1989 e30 Touring... this is Betty

[MC Hammered]

The last leak that I know of up front is coming from the blower motor area





After removing the last piece of carpet that is wedged between the dash and the transmission hump I could peek into the spot where the blower motor gasket is.




I set the hose on a fine mist and set it up to spray the right hand side of the windshield, bent myself into an awkward position and proceeded to see what happened… the drip indicated with the red arrow is what I wanted to find, but as I let the water keep flowing you see what happened next.

[MC Hammered]

Taking this car to places it would have never went with me. Simply did not have the attention to detail re. OCD Winston possesses to get this car where it needs to be.

Seeing all these leaks makes me feel like a chode though. I thought I had nipped the sole major flaw in the butt with this car prior to selling but it seems as though there were many more.

I don't blame you for not finding these issues as you would have to tear down the car like I have to find them all.

I made up my mind that I am going to make this touring help me forget about selling the vert, so going 200% into making sure it is not going to die of cancer it my main goal.

[MC Hammered]

Here is what the backside of the elephant drain looks like



and this is the view from the driver side vent towards the blower motor as I was looking for leaks

[cale]

Taking this car to places it would have never went with me. Simply did not have the attention to detail re. OCD Winston possesses to get this car where it needs to be.

Seeing all these leaks makes me feel like a chode though. I thought I had nipped the sole major flaw in the butt with this car prior to selling but it seems as though there were many more.

[MC Hammered]

I am jealous of your MTech2 touring as well as the body seems to be in excellent condition.

My touring has all the right puzzle pieces, now it is just a matter of me reconfiguring them a bit to make it work the way I want. I just hope to get it all done before the rain comes back.

[bmwandhonda]

Sharing the love for another Touring :) love it mate, good to see you are fixing it up in such detail. Nice work mate, also I am jealous of your engine!! lol

[MC Hammered]

One of the last leaks up front came from the big fusebox bulkhead gasket. It must have shrunk just enough over the last 20 years to let water seep in now



Using a tool to confirm the location of the point of entry




So how is water getting there? Well there is this tiny gap you can see underneath the hood gasket



Gap shown with gasket removed



Rainwater will run down the side of the car, drip through the opening, run underneath the fusebox and down the outside of the front strut tower where it eventually meets the side of the fusebox bulkhead gasket.

Since the gasket is not sealing the water will just seep through over time and enter the cabin.

So I began by removing these remnant pieces of sound deadening from fusebox area. Doesn't do much except hide dirt and debris and wait for rust to form



What it looks like with the sound deadening removed and you can see all the dirt built up underneath it. If you look carefully at the lower center part of the image you can make of the bulkhead gasket.

Path of water flow from the above gap to the edge of the gasket is shown with the red arrows.



I don't have a before picture but there was a lot of debris built up in the gap you see in the image below.





To seal up the edges of the bulkhead I used Proform PF224 urethane based body sealant



My very special tools to do the job



I pumped in a bunch of the sealant into the gap and then proceeded to smooth a bead of it around the entire edge of the gasket.

Obviously the caulking gun will not access the area, so putting small amounts on a gloved fingertip and smearing it into place it how it was done.

[MC Hammered]

Time to get rid of the rear sound deadening so first thing to go is this 20 year old insulation… and I was scared to breathe in the dust when I pulled it out



Just takes some patience and a soft touch to get it going



GONE!



So this is what we have left.



I went out and bought another 10lbs of dry ice and went to work hammering out the old sound deadening. The material located above the muffler turned into the same obsidian like substance as the sound deadening by the shifter which is heated by the transmission. It took 4 hours and made a mess but this is as good as it gets. There is still a 1"x3' strip left underneath the hatch area.



Here are some surface rust spots that will be cleaned up




I decided to pull off the rubber seal and see what is hiding underneath… not too happy when I found rust on the entire edge




The entire time I was working in the trunk area I kept looking at the fabric covers that were sitting on top of the wheel humps




To satisfy my curiosity I removed the left hand side one and found nothing out of the ordinary



However… when I removed the right hand side one I saw this






I took a little screwdriver to probe around the area and rust just fell to pieces




Time to send it back to the shop to cut out and patch up this spot too

[MC Hammered]

Damb that looks bad,but nothing is unrepairable..

Looks worse than it is since i took a macro shot of the rust. Just going to cut out the cancer and del in new pieces.

Did you locate the water leak in the rear?

Not yet as I am trying to seal up all the big items before tackling the smaller ones.

I think the rear leak is due to a bad tail gasket and maybe side vent gaskets as well.

[cbouchez]

Did you locate the water leak in the rear?

[downernsp]

Damb that looks bad,but nothing is unrepairable..

Sent from my HTC VLE_U using Tapatalk 2

[MC Hammered]

When I removed the rear washer fluid bottle I noticed that there was a rust spot




So I borrowed a tool to help strip away any rust so I can treat it with por15 and forget about it for a while



After a quick hit of the wheel you can see the body sealer flake off exposing the rust underneath



I took a peek underneath and it did not look bad so the rust did not eat its way through the panel




So I kept working away at the area stripping as mush of the old sealant away as possible so I can make sure there was no more cancer hidden underneath.

Looks good so far as it is nice to see shiny metal!



I was not convinced so I kept stripping away the sealant and then saw another patch of rust




I picked away at the old sealant and exposed quite a bit of rust.. but then I noticed I could see the concrete floor!



Nice shot of all of the rust that fell on the floor while I was grinding away on the inside of the car



Looking underneath you can see where it has rusted away as the seam and left a nice hole the size of your finger.

I do not know how to weld so the car is going back to the shop to have that section cut out and new metal welded in place, por15 and then sealed up.

[MC Hammered]

I did not see any point in having the factory bungs be in place if I plan to lay down a couple of layers of sound deadening on top of them.

It would make the job a lot harder to fix if the bungs decided to rot away in the future so I decided to have them all removed and holes sealed up.

So I had the shop fab up some aluminum discs to sit in the hole and then used some automotive body sealant to set them in place. Self etching primer as then applied on top and now I am deciding if I want to apply a layer of por15 on top or not.

The leaking plug was removed and hole sealed up, the layer of Dynamat that the PO used in the engine bay as a heat shield was removed and proper head shield material as applied.

Rubber undercoating was sprayed on the outside of the hole locations to protect them from debris.

[BavarianAddict06]

omg. betty,

[dude8383]

so many bettys on this board. Next person with a schwarz car needs to come up with a new name that starts with the letter 'b' :d

lol!