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Sorry, yes i meant the metal, not the carpet. My tire well and the area around the gas tank is SHOT. Alex at Restoration Design was supposed to get them back in stock in June. But when I called last week he said his supplier still has them on a 3 month backorder. I've checked with W&N and BMW Classic. I've not checke with BavAuto. I'll call them next. If I can find someone with a good tire well, I COULD make the panel myself out of sheet. Zach

Does anyone know who makes the 2002 trunk floor panels? Everyone seems to be out of stock. I'm on the waiting list at Restoration Design, W&N don't have them on the catalog at the moment, and BMW classic has them on the catalog but none in stock. Zach

I would not ever use cloth braided lines for fuel anymore. They degrade from the inside out due to the alcohol. Last year a friends M3 burned up. Use the expensive ethanol rated fuel hose for your car. Fire sucks. Zach

Looks like you have had a few different iterations of the hood. Curious to know what has worked better, the forward facing scoop or the wedge with the pocket facing the windshield? Which are you running now? Zach

I do not like POR-15. The prep work is vast. The advertising suggest you can just paint it on. NOPE. You need to de-scale the steel, wash it with their prep product (Metal Ready - mild acid etching degreaser) and wash that with soap and water. When the metal is TOTALLY dry, then you can mix and apply the POR-15. If there is any moisture on the substrate, the POR-15 will not adhere there, and you will get a bubble. And you will get rust under that bubble. Many years ago I painted an tin lantern with POR-15. The lantern was rusty. I cleaned it, and applied the POR-15. The lantern was left outside, and the POR-15 was bubbling within a year and was flaking within 2 years. I did use POR-15 on the floors of my 914. OMG, that has to be 12 years ago now. There is one bubble where a drop of sweat dripped, but other then that it has worked. But I was WAY meticulous with the prep work. For the money, I think there are better products out there. Once you have descaled the rust, I like spray epoxy much better. Zach

I make shifter knobs for fun as well. What I would do (and have done hundreds of times now) is get round delrin rod (acetal rod from Amazon, Delrin is a trade name) and machine that to fit. The Delrin (acetal) turns very easily on my wood lathe, and it is CHEAP and STRONG, and you can get the rods in almost any diameter. Brass works, but it is heavy. For older cars that do not have cable shifters, I want the shift knob to be a light as is possible. Otherwise, the weight of the knob is always bearing on the linkage. Kinda like leaving your hand on the shifter. For modern cars that want a counterweighted knob, I've used 1 inch brass and carbide tools and could work it on my lathe. No need to C&C. I've also had good luck with Aluminum. Again, I can machine it on my wood lathe. No need to C&C it. But I greatly prefer the acetal. Good luck, and great looking knob. Zach

In my post, 60 gallons referred to the size of the tank. Here in the US, compressors are rated by volume and CFM (cubic feet per minute) of air delvery at a certain PSI (pounds per square inch) pressure. Apologies, but I have no clue how its rated in the rest of the metric world. Probably (like most metric measurements) its a lot easier in metric. For instance, my compressor has a 60 gallon volume tank, and delvers about 7.5CFM at 90psi ( I think, been years since I looked at the data tag). Its on the small side for things like media blasting, but you can do it if you are willing to spend a good deal of time. Its about perfect for painting and running all my air tools. I think, once you have bought a compressor and paid for media and filtration and line driers, you are going to be cheaper paying to get the car blasted. But, I have no idea how expensive blasting is where you live. For me, I know I could get my 2002 vapor blasted for about $900 USD. I have also used mechanical means to strip a car, and chemical. Neither are fun. Mechanical probably takes the longest, but may be the cheapest if you can get the 3M pads cheaply and have a decent drill that won't burn out 1/2 way though the job. I would always choose mechanical over chemical. Chemical just SUCKS, unless you get the car dipped. You end up getting burned. Crap drips everywhere. Its slow and messy and the cleanup is toxic. Dipping is awesome, but its expensive and can be hard on the metal of your car if the dipper isn't paying attention. Cool pics, by the way. Looks like a fun project with a solid start.

Couple things. 1) DO NOT USE SAND 2) Seriously, do not use sand. Do a search and use something other then sand. Sand is bad. Ground glass with rust inhibitor works really well. Aluminum oxide. Anything but sand. Silicosis is bad, and the sand is going to get trapped in lots of blind corners where it will trap water and rust you from the inside out, and will also work into the paint. Bad ju-ju. 3) IMO you need at least 60 gallons capacity to blast a car. It is going to take a long time. Its is going to make a huge mess. Consider farming this out. There are a bunch of blasting innovations over the past few years. Dustless. Soda. They work, and almost all of them are gentler to the thin metal on your car, and some of them will place a protective coating on your car that will keep it from rusting if you can't paint it right away. You have to wash it off before you paint, but thats way better then getting to your car the next weekend and seeing a film of orange flash rust all over it. 5) IMO, you need at least 60 gallons to paint, and you need good filtration. OR, you need a HVLP turbine. If you are only getting the compressor to paint, you may want to consider a turbine. If you have never painted a car before, its a lot of fun. But there is also a steep learning curve. Your first car is going to look like an amateur paint job, becasue it will be an amateur paint job. That does not mean its going to look bad, but it does mean that pros are going to spot flaws from 10 feet away. I'm still proud of the first car I painted, and still have it, and plan on repainting it someday. 6) Or another option is for you to do all the prep work. Spray primer and get the car all smooth, but then give the car to a low-priced shop to squirt on the color and clear. Those types of shops usually cut a lot of corners on the body work, but they know how to lay down a coat of paint. If you do the body work and lay down the primer, the paint shop can play to its strengths, and you get a really nice paint job at a fraction of the price. Best of luck! Also:

Sectioning that roof should be the last resort. I doubt PDR will get that, but I have been wrong before about what those guys can do. If it were me I'd break out the stud welder and slide hammer. Zach

Where in Maryland? I do this as a hobby, and barely have time to work on my own car. I'd be interested in helping you do it, but doing the work myself would be a false economy for you ;-) As for shops - Kahiko Customs in Richmond Virginia is where my car lives right now. The owner is a very good friend of mine, and one of the best body guys on the east coast. He's just had one of his restorations make the cover of Rodder's Journal, and specializes in Porsche and BMWs. http://www.kahikocustoms.com Zach

The advice to match the wrist pins to the pistons is a good one. Be sure to include whatever keepers (if used) hold the wrist pin in, and even including the piston rings (and then marking everything to be sure that the unit stays matched). Everything that rotates should be balanced. Some shops offer dynamic balancing which is AWESOME, but you have to give them everything that spins, and you get back everything indexed! Indexed down to which bolt goes into which hole. Overkill? For this application probably. But as others have said, the closer your engine gets to being perfectly balanced, the smoother it will run, the faster you can rev it (at least till you start floating valve springs) and the longer it will last. Most home builders can easily balance the piston assemblies, the rods (balance them big end and small end and overall). balancing the crank, cam, flywheel (with clutch pack included) is harder for the home builder but should be easy for your machinist. Youtube also has ideas for bubble balances for these items for the DIY guy. And absolutely measure bearing clearance using plastigauge. I know that there are other ways to measure squish that some people prefer, but plasitguage will get you into the bearing tolerance that you are looking for very quickly and positively. Also. Clean clean clean. Sounds like you have this one under control. Get that case surgical clean. Clean to the point where you would feel okay serving sunday dinner to your grandmother on it. Zach

For the past several months, no work on the car has gotten done. The shop in VA that I have been working at moved to a new location, and so from the months of May - July we have been packing boxes, moving shop equipment, tools, 10 years of build up stuff, and cars. The new shop is slightly smaller, but WAY better. We moved out of an industrial park about a mile down the road to a new, private location in Charles City, VA. Cuts, scrapes, a LOT of sweat and swearing, but we got all three bays cleared out, cleaned up, and moved to the new shop by Midnight July 1. For the "work weekend" in July, we went shooting. And I'm guessing for the work weekend in August, I'm guessing it will also NOT be about cars - maybe a James river float or something else relaxing to do on a hot, humid Virginia day. In June I picked up a set of Alpina wheels (for free) and a spare set of axles from a friend who was also moving and needed to clear stuff out of his garage. SCORE! I'm not sure if the wheels are 5.5 inch wide or 6.5 inches wide. I have been thinking about the build quite a lot. The rust is extensive, yet fixable. And I've already tackled some of the bigger areas. Now that the front fenders are off, I found a small patch of rust on each side going into the cabin that I am guessing is pretty common. A patch will fix it. I'm going to replace the front fenders instead of trying to fix mine. There is not that much wrong with them, but I'd really like to just be able to bolt on new ones instead of cutting and welding and cleaning the old ones. The rear fenders both have rust in the arches that was hidden. The arch panels will fix it, but are just as expensive as fitting in flares. Man, it is really tempting to flare out the car and run some wider tire with a little spacer to push the wheels out. But this goes against my desire to have a basically stock car. Going down this route is what has kept me from driving my heavily modified 914. Though if the wheels I got are the 6.5 inch wheels, I may have to flare it out for them to fit right. Once the rocker panels are fully welded closed again, the next BIG task will be the trunk. Its daunting, and will probably be several weekends of effort to clear and repair. The reality is that almost every panel of this car needs some sort of rust repair. That the shock towers are solid is some sort of weird godsend. When I did my 914 the first time, it took me three years from buying it to the first drive, and that was with the car in my garage, here in York PA. I have started thinking about dragging the BMW home to work on, but I enjoy and need the break from life to go down to VA and work on it once a month. I've had the BMW now for just over a year. Hopefully its not another 2 years before I am able to start it up for the first time and drive it around. Zach

Did you drop a valve seat? What was the foreign object damage?

living this pain right now. You gotta be strong. Zach

If you do change color, and resale is important, just be aware that resale will take a hit on color change cars. I don't personally care, but a lot of people do. Zach

Every time I find more rust that needs to be put back together..... Zach

What is required to remove the front fenders? It looks like they are held on with a combo of bolts and welding. What all is involved? Thanks! Zach

Wooden baseball bat and a hair drier? I'm not saying that how you should do it, but I have and it worked. Zach

A lot of us buy cars to restore and modify and drive and don't really care about the immediate resale value. I have a TON more into my 914 then it will ever be worth. But it makes me happy. Likewise, I bought a BEAT 2002 specifically to play with it and make it into something that I wanted, and I don't exactly care about future resale. Playing with cars isn't always just a money game where you are looking at the end sale price. If that makes you happy, then there isn't a problem with it. At all. But for a lot of us, its just as much about getting dirt under your fingernails and having the car you wanted to drive around. Zach

The money spent making or buying a pressure bleeder is time saved. Just make sure you keep topping off the brake fluid tank. You dont want to suddenly be pumping air into the system. Zach

Will those tires on 15 inch wheels fit under a 2002 without rubbing? What wheels and ET are you running? I want to move to a 15 inch wheel on my car just to get a bigger selection of tires. Zach

What will a 292 cam give to a "stock" motor, if anything? Is it just changing the powerband? My engine is stock as far as I know, aside from headers and a weber 36/38 carb. I have one of the new programmable spark contollers from the group buy, but have not yet installed it. Would a 292 make a difference for my engine? Zach

Do not do chemical stripping! You will be tempted. Don't do it! It takes forever. Its very messy. The strip burns your skin. It wicks into crevices and will cause paint to fail down the road. It SUCKS. Dry ice blasting. Soda blasting. Ground glass blasting. All of these work great. I've never seen the water vapor blasting but it seems to be another fantastic option. I have done mechanical stripping too. Using the 3M disks on an electric drill. It worked. But it took a long time and it was hard to get the nooks and crannies. Spend the money to get the car blasted. Dont use SAND. Use one of the modern blasting methods. Get it in epoxy the next day if possible. Zach

So I know its my 914 and not my 2002, but... If you can weld there really is no substitute for a rotisserie. And when you are done you can sell it for more then it cost you to build it. Mine was built out of a set of HF engine stands and off cuts from my local steel yard. It is really nice at times to be able to store the car sideways against a wall if you need the floor space for something else mid-restoration. Its also very nice to be able to roll the car around or out of the shop for blasting or degreasing prior to painting. Zach

Good to know. I have been thinking about 15s due to tire selection but I don't really want to add flares. Zach