'Honu' #2588935

[stevebo77]

It all started with a craigslist posting of "bmw 2002 !!! 30 mpg !!! - $800 (Pahoa)"

I always wanted one, but never found one for less than a few grand whenever the 02 lust struck me.

So the fiance will be starting her job soon and I need an extra car since I sold the extra Hyundai before we left Reno for Hilo Hawaii. But I'd been craving a project car for ages and so now was the time to build something quick before I was stuck at home, car-less!

Some of my project car history:

My first project car was this 66 Cadillac, love of my life. I picked this up from a nice local car guy in Reno and spent tons of cash rebuilding everything in the drivetrain, bagged it, drove it every day.. then I stupidly sold it for a good sum.. it was wrecked only months later

Also had this 62 Imperial, it was my daily driver in Scottsdale for a long time.. I didn't have to do much to it since it was already restored (boring!), but totally enjoyed it anyway. Sold it on ebay for some college semesters worth of tuition cash.

And somewhere between those two was the 56 Cadillac off of ebay. Snakebitten from day one and never got much road time. But a fun big, mean, and loud beast for sure. Dumped it on ebay and have always wondered where it ended up.. hopefully better than I left it.

Back to the BMW

The $800 wonder bimmer showed up on craigslist to my joy and off we ran to Pahoa to scope it out. A younger fella was the owner of it now and it was not doing well at all. Front bumper was hanging on by the side bolts while the major mounts were sheared off from an impact- said impact also ruined the front right fender and turn signal. The kid managed to pull alot of the fender back to straight but it was far from right still.. it's okay, I couldn't do shit for body work when I was 16 either

Floor under the driver's pedal foot was gone. There were no brake shoes in the left rear at all, also less than 1/16" of front pads left.

Ansa center exhaust section was sheetmetal screwed together along its blossoming seam and simply stabbed into the collector. Muffler section was stabbed into the back of that and hanging over the left rear cross member, tied down with speaker wire.

No lights at all. Moldy and shredded interior.

I must have left my logic at home that day and still handed over the 800 bucks in a purchase of passion Now, to drive it 30 miles home with a spurting back cylinder and one possible working corner of brakes. 32 years old and I still make dumb decisions! We grab a bottle of brake juice and hit the road with no issues. Get home and start the break down.

Since I need to just get this running and not look embarassing, I have a strict budget of $1000 more than the original cost of the car.. we'll see if I can stay in that space hehe.

Day 1:

Door handles were hanging off.. lets start this off with an easy fix

Let project Honu (seaturtle) commence!

[stevebo77]

Straighted out much of the body work on passenger front. Also helped out the grill area with some straightening and grinding

Cassie pulled off all the rear trim, lights, and bumper for me to straighten out that back panel, she was an excellent helper in these early stages.

Yeah, I have the 4th bmw wheel also, it just had a treadless wonder mounted to it.. not safe to drive on.

I'm beginning to realize how deep the rabbit hole goes.. the trimline has the cancer residing behind it.

A forum member here pointed out that these are (or will be) very nice seats some day. Just a bummer that someone hacked away at those poor inner door skins.

It took me 2 weeks to realize that I had the upper and lower column trim all along! I'm new to the 02s and wasn't recognizing what parts were what in the included boxes of goodies. The gauge pod was non-op or bouncy as hell, depending on how it felt at any given moment.

Yanking the furniture out.

[stevebo77]

Preliminary pound out of the back panel, gawwwd this is bad.

Cas is gearing up the shop vac for some interior dirt, bug, scorpion, rust, mold, you-name-it vacuuming.

Rust rust rust, crap crap crap.

Craptastic

Beginning to look better back here

Oh hello! ~1/2" deep bondo..

The Recaro seats were feeling pretty unsupportive in the bum area. Actually, when Cas pulled the driver seat out we found that it was being supported by a jug of cat litter and a wood board! Some people are just so creative

Just took a long ratcheting tie down strap, cut the ends off and started weaving.. instant support (i have just tons of these long straps from a Harbor Freight sale hehe)

[stevebo77]

Decision was made to not fight the bent trim and the widening cancery trim holes. Time to weld out the trim line.

Retrospective note : this ended up being a very bad day.. after hours and hours of welding this crap up (mostly not using a mask and doing the tightly closed eye, turned head method of welding), I finished up the afternoon starting to feel a really uncomfortable feeling in my eyes. The burning was immense. Then I stumbled into the bathroom to see that my face was sunburnt beyond belief, so were my eyeballs. That night was so painful and much of the following day was spent in pain too. WEAR A PROPER MASK

I was asked at some point if I kept all that trim.. yeah. For better or worse it's in storage now. Can't bring myself to throw it out, even tho most of it was not great at all.

Crap! The seats are out but I need to move the car still... the beach chairs are a perfect fit (for driveway driving)

[stevebo77]

Day 9

While neglecting to take photos I had welded in new patch panels for the offending floor areas. Then dumped a bunch of Rust-O Stop Rust Hammer Finish paint and rolled it around to coat all the areas I could reach. We pick up the photo session again with the insulation material.

Again, sticking with the budget I opted to use what I could find at the big box stores. Home Depot provided two rolls of roofing peel and stick for this initial layer.

Then on top of that went the tin-backed sticky foam. This came from the Home Depot ducting section. Not glorious, but effective!

Remember the budget before you roll your eyes! This is only version 1.0 of the car. I will definitely go back and pay for the good stuff when this car is down to its bare metal again in the far future.

Custom forming the carpet material.

[stevebo77]

Day 10

This day started off with a curse word or 10. Put the car up on stands and get prepare for the following days exhaust build out. I found that the front rail was rotten to bits (the thin section, but not the upper reinforced section). I boxed that in and felt better about life soon.

I totally regret using that shitty red primer.. it was SO hard to get off when it came to paint prep time. Gummed up sanding disc after sanding disc..

[stevebo77]

Day 11

Do you like loud? I don't care, because I do

Remembering the budget again, I put together a quick list of parts that could be procured easily without having a pro shop do the work for me.

2 18" resonators inline and a section of 2.5" pipe from carquest. Two 90 degree 2.5" pipes from home depot electrical section. And a couple of tips from carquest. All welded up and stupidly painted for $49.

What's it sound like? Well at idle it has a very intimidating deep burble. 2k is where it starts to get loud. 3 to 5k is where people about 9 streets away are wondering who that asshole with the honda rice racer is. Honestly, this will probably be the first thing I break the budget rule on sooner than I meant to. But fun for now

Collector feeds the inline glasspacks, splits in the Y to each side of the car right under the stupid lift points for that crazy suicide jack that came with the car.

[stevebo77]

Day 16

A pile of parts and a cardboard template:

Cardboard becomes steel:

Make another and mate them with a 1x1 square bar.

You know the rest.. it was an instant driving benefit, no matter how lowbrow it appears! I also made one for the rear towers but still haven't remembered to stick a camera in there for a shot.

[stevebo77]

Day 18:

Needing a break from building stuff, time to prep for paint. Sand, fill, prime, repeat.

[stevebo77]

Day 19

Still on the budget and a proper spraying rig does not fit into that this year

Spray bombing is frowned upon and for good reason. But this will get me through for 18 or so months.

Damn you Steve, buy better masks!

[stevebo77]

Day 20

Time to work on the second color

Figuring out the stripe layout:

That ratty ass center grille is _alot_ better than when it started.. poor thing was a mashed mangled misshapen hunk of garbage. It still isn't great, but presentable for this driver. I must have added a new grille to my shopping carts so many times or almost bid on one at ebay.. but remember the budget That BMW roundel on the hood was in rough shape too.. I, many times, added a replacement to online shopping carts and many times walked away from it.. just too much money for a little bling right now. Time to get creative again.. Took my three colors of spray paint and lined up three little containers, sprayed a little puddle of color into each one. Then took an old dead sharpie and soaked up a color and touched it to the roundel's depressions.. the paint released and filled the voids expertly. That'll do.

[stevebo77]

Day 21

Stripe time, blue layer first.

While we wait for that to flash over I need to address the TERRIBLE bumpers.. the rear has a fist sized hole in the right corner and a million more little holes all over. It's literally a lost cause. Time to commit some bondo sins after I have welded in some roughly shaped patch panels to it. I simply can't afford a rebuild and certainly not a rechrome. I really look forward to version 2 of this car, when I'll better afford some show-chrome bumpers.

The front bumper was also in weird shape.. full of rotty holes and misshapen from the impact it took. Straightened it out and committed more sins.

Back to striping. Black inside the blue.

Yank that tape off already!

[stevebo77]

Day 26

Time for a test drive now that I finally got all the brake parts that I've been needing so badly.. New shoes, new pads, new cylinders, new lines. Stops like a champ.. but it would help if the tires had enough tread to matter

At this point I've also cut 1.5 turns out of each front coil. This as I had removed the 4 spring helpers (i dislike spring helpers) from each rear coil I noticed that the nose just kept getting higher hehe. No good. Got the nose to a good looking/functioning level and will attack the rears later.

A post test drive picture.. still haven't finished up those bumpers at this point.

[stevebo77]

Day 31

Let there be lights! After much tooling around with the electrical system I've finally sorted out the signals, the wipers, the washer pump (which was reverse wired by some previous owner), brakes, lights, dash.. yaay.

Oh and a bumper! Rebuilt the sheared mount and put this back together.. at first I didn't want a front bumper, but looking at it now I'm glad I decided to go this way.. looks cool.

Back bumper is on now too. Found an excellent brake light pod from a 90s Nissan Sentra at the junkyard today. Looks natural and pumps out lots of stop light.

Stock speedometer gave up at some point and it appears that the return spring is bad, as well as the magnetic bits. It sounds like garbage when it's turned and simply spins the broken needle lame. I ordered an autometer 160mph speedo. 160mph specifically because 120mph (my supposed top end on this 2002) * 1.28 (my stock speedo's ratio) = 160ish mph.. so if I can get the face off of this Autometer speedo, I have printed up a new face graphic with the numbers calibrated for how the needle actually moves in response to the shaft speed. If I can't get the face off then I'll just have to remember that 20 = ~15mph, 35 = ~27mph, 55 = ~43mph, 65 = ~51mph, 160 = ~125mph... you get the picture

So lets review the 31 day total:

$800 for the car

$300 for the welding rig and necessary protection/supplies

$70 for the new angle grinder and DA sander

$50 for new shoes and lines from local parts shop

$70 for new pads and rear cylinders from Amazon.com

$80 for new speedometer from Amazon.com

(amazon.com ships to Hawaii for free, usually, and gets it here in 2 days no matter what)

$18 for a 36mm hub socket.. my right rear was loose by 3 clicks past the cotter pin and trying to fix this with the hub in the air while using channel locks is a joke.

$200 for a ton of paint and prep(including gallon of floor/trunk paint, primers, car colors, and various other cans for little projects, plus a tub of plastic).

$45 for the 3 rolls of peel and stick and tinbacked sticky foam for sound/heat deadening in interior

$25 for the carpet material from a local discount fabric shop

$49 for the glasspacks, pipes, angled pipe and tips for the exhaust

$23 for the front and back strut bars

$5 for all the various lightbulbs that needed replacing

$10 for all the brake juice needed to purge and bleed and refill the system

$12 for a coolant recovery tank- I tend to always install one of these in a project car for peace of mind.. I like the thought of keeping all that purged liquid in the car instead of on the asphalt.

$20 for new license plate trim and lights

$10 for the junkyard 3rd brake light

Total: $1787 woot. I'm sure there were some things I forgot here, but nothing major..

The 205/60R13 tires need replacing, that's another $384 (needing to get them shipped from mainland apparently), but I may just see what I can find that's close enough to that size and already in stock. Back taxes, title, inspect and reg will come to $270.

Freebie value of new stuff that came with the car: New in the box brake master and I think a clutch cylinder (haven't looked too hard at this part yet).. gotta be worth a couple hundred bucks!

[stevebo77]

Day 32

It took me 31 days to realize what the hell that chrome hoop was.. I was positive it was just some garbage that came with my 73. I also, before last night, had never figured out how the Klippan belts were supposed to work.. I must have stared at them for hours, thinking that I must have received 4 mismatched peices. Yesterday I bought some nice retracting seat belts from the junkyard and was reading about other people putting such things on here in the forums.

Then in a magic result of my search query, someone mentioned Klippan and chrome hoop. It all came together in an instant hahaha. I ran out to the garage and test fit the hoop to the trans tunnel and whattya know? Perfect fit. Crazy Germans and their 'Clip on' seat belts.