carefully, everything stayed in place:
Aligning the CBC was surprisingly simple. I rotated it twice to line up with the crank bolt and took a couple pictures to see if the holes lined up. Here is one of those pix:
They did line up - but I wanted to be absolutely sure so I hand-threaded all 8 VTT bolts to make sure there was no stretch needed. I didn’t need a mirror for this. Then I removed them again to apply Loc-tite. After I had hand-threaded each coated bolt again, I used the mirror to make sure the hex shaft mated with the socket of the VTT bolts so I could tighten them to 25 ft-lbs. I used a kitty-corner approach on tightening as well. Here’s the completed CBC installation:
A tip on repositioning the shroud - the dark hoses show up great against a light background. Get a light piece of cardboard or several pieces of paper, and put them on the ground under the shroud area. Then put a strong light source down there pointing up and work from the top. You will need to go under a few times to push things past the pump and the hoses. WEAR GLOVES. Take your time and don’t force anything so as to not break things or puncture hoses.
A tip on reinstalling the two fan shroud shields: do them before reinstalling the oil cooler and before clipping the oil line and coolant lines back to the subframe or shroud. See above for the tool I used to get to those hard to reach T25s on the second (long) shield.
A tip on reinstalling the skid plate and plastic cooler/bumper shields: position each piece and then hand tighten a few corner bolts before torquing them down and doing the middle ones. This lets you wiggle them around a bit to make sure all holes line up.
That's about all I can think of. Good luck to anyone out there who's still going to try this. Damn I love this car.
