My Grey Athletic Shoe | 1989 320i Touring

[Sledgehammer_01]

March update: The body shop was slow to get it in but its in now. PDR is pretty much done, the dent in the rear quarter panel from a sideswipe hit and run in the grocery store has been fixed and now they are blocking the car to check for any last minor dents. Then it's on with the major rust rehab & trim/glass removal prepping for paint!

[Tzantushka]

This is good... no... fantastic progress!

[Sledgehammer_01]

Thanks, its going to be an expensive spa month for the old lady but she deserves it.

The Lachssilber Metallic grey color it came out of the factory with is a good color but like all paint colors back then it lacks depth, it just feels flat. I am going to stay pretty close to the factory color so blending into the engine bay and door sills isn't that noticeable. My buddy has a 2019 RS5 in "Daytona Gray - Pearl Effect" which is beautiful. It's definitely darker and has the perfect amount and size of metallic flake giving it depth, so we are probably going to use that as the maximum edge of how much darker I want to go, the final color will likely be a shade between Lachssilber Metallic & Audi's Daytona Gray.

[DEV0 E30]

Thanks, its going to be an expensive spa month for the old lady but she deserves it.

The Lachssilber Metallic grey color it came out of the factory with is a good color but like all paint colors back then it lacks depth, it just feels flat. I am going to stay pretty close to the factory color so blending into the engine bay and door sills isn't that noticeable. My buddy has a 2019 RS5 in "Daytona Gray - Park Effect" which is beautiful. It's definitely darker and has the perfect amount and size of metallic flake giving it depth, so we are probably going to use that as the maximum edge of how much darker I want to go, the final color will likely be a shade between Lachssilber Metallic & Audi's Daytona Gray.

Ohhh, I think that's gonna look good.

I know you said it will be a shade between the two, but for reference he's some random shots of a aytona Gray - Park Effect.

Link to random find.

[Sledgehammer_01]

Yea it's a sharp color for sure!

Here's a quick update, all of the rust has been dealt with except for the windshield area which is going to be a task.

[Sledgehammer_01]

Rusty Spot

[DieterQ]

Great thread, enjoyed the read immensely. Beautiful car and can’t wait to see finished with new colors!

[Sledgehammer_01]

Well after much frustration and way too long she's finally home.

[IncogutheIII]

Looks amazing! Did they fully strip the vehicle or conquer most of the rust repair with interior still intact?

[Sledgehammer_01]

THe whole story behind this is honestly painful for me to tell, they've had the car for 10 months, and what you see is the second paint job because the first one looked so bad.

I'll try to cliffnote the whole experience for ya. So this is a body shop that was renting shop space from my buddy who has an import auto shop here in town, they've done work for him before and it has always turned out nice so thats why I chose them and I took my car to them in Feb 2023. Well my buddy is expanding his shop, and owns the building so when the body shops' lease expired they moved to a new place down the street, this was in April, so at that time they had my car for 3 months and you can see how far they had gotten in my previous post. My post from 4/11 was from when they were moving shops, progress pretty much stopped on my car, and they were unresponsive on the phone, my only way of figuring out what was going on was to go to the shop in person and confront them.

So fast forward to June, they've moved shop and apparently set up everything as slowly as possible. In July they painted it and got it back to me, this is what I got.

[Sledgehammer_01]

First off, whoever they had do the final cut and polish burned the clear coat so it had waves in it. Secondly, there was so much FOD in the paint that I questioned whether or not they sprayed it outside in the open air. Some spots didn't even get painted mainly around corners and trim, inside the hatch had areas of bare metal, the patch that they put in under the windshield has resulted in cracking in the paint at the seam location and they sanded a hole in the uncracked dash. It was just shit I was very displeased so I marked up all of the defects with a chalk marker.

[Sledgehammer_01]

They promised to make it right, so I took the car back to them after I replaced the dead battery (because they didn't use the maintainer I gave them). They then had it from July to the first part of December during that time they completely sanded the car back down, took the windshield out to address the patch panel, and repainted the car in the paint booth. Got the car back and the new batteries were so dead they wouldn't take a charge, had to replace the battery again because they didn't use the disconnect and use the maintainer, so that was neat. Otherwise, this paint job is 1000% better than before.

That said, because of how long it took them to do this and the fact that they left it outside with a windshield out during a couple of rain storms I had multiple issues that I had to track down and fix. These were issues due to corrosion and water intrusion, which didn't make me happy. Furthermore, they didn't repair the rust behind the front wheels/jack points. And they had the gall to ask me to settle up the $1,000 I owed them, which I told them no due to the dash being sanded through and the batteries being killed among everything else. And now today, I discovered that the paint is cracking again at the seam of the patch plate under the windshield, I had to replace the blower motor which allowed me to see the other end of the patch panel and it was unfinished and already showing rust so I took care of that. Regardless the

I'm upset that they didn't repair the rust in the wheel wells but at this point, based on how they did the windshield rust repair and paint job, I don't want them to touch the car anymore. I don't want it at their shop ever again. There is quite a lot of rust on this car unfortunately, I know I'll need to handle it at some point, this experience has taught me that I can't trust anyone to do stuff to my standard, so I'll just do it.

[Sledgehammer_01]

Body shop saga behind us I did some upkeep on the old girl:

• Rebuilt the front ground control setup, replaced the shocks with Koni adjustable & raised the front end ~15mm
• Replaced the rear shocks with Koni Adjustables and raised it by 7mm
• Rebuilt the vanos unit, replaced the upper timing chain, chain tensioners, valve cover seal & spark plug seals
• Replaced the spark plugs, engine ground straps

[Sledgehammer_01]

Well I'm going back to the Bosch plugs, at idle the NGKs are causing a slight miss. I suspect one of the coils is weak but either way, the bosch's are back up to bat until I get a new set of NGK BKR6EQUP (which are one of the spec'd plugs for the S52)

[DEV0 E30]

Geeze, sorry to hear about the paint fiasco, sadly it's not an uncommon story. At least its over with and you can move forward.