75 2002 Sleeper - M20B32, ITB, LSD

[tinkwithanr]

First off I'd like to say hi to everybody, I'm really glad to finally have something to post up in the project section! For the past couple of years I've been working towards/dreaming about picking up a 2002 to call my own, and a couple of weeks ago I finally pulled the trigger. I went up to Detroit and amidst a strong fuel/exhaust smell she managed to tackle the 4 hour drive back to Springfield (Ohio) without a fuss so I can't complain. Anyway, without further ado here she is:

2002 by jonathanwtinker, on Flickr" rel="external nofollow">

The engine runs pretty strong, not that I have much to compare it to.

Once I got it home and really started looking it over, I found out that she has a few nice surprises and a few not so nice surprises. But that's all to be expected I suppose.

First, a 32/36 w/ manual choke:

Next, a Tii Mechanical Advance Dizzy:

Then I forgot to take a picture, but a full Ansa Sport Midsection and Muffler, which is pretty freaking loud @4000 rpm cruising down the highway lol. I think there's also a leak somewhere though, so that's definitely not helping anything.

The interior also came with a 3 gauge pod with oil pressure, voltage and an old school vdo clock (that still keeps time!) as well as a very old tape deck lol.

Now some of the not as nice things:

Driver side rocker panel

Driver Side Floor with carpet and sound deadening removed:

Oil leak from somewhere around the oil filter housing / intake manifold / head gasket.

So the plan is to fix the rusty area's and get the interior back to being sealed from the exterior. I've got some plans to help stiffen her up where it counts that shouldn't add to much weight either. In the end it won't be a show car by any means, more just a car meant to be driven. I've already started some of the rocker work so I'll post up more pictures soon.

[roadhog0]

I recommend putting an air filter on that 32/36, dont want your motor wrecked. Also that oil on the side of your motor is most likely coming from the Mech. Fuel pump, they dont always seal well and leak down that direction. I just ignore all my little tiny leaks.... But good luck with your car man!

[tinkwithanr]

Hey thanks, I'll look into the fuel pump. Also, the carb does have an air cleaner it just happened to be taken off when I took the picture.

[M3M3]

looks like a great project!

for a few hundred pics of another red 75 being taken apart and put back together try here ( and all the subfolders in it for specific sections):

http://s397.photobucket.com/albums/pp59/mblytle/76%20nc/

[jgerock]

Congrats on your project.

Looks like the distributor has a Pertronix.

Rocker is/was filled with expanding foam?

[tinkwithanr]

Thanks for all the pictures of the other '75. Ironically, mine is a respray to Verona. It used to be Jade Green I'm pretty sure, whatever the darker forest green was called.

And yes, it does have pertronix. That was my first official upgrade, along with new Hella H4's, and some other goodies I haven't put in yet. But first thing first I need to work on the rust.

...Oh and yes that is expanded foam. At first I was cursing the PO for putting it in there, but after removing it from the driver side it actually protected the inner rockers pretty darn well. That being said he should have just fixed the rust the right way to begin with but that's neither here nor there.

[tinkwithanr]

Soo I dove into the driver side rocker panel. As you could see from the picture I posted earlier it was completely filled with expanded foam. It did a decent job of protecting the inside rockers from rust, but it was a ***** to get out. Luckily a wire brush on a drill seemed to do the trick.

This is NOT what I consider a fun foam party...

You can see in this picture that the inner panels are still fairly solid around the top, so that's good news.

The worst rot in the rocker was towards the front just infront of the drivers seat mounts. This was covered with some silicon seam sealer type stuff, but I poked it out with a screwdriver. I'll have to mock up some replacement pieces and weld them in to fix it.

That's when I decided to call it a night. But not before I checked out some of the different options I had for reinforcing the rockers. I tried out some 2x3 rectangular tubing as well as 2.5 x 2.5 square but neither would clear the up front, so I settled on using 2x2 square. It'll give it way more strength than it had before, and a place to tie in a roll cage when the time comes.

[tinkwithanr]

The next step was to cut the tubing to the correct length to run inside the rocker panel and then notch it so it would clear the seatbelt mounting points that reached into the rocker. In order to notch the tube, I used the ever trusty Plasma torch. For those that don't know, this can cut through 3/4" steel like butter, so it made very short work of my ~0.125" wall tubing.

The Beast:

But of course I forgot the take a picture of the tube after notching. However you can see how nice and flush it sits up in the rocker panel now.

I can also use the tubing to create some e46-like jack points in the rockers. Which will be very nice considering the stock jack points weren't strong enough to support the car anymore :eek:.

Once the tubing was in there I tacked it in place and started tying it into the inner and upper rocker panels. I'll also weld along the inner bottom and outer top edges so that it spreads out the load and doesn't focus it on a small section of sheet metal (think e46 rear subframe lol).

One tie-in point before cleaning up the welds:

I still need to finish welding along it's whole length, but the tubing is in there now. I'm also thinking about tying it in directly to the front frame rail and the rear subframe mounts just for piece of mind. I'm not sure how much I trust the old mounting points.

[tinkwithanr]

So I haven't been able to get much done with her in the past two weeks, work has been pretty crazy and I had to help my friend move etc etc. The good news is that I've been able to keep my whole labor day weekend free and the g/f will be out of town so I'll have all the time in world to really get some of the body repair done. I'm hoping to get both rockers fully repaired and then get some por-15 in there before I weld on the new outer skins. I'm also hoping to get at least the driver side floor patched up. Then all that would be left would be left to repair would be the passenger front floorboard and I can start putting the interior back together.

But just because I haven't had time to work on her doesn't mean I haven't been thinking of her. Considering the condition that the stock (read original) seats were in I was keeping my eye out for some replacement. The this past weekend I found two Recaro's from the e21 320is down in cinci for a good price (thanks again Jason).

I'll probably end up recovering them in black vinyl and alcantara or something along those lines down the road, but for now they're still light years ahead of what was in there to begin with. I'm just glad I won't have to pick off pieces of foam from my back every time I get out of the car.

Then since the front seats were getting replaced I figured I should do something with the rear as well. The stock rear bench had a couple of gashes as well as zero foam left. So a quick search on bimmerforums turned up a 6 series being parted out just north of me. That scored me these beauties:

These also included my personal favorite feature:

The fold down middle arm rest!

Just for comparison this is what the normal 2002 seats look like (not the ones from my car though):

Front:

Rear:

Both the front and rears feel great. They really hold you in place. They're also incredibly light, but I'm used to the e46 M3 seats so that's not really saying much.

I was also able to get a really good deal on a complete set of beltline trim (the po shaved it off the car before I got it) thanks again to eurotrash and his magical donor '76 tii. The best part is none of the pieces are dented or dinged up. After some polishing they should look really good.

All in all she should be starting to come back together very soon, and then I get get out and driver her again, I can't wait!

[tinkwithanr]

So this past weekend I was able to get a big chunk of the rust repair taken care of. There's still a lot of stuff to do, but now I have a feel for what I need to do and more importantly how to do it. This is the first time doing body work and so I'm pretty much learning as I go.

First order of business was to remove all of the rusted out/heavily pitted metal. Once this was done it exposed the frame rail that sits under the floor. Luckily for me it was still very solid, it just has some debris inside.

Once I cleaned it out, I applied a coat of Weld-Thru primer so I could add some extra support on the inside of the frame with a 1/8" thick sheet metal cut to fit.

The Primer:

The Frame Rail freshly primed:

The reason for the primer is that when 2 pieces of metal of butted up against one another they have a tendency to trap moisture, which leads to rust. The best way to prevent that is to paint both pieces before you push them together. But since the insert was being welded in normal paint would be burnt away, so it wouldn't do any good. The Weld-Thru primer is special in doesn't burn away when welding, so it will still protect the metal from rust.

The frame rail with the added metal welded in:

After that I applied a good coat of POR-15 (rust inhibitor). Once that was sealed up I could move on to the rest of the driver's floor. Below you can see where the rust started to run up onto the transmission tunnel ever so slightly. In order to repair this I cut put a template from thick paper and then traced the pattern onto some sheet metal.

The hole:

The metal piece cut from the paper template:

Once I had the outline cut out I used some body hammers and dollies to get the curve right. Once the shaping was done I tacked it in place until the rest of the floor could be made up. I forgot to take more pictures as I made that piece up, but here's the paper template I made for the other corner of the floor.

Paper Template:

Sheet metal from Template:

And here you can see this piece tacked in place:

Next in line was the inner front rocker/side of the floor. At first I was going to leave this piece in, but the more I poked at it the more fell out, and so I decided to make up a new patch to cover it up.

The rusty piece:

The sheet metal patch, unbent:

The patch, freshly bent:

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And here is where it got welded in:

Once the sides were patched up I made up the inner floor panels. Here's the left one ready to be tacked in place:

The last thing I worked on this weekend was my crappy stock gas pedal mount. it was rusted and pitted and all around worn out, so I figured I would make a new one.

The old busted joint:

The new sheet metal piece ready to be cut:

The bends matched up pretty good:

Then I made up some new mounting 'nipples' from some 1/4-20 bolts and acorn nuts. I put the nuts in a drill press and then rounded them off with a grinder until they were the right shape. To hold the bolts in place I welded then through the holes from the back of the mounting plate. Finally I threaded on the rounded acorn nuts down onto the bolts and Voila!

The New Hotness:

And it actually fits!!

Last here's a picture of how she sits right now. I still need to grind the welds down and then seal everything up nice and good. I'm hoping to get to that tonight or tomorrow. Then I get to tackle the passenger side....

It has a floor now! :excited:

[tinkwithanr]

In the meantime, since I don't have enough to work on yet:

They will just need to be re-jetted and then mounted to a custom intake manifold to take the 3.25"-on-center carb spacing to the 4"-on-center intake port spacing. It will also need to transition from the circular outlet of the carb to the more rectangular inlet on the m10.

[tinkwithanr]

Alright, so after many months hiatus it seems like I need to put a few updates. For those that didn't know I was having trouble posting pictures on the forum, so while progress was being made on the car, updates weren't being made on here. So the next few posts will recap the last few months, how she sits now, and what is coming.

[tinkwithanr]

The Passenger Floor. Maybe there's at least some hope of clean metal underneath....

No Such Luck:

Finally cut it back to some 'clean' metal:

Then new floors were cut out, beads were rolled, and then welded in like the drivers side. Which I forgot to take pictures of.

Next was the rear passenger fender area. This is were you could really start to tell the car spend a lot of winters in Michigan (and were the wind noise was coming from on the drive home).

Lots of cancer:

View from the inside, cause even backseat drivers need a sunroof for their feet.

Luckily the cancer could be cut away:

It did get fairly deep though...

So after cutting out that rust and welding in some new metal I gave it a nice coat of POR-15:

After Drying:

And then a new panel to cover up the insides from more damage:

[tinkwithanr]

Then I needed to make a new outer fender panel. Here it is in the earlier stages of being hammered out:

And here it is welded in place. It's not the prettiest but I'd say it's pretty darn close for my first hand-made fender.

Now with the majority of the rust repair done (woo!) it was time to help makes sure things didn't start to rot away again. but before you can really protect the metal, you have to get down to the bare stuff. This meant getting all of the old, tar-ish sound deadening off of the floors. Normally this is a terrible job that can take days with a heat gun and a scraper. Unless you know a little trick. Say hello to my little friend...

Dry ice in a convenient pillow case:

It may look tame, but it's doing it's thing. After 5-10 minutes under the pillow case, the sound deadening chips right off like a Maaco paint job.

Here's the rear with all the sound deadening off the floors. They are now ready to be covered in POR-15:

But first let's give a nice test fit to those e24 rear seats. After some trimming of the rear fiberglass they fit like a glove.

With the rest of the interior sorted and repaired, the floors got coated in POR-15 top and bottom (where the undercoating had come off):

Then as the POR-15 was drying, I prepared the next layer to go down. Sound deadening tar paper and Insulating ducting foam. Much like Dynamat and carpet insulation in function, but a whole lot cheaper. If I ever get to the point of doing a 'frame off' restoration, then I may splurge on the name brand stuff. Until then these will definitely do just fine.

Laying down the Tar Paper:

Laying down the insulation on top of that:

With all that done there was just a couple of minor details to button up like re-sealing the gas tank and patching some holes in the trunk. Then the new fuel lines were run and hooked up to the engine. Finally after a couple of cranks she fired up as good as ever. That was about as far as I managed to get before school started and I was back up on campus. I did drive it up at school on and off for a couple of months until the weather really started getting cold. At that point, the lack of a working heater/defroster meant that the windows would fog up within the first 15 seconds of driving. So she got parked until I could find more time to work on the heater box and brakes. Thankfully that time came at the beginning of the new year. hopefully I'll be able to upload those pics in the near future.

[tinkwithanr]

I'm going to try and let the pictures do the talking....

Step 1: Remove the Hood

Step 2: Admire Weight Reduction

Step 3: Examine Ugly Engine Bay

Step 4: Spill Coolant All Over the Floor

Step 5: Disconnect Coolant System and Remove Radiator

Step 6: Remove Intake Manifold

Step 7: Admire Your New Roomy Engine Bay. Your engine now runs on hopes and dreams.

The main reason for removing this stuff was to work on the new manifold design and make sure it would bolt up to the head and let the carbs sit at the correct angle etc etc. But after looking at how dirty the engine was I couldn't help but think I should just pull the whole thing and give it a good refreshing. But I digress...