Early Grill Finish

[Mike_B]

I picked up some beautiful early grills which are exceptionally straight, but need a little cleaning. What is the proper finish for these? Were they originally shiny like chrome or more of a matte, brushed finish?

[Arshloch]

those are anodized from the factory made to "resemble" chrome.(they fade with age and get dull)

You always have an option to strip the anodized finish and polish them. Quite a bit of work and maintanance to keep them shining.

Your local chrome works shop should be able to re-anodize them for a decent price. Keep in mind, anodizing is less labor intensive and not as costly as chroming stuff (a lot of polishing involved)

I know that it's hard to find undamaged grills (especially early grills)

[eastsidebimmer]

If you are installing them on a 2002, run them thru the dishwasher with some detergent and "glass magic" powder, use Wurth CleanSolve or some type of solvent on the areas to be painted and then mask everything but the bars you want black, then prime with a good self etching primer (Wurth for example) then shoot several coats of SEM brand "Trim Black" rattlecan paint. Your grilles will look faaabulous. If you want the easy route...just buy a new set of stick on slats from the dealer or Blunt here on the FAQ.... The procedure described above is correct for 68-69ish 2002s.

Cheers,

Ben

[c.d.iesel]

[AlaskaMike]

Makes me wish they'd stuck with the partial chrome/black grills. All my 02 are black grills. What color blue is that?

[jgerock]

Is it just me - or are the headlights on the "Diana" pointing skyward?

Hard to tell from the lighting, but I wonder if this is the same car I found a rear shot of (blue vs. green).

[02Anders]

That is indeed the same Diana. Actually it's the only one of the original 12 that is roadworthy today. It belongs to Andy Andexer - THE 02 guru in Germany. He runs the company 'Team Andexer' where they restore 02s and other BMWs of that era to absolut mint condition with great respect for originality. Needless to say his Diana is nothing short of breath-taking... :-D

Oh and as for the grills - imho. there's just nothing like the early front with anodized grills - so much prettier than the later plastic grills!! And as for the original question - yes, they should be shiny.

[02Anders]

Just got to share this with you!! :-D

Team Andexers latest 02 resto!! Absolutely stunning!! It was sitting at the Techno Classica 2008 exhibition. It's been built up around a brand new shell that Andy had been storing for ages. Actually Andy also provided Mobile Tradition with the shell for their 'Brand New' 2002tii that they built back in 2002...

http://suchen.mobile.de/fahrzeuge/showDetails.html?id=90735932&__lp=1&scopeId=C&sortOption.sortBy=searchNetGrossPrice&sortOption.sortOrder=ASCENDING&makeModelVariant1.makeId=3500&makeModelVariant1.modelDescription=2002&makeModelVariant1.searchInFreetext=false&makeModelVariant2.searchInFreetext=false&makeModelVariant3.searchInFreetext=false&vehicleCategory=Car&segment=Car&minFirstRegistrationDate=1970-01-01&maxFirstRegistrationDate=1975-12-31&minPrice=20000&siteId=GERMANY&negativeFeatures=EXPORT&damageUnrepaired=NO_DAMAGE_UNREPAIRED&export=NO_EXPORT&customerIdsAsString=〈=de&pageNumber=1

[c.d.iesel]

...." Is it just me - or are the headlights

on the "Diana" pointing skyward? " = PUSH-UP headlite buckets !!

[jgerock]

Slightly OT - but what the heck (sorry for the hijack):

1) What is the color of the Diana 02?

2) Other than the information in Mike Macartney's (small) 2002 handbook, is there any other info on the "Diana" special edition?

3) Since the front grills are obviously from a different model (2800?), how come other 2002's I've seen in pictures have the head lights pointed straight ahead and not upward?

I just found this (couldn't convert to English though). I think these are the (12) Diana cars.

[02Anders]

Those 12 cars are indeed the 12 Dianas. And as you can see all 12 came in its own unique colour. So the one Andy owns is not a regular 02 color - unfortunately I don't recall the name of the color...

The grill is not from the E3 or 2800 as you put it. It is also unique to the Diana. As with so much else. Now lets see, this is going to be totally from memory, so I might forget something:

Besides a unique color for each Diana, they all came with:

- Recaro frontseats

- Complete leather interior incl. doorcards and rooflining

- Bespoke centerkonsole with 2 extra gauges

- Air condition

- 3 spoke leather sports steeringwheel

- Leather gearknob and handbrake lever

- Electric sunroof

- Electric front windows

- Greentint windows

- Twin headlights from E3 with bespoke aluminium grill

- 6 spoke Alloys (produced by 'Stiel')

- Sports doormirror

- US overriders front and rear

The cars were built by Hubert Hahne. He used to be a works driver for BMW but when he retired he started a BMW dealership. As a PR gemick he had these 12 Dianas built to sell exclusively through his new dealership. They were all based on the 2002ti. As his wife was a famous German actress called Diana.... - yup, you guessed it.... ;-)

He sold off 11 of them but kept one for him self. This example got a little extra treatment!! Out went the 120hp 'ti' engine and in went the great big M30 lump from an E3 2500!! Sadly, this car is not known to exsist anymore...

I could be wrong here, but to my knowledge Andys beautiful Diana is the only roadworthy example left. Romour has it that 2 other examples exsist, but both in need of full restoration.

So what is the Diana?? Well, only the undisputed most rare 02 of them all!! :-)

If you want more you'll need to buy "Das Grosse BMW-02-Buch"

http://cgi.ebay.de/Das-grosse-BMW-02-Buch-Stefan-Schrahe_W0QQitemZ330293237617QQcmdZViewItemQQptZSach_Fachb%C3%BCcher?hash=item330293237617&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1229%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

But as it's only in German you might want to find your German - English dictionary out from the bookshelf as well... ;-)

[02Anders]

If there's interest I'll try to find some of my pics of Andys sweet Diana. I took a few at Bavaria Tour 2006....

[jgerock]

What the! I just finished typing the detailed info on the Diana models from the James Taylor/Mike Macartney book and my wireless connection died.

You'll just have to read it on pages 32 and 33 of their book The BMW 2002 A comprehensive guide to the classic sporting sedan.