BMW E30 Touring resto

[Grrrmachine]

Just one more bit :x

While fitting a new fuel tank, I noticed a little bit of orange around the hard fuel lines. It was at the bottom of the new sill that I'd paid someone else to fit two years ago; that's one year on the road, one year in this garage. So I put the wire brush on the angle grinder to see how bad it was...

NOT a happy bunny! The garage I had paid to fit a brand new outer sill had done just that; slapped the new outer over the existing rust, and slathered the rear of it with seam sealer to mask the crusty bits.

There was no other option but to get the slit discs out, and remove the outer sill to see how bad the damage was:

A lot of curse words were used at this point. The idiots hadn't bothered to remove any of the rusty inner sill when they'd had the chance to do so, and now it had festered to a dangerous point. At the front end, there's hardly any material left for the floorpan to affix to, and under the B-pillar is a horizontal support beam that is now attached to f-all.

Cutting and grinding got me back to clean metal. Fortunately I was below the spot-welds at the rear end, but the front section is essential to put some rigidity back into the floor. So some fresh 1mm sheet was used this time (no sunroof) to make a repair length - 1.16m long.

An afternoon with the MIG got it all seam-welded to the existing inner sill, then plug welds where the original spot-welds were.

Then it's time to offer the outer sill back up. This is how I chopped out around the B-pillar, so that I wasn't too close to the original seams.

And the outer sill going back on. Now it's just a case of welding the sides up flush, and putting the plug welds back in place top and bottom. And that had better be it!

 

[zx9]

The first picture is fine but the others are little large, makes it very difficult to read or view without using the left / right slider at the bottom of the window.

 

[Grrrmachine]

Seems like imageshack is being stupid; I'll try to fix this asap

EDIT: Done! moved to imgur

 

[zx9]

Seems like imageshack is being stupid; I'll try to fix this asap

EDIT: Done! moved to imgur

Nice one, much easier to understand now.

 

[Grrrmachine]

This post is a bit dull, since it's just shots of the car in VERY fresh primer.

First off, cocooning the car into a plastic pod.

My garage isn't enormous, so I have to do my best to squeeze everything in. There's a freshly-painted valance and bonnet sitting in my basement, and there's no more room to store panels so the old rusty ones have to stay on the car during the paint job. So I masked off the front end and got to spraying.

The bonnet was up when I sprayed, but ensuring that the scuttle and windscreen lip got fresh paint was important. The door jambs not so much, since all I'd done was keyed the existing paint.

But the back end got a much stronger dose. Due to lack of space I couldn't take the tailgate off and store it, so I couldn't spray it separately which means it had to be masked off and done at the same time as the shell. But it worked out fine in the end.

The only issue was manouvering around when the tailgate was at eye level. I got one clout on the painting helmet from the corner of the tailgate, and it bloody hurt.

But all those arch repairs paid off; this side came out really well. There's one scratch visible that needs a little bit of filling, and I'm sure I'll uncover some other minor lumps and bumps that need to be dealt with in due course, but I'm just so chuffed to be working on painting again after all that welding

 

[Blazej]

To bring the bodywork repairs to a close, it was necessary to seal everything up with a variety of chemicals and coatings.

After welding, the floor was in a right old state. Surface rust, greasy fingerprints, weld spatter, left-over bitumen sound insulation and melted underseal. It wasn't a pretty sight.

What's worse, the rear floor wasn't looking too pretty either. I hadn't stretched my repairs this far back and hadn't anticipated this...

That's the drainage bung hole. I won't show you what the actual bung looks like, but it's not pretty.

So, toget this all scrubbed up nicely, I use an etcher. This is a very primitive method, and there are more sophisticated products on the market for this, but not in Poland. So it's out with the Phosphoric Acid, in an atomiser bottle

and the wire wool to rub it down with

A bit of elbow grease, a go-over with the vacuum cleaner and a wipe-down with panel wipe (or white spirit), and you're ready for an anti rust treatment.

I've picked up plenty of these over the years, but they all work in essentially the same way, converting surface rust into a stable oxide, and sealing the whole layer under a membrane. It doesn't cure rust, but it's an added layer of protection. There's also zinc paint which is good if you've just drilled a hole in a panel (for fitting body kits to sills, for example.) This time around, I used Dinitrol RC900, which sprays out like WD40. Spray it on, let it fizz, then give it a tiny drop of water on some tissue paper to stop the reaction process, in case it eats too far into the metal.

Once it's sprayed on, it should look like this:

And that's the new bung plate from BMW, ready to be fitted in. There's one on each side of the rear footwell, and although I haven't looked under the carpet yet, I bought a second just in case.

To fit them, they just drop into the slot and twist, which isn't much of a seal, so to give them all the help they can get we'll use a brushable seam sealer.

You can use U-Pol or 3m, I'll use my local brand. It goes on smoothly, and application is even better if you cut the bristles down on a normal paintbrush by an inch. This was liberally daubed and smeared over every single area of the resto, including the inner wing, the floorpan welding and the bulkhead. I was too filthy afterwards to hold a camera, so there's no photos, which I'm sure you're gutted about.

Although seam sealer is soft AND strong, a more durable layer needs to go under the car, and with all the floorpan and wheelarch repairs I had to look at my options. There's no Waxoyl or POR-15 over here, and I didn't want to mix engine oil with pig fat and paraffin like your grandad used to, so I bought this:

It's a 2-in-1 seam sealer and underbody spray. The upside is it makes a good spatter pattern of thick rubbery sealant which is similar to the original BMW stuff, but the downside is that it needs a compressor and a special gun to be used. I had the compressor already, and the gun was about five quid, complete with a special tube for injecting the sealant into cavities. This tube turned out to be utterly useless, but the gun itself sprayed a good controllable mist which left the arch like this:

After that, it was just a matter of covering the interior repairs in a good coat of hammerite. You can also use cheap spray paint if the repair is not going to be visible, but make sure it's acrylic so that you have a plastic layer of protection. I'll be covering my repairs in bitumen sheets for soundproofing, so no-one will see them anyway.

With all that taken care of, I can go back to what I wanted to be doing, which is sanding down the doors ready for spray-painting.

What is the part No for these bung plates from BMW :confused

 

[Grrrmachine]

It's 41128200462

 

[Grrrmachine]

Rubbing down primer is an absolute chore. I had an electric DA sander which worked wonders on the roof (400grit, if you care), but everything needed finishing off with 800 wet sandpaper, including all the nooks and crannies of the door jambs.

So after many evenings with repetitive strain injuries, it was time to wheel the shell out of the garage for the last time...

to dust her down, clean out the garage and prep everything for paint. I've now learnt to hate masking up a car, as it's fiddly, boring and frustrating when you just want to fill up your gun and shoot some paint.

But it all came together in the end, and after three basecoats and four clearcoats, I let the mist settle to admire my handiwork...

There's quite a bit of denibbing to do, one paint run to rub out and a small repair to do, but that's the big work done.

and I'm in no rush to do another home spray job, after all that!

 

[bc30se]

POdziwiam zapał, ale to chłopie wszystko zardzewieje w ciągu... max 2 lata. Można się bawić w ratowanie takiego czegoś, ale... goła buda, obrotnica i przede wszystkim.. piaskarka. Waliłeś niemalże ciągłe ściegi w miejscach gdzie powinieneś zrobić tylko punkty. Przegrzewanie to najgorsza rzecz jaką mogłeś zrobić.. Kolejna sprawa, używanie kwasów na rdze... kwasy trzeba później dokładnie neutralizować wodą, to nie do końca się nadaje do blacharki... no ale cóż... ile to ma pojeździć?

Pozdro..

 

[Grrrmachine]

I admire with enthusiam but man, all of this derusting will last... max 2 years. Maybe you can play around saving a thing like that but... bare shell, spit and before all that, sandblasting. You put constant runs in places where you should have done only spots. Overheating is the worst thing that you could do. And another thing, the use of acids on rust... rust needs to be neutralised with water, and its not for use on bodywork... no but... how long is it supposed to live?

I'll reply in English since this is the language of the forum, although I'll try and reply in Polish if you PM me.

So thanks for your comments on the work. I know a PROPER restoration would require everything you've said, and I'm also aware of all the comments you point out (runs, overheating, the use of acids and so on). The runs you mention are in one small place only for added stiffness (a weld that was used on Motorsport and cabriolet shells by BMW), the panels were cooled with compressed air, and the acids were neutralised. All of this is mentioned in the thread, but I understand that it is a long and boring read so you might not have noticed.

Maybe the car will last two years, maybe it will last ten. But it's a fun project, it's taught me a lot of skills and hopefully if the car needs more work in the future then my abilities will have improved enough to fix them in a better way. But I do appreciate your comments

 

[Grrrmachine]

Time to come back to the engine bay...

What an unloved den of filth and grease this was. The car came into Poland in 2004, and I doubt the engine bay was cleaned a single time in those 8 years. The PAS reservoir had leaked all over the place, the wiring loom was corroded and cut up, the sound deadening was falling off and there was the scars of my inner wing repairs to deal with.

With that happy setting, I set about stripping the engine bay as much as I could. Brake cylinder out, wiring disconnected, all ancilliaries unbolted and the pipework pushed to one side so that I could sand back the surface blisters to this:

The front left corner has had an argument with something in the past, so the headlght bracket is a little squashed and the lower corner of the slam panel is chewed. The fuse box is also still in, so this isn't going to be a mirror finish job. But the rust has been dealt with and sealed with epoxy converter, and she's going to get some new paint to stop the orange lichen coming back:

Two coats of high-build primer to mask the scratches, and some seam sealer to protect the edges. Then it all got rubbed back with grey wool (about 500-grit) before the colour and clearcoats go on:

And bang, in with the black magic. That's an engine bay ready to house a better engine than the one before, so I can FINALLY get on with reassembly!

 

[Grrrmachine]

Reassembly time! Back in May, the car was a freshly painted shell, but a little bit bare...

So it was time to dust off the screwdrivers and get some panels back on the car. **** end first:

The bumper got scuffed in storage, but nothing a bit of wet-and-dry won't fix.

Then moving round the car, the doors and wings went on. One of the wings was a NOS aftermarket one which needed a bit of fettling to line up properly, but it's all in place now. All the panel gaps will need adjusting later, but for now I'm just glad everything's there.

And finally I plopped the bonnet on. This was one of the first panels I painted, and it had had a post-paint autopsy (some 1200-grit sanding) to assess the level of orange peel, which is why it looks flat here

And a fully-populated, if dusty, engine bay.

The only things left to paint are the rear window trims and the petrol flap, plus a tiny spot repair on the front valance which is why it's not fitted yet. And the whole car needs a good hose-down, plus I'll probably repaint one door sometime in the future, but as a first respray, I'm well chuffed I'm getting worryingly close to MOT time!

 

[Angusdog]

Top job - well impressed. I've following this project and you can be proud of that. Good luck with the MOT!

 

[Chipper]

Good stuff, must be nice to be nailing things back after the repairs and hard graft. How'd the MOT go?

 

[Grrrmachine]

Cheers fellas. While it's great reassembling the car, it unleashes a whole new world of frustrating problems. Where did I stash the rear sunroof seal? Why won't this new seatbelt fit? How did my tyre get a puncture while not being used?

There's a million and one little details to sort out before MOT-time, but I'll get there.

 

[Grrrmachine]

It's ROADWORTHY!

I got the car to a stage we shall call First Assembly, which means all the panels are on and the majority of the trim is fitted. And it looks like this:

The eagle-eyed among you will notice the paint-colour disparity between the doors and the rest of the car. This only became evident when everything was bolted together. Even though I bought all my paint from the same supplier using the same product, it seems that one can came out lighter. I want to blame my own (lack of) skills, thinking that I mixed it incorrectly, but subsequent spraying of the petrol flap seems to confirm that one batch of the paint doesn't match the rest, so there's more painting to do in the new year. But for now I'm enjoying the 2.5 engine too much to care.

Despite the harlequin paint style, and the lack of power to the door loom, and a dozen other little niggles, the car and I rolled on down to the local MOT station for our checkup. Over here you need a special test to confirm engine replacement, so I told the examiner what I wanted. He spent a cursory amount of time looking at the car, we had a good old chat about smokey old motors being allowed on the modern motorways, then he stamped my log-book and that was that. The car is now officially a 325i again with a 2.5 litre engine. Woo hoo!

With daylight fading, I went for a jetwash over the road to get all the garage dust and grime off. And here's the Black Pearl sparkling in the sunshine:

Panel gaps all need adjusting, and the bargain replacement wing I got isn't such a bargain - the fitment is atrocious, so I'll be replacing that at some point and then I can spray the doors and wing all in one go to avoid colour problems. Right now though, let's just appreciate the contras between the old...

and the new

The road trip to England is in three weeks. Wish me luck 8)

EDIT: No idea why the pics show up so huge!

 

[Loren]

I bought my Touring a few years back, knowing full well it was a project. A 1989 vintage, 320i, it came with all the traditional extras you get in Poland: 14-year-old tyres, a dog-chewed interior, and miscellaneous bodges including a door window held in place with a piece of wood.

I spent the previous year making sure all the mechanicals and electricals worked, and this year I figured it was time to do something about the dull paintwork and various paint bubbles. The plan was to do it in stages, taking off panels, sorting any rust, then painting the panels and re-fitting them. So I've started with the front wing, and got a bit of a shock:

The inner wing support has crumbled away, there's a crack between the inner wing and the suspension turret, and there's holes under the fusebox, to the rear of the arch and at the edge of the floorpan (due to the E30's "jacking points", which are notorious rust traps).

I'll have to just cut away and see how bad the rot is, and go from there.

Hi,
I see that this is a very old post and you may not still have this car.
I bought an E30 in Germany in August and the professional dealer promised me that underneath the black uncoat covering all of the bottom of the E30 there was not significant rust - but after removing the underseal I discovered "a project" not a usable car .
I would take it to a professional but buying the car, towing and attempted repairs have taken my money for the moment.

I'm wondering if I could hire you to tell me what I need to do to restore my car and maybe guide me through it.

I'm American with french nationality.

Thanks for any help.

Best regards,

Loren