looking great man! I am currently redoing my front end and yours was the inspiration/frequently viewed motivation for me seeing as the engine was out and what not. Hopefully i'll progress to the rear of mine soon....all urethane, big sway bar and 4.11 with 40% lsd are waiting in boxes...

Keep up the good work car is looking amazing!
Tristan
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1970-resto/mod =money drain
1973 Charmonix, mhh clean

GO COUGS

Quick photoshop to see how the Axis OG wheels will look on the car:


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IMHO they look great!
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HarryPR
BMWCCA #19290

Small update. didn't get much done because all the work under the car took a lot out of me.

I think I was the nastiest I've ever been in my whole life this weekend. That sort of thing happens, you know, when you decide to scrape off all th old dirt, oil and rust from underneath a car. Its especially bad when you're under the car as well, and your instrument of choice is a wire-wheel on a power drill.

This is me. I'm having a good day, really.

Seriously, i felt like someone had stuffed me into a sandblasting cabinet for a few hours.


This is the view I enjoyed for most of the day:

Its getting there. The rusty spots are getting hit with some POR15 and then some Herculiner. Everything else just gets the Herculiner. Right now I've finished from the firewall to the rear seat bulkhead. I ran out of paint there, and theres also a few spots that need to be patched also before I move on.


More dirty work here. CV joint rebuild. my boot kits are on backorder, so i've got a bunch of nice clean steel parts sitting in WD-40 filled bags while I wait.






I also repainted my rear springs.



I'm in the middle of re-sealing my gas tank with the POR-15 kit right now. Should be done by tomorrow, and i can repaint the outside this weekend. Will update when I get a little closer to done on that project.
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H_Krix wrote:

I hate my job...

I would be there every evening when you came home from work to massage your feet and pleasure you...






































Oops, sorry, forgot about the girlfriend.
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"It's what you feel, not what you ought to. Reasonable and sensible."

'75 Golf Yellow Automatic 2002 with Weber 32/36 DGAV - "Karl"

I think there exists a special place in "Automotive Hell" where Satan brings you the first car you ever worked on, and he then makes you correct all the dipshit "repairs" you did to the poor thing in the first place. I have the unique benefit of still owning my first car, so I get to gaze upon my past "repairs" with a bitter cocktail of awe and horror; what the fuck was I thinking when I did that?!

Pictures to follow soon, but of particular note are 2 floorboard repairs done at least 2 years apart from one another. I got better from one to the other, but not by any largely noticeable degree.

#1 happened during my first year with the car... I think i was 15 when I "repaired" the spare tire well. This more or less consisted of cutting out the worst of the rust (at the time there wasn't a large amount) and filling the well with several layers of fiberglass cloth and maybe a gallon or two of resin. I'm exaggerating of course, but not by much. Nearly a decade later, I learn that fiberglass over bare metal does little more then trap moisture between the metal and the 'glass. Given the choice of which one to eat through, the moisture attacks my trunk floor in an effort to escape, and I'm now looking at a heavily pock-marked wheel well with at least 2 dozen more rust holes. Genius.

#2 was a repair done in College. The area under the passenger rear seat had all but disintegrated; this time I knew fiberglass would not do the trick. Coincidentally, I had been taking a welding class at school. I pulled the car up to the shop one weekend, and patched the floor with some spare 12ga sheet that was laying was laying around. So far, so good.

Thing is, I must have been in a rush... or severely drunk... or possessed or something, because I never primed or painted the underside of the car. I painted the inside, sure. The underside, however, was treated with roofing silicone spread over the bare metal in about a 1.5" thickness. I know this material very well now - I spent the better part of four hours peeling it off from the underside of my car this weekend.

I'm very glad I only really have to deal with my own idiocy where my car is concerned. At least this way I know who to get mad at.

Gas can refurb and CV refurbs are finished. Like I said before, pics to follow. This time, it almost looks like I know what the hell I'm doing...

...almost

Quote:

Oops, sorry, forgot about the girlfriend.

(She reads this thread too, ya know.)
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Pictures to go with my previous post:

Gastank refurb is complete! I think I spent about $100 altogether on paint, POR-15, and about a week's worth of time for painting, curing, etc. Hopefully it will hold up for another 35 years! Don't have any before shots handy.... but its a HUGE step in the right direction.









Fooling around with making my own gauge cluster, since I can't find one I like. This is (obviously) just a mock-up of what I could do in MDF and fiberglass... 4 might be too much.





Spots that are getting the POR treatment: This is the one that i had submerged in silicone...



And this is the spare well (duh) with the fiberglass patches... Looks worse than it actually is, but its still pretty bad.








Started rebuilding the brake MC. Any tips on cleaning out the barrel? there isn't any rust to speak of, but it couldn't hurt to polish out the innards out a bit.




And the obligatory old vs. rebuilt CV axle shot:


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No replies recently, eh? Well, I guess this stuff is pretty boring (I mean really, "nice CV joints!" yeah... thats exciting.)

Still getting the trunk wrapped up. I think this is just another file in the "what the hell is wrong with me" pile. One of these days I'm going to have to realize that I am not BLUNT or Bill Williams and I'll stop this level of insanity. That being said, what follows is more or less my train of thought...

Remember that wheel well? If not, its posted above. I started looking at the paint around it and thinking "You know, thats not going to blend very well. I should strip the paint around it up to the seams so it will look better"



Also, I never really did like those big blobs of seam sealer up there in the middle...



I guess, while I'm in here, I should strip all the seams just to make sure...



May as well check the shock towers and wheel wells too, right? I mean, you never know... Oh yeah. The rear bulkhead too. Just... because.






I was going to do the side panels, but thought better of it. If I heat the metal up a bunch, the paint on the outside of the car would bubble up... and then I'd have to shoot myself. So these got a quick scuff, and the rusty bits where the rear reflectors were got a full wire-down.






First coat of POR-15 with patches. This stuff is pretty cool. Works just like fiberglass, but you use POR-15 silver instead. apparently, the silver has metallic bits in it that makes it "fill" better in the cloth. A couple coats of the stuff and I'm convinced it isn't going anywhere.



Some shots of the black POR-15 topcoat. The pics suck, but thats because its really hard to shoot gloss black (especially with my crummy camera.) It looks really nice and clean now. I'm thinking of using some Wurth Body shutz and spraying over top to get the "textured" look again, then going over again with a close match to my silver. We'll see.








As soon as this gets wrapped up, I should be able to get the back end together.

So, in order:
- Finish Trunk
- Finish undercarriage in rear
- Rebuild and put in rear suspension/driveline components
- Drop in engine (yay!)
- 5-speed
- Wire MS
- Interior

Easy, right?




PS: If you're going to do the above with one of these:



WEAR GLOVES and GOGGLES!
I'm pretty sure my index finger would have gone bye-bye had it not been for the gloves I was wearing. Also, I had a bristle shoot off this thing and stick itself so far in my cheek I could feel it with my tongue from the other side.

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Harrison - You're a madman.
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Patrick Sloan


67 1600
90 325is
04 Audi A4

Seriously... I think you can add "Wire Wheel Master Technician" to your resume... =)

How many hours of wheelin' do you have in that, now? If I read right, you did the whole underbody that way, too, right?

I'm still followin' along! (and I don't thnk that the trunk looks that bad in gloss black, btw)...
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:::Chris::: -> '04 VW GTI 1.8T ("Squeakers") -> 1975 BMW 2002 ("Gir")

fazeShift wrote:

Seriously... I think you can add "Wire Wheel Master Technician" to your resume... =) How many hours of wheelin' do you have in that, now? If I read right, you did the whole underbody that way, too, right? I'm still followin' along! (and I don't thnk that the trunk looks that bad in gloss black, btw)...

x2. how many hours?
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Patrick Sloan


67 1600
90 325is
04 Audi A4

I'd guess start-to finish (this includes chipping out the fiberglass out of the wheel well) was around 10-12 hours total. I lost a lot of time initially because I was using a standard wire wheel on a drill motor for some of the work. When I got that corded brush for the angle grinder, things started to pick up rapidly.

Its pretty tiring too. Keeping a death grip on the grinder to make sure it doesn't go shooting off in any direction it damn well wanted to go while being folded up inside the trunk took a lot out of me. Slept pretty well those nights.

This is nothing compared to some of the MkI guys over at the Vortex forums and the level of detail they put into their engine bays. I got the corded brush idea from them, and definitely recommend it to anyone that needs to do this level of paint removal.

I'm only going this far on certain spots under the car - in and around the floorpan patches (Which, honestly, make up at least 50% of the floor at this point) A large part of the rear of the car will be getting this treatment, just because of all the water it retains from day-to-day driving. The front end of the car wasn't nearly as bad.

Thanks for the compliments. This is something I never want to do again, but I'm pretty glad I decided to do it.
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congrats man!

Grinding is nasty work..........been there myself. I feel your pain........ my $13.95 grinder from harbor freight was screaming in my ear even during my sleep.

I would add some hearing protection to the list while grinding. I also tested my safty gloves.....went thru my leather and first layer of my skin.

Grinder
Gloves
earplugs
glasses

and you have little wires from the brush stuck in your shirt when they fly off the wheel.



Your doing great work man! Keep it up!

I have to tackle my rear suspension soon too.......
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68' 1602
98' ///M3 Sedan

88' ///M3 Sold *
06' ///M3 Competition Pkg Sold *

http://www.bmw1602.com/

Any updates Harrison?
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72tii - Whitey
74 - Blacky

Yeah, just as soon as I can find my camera cable...

Undercoating is finished, rear end blasted/repainted/etc etc & 80% assembled (just waiting on some misc parts to get everything buttoned up), I've started bending brakelines and Fuel lines as well.

I'll post pics soon
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Keep it up man. It's coming together nicely. At least you can look at the repairs you did when you were young and know why you did it that way. Buying a car that has had an unknown number of PO's make mistakes during repairs because of lack of knowledge or pure laziness is even less of a treat. I look forward to seeing more progress. I'm about to do both of my subframes myself, so I've looked at your pics quite closely actually. Thanks
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-=Scott=-
My Short Bus

1971 2002 - "William Grover-Williams" - Track Car VIN 2579197
1998 740iL E38 - "Blau" - Daily Driver
http://gallery.xfiler.com

Thanks for the support man, it gets annoying when i can only work on the car 2 days a week, and it pretty much eats up all my weekends... but looking back at everything does give me some sense of accomplishment, even if it isn't on the road yet.

Quick teaser shot of the undercoating - more images to come tomorrow.
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H_Krix wrote:

Thanks for the support man, it gets annoying when i can only work on the car 2 days a week, and it pretty much eats up all my weekends... but looking back at everything does give me some sense of accomplishment, even if it isn't on the road yet.

I know the feeling. I've been trying to redo my suspension and steering for almost a month now. Work has gotten in the way as well as personal obligations. It'll get done though. Keep it up. The undercoat looks pretty sweet. Was it difficult to get on there without getting it all over you as well?
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-=Scott=-
My Short Bus

1971 2002 - "William Grover-Williams" - Track Car VIN 2579197
1998 740iL E38 - "Blau" - Daily Driver
http://gallery.xfiler.com

Been a long time coming... and here it is. Doesn't really look like a lot of work (Do I always say that?) but it really has been.


I've decided to leave the trunk black. I dont think many things are going to go over the POR-15 very well, and I dont feel like roughing it all up for a topcoat. I'm going to be making some custom panels to cover a lot of the area in gray vinyl, so the black will mostly just be the wheel wells. I think it'll look good. I did score a set of side panels to use as templates to make some new ones out of:


I know I say I'll start a lot of projects (wiring diagrams, kick-panel pods... I know I know....) but I'd like to trace these into a PDF for download. Maybe i'll finally get around to all that when I finish my car...


Random stuff first. This is the worst spot of rust in my car. Well, it was. I ended up cutting the entire thing out and POR-15ing over the empty space. After looking a few things up, it doesn't seem like this spot is structural, and it only really served to capture a bunch of dirt and water, then rust. Good riddance.



Here's the floor pan from before, POR-15'ed and scuffed up to await undercoating. I used some of their 2-part epoxy sealant in the seams - the stuff dries like concrete.



Also, took a pressure washer to the 5-speed. Now I dont look like a chimney sweep every time I pick it up. I'm contemplating painting it...



Onto more meaningful stuff. As for the rear subframe, I started off with coating the diff in POR-15 (about 4 coats) The shaft seals are in good enough shape, and I'll probably swap to a limited-slip in a year or two, so I didn't want to go crazy and rebuild this thing. It'll be fine for now.



Speaking of the diff, here's a couple of shots of my bushing rig. Nothing spectacularly new or different from other people's, but a combination of a few ideas. I find that the hose clamp really works wonders to get that first flange into the opening. Also, if you put a washer and nut on both sides of the bushing before you press it in, it forces the bushing to keep its shape around the metal sleeve in the center, making this whole process light years easier. Ask me how I know.







All the rear subframe bits have been blasted and repainted, and I've started assembly. the rear wheel bearing shims are on backorder from Germany, so I'll be waiting on those before the CV axles, stub axles, and hubs can go back in. Also I've got a few parts for the swaybar on backorder from BMP, so thats in limbo too.

Starting out:


End of the day:


The Diff bushing tool also proved useful in pressing in the rear bearings. I just had to invert the PVC cap and find a larger washer for the bearing. I don't like whacking bearings with hammers, and this made the whole process very simple.





Started bending the brakelines I got froma fellow FAQ'er (thanks Alonso!) this is a fun process. Never done it before, but I think its turning out ok.





And lastly, a couple more shots of the undercoating (Before & After)






As soon as my parts come in, hopefully I can put the rear end back under the car... Going to have to read up on how to align everything. Can anyone point me to a good place where I can read up about aligning the engine/trans, driveshaft, diff, and rear subframe? It seems like everything really has a lot of adjustment to it, and I'd rather not bork this up. I've left the rear subframe bushings loose for now, but the diff is already torqued down. Should it be loose when I get it in the car?
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Harrison = King of wirewheeling.

Just FYI - all of this has been a huge inspiration and a general model for my project.
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Patrick Sloan


67 1600
90 325is
04 Audi A4

Top notch yet again. Nice work!!
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72tii - Whitey
74 - Blacky

Unbelievable work, My Highest Compliments to you skills, patience, and persistance. And for your girl friend for her patience.

I have just gone through pretty much the same process you are doing regards to the back end, even the power washing process. One thing I know for sure that if you can do the front the back end is a piece of cake.

I would suggest to look for a limited slip if you are going to go through the effort of a 5 speed anyway. We put one on my friend '02 & it made a tremendous difference and will expand the legend of the Pheonix even more so.

I just bolted up the drive shaft last night and I am trying to find all of the information on aligning it as well. I can not bolt in the TEP brace until that is completed, I have heard all about the "Mythical BMW Drive Shaft Alignment Bar" that has been in dated pictures from the 70s as well as artist conception of it as well. Everything from angle iron pieces to the laser guided alignments from old hanging bearings. The tough part is that one can not just drag one 02 to the local dealership to do it. Hell, the staff would probably would go through the "who's on first" routine with you on model year and model number (been there, done that, got that t-shirt). If we can get a FAQ topic just on this alone, we would be half way there. I have tried the search engine in the site but it gets me more that what I am looking for.

Again, Awesome Work,

Justin

'75 (Lola)

No, the steering wheel isn't attached.

Yes, I'm sitting on a milk crate.

No, there is nothing resembling an engine in the car.

Yes, I was smiling like an idiot all freaking day.

Rear end DONE! (More pics to follow.) I don't care how much of a bitch it was pushing it back inside and over that 5" concrete slab in the garage. It was worth it.




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I said more pics to follow, and here they are:

Brakes with suspension. Apparently Sesame Street is sponsoring my car, what with the primary colors going on in this shot. The nut there is only at a paltry 200lb-ft currently (all my torque wrench will do) so I'll have to jump on those a bit more once the transmission and engine are in the car.



Subrframe showing new plated bits, Urethane, Herculiner, brakelines and rebuilt CV's.



Swaybar endlink pirated from an old dodge minivan (i think.) The hardware originally in my car was some really rusted bolts and seized ball bushings, so I scrapped that and had a friend at a local auto parts store dig through some of their stuff to see if anything matched.



Rear end... These shots speak for themselves.

BEFORE:


AFTER:



And some shots of Phoenix, outside for the first time in over a year!








Even though it was a pain to bring it back in, it was worth it. Also, i really needed to clean out all the crap from under there and chisel all the dried POR-15 and Herculiner off the garage floor.

This weekend I re-routed the sunroof drain tubes as well as finished running the new hardlines on the front end of the car, so the girling upgrade is complete (finally.) Also replaced the front studs with longer bolts in order to accomodate the Axis wheels I'll be running in the future.

All the wiring for the roof (antenna, dome light, map lights) is getting wrapped up too, so headliner should be going in soon. Man, I cant wait for that....
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Great job bro, today I meant the guy that sold it the you when you were a kid, good times, keep it up!

what was it you were saying about bottlecaps?? :)
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Life's a garden baby, dig it.
My web album
75 Fjord
73 RHD Targa

2002Targa wrote:

what was it you were saying about bottlecaps?? :)

oh, i dunno....


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Those are going to look nice on there.
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