e30 M3 minor rust repair.

[castros]

WOW I cannot believe my eyes, sir you are one sick being! You give me hope for my M3 thank you.

[xworks]

Episode 453, Interior design.

With the wiring and carpet refitted to the inside it was now time to sort out
the internal furniture. A while back I'd managed to pick up a second hand set of
Recaro Sr's and although the material was a bit grubby the actual seats were in
perfect condition otherwise.............



So these along with all the rest of the interior shown below were sent
to a local retrim merchant to give them a new lease of life..........



Decided to go with half cow's arse and half material, like so..........





Next up was to get some brackets knocked up to mount the Recaro's
on the standard e30 slider rails.



With the brackets trimmed and drilled it was time to bolt them up to the
seat base so I could mark them up for bending. There are few things more certain
in this life to send you into a rage then spending ages carefully making brackets
only to bend them the wrong way. I've the hammer marks on the garage
roof to prove it..........



bendy, bendy, painty, painty.......



before giving the original sliders a clean up............



making sure to apply a little fresh grease to the runners afterwards........



needed a few spacers before the brackets could mount to the runners,
so, chopped two 15mm length pieces(or 13mm, can't remember, and it's pissin rain out
there so I can't be arsed going out to measure them) off some round bar and drilled
them 8mm in the centre............



which sit into the runners like so............





and with them in place I could start bolting thing up. The mounts on the
front of the runners sit a little more inboard compared to the rears (5mm),
so to keep everything straight and true 3 little washers are added between
the bracket and runner, like so...........



The only thing to watch out for is that the bolt used on the side with the
adjuster arm isn't to long, as if it is, it'll get in the way of the arm
moving up and down to unlock the seat rail...........




Front bolts taken care of, it was on to the rear. The bar arrowed below
passes through the runners both sides at the back..........



and sticks out through the seat brackets like so.........

[xworks]

and as you can see in the pics the ends of the bar are square
sectioned, which is helpful, as this allows the seat belt buckle
to be bolted up and held in the correct position..........





The other side gets a few washers to take up the gap before being
bolted up aswell. The last little bit to remember is this little link bar that
fits from one rail to the other. Its function is to link the catch on one side
to the catch on the other, so when you pull the lever to adjust the seat
back or forward it opens the catch on the side of the lever and this little link bar unlocks
the catch on the other side, allowing the seat to slide..........



and that was the front seats ready to go in. But, the rears needed to
go in first and before the rears could go in, the rear door cards had to
be fitted and before they could be fitted the front seat belts had to be fitted.
And if I knew all that before having to find it out the hard way my nextdoor
neighbours visiting grandchildren would know a lot less foul language.

So, front seat belts were needed first and this presented me with a small
problem, after 20 years the retraction reels had gone so limp on them I reckon
you'd be a good foot or two through the windscreen before the original belts
decided to halt your progress. Alas, some new belts would be required.
And if I was going to renew them might as well go for the red variety fitted
to the sport evolutions. Unfortunately I couldn't come up with the one million
dollars in untraceable bonds that the main dealer wanted for a pair of seat belts
so ebay turned up these instead...........



They are seat belts made by a crowd called Securon and as the tag below shows
they're fully certified and "E" marked........



They can be ordered with 2 different length buckles, 15cm or 30cm.

http://www.securon.co.uk/seat_belts_firstframe.htm

I ordered the 15cm ones (p/n: 500/15) and of coarse when I went to fit them realised
that the 30cm length (p/n: 500/30) would have been more suitable. Gobshite.
Thankfully the buckle could be stripped and the original e30 strap fitted
to replace the short Securon one...............



Next little mod was to the buckle at the end of the belt. As you can see
below it's an eye bolt type and the e30 has the bar type, so......



chop, chop..........



with that done it could be fitted. The reel part bolts in just like the original one..........



little plastic thingy refitted to keep the belt run neat.........



up to the top buckle supplied with the belts that bolts into the B pillar
to replace the original one.........



and then finally down to the bar at the floor now that the eye bolt type
buckle was cut off...........




the only downside to the belts is that when fully retracted in the rest position
they still don't pull taut. The belts still have about 2 inches slack in them as
you can see below. However given that these cost less than a quarter of
the ransom Bmw wanted for the genuine one's, it's something I'll not loose
any sleep over...........



once the belts were in, rear door cards and seats could also go in...........



to be followed by the fronts..........







and thats all for now. Should have the next part up tomorrow.
Till then.

[xworks]

With the interior fitted next up was to sling the doors back on.
Never a bad idea to run a piece of masking tape on the edge of the
door and back edge of the wing to avoid marking the paint work when
rehanging a door. They have to get fairly close to each other to engage
the hinges........



If you ever need to remove the doors from an e30 theres two ways
to go about it. The first is to remove the two m8 nuts seen below on
the leaf of the hinge left attached to the door. This leaves the whole
hinge attached to the car and has the big downside that you have to go
through the whole hassle of re-aligning the door upon refitting before
you tighten them nuts again to keep it in the right position.
The less stressful way of doing it is to let go of the two
little m6 bolts in the centre of the hinges, which leaves half of
each hinge attached to the door and the other half attached to the
car. This makes reassembly far easier, as all you have to do is drop
the door back down into place, refit the m6 bolts and bingo, it's
done.......





with the door refitted all this crap needs to be nailed back into each one.......



first up being the check strap who's job it is to stop the door from opening too
wide. After a quick clean up and some fresh grease............



it bolts up inside the door with the strap part sticking out like below
and then the pin and circlip are refitted (arrowed) to lock the strap to
the door frame..........



next up, the locking mechanism. The main door lock on the lower left and
the release pin linkage above it (arrowed)............



the lock mechanism bolts up inside the door by 3 philips head bolts
fitted from the outside...........



and after its in the door handle mechanism can follow it...........



first bit to go in, is the little plate with 2 threaded studs fitted to it, shown
above. It slots down into the recess arrowed below..............





then with that in place the main bit can be bolted onto those studs, making
sure that the bits that push against each other line up like below..........



which when all in place leaves you with the two little bits protruding
through the door skin to screw the handle on to............





after thats in the bits below can be fitted. The key barrel, the
bracket for holding the central locking microswitch and the clip
that keeps it all in place...........



before fitting it's a good idea to give the key barrel a clean up and
apply a little oil into the tumblers to keep them freed up......

[xworks]

The body of the key barrel is shaped so that it'll only fit in the hole in the
door one way without the use of a sledgehammer.........



and, as the barrel passes through the door skin that little "leg" that sticks out
the side of it needs to engage with the lever on the main locking unit arrowed
below...........



Easy right? Is it f*ck! As the barrel passes through the door it's also
got to pass through the bracket for the central locking switch which
has to be in the right position so that the barrel triggers the
switch as it is turned............



and then, with all that held in place by your fourteen f*cking Smurf size
hands you've got to slide in this clip to keep it all held tight to the door skin...........





and after much swearing and consumption of alcohol it's in and this is how it should
work. When you rotate the key barrel the back end of the barrel (coloured
green below) either pushes the lever on the main locking unit up or down
to lock or unlock the door, while a little wedge on the other side of the barrel
pushes against the central locking switch to send a signal back to the central
locking unit to open or close the other doors............



next up the inner door release lever.............



on the back of it theres a little lever with a hole in it............



the long steel rod sticking out of the main door locking unit fits into this
hole like so.................



and then the lever can be screwed into place on the door............



And then finally the last piece of the jigsaw, the central locking actuator,
the little motor that locks and unlocks your door..............



it hangs from the little link bar from the main locking unit shown below.......





and bolts up to the inner doorskin with two little bolts shown below........

[xworks]

Locking system done, it was on to the window mechanism. Before the
electric motor and rail is refitted the rail and the cable that runs in it are cleaned
and new grease applied. The two parts that the window connect to are arrowed
red below, and when you hook up the two wires that go to the motor to a
battery they will either rise or fall depending on which way around you
connect the two wires.............



and these are raised and lowered a few times to work the new grease into
the rails to keep things working smoothly.............



With that done the rail and motor is refitted and bolted up to the inside of
the door skin. There's a very precise method for slotting the rail back into the
door skin, basically you f*ck around with it for 30 minutes trying it every
conceivable way before all of a sudden it's in and you've no idea how you done it.
Four bolts hold the rail in place (red arrows) and 3 nuts hold the motor in (green).........



before the glass can go in the rubber liner needs to be refitted to the
window frame............





Glass gets a clean, which turns out to be completely pointless as your going to cover
it with greasy paw prints anyway while getting it back in.........



theres two brackets on the bottom of the glass, this one on the front
which the roller on the rail will slide into............



and this one at the rear which the other rail bracket bolts up to.............



If, like me, your doing this task before the electrics are reconnected,
you can remove this little rubber grommet from the centre of the motor............



and stick an allen key into it to wind the window up and down manually.......



The motor is wound up or down to bring the two points the window connects
to into line with the gaps on the inner door skin, so you can see what your at
as the window in slid down into place. The front window bracket is slid onto the
roller on the rail first.........



and then the rear is lined up with its bracket so the two retaining
bolts can be refitted...........



as you can see the slots in the bracket are elongated to allow a little
scope for adjustment and getting the window perfectly straight within
the frame. To do this you tighten up the two bolts, wind up the window
to within 1 inch of the top frame and then get the gap completely
parallel by loosening off the two bolts again and raising or lowering
the rear of the window............



That done, door loom went in next...........



it's all fed in through this hole...........



and then plug into the female plug on the door pillar, making sure
that the rubber boot is properly fitted over the the holes on either side
as this can be a common source of water getting into the car.
Another thing thats not a bad idea can be to rub a little smear of
grease on the sealing face of the rubber boots just to give a little
more resistance to water ingress.........

[xworks]

With all the wiring ran to wherever it needs to go and then secured to
the door skin with the little clips, it's worth running the window fully up
and down just to check that it doesn't snag on any of the electrics.
With all that done the final thing to do is seal the inside of the door
to stop condensation getting in. You can buy proper sticky plastic
stuff from the dealer to do this job, or, just use double sided trim tape
and normal polythene like so..........





with that on, the little trim strip that sits up against the window on the inside
can clip back into place............



making sure that the little clips face inwards as the door card is going to
sit down into these next..........



but before the doorcard drops on these little bits go on first........



The 3 white ones are for the the armrest screws to screw into..........



and the black one goes on the side of the door as it's the diddy that the
door light switch presses up against.........



then the doorcard can drop on. It's fitted by sliding down onto them clips
shown earlier on the window strip and once down in place the clips shown
below are thumped into their corresponding holes on the door...........



and with the doorcard in place this little bit of trim can go back in place
around the open lever.........



it's pushed in slightly behind the lever and then slid forward to lock it
in place..........



which leaves it looking like so...........



finally these 3 screws are used to refit the door handle..........

[xworks]

Moving up the door a little the final bit of trim to get refitted is this cover that
goes on the inside of the door pillar. 3 little dowels on the inside of the trim
and 3 little holes on the door pillar..........



thump, thump, thump, job done..........



and then finally on to the outside of the door. All the shadow trim on the outside
of the car was sanded down with 320 grit wet & dry paper and then sprayed
with Plasti-kote Satin black..........





Although it's touch dry after a few hours it's best to try and leave it a few days
to fully harden before trying to refit it, as when it's fully hardened and settled
it's a lot more resistant to scratching. First bit to go on is the door pillar cover.......



as you can see the edges of the cover curls around on the inside........



and it's this curl that "clips" around the door pillar to hold it in place,



however this isn't enough to hold it for ever and ever on it's own, so
a few fat blobs of this stuff is placed between the two.......



It's Upol Tiger Seal and you'll pull the door off the car before you'll pull
that trim off once it set's.
Next bit of trim's a bit more involved, it's the little bit that goes around the
window frame...........



There's a clatter of clips that fit to the door first before the trim goes
on, I've no idea how many it originally had coming off as most of mine
decided to commit suicide during disassembly. I've managed to turn up
16 of them from spares, so each doors gettin eight............



the non-compliant clips...........



before Hari Kari.........



they slide onto the frame like so............





and trim, just like the pillar trim is curved over at the edges and this is
how it fixes onto the door. The top half sits over the frame and then
the bottom half clicks on over the clips............



Last bit of door trim is the straight bit below..........



They sit at the bottom of the window...........

[xworks]

and just like the similar ones on the inside of the window, these also
have a rubber weather strip on the inside of them. The rubber strips
on mine had succumbed to the ravages of twenty odd years of weather
unfortunately, and any attempt to lower the window to clear off the condensation
on a winters morning would simply result in a fancy streaky pattern on the
glass. The answer, new rubber strips. Their still available and don't cost
a lot from the dealer.........





Rubber strips attach to the trim with a few clips..........





but you gotta measure where exactly it's to clip on..........



as the rubber strip is shorter than the trim because it only needs to
sit in against the glass..........



That done, next thing to go back on is the mirrors...........



which are held on by two little bolts on the inside.........



Final bit to go on is the rubber seal at the top of the door........



The rubber seal has a groove in it and a hole at either end.......



and at the top of the door there is a ridge sticking out (red arrows)
that sits into the groove on the rubber seal to hold it on, and a hole at each
end that a plastic rivet sits through the seal and into the door to secure it.........







and thats about where it's at right now. We've progressed to the stage
where I can now sit in it and make brum brum noises while twirling the
steering wheel. Marvellous entertainment.









Till next time.

[619E30]

WOW... A very well described thread, that is some major miracle work right there

[CorvallisBMW]

seriously, every update is like God's own manual on how to build an e30. I salute you good sir.

[Conrad311]

seriously, ive used this thread to fix countless little things on my car that i couldnt find anywhere else. thank you for such attention to detail in you write ups

[bmwpower]

Enough already. Christ.
:bow:

This is clearly in the wrong section. Please put these gems in a FAQ.

[TheCanuck]

I couldn't help but thinking if a young punk crashed into this beauty and totaled it how many death threats would he get?

[xworks]

they'd need to be sent to his next of kin for a start.