Greg's 1975 2002 - Bel Air, Maryland

[GD]

Hello everyone. It is time for me to start documenting my restoration project.

In the fall of 2005 I bought a 1975 BMW 2002 (2366773) on eBay from Arizona. I had the car moved to my sister's house in Phoenix temporarily. After a few months of patient waiting my friend Aaron and his car hauler were finally scheduled to pass through AZ in May 2006, and he picked up the car and headed back to Maryland.

May 2006

Our initial inspection of the car showed that it needed some love but there were a lot of pleasant surprises. The interior is in bad shape. The seats, carpet, door panels, and headliner will all have to come out. I would like to change everything over to black leather from a later model. The trim is mostly complete, but there are a couple pieces that are dented and would look terrible against a new paint job. The 4 speed has some sludge on the outside of the case and the shifter bracket is held on with wire. The brake system and suspension should live through a few miles before being rebuild during the winter. The windshield and one of the tail lights are cracked. On the bright side there is no body rot and only a few spots of surface rust. The engine has already been upgraded with a header and a Weber carb. I was pretty pleased.

June 2006

The first goal is to get the car running so we can evaluate what the long term plan should be. I pulled off the wheels and had the old tires removed. I cleaned the wheels up and repainted them silver. We put a set of Pep Boy's basic 185/70-13s on for now. I still need to polish the trim rings and center caps. The engine compartment got a battery, coil, spark plugs, and new oil and filter. We siphoned out the old gas and poured in a few gallons of new stuff. A few sprays of carb cleaner caused the car to come to life for a second, but it obviously wasn't running on gasoline. We took and Weber off and pulled it apart. The gas had turned to jelly because the car sat in the desert for a few years. The floats were stuck to the bottom of the bowl and the jets were completely clogged. A can of carb cleaner and a rebuild kit solved the problem. The engine fired right up and idled. It sounds great. We only ran it for a minute because of the coolant issue. The goose neck on top of the engine has a hole in the casting. I'd love to know what caused that. A replacement is one the way and we can top off the coolant after it is installed.

Next Step

Get the cooling system in order. Move on to the trans and clutch.

I have posted a few pictures for now at:

http://www.donarum.com/cars/BMW2002/

This is my first restoration project, so suggestions are welcomed.

Greg

[TMK-001]

Start by giving it a good clean up... from there you can see what paint remains, how straight the panels are, whether anything nasty is lurking about in the rockers or rear guards, etc.

What do you want to do with it? Track? Resto? Are you keen on restoring it or if it looks too difficult will you move it on?

As for ideas, they are endless, from engine up grades, suspension etc. all really depends on imagination and finances.

Have a look at some of the other projects, there are some excellent ideas to get you going around here!

Best of luck with the project!

Todd

[Skippy_the_Bush_Kangaroo]

Looks like a good project.

I think the combination of a black interior and sahara would be pretty cool.

by the way, thats a cool garage setup, much better than crawling under the inder the car.

[kcdonahue]

Hello Greg,

Looks like a great project! If you find yourself needing an extra set of hands drop me a line. There are a few of us in Bel Air.

Casey

[GD]

July 2006

Installed new plug wires. The old ones were falling apart. Traced a few wires through the engine compartment to solve a gauge problem and to more permanently connect the coil.

The transmission shakes like crazy. It's a four speed...probably the original. The trans mount is completely split in half. The guibo is split into 3 pieces. The shift mount bracket is held together with a home made bracket and mismatched bolts. This car must have been off road at some point in it's life. It's time to rebuild this area. First we drained the transmission fluid. There was less than a cup of fluid in the case. That's probably not good. Only a few flakes of metal on the magnetic plug so hopefully it is fine. We started by taking apart the shift lever from inside the car. We removed the trans bolts that we could reach from the engine compartment. Then we got underneath. We unbolted the transmission mount bracket and guibo. We kept unbolting parts of the driveshaft until we could slide it out of the trans.

August 2006

We cleaned up the transmission and found that it was "sealed" with silicon. It must have been taken apart at some point. After talking with local 2002'ers Tim and Casey and local shop owner Mark Raspi, I decided to just try to seal it up again with silicon and save money for a 5 speed conversion. I rebuilt the shifter and reconnected it to the trans. We inspected the clutch and reinstalled it without modification. A new guibo and bolts and a new trans mount completed the installation. After the car sat overnight, another fluid puddle soaked the cardboard under the car. One of the bolts needed a better coating of silicon. It has been leak free ever since. Since reinstalling the trans I have put about 20 miles on it and second gear is not good at all. I have to hold it in. I have to decide whether to fix it, get another four speed, or bite the bullet and find a 5 speed.

During the first couple trips in the car, the temp gauge kept inching its way to the red. It turns out that the water level was low. That was a simple fix. There's definitely a ground problem too since the temp jumps when the blinkers are on.

Most of the light bulbs were shot or missing so I bought everything except the headlights. I took apart the tail lights and gave them a light coat of chrome paint. The reflectors were basically black. Since the lenses are cracked I will probably get new assemblies at some point.

So now it's a driver. I've driven it to work, but it's quite an adventure. The car sputters like crazy and really smells. I should probably replace the distributor cap and points and make sure I didn't crack one of the plugs when I installed them. The Weber seems to function great, except the idle at startup is too low. The brakes are functional but seem to exhibit the grabbing problem associated with old brake hoses. The shocks and struts are terrible, The steering floats a little at speed.

My goal is to do a rolling restoration, but it's tough when there are so many worn out system. It should be fairly simple to tune out the engine bugs, but that second gear problem really bumps the drive train up on the priority list.

New Pictures:

http://donarum.com/cars/BMW2002_JulyAug2006/

[GD]

SS brake hoses from Ireland Engineering really improved the feel of the brake pedal.

[GD]

I have an electric fuel pump. I wanted to add an electric fan and someday I may put a radio in this car. I figured it was time to upgrade the alternator. I decided to follow Zenon's how-to:

http://www.zeebuck.com/bimmers/tech/318alternator/318ialternator.html

I called up Terry Sayther Auto, and Rhett sent me the E30 alternator and required brackets.

The installation is really easy using the above mentioned instructions. The new bracket makes belt adjustments really easy.

While I had the radiator out I installed a 12" electric fan. The fan's adjustable themostat fits nicely where the voltage regulator used to be.

[Miss_myTii]

Looking good! Looks like a nice project. I am jealous of your lift. I want one but my garage roof is too low

I have about a foot and 1/2 above the Land Cruiser. Hell the posts would not fit grrrr.

[GD]

This car had a lot of the typical electrical gremlins. The gauges jumped when the turn signal was on. Only a few of the marker lights wanted to work. I added a ground strap from the battery to the body, which helped a little. The thing that really did the trick though was to clean the fuse box with electric contact cleaner and clean or replace all of the fuses. After all of the fuses went back in everything worked.

[GD]

I don't feel like I am driving a school bus anymore thanks to monkeystripe's garage sale. Thanks Chris!

[GD]

Finally some winter progress. I have never rebuilt axles before, and now I hope I'll never have to do it again. I have a 3.91 LSD from a 320i that needs to be installed. I decided to use 320i CV joints on the inboard ends of the axles for this swap. I cleaned up the axles, replaced all four boots, installed the 320i CV joints, repacked the grease, and reassembled. Next I have to finish rebuilding the rear subframe and order the required axle spacers from Ireland.

Here is a more detailed explaination:

http://donarum.com/cars/index.php?entry=entry070304-215109

And here are the before and after shots.

[GD]

I finally finished rebuilding the rear end of the car. It now includes new urethane bushings from Ireland Engineering, a 3.91 LSD, and an Ireland sway bar. You can read about the entire procedure at

http://donarum.com/cars/index.php?entry=entry070723-140135

Thanks to the guys who talked me through the sway bar install over in the General Discussion area.

Here's a picture of the final product.

Greg

[GD]

The undercoating in the rear wheel wells was chipping off in some spots. I scraped off all of the loose material with a scraper and then a wire wheel on the die grinder. Most of the undercoating was still good.

I then used steel wool and paint thinner to prepare the surface for Herculiner truck bed liner. The stuff is like with brownie mix. I used a disposable paint brush to put a heavy coat in the spots where the undercoating had chipped off. I then took a small roller and applied a coating to the entire wheel well.

While the bed liner was drying I got the new parts ready to go in. New Bilstein Sport shocks and Stage II springs were delivered from Ireland Engineering earlier this week.

Check out the before and after shots below. I can't wait to finish the front end and get this thing on the road.

More pictures at:

http://donarum.com/cars/index.php?entry=entry070820-233400

[GD]

So upon closer inspection of my front subframe, I discovered that it's bent. The front suspension arms are a little tweaked too. There must be a Hazzard County in Arizona I guess, because this car has some frequent flier miles. Luckily a call to local 2002 guy kcdonahue yielded a whole new subframe and arms. They weren't pretty though.

So I had a beautiful but bent Arizona sub and a rusty but straight New England piece. At that point my boss told me about All Strip LLC in Edgewood, MD. They did a great job on the parts.

The black POR-15 is drying as I write this.

[GD]

Here are a few pictures of the new front subframe going in. I applied POR-15 with a brush on the bare sand blasted metal. It adheres really well. Thanks to kcdonahue for the subframe, suspension arms, and motor mount. The new sway bar mounts are made by Ireland Engineering. More detail on the subframe swap is available at http://donarum.com/cars

Next up: struts and suspension arms.