'76 '02...?

[jimk]

27 minutes ago, '76mintgrun'02 said:

do you think any improvements were made over the years?

From the very early cars yes, only in the crankshaft/diff/outside mirrors/2bbl carb and that's about it.  Of course, the Tii because the competition was breathing down BMWs back and it got eaten up by the emissions regs.

[ray_]

1 hour ago, '76mintgrun'02 said:

I am just curious, Jim... do you think any improvements were made over the years?

 

 

 

They were, up until MY '73.

 

[Vicleonardo1]

Well, I am the only person that may like the 75 California only 2002. 

Why? 

It was "free". But I know know that my brother in law that gave me a "Free" BMW hates me... Cuz this free car is nothing but..Rust....rust and more rust.... and my brother (in law only) has watched me spend a lot of cash on the car that he never did.....

A postitive I can see with the squares is that at least there are a few more parts that can be swapped from an E21 that increases at least a few of the boneyard pickings... Cuz, for cripes sake, I have had to hunt for a lot of parts.....

 

Plus the big heavy diving board bumpers so far have kept other idiots at bay for awhile. I personally believe that driver training schools and body shops have conspired in an unholy alliance to no longer teach people how to parallel park....

 

[TobyB]

6 hours ago, bluebmw said:

In my opinion, 76 2002's are great because the California buyers don't want them for smog reasons. That means you can find clean examples for cheaper than an identical 74 or 75!

This,

 

but,

 

if you live in a Caliwannabe state, you may, one year, all of a sudden, have tosmog again.

 

Montana's pretty safe, in this regard.  The Dakotas, too.

 

t

[saaron]

On 7/6/2018 at 10:25 AM, '76mintgrün'02 said:

For example, they eliminated the puny round tail lights and the dainty chrome bumpers in 1974, but those UpGrades lasted through '76.   

 

That was also when they did away with those fragile aluminum grilles and used the awesome plastic ones.

 

They shed some weight by using thinner vinyl on the seats!

 

The intermittent wiper switch was '76 only.  Not really a bug, but definitely a bonus.

 

Headlight relays were a nice improvement.

 

Um... '76 cars had cool looking air cleaner lids.

 

Best post ever.  Good work.  There will be something extra in your pay envelope next Friday. 

 

 

Scott

[saaron]

On 7/6/2018 at 10:01 AM, fastricky said:

I've read a number of times that the beauty of a '76 2002 is that "all the bugs have been worked out" and it is a desirable car for that reason. What bugs exactly? Is there any merit to this claim?

 

I have heard this before, as well.  I'm not sure what that statement referred to.  Over the years, US crash standards and emissions standards became more stringent.  So you took a simple '60s car design and kept adding regs that it had to meet.  So I think the cars became somewhat more complex and heavy over time.  

 

By now, any '76 not in Cali has likely had a lot of the emissions stuff removed.   So I'm not sure where that leaves us.  

 

Scott

 

 

[jimk]

By 1974 BMW would have deep into the design and tooling up for their superceding model the E21.  The only changes to the 02 were to keep up with the emissions/safety mandated regs.  These were probably not handled by their prime crew.  The 02 was one of their cash cows and it would have been dumb to stop producing it and not be ready with the next model car.

[Rich Elliott]

On 7/6/2018 at 11:00 AM, Ian said:

Funny thing.  When the '74's came out some owners cut the square tail light assemblies out of the later cars and grafted them into their early cars, replacing the "old fashioned" round tail lights with the "modern euro" square tail lights!  Times and taste change.

My '70 is like that.  Just bought a new rear panel directly from BMW and it just arrived from Germany.  Hopefully, I will have it installed soon.

[jrhone]

What I heard was that improvements were structural.  Reinforcement here and there. Stiffening here and there. Rust proofing here and there.   Nothing major and maybe nothing you would notice unless you examined two shells side by side.  From what I remember of my SCCA time when I was a kid (my brother raced GT2 and GT3 in a 510 and 200sx) was that early chassis’s were lighter.  Could be hearsay but that’s what I heard.  I have zero facts to back that up.  Also things like dizzys and coils and those bits and pieces were probably better to some extent but again bolt ons so after all this team people probably bolted them on if they had failures.  

[Buckeye]

[jrhone]

3 minutes ago, Buckeye said:

 

There ya go.  

[Brandon]

The early cars with the chrome faced silver dollar instrument gauges were built with better materials than the later cars...especially better than the square taillight cars.  The interior is where you really see this.  So it almost seems like bmw went backwards and introduced bugs into the later cars with cheaper materials that wear out quicker.  In general though, all 02s were built well from the beginning to the end and shared a lot of the same bugs from what I’ve seen.