The 5 Year Restoration - E30 M3 Reborn

[CurrusDei]

Coming along












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[CurrusDei]

looks terrific. but a lot of that hardware is coated, so unless you re-coat the steel bits will rust.. guess you're going to re-plate using the zinc chromate kit?

Yep. Caswell Zinc electroplate with yellow chromate solution - will look like OEM when done. I have some zinc blackener as well for the black bits. All the box to the left of the buffer.

[bradnic]

looks terrific. but a lot of that hardware is coated, so unless you re-coat the steel bits will rust.. guess you're going to re-plate using the zinc chromate kit?

[CurrusDei]

2.5 Years In... M3 Build Thread...PAINT COMPLETE!

Car is almost done at Magnum. They had an ownership change so that transition slowed things down a bit. It's been good the car is out of the garage because painting and polishing makes a mess. Don't need any overspray or buffer wheel fly-away fuzz on the car. A few pics






Cleaned only



Polished



Comparisons





Some pieces cleaned up well, but are too pitted and are being replaced



Some pieces are turning into jewelry. I'm literally using jewlers rouge polish on some of these. Some would call that a problem. Not me!





The tool you see clamped onto some of the fasteners is called the Notchead. Some hot rod mechanics made it specifically for polishing fasteners and won some awards at SEMA for it...

https://youtu.be/v7udFPT-vi0

Lot more polishing then onto plating!


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[jhaurimn]

Nice on the new rad. Those things aren't cheap!

[Shock(/\)ave]

This thread is turning into another xworks style "minor rust repair" epic rebuild thread, complete with the ridiculously unassuming title. ;D

Well done on the restoration so far, sir, and fantastic documentation of the effort. I'll be using a lot of your research and refined techniques when it comes time to finally restore some of the areas in the engine bay of my M3s (one was lightly damaged by a disgusting mouse nest, the other by shoddy repairs).

I'm looking forward to more updates, and seeing this car returned to the road. :D

[TimeMachinE30]

I've soaked hose clamps, bolts and other bits in Ballistol. Cleans and protects. Even the cosmoline discoloration shed off after a soak of ~ 48hrs (garage is cold, and I didn't get to them any earlier).

[CurrusDei]

More clean bolts...





...and an early Christmas present. I'm weird to shop for. The little guy in the top left is the same one that was asleep in the engine bay several pages back. Much bigger today!




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[CurrusDei]

Ok I'm getting the hang of it now. Lessons learned: Evapo-Rust is really, really good for this. It takes off all the rust, most corrosion, and the old yellow zinc plating. Only thing it won't touch is grease or other sticky stuff.

So my new method is
1) 24 hour soak in Simple Green for degrease
2) 24 hour soak in Evapo-Rust (after tumbler if it's bad)
3) Bench polisher (not there yet)

Some pics

After 24 hours in ER (replacing the broken speed nut and corroded thin washers at the bottom)



After 24 hours in SG



Sanding + ER got all the gunk and rust off my rear subframe mounts, including the surface rust on the threads. Ready to prime and paint.



Door handles came out well. Need to beat out some dents in the external B pillar covers but they did well too.





Set up 2 tubs of SG and 2 of ER last night. Taking pics of each item going into each bucket and putting the plastic bags on top of the bucket to keep things straight. Can't put too many similar items in at once or it would get confusing.






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[CurrusDei]

More pics from last night





Vaporust bath for 24 hours
Before



After


24 hour simple green soak
Before


After



Messed up on the handles. Sanding to respray tonight.




Nearly there on trim. It's looking really good but revealing some of the imperfections in the metal (small dents, etc) hopefully I can tap them flat with a wood dowel or something this weekend. I'll need sunlight for that.




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[jhaurimn]

Looking good man :)

[CurrusDei]

2.5 Years In... M3 Build Thread...PAINT COMPLETE!

Hey, sorry been busy lately. Car's still at the body shop and I haven't been pushing them on it because I'm doing some work in the garage that is not awesome for new paintwork to be around. Lots of chemicals and spray painting. Even with proper precautions there's only so much you can prevent. That said, here are some pics from recent work...

Harbor Freight 5lb vibratory bowl




Rust removing media




Shredded walnuts. After reading a lot this was a well reviewed media and it's actually pretty cheap - because it is sold as iguana bedding. True story.



Some before/after







Tumble/Sand/Paint



The bowl is a great tool, but it's not magic, and not as good as a media blaster. It won't take off anything greasy with the media I'm using, so I'm using a combination of chemical soaks, brushes, sanding, an ultrasonic cleaner, and the tumbler.

This was an interesting piece



These wire mesh gaskets didn't seem good to tumble, so just brush and ultrasonic here. They were caked in oil at first.



The lower part here really responded to tumbling. The top one not so much, probably because it has spent its life ON the exhaust manifold, so it's been reeealy hot and is thus pitted a lot from debris baking in.



It did respond to an overnight soak in a rust removal solution I got at HF




Front sway bar mount. One tumbled about 2 hours, the other not.



Misc hardware. You can see the 6 brake line brackets in the upper right that 4 were scrubbed before being tumbled, 2 were not and are going back through the process now









Also had to use my punches and mallet to beat this trim piece corner straight. Came out well.





My DIY paint booth





So far (actually there's more drying in the garage now)...



For the parts cleaning, my method is going to be

Degrease if needed
Tumble
...continue until ready for
Benchtop Polisher
Acid bath or electro de-plating to remove old yellow zinc coating
New Zinc Electroplate
Yellow or Black Zinc Coloring to match oem

Off to put on another coat of paint...More to come


Edit: here's where I ended the night



And with flash on




Plus other flat door trim and both door handles in primer and drying


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[jhaurimn]

hi

[CurrusDei]

2.5 Years In... M3 Build Thread...PAINT COMPLETE!

Sanding and priming. Not everything is being primed, only parts like the sunroof runner that had some rust bubbles and were taken down to bare shiny metal







Everything in the bottom right is ready for paint. Fun fact, the tiny pieces between the primed sunroof runners and the B pillar covers...cost $80 new, a piece.

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[CurrusDei]

Yes it would. I almost bought one, but I'm going to see what the acid and degreaser does first. Harbor Freight has some inexpensive ones


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