Shawn Piper

I bought this without thinking too much since the price was right. When unboxing it, I realized it was pretty different than the regular pedal box. Anyone know what this goes to?

Try buying a used door handle with bad chrome (cheaper!) and cannibalize the door lock. I'd post a want ad since someone on this forum likely has one they want to sell. I might even have one and will check if you're interested.

I'm in San Diego and I had Busy Bees Locksmith do the re-key on my 2002. They have a guy that focuses on older cars and motorcycles. You would want to bring them the door handle separate from the car. The lock comes apart pretty easily if you're feeling adventurous. Here's a how to: http://www.zeebuck.com/bimmers/tech/doorlocks/doorlocks.html

Just because the plastic is stained doesn't mean its blocked. Plastic turns dark brown when in contact with gas. You might see this with carb floats. This example from a Solex carb started off being white. I rehabbed my fuel sender and had the screen zinc plated. The screen is as clean as it will possibly get and it looks like this

Take it to a shop and have it inspected. If they cant repair it for a decent price then I would look for a nice used one or buy new one ($300-500).

I wouldn't use any solvents like acetone. They will likely change the texture of the dash since they soften the vinyl material. Try isopropyl alcohol or a citrus based sticker/decal remover. If you're careful, you might add some heat to speed up the process. Dont scrap at it with anything metal. Plastic spudger tools are cheap and fairly surface safe.

I'm sure you could improvise or 3d print something if you're not particular. In my case, I had a NOS antenna but it came with a later style clip. I ended up buying a cheap, trash antenna for an old style clip. I soaked the clip in Evaporust then had the screw part zinc plated with some other items I was sending out. Turned out really nice. Example newer style Example earlier style

This was a successful weekend project that I wanted to share. Since the pinch welds from my car were really dirty and rusty, I decided to try restoring them. I started out by cleaning them with Simple Green and then soaking them in Evaporust. Afterwards, I tried gently wiping them down with acetone to remove overspray (note that acetone, paint thinner, or any other solvent will easily melt the pinch weld). This is the end product: Its OK, but you can still see some significant staining and discoloration. The ends were also looking unsightly: Next, I filed the ends down with a needle file and finished scraping off the remaining overspray with a plastic spudger. To deal with the staining, I decided to try a fabric and vinyl paint. I had a can of White Duplicolor Vinyl and Fabric paint. I tried a test spray and it was a very bright white, while the original color of the pinch weld is off white. I found this offering from SEM when searching locally for a better matching paint-- literally "off white": To paint the pieces, I made an "apparatus" out of cardboard and rested it on a jerry can: The paint dried very quickly and had a nice, flexible finish. Here are some before and after shots: And then I packaged everything up for when I assemble my interior...

Its KiP brand, but there isn't a model # printed on it anywhere. I bought it from Vintage Blau. He's active on these forums too. https://www.ebay.com/sch/vintageblau/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from= http://www.vintageblau.com/home.html These moduls seem to be homebrewed or made in small batches but I regularly see them for sale on eBay and the Samba (there was a user selling modules that had a microphone input so you can take calls, which is cool). You are basically looking the for a BT module with a DIN connector and documented support for your radio type. 7 or 8 pin connectors support stereo, 6 pin connector support mono only. This one looks pretty good: https://www.classentials.com/product-categorie/motoring-accessories-autoradios-fog-spot-lamps/vintage-classic-car-auto-radio-autoradio-blaupunkt-becker/

I'm getting pickier since seeing my car's new paint. My previously OK radiator is now starting to look cosmetically unacceptable. I tried to clean it up and spent considerable time straightening the smashed fins with a plastic spudger. Even though I achieved decent results (better with a repaint I'm sure) , I decided to go with a new radiator and keep the old one as a spare. Here's what the old radiator looks like after cleaning. This clearly isn't the radiator that came with my car (due to the fan shroud provisions) but its a genuine BMW part. I originally started down the path of reconditioning my existing radiator but local radiator shops wanted a lot of money to rebuild my core- I figured there is no point spending lots of money rebuilding something that isn't original to the car. As a result, I decided to find a new BMW radiator (part # 17111115755). I placed my order online and waited about 6 weeks for the part to presumably arrive from Germany. When I first opened the box, I was immediately tipped off by the radiator cap that it wasn't the same as the photo. Not a big deal because I had already bought a BMW radiator cap (that I attached right away!), but I was curious what that meant for the radiator. Here's what I got: The radiator looks really nice and came well packed (double boxed!). At first glance, the new radiator is missing any BMW or LR stamping. At second glance, the fin density is higher on the new radiator so I wonder if the cooling properties are better than the old radiator. At third glace, the stamped metal at the top and bottom have different patterns. That being said, the drain plug is there (white flecks are from styofoam packing) and the dimensions are identical. As for maker's marks, I found this sticker for TUV Nord: Doing some research online, TUV Nord seems to be one of these large German companies that does a bit of everything. One of their offerings is safety inspections of automotive parts. There is no indication who made the radiator, but I presume BMW changed their supplier from LR. Later, I got suspicious that I was shipped the cheaper Wallothnesch radiator for the higher BMW price. However, the Wallothnesch radiator actually looks more like the radiator I just replaced than the one I bought, so the purists might want to use that over the new "BMW" part. On a side note, my hoses, clamps, and thermostat arrived. I'm getting excited to start reassembling the car in the next months.

That's absolutely right. The interior-facing hinge is partially fabric covered but the external hinge is exposed. My seats also didn't have provisions for the chrome eyelets around the headrest posts. The seat rails are also different. Here are my tags, which I kept

The place I sent it to is https://gcartrim.com/ Cost was about $300 shipped, which was considerably less than other places I tried.

So I found a good deal on a TI air cleaner, which inspired me to go dual DCOE with my engine build. My goal is to attach it to the shock tower with a custom Alpina-style bracket. But in my excitement I didn't test fit anything and took the air cleaner directly to the body shop to have it repainted... Of course it came back looking beautiful, but when I attached the clips, they didn't line up correctly. So the air cleaner now has to be modified and repainted so that the clips line up right. I'm guessing that one end is from a different type of air cleaner. This whole car has been a long waiting game so its challenging to not get ahead of myself sometimes.

My car had a gauge cluster housing from a late-model car. The wood grain bugged me so I went to Autobahn Dismantling to find a correct style one worthy of restoring. Interestingly, the wood panel can be removed but the housing itself is actually quite different. The early style has a clear plastic window on the side, mounting holes in the top, and no provisions for attaching the fake wood panel. The gauges themselves went to The Speedo Shop for rebuilding and recalibration. The housing went to GCAR and came back looking brand new.

In the 80's, my aunt had the seats reupholstered. Unfortunately, the upholstery was done in black when they should have been blue. This was something I wanted to fix. The first thing I did was tear down the seats. The horse hair padding was basically powder so this process was really messy. Once the seats were dismantled, I pressure washed all the crud from the frames. The rust was removed using Metal Rescue Gel... this stuff works amazingly well and I highly recommend it. Some seat parts were damaged, such as the interior plastic dust covers, so I acquired some derelict seats for parts. Other parts I sourced on eBay Germany, such as the fasteners. I bought new fasteners because mine were stripped from the previous upholstery job (I know the Philips style isnt correct for a 69, but it was better than what I was working with). The hinges and seat rails came apart and I sent the pieces out to have them re-chromed and zinc plated. It was at this point that I knew I could never reassemble these things (the huge hinge spring looked like it required a special tool that I didn't have). Fortunately, there is a local shop called Autobahn Interiors that specializes in vintage Porches. They had the right tools to re-assemble the seats and were also able to recover them using the correct German vinyl. In this process, we discovered that my seats were a rare, wide-backed variety. And here are the completed seats. The rear seats don't have the basket weave pattern across the whole thing because the upholstery shop didn't have an iron big enough. Overall, I'm very pleased with them and I think they are a huge improvement over what I had.

My car came dealer equipped with a FrigiKing AC unit as a console. However, in the 90s, the whole unit was unfortunately removed and tossed because it had broken. I wanted to replace the unit with a non-AC variety. My goal is to have something period correct that allows me to play music from my phone. In my '66 Beetle, I used a RetroSound stereo with a vintage faceplate and knobs. This time I tried something different. Inspired by what I've seen on this site, I decided to use a vintage stereo and wire it to a BT receiver. The parts gathering process took about 6 months. First was the short console itself. Then I acquired a speaker grill, which I straightened, polished/painted, and then added new fabric. Finally the stereo, wiring, and speaker, which came from vintageblau.com.

When I received the harness from the body shop, it was clear that most of the electrical components themselves were heavily degraded/broken. I had anticipated that most of the electrical components would need replacing so I began buying NOS pieces on eBay when I embarked on the restoration. Here is my collection of new and refurbished parts: The harness itself came to me in a giant tangled ball because the tape had mostly fallen off. Any of the harness that had been exposed in the trunk and engine compartment was badly over sprayed. My initial intention was to save the harness so I spent about 6hrs carefully cleaning it with acetone and using zip ties to re-bundle the wires. Here's it how it looked afterwards: I also found these wiring diagrams online, which I used to orient myself with the harness and label the ends and reattach components. Unfortunately, the harness was extremely brittle due to age. After all that work, I decided I would remake it instead of doing a bunch of splices to fix the broken segments. So that's coming next!

After all of the repairs, the car was sealed... Then primered and sanded Then final paint! Next will be black out work on the dash and core support. We decided to do a silver fuel-resistant epoxy on the fuel filler neck since it wasnt removable during repaint.

When the engine came out of the car, it was very tired and it needed a rebuild. But after taking care of the fundamentals, I was left wondering what I should do with it? A lot of the original equipment had been changed over the years so it wasn't practical to return it to stock. Therefor I decided to strip off the remaining smog equipment and go with a side draft setup. I started with a new mechanical distributor setup and higher flow fuel pump (13311260677) These would support a single DCOE and on a Lynx manifold (i've changed course on this and i'm now using dual DCOEs, so this setup will be for sale shortly) I also found this cool dipstick holder so I could remove the smog pump bracket Other parts (new fan, water pump, clutch, seals, belts, etc) came from Ireland Engineering and Blunt. The end product looked very nice!

My heater box was gross and inoperable. I don't have pictures of the before state, but the motor didnt work and the bowden cables were broken. There were enough parts broken that I had to buy another core at Autobahn Dismantling in Santee. I highly recommend this business - they have saved me a lot of trouble! I tore down the cores and sent the metal pieces of zinc plating. This became a huge problem for me because the zinc plater closed down while they had my parts. It took about 4 months to get my parts back and have them zinc plated elsewhere. I then sent everything to Brandon at prdesignsf.com to have him reassemble the box. The finished product came out excellent. I ended up changing the valve for the later (wider diameter) style so I know this may cause me issues later when connect the heater box to the engine. The valve was changed because the old style is not rebuildable and not available new.

During the teardown, I had the suspension disassembled. All of the parts were media blasted and repainted. Fasteners were either replaced or zinc plated. \ At this stage we discovered the rear diff had problems. Thankfully a new set of spider gears (ordered from WN) addressed the problem and everything else was assessed as fine by Pro Gear. Then after much parts ordering, we began reassembly of the suspension. Anything that was rubber was replaced.

At this point, there were many weeks of labor in going over the body and repairing damage to prep the body for smoothing and paint. Here are some examples of things we fixed. Repairing damage from the AC install (core support, firewall, and trans tunnel) Repairing rust in the floors, fenders, and anywhere else it was discovered Reversing the rear speaker install Smoothing all of the repairs

Once the body was stripped to a shell, the outside was hand sanded to bare metal and the interior was media blasted. Then the body was coated in primer while it waited for repairs to begin. Some minor repairs were made during this time. My grandfather had installed aftermarket trim in the early 70s, likely to make the car look like a late model variety. Parts of this trim was missing and it wasn't period correct so I had it removed and the holes welded. As the car came apart, more rust was discovered. Here you can see evidence of past body work on the fender. This was previously hidden under bondo. Its at this point that I made my first "customization" -- I had the reflectors on the front and back removed by welding up the holes.

Although the car is good at 20ft, a closer inspection revealed some expected rust and a lot of deferred maintenance. The car's last paint job had many drips and tons of overspray. Every piece of trim had dents and scratches. Given the car's condition (which is actually remarkable at 190k miles and 50 years) and my project goals, I decided to proceed with a full restoration. The first step was tearing it down. I removed the interior at home and scraped out the sound deadening material. Then had the car transported to So Cal Paintworks for complete mechanical disassembly. Given the car's multiple owners and many modifications, I was surprised by how many holes and cuts were made to the body. Example being this notch made for the AC installation or this hole drilled in the headlight bucket for the car alarm switch.

As long as I can remember, the BMW 2002 has been a fixture of my family. In 1968, my father bought a 1600 as his first car. My grandfather took delivery of the car and drove it to my father, who was living in Oregon at the time. On that drive between California and Oregon, my grandfather fell in love with the car and went on to buy himself a 2002 in 1969. My grandfathers car was bought from Schneider BMW in Anaheim (now 2002AD). It was delivered as Chamonix with a marine blue interior. A Frigiking AC and stereo was installed, a long with a single speaker on the rear parcel shelf. At some point in the next years the car was also repainted to Fjord blue. My grandfather owned the car until 1974, when he died of lung cancer. After his death, my aunt inherited the 2002. She drove it during college and then daily to her job as a veterinarian until the mid-90s. Its at this point, the car was pretty worn out and had been relegated to a barn. The car was then passed to another family member who refurbished it mechanically and repainted the car to arctic white. In 2019, the car was inherited by me. Below are some pictures of me taking delivery of the car and the condition of the car as I received it: The car came with a tremendous amount of documentation going back to its purchase Its been fun looking at who and when certain changes were made to the car. In the 1970s, a car alarm was installed. In the 1980s, the seats were changed to black. I'm not sure when the grills were painted, and the gauge cluster and wheels were updated. My goal is to return the car to its 1969 appearance with some tasteful modifications to enhance the driving experience. I want the car preserved such that my children and extended family can enjoy it too.