2002 Touring '74 from Belgium, full restoration project (Lots of pictures)

[1936spyder]

Moving right along, love it! Wish I had your time, skills and most of all SPACE.

[D.martijn]

@1936spyder, thanks for the comment.

I'm pretty lucky now that I graduated college. Since I'm planning to do a master degree next year, I have 3 months for working on the touring.

We only have our driveway as a place to work on the car, not ideal since you are depending on the weather.

We're still on the lookout for a garage/shop/warehouse.

 

___

Today I went and got a little sandblasting cabinet and a bigger air compressor we ordered this week. We can finally begin welding! 

Edited July 8, 2016 by D.martijn

[D.martijn]

Today I got started with disassembling the hood latch and the wiper asembly. After that I cleaned some of the aluminium parts of the motor by sandblasting them with glass beads. The glass beads make the surface pretty smooth and gives a shine to the part.

Glad we got ourselves a nice sandblasting cabinet, not that expensive and just great for cleaning parts!

 

Disassembled hoodlatch & wiper assembly

 

First of, the thermostat.

 

After the thermostat I blasted the temperature gauge and it's housing.

before:

after:

Assembled:

 

Hood latch pulley

before:

after:

 

Engine timing chain cover

 

Crankshaft seal housing

 

Distributor housing

 

Little windscreen nozzles

 

 

 

[D.martijn]

This week I got further with sandblasting several parts that will get re-plated , cad or regular zinc.

 

Little difference shot of the steering knuckles.

 

A few of the zip lock bags containing the blasted parts.

 

I also made a list of all the nuts, bolts and washers of our Touring by going through all the exploded views of BMW on the RealOEM site.

I then went to our local hardware store and got almost everything we need, still a few more screws to go since they didn't have everything I needed.

These will also get re-plated with the rest of our parts.

 

Also got started with disassembling the seat mechanisms so these can also get blasted, repainted or re-plated.

[D.martijn]

Since we are planning on sandblasting the whole car, we started with scraping the undercoating on the underside of the car and in the wheel wells off.

On Monday we cleaned the underside of the car (and got a pretty bad sunburn haha  )
The jig I welded up does come in handy with removing this stuff.

We did discover a small hole on the rear driver sides floorpan, but nothing bad. Otherwise some bits of surface rust.
Now you can see clearly how bad the previous owner repaired the drivers side floorpan and part of the inner sill.

A before shot:


After:




We tried cleaning it up with a bit of acetone since it was quite sticky, shouldn't be a problem when blasting though.

Tuesday we too hot 34°C so we did nothing to the car..


Today we stripped the undercoating inside the wheel wells. My brother did the rear wells, I did the front.
Not too bad to get this stuff off, looks like the same stuff that was used on the Golf Mk1.
You can remove quite nice strips on the flat spots, tight curves are a bit harder though, needs a bit more fiddling around.

After a few minutes you end up with something like this, a wire wheel on the angle grinder will take off all the remaining little bits.
I don't have a picture of the clear well so this will have to do for now

 

[D.martijn]

Today we flipped the car onto it's other side. This way it's much easier to remove the remaining undercoating on the transmission tunnel and the other wheel wells.


Front wheel well done. Still need to remove the front fender support so I can clean the corners a bit better


Rear wheel well fully cleaned. I'll have to fabricate a few pieces of the outer tub when replacing the outer arch panel.



Went over the whole floor with a wire wheel. I think this will make the sandblasting much easier and faster since you only have to remove the remaining paint and not little bits of undercoating. I also experimented a bit with a little dent removal kit I bought a few weeks ago to remove a few little dents etc of some of the floor pans. Turned out pretty good if I say so myself.


Last thing we did was removing the rear window out of the trunk lid.


We'll now brace and strengthen the shell with some square tubing, remove some of the panels that we'll replace anyways, this way the sandblaster can blast the underlaying panels. 
 

[D.martijn]

Weather hasn't been great this week, today we only had time to add some bracing bracing inside the shell , we'll probably add some more once we start replacing some of the panels.
I also braced the rear shocktower so we can remove the rusted sheet metal plate on top.

 

After that we started with removing the front side supports

 

Yesterday evening the guy that will sandblast the 2002 came over to have a look. He seems to be pretty busy and will only have time for us on 25-26th of August..

In the meantime we started with removing some of the rusted bits like the front side supports and the water scuttle.

We first started with drilling out all of the spot welds

 

Then we cutted the bottom section off so we had easier exces on the spot welds on top. 
What rust hole?

 

By tilting the car onto it's side it was pretty easy to remove all of these spot welds.

 

Other side also done

 

I though there would be much more rust behind these panels, good thing there isn't we'll let the guy sandblast the inside of these bits too.

After that was done, I started with removing the rain scuttle since the underside was too far gone and it would have been very hard to patch this up when it's attached to the car.
The middle of the scuttle is in the worst condition, both the upright piece and the bottum is rotted.

 

The firewall will also have to be patched a bit.

 

I did went over it with a wire wheel to remove some of the loose chunks of rust. I also removed the sound deadening on the firewall.
 

Edited August 5, 2016 by D.martijn

[Tommy]

Really good job. You are thorough and not afraid to attack the "not so easy" places. The car is not as bad as I expected after your first pictures, not bad at all. Very interesting to see your progress and also good chance for many of us to learn something about touring.

 

 

[2002haus]

Agree.  Thank you for showing the details for all to see.

 

 

[D.martijn]

@Tommy Thank you. Yes at first we also thought it was in pretty bad shape, the passenger side A pillar is definitely the worst part of the car.

As this is an original Dutch car, weather isn't all that great compared to California so obviously there's a bit more rust

 

August 25th the car will get sandblasted (finally!) This has taken a bit more time than expected, the guy that will sandblast it seems to be pretty busy

 

@2002haus Thanks for the comment!

[D.martijn]

So while waiting for the sandblast guy to come over, I got started with making new plugs for the holes in the floor.
I needed to make 2 new ones since we'll replace 2 floorplates.

I wanted to included the indentation to make it more "factory".

Old plug on the left, seen better days. New fabricated one on the right, turned out pretty good.


For the second one, I have to cut 2 plugs to make a good one.


Hole cut, ready to tack weld




Finished plate



Both plates finished and coated in zinc primer.
I make a little flange on one of the plates because on the repair panel for the driverside from WallothNesch the plug sits a little lower than on the repair panels for the rear.

[tzei]

Excellent! You are really getting down with it. It'll be great when ready. Keep up the good work!

[D.martijn]

Thank you, @tzei! Yes, it'll be fun when it's ready but as of new still a lot of work left!

 

______

 

 

Today my brother got started with disassembling the doors we got from a relative.
Everything is still nice and shiny, although we found some rust on the bottom of the door but compared to the door that were on our car these are in much better shape!

While he was busy, I removed the other bracket for the front fender, again first taking some measurements then removing the spot welds.
This went a lot better since there were a lot less spot welds compared to the other side and also we got a new spot weld cutter and drill.

After this I removed the bracket for the jackstand in the boot from our donor shell. Measured and cut out the damaged one from our car.







In preparation of sandblasting the car I got started with removing the outer sheet metal on the rear shock tower, so the inside can be sandblasted too
I first measured the location of the tower and then cut a little door in the upper sheet, didn't look too good so I removed the whole lot.

SUPRISE!!


This had to be cut out (obviously).
I first measured the whole lot again, it still was in the same place, looks like the jig works.
I do find it weird that the other side was in much better shape than this side..

I removed the shock tower from our donor car and my brother sandblasted the whole thing.
We then sprayed a few coats of Brunox on the inside and finally a good coat of zinc primer.






For fitting the inner piece we adjusted our jig so we could place and clamp the new piece in the same exact spot.
Some measuring, adjusting and more measuring and it's in the same place like the old one. 

We got started with replacing the upper sheet metal but had to stop since it got too late to make a lot of noise..
I'll continue fitting the replacement panel tomorrow. 

[D.martijn]

Another update on the 2002 

Today I got started with fitting the upper replacement panel for the rear shock tower.
After cutting the rot out on the support pieces on the side of the tub and fitting some fresh metal, I fitted the replacement panel.
It was still a bit too big at this stage but overall it fitted pretty good.


I scribed a line from underneath and cutted the exes off.
Getting closer on the fitment.


After much adjusting and fiddeling I was pretty happy with the placement, scribed an other line agains the inner piece so I could drill some holes for plug welds.


After that I got started with the tack welding, making sure jumping from place to place and checking the measurements several times.
When I was done I cleaned up the welds with a brass brush and finally gave it a coat of zinc primer.


Good wled penetration on the backside of the tub.


As it was too late to start grinding the welds down, I cleaned everything up.
Tomorrow I'll further weld the remaining bits of the tub (towards the front) I'll have to get creative and form some sheet metal myself 

Edited August 13, 2016 by D.martijn

[2002haus]

This is all some seriously beautiful work.  Thank you very much.