D.martijn

Today I welded the new replacement A pillar corner on our car. I started with cleaning up the epoxy primer on the edge where I'm going to weld. I also coated the inside again with some Brunox then some zinc primer. Making sure the piece fits, these handy little magnets make it much easier. Tacking the piece in place, had to do some fiddeling on the right side as the weld shrunk the metal pretty hard on that side. Hard to get this on picture but both edges are nice and flush Ground all the tacks flat. Ground the spot welds too Wasn't happy with the little flange so I filled it up and ground it smooth again, looks much better now. I pulled the flange from the firewall where it meets the tunnel when we sandblasted the car since there was some slight rust forming in there. I now hammered it flat again and gave it a coat of zinc primer. I also got started on the other A pillar. I have to fabricate some new metal on the backside of the corner since it's rotted there too. Pretty hard shape to make so I'll have to make it from 2 pieces.

When I try to edit my own post, This message pops up and won't let me save my edited post. I did not removed the post and was posted 2mins ago.. Thanks

@2002haus Hahaha, Thanks for the great comment, it put a smile on my face! It was actually a pretty hot party at 95°F outside temp, even hotter inside! Dust mask is advised, a broom optional. ___ And here it is, the long awaited sandblast update!Most nooks and crannies got sandblasted. We didn't sandblast the big flat panels to avoid warpage.When blasted I went over the whole car with compressed air to remove all of the sand and rubbed the car down with white spirit to remove the last bit of dust.Then I sprayed Brunox on the places where there was some pitted rust. Finally everything for a coat of epoxy primer.First time ever using a spray gun, painting the car went pretty good. I first started with the bottom of the floor to get the hang of it.I'll just post pictures now

Yet an other update!Yesterday evening we set our big party tent up in the backyard. This will serve as a blasting booth.Hopefully it'll keep most of the dust inside Today I still had to disassemble the steering column, luckily I found the right instructions in the BMW Shop Manual.The shaft will get galvanised and the column blasted and painted black.I also removed the rest of the old A pillars and the flat piece of sheet metal on the C pillar.Also get everything that needs to get blasted ready and masked the surfaces that don't need to be blasted.Struts, shafts, suspension bits..Exhaust manifold, pedal box, brakes and some sheet metal parts..Real trailing armsFront & rear subframe, rear springs, brake parts & sway bar..Front nose panel

Our order form Walloth Nesch arrived this week, mostly rubber suspension bushes, some hardware and the rubber protection tube since it all was on discountWe also got 3liters of epoxy primer so we can paint our shell when the sandblaster comes on ThursdayHe will also sandblast the suspension parts so I gave the local powder coating place a call, all set

Today I went through all the parts that we want sandblasted by the guy that will sandblast our shell.Still need to disassemble a few things further and remove some of the rubber bushes of the suspension bits.There was a discount on the suspension bushes from WallothNesch I of course placed an order, great timing!After sorting that stuff out, I had a look at the lower right side corner of the front a pillar. It was starting to get pretty thin on the seam where the window rubber sits over.I first cut the required patch out of the panel that came from the cut up shell we got.Then I marked the outline of that piece onto the corner and cut most of the rotted bit out.Here you can see the rusted lip still in place.Then drilled out the spot welds and test fitted the patch. Still a bit of grinding left to make it fit.Now that this piece is out it'll make it much easier to sandblast the inside

Yesterday I received a new book in the mail. Very nice quality and at a first glance some great information about the 02s.Today I had a look at the Hofmeister Kinks of our Touring, it was pretty clear that these will have to be replaced/patched up.First layer of metal removed, exposed some more rustSecond layer removed, looks like there is something missing Last piece removed, I still have to remove the flat piece too.This will now get sandblasted before I put new metal in.As for now, I sprayed some zinc primer on it to protect it a little bit till it gets sandblasted.We were able to save this piece from the cut up shell, this is in much better shape than our kinkHere is a shot of all the layers, I thought some people might find this interesting Other side, not as bad from the insideForget what I said earlier..Everything removed except the flat piece. Same deal for this side, the replacement piece we got is in much better shape.

Today I continued on the repair of the rear shock tower of the 02 because I didn't want to get the neighbors angry on a nice sunny Sunday and I didn't have time on Monday..I first thought I might be able to reuse the original piece that I cut out and replace some of the rotten bits, I decided this would be too much of a hassle so I tried to form the repair section from a flat piece of 0,85mm sheet metal.For the little step down section I was able to use some flat jaw welding vice grips to form it. To make the curve I bended the piece by hand and some hits with the hammer & dolly.Still too big but getting there..After trimming the exes off, some more forming and drilling the holes for plug weldingHad to ground some more off, ready to weld. These are some handy little clampsFully welded and cleaned off.Detail of the step down, pretty close to the original shape. (Looks like it doesn't show up that good on photo)Checking the underside for penetration, seems to be goodJig fully removed and zinc primer addedOnly thing that"s left is grinding all the welds down, welding a bead on the middle support and 4 beads on the side of the inner piece.

Thanks for the comment, @Colin !

Thank you, @2002haus!

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

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 tooI 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.

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 weldFinished plateBoth 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.

@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!

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.

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 betterRear 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.

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

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.

You need 3 M8x90 half thread bolts, 2 M6x28 full thread bolts and 1 M6x40 half thread bolt. Looks like you are missing 1 M8x90 bolt.

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

@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!

Today we tested our dolly/jig/rotisserie, whatever you want to call it With the help of my brother, we pulled the car sideways so it rests on the triangular pieces. Then we carefully pull it further and make sure it doesn't fall on to the ground. Once the shell is sideways it's pretty sturdy. We might still pay some old tires so the shell can rest on them just to be 100% save. There still is something weird about seeing a car on it's side Underside, this will make removing the old brake lines so much easier! I also made a picture showing our replacement panels, lot's of welding to do! (Picture didn't even included the front nose panel, front fenders and some small bit's like the a pillar corners)

Yesterday evening we got the cut Touring shell. We'll be able to use the lower corners of the A pillar (since the other panel I got doesn't seem to be correct, seller probably sold me one for a sedan..) Also the Hofmeister kink is in great condition so I'll cut that out, aswel as the left lower corner of the firewall where it meets the floor. Other things I should cut out and keep? Since the rest of the shell will end up in the scrapyard.