M3Gonz

As an example, I was looking through the Beauty Shot thread, and every time I'd scroll to the bottom then hit the "next" button, or click on the actual number, it would put me at the very bottom of that next page, forcing me to scroll all the way back up. Is this a known issue or something wrong with my browser (Chrome)? It's just kind of annoying.

Continued working on stripping the interior of the car, getting ready for some minor rust repairs then respraying and rust proofing. Today I experimented a bit with dry ice to remove sound deadening, it worked pretty good! I bought 10lb of pellet dry ice and was able to do the front and back floor pan and one side under the back seat. Old floor mats worked pretty well to insulate as the dry ice was doing its thing. Not sure if the video will work, but it shows how satisfying this process is! Video (1).mov

Good to know, obviously I'm still learning and am now understanding the sticker shock on those Recaro seats! Thanks for info everyone!

Is that true? If so, the sites I'm looking at need to be a heck of a lot more clear. It said 'sold in pairs' then listed the price, w/houndstooth, as $1645. If it's $1645 each, then yes that's a bit steep for me. Honestly, again I have no idea on the market, and I just figured the original E21 seats had a premium because they're, well, original!

This has me wondering now. I honestly didn't know the market value on the old Recaro's, and I'm wondering if they're that 'cool' or impressive, versus brand new ones. I've been eyeballing the Expert M seats, in houndstooth, and they're about $1600 for the pair brand new.

Made some progress on the refinishing of the suspension and subframe components, and started prep for my welder/body guy who's going to be repairing my rusted rear wheel arches/strut mounts. Kind of scary looking, in fact as someone who doesn't do body work it kind of hurts my brain, but I'm hoping that for someone who knows their stuff this really isn't that big a deal. I have donor rear wheel wells from another car. Looks like someone tried to weld or repair these once before, looks pretty brutal!

Thank you for the response, email sent!

Not sure if this is a ludicrous request or not, but I thought I might as well try! Looking for a pair of Recaro seats for my '71 2002. I'm open to any condition leather/fabric as I would most likely refinish them. Thanks for looking! I'm in MN, not sure how difficult it is to ship, but I'm willing to drive a reasonable distance to pick up.

Spent several hours in front of the sandblast cabinet yesterday getting things cleaned up before repainting and putting it all back together!

I got it through Summit Racing, it's a decent dolly and was the best price I could find online, even with freight shipping included.

Isn’t media blasting just one of the most satisfying things? I cleaned up some subframe parts today getting ready to repaint then rebuild. FullSizeRender.mov

Been busy here with the project! Still taking things apart in an effort to move forward. I ordered a body cart that finally came in so I was able to drop the front & rear subframes. I’ll be completely rebuilding and refreshing them with new paint, rubber, new shocks/struts and eventually new disc brakes all around.

Great looking inspirational cars! I'm working on a full restomod including repaint and want to retain the factory Granada Red ('71 car) but love the schwarz and would love to see other combinations like you posted and see if they'd work in the Red/Black combination too.

Thanks for all the answers and suggestions! Very helpful indeed, gives me a few ideas of where to start and how to approach fixing this. I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky, I actually have the entire car stripped down to more or less just the shell and this is the only spot of rust. The floor pan throughout is in great shape, the trunk is solid otherwise, and there's no rust on the exterior body at all. I'm going to be doing a complete tear down and resto-mod on the car, I'm currently just assessing and inventorying what I have for parts and where to start. I've been pulling up all the interior stock sound deadening (with dry ice, good times!) to check every square inch of the body to be sure it's solid before repainting everything inside and out.

I'm just not having any luck searching, or not using the right terms, because I can't seem to find any threads on this issue. Pics attached below, both of the rear wheel arches, seen from inside the trunk, appear to have what looks like stress cracks or fractures in them. Is this a common issue? The car is a complete restoration, barn find that's been sitting for probably 12-15 years. It came with a ton of parts, including two rear wheel arches that look like they were cut out of another car. I'm guessing the plan was to swap/weld these in place? Seems like a ton of work, is anyone familiar with this and know an easier solution? I have access to a father-in-law that's very handy with a welder and fabrication. The car is otherwise in very good shape, almost zero rust on it, frame and rest of the body are in excellent condition considering age/abandonment. Thanks!

Thanks for the welcome, it's funny you mention the wheel arches in the trunk. They both appear to have cracks in the same place, I'm guessing this is a known issue with the 02's? The car actually came with a pair of wheel arches that appear to be cut from some other car, perhaps they were intended to be welded into place instead of these below?

Intersection take overs and extreme reckless driving have been a plague in Minneapolis lately, on top of all the other drama we have going on here. Two weekends ago there was a clown doing donuts in an illegally blocked off intersection while the passenger was leaning out the window firing off rounds like it was the fricken wild west. Completely surreal and unbelievable. Of course it's all on camera and all over the interwebs, but not sure anything was done about it. I feel your pain.

Today I continued the process of disassembly of my '71 project while continuing to make notes and lists of things I'll need to replace. Figured out a local source for dry ice so I can remove the factory sound proofing material and cleanup the interior before a rust-check and respray. It'll be hidden under new soundproofing and of course the carpet, but in my head I'll know it's clean and done right!

Lookin good, this will be the first step I'm thinking for my restoration, then save the exterior to later so I don't wreck the new paint while doing everything else on the car. Did you strip/repaint the interior?

Hey all! New guy here, I've been active online and in the BMW community for a while, but new to 2002's. I have two E36 M3's, an M50 swapped E30, and an E60M5 (with the Dinan Stroker ?) that I've been enjoying with my son and wrenching on for a few years. He's heading to tech school this fall in the auto mechanic program and has really become passionate about cars, restorations, performance and fun, not something you see too often in an 18 year old! We just picked up a '71 2002 that has been in storage in a shed in WI for the past 12+ years. Bummer of a story, but the previous owner had been collecting parts and pieces for the car to become a retirement project, then he passed away a little over 12 years ago so everything has sat in their shed since then. Car is in pretty good shape, very minimal rust (a lot less than the E36 and E30's that we own!) and it came with an absurd amount of parts. I think the PO was a bit of a hoarder actually, for example I'm not sure what I need with 10 window crank handles for one car. Or 2 complete engines and another complete engine worth of parts/block etc. Anyways, I'm excited to be starting this project with my son, we have high aspirations and hopes and are planning on documenting/blogging as much as possible, maybe even putting up a Youtube channel to document as much as we can. I've been doing a ton of research here already, and I'm sure will have a million questions as we go along. Thanks in advance for this excellent resource and all your help!