The Difference Between Cab and Coupe

[NC325iC]

So, let start off with a re introduction of sorts.

I was handed down a 1989 BMW 325iC that my dad bought it 1994 and gave to my sister in 1999 as her first car (these were the years of torture for this car), Lucky for me in 2001 she wanted a different car and i was just about old enough to almost be able to drive (14) so this car was promised to me. 16 came and i started the modding off with some wheels and springs and shocks. Then i decided on a 87is front valence and an RD rear apron. i didnt get them painted right away as you can see here.



anyway, as time went on more mods more paint more engine.

heres some random collected pictures





Flash to present day unedited cell phone pictures



You will see in the background my new project a 1986 325e Black with

houndstooth interior (non sport seats :( )



This thread will keep track of the projects i go through with this new car and the convertible, i will illustrate any differences i find between the coupe and convertible along the way.

[NC325iC]

Project 1:Interior cleaning and Shadowline

the plan is to take off all the exterior trim (most of which was already off) any interior chrome trim. remove interior panels consoles and carpeting. Prep Prime and Paint the faded exterior trim (and the few peices of interior chrome) with black trim (i use Duplicolor trim for availability). Clean Carpet with "steam" cleaner its actually just a water gun on a vacuum but it works, let dry and dye black. Clean interior panels and upholstery safely.

PLEASE FORGIVE THE ABSO-SHIT PICTURES

As you can see the interior is out


and inside my basement


Differences in removing interior:
1) front seats come out the same way but are more difficult to get out being there is confined head room
2)Rear seat bottom comes out the same way just pull up, there is however again less room to get it out of the car, its a much tighter fit between the rear panels
3) Rear seat top in the coupe is held in with 2 screws on the far left and right sides and in the cab 2 17mm bolts more toward the center of the bottom of the seat, and again, much harder to remove when you cant just lift it out, very tight fit pulling the thing out.
4) rear side panels in the coupe are held in by just a couple door panel style clips in the convertible they are held in with 2 screws on each panel and the lower front seat belt assembly must be unbolted as i goes through a slot in the panel which brings us to
5) seat belt assembly in the coupe its just a steel bar bent to fit in there, cab has a clever little hinge assembly. both which must be moved out of the way for carpet removal
6) carpet removal is the same, cut around the hvac area and any areas in the way as long as theyre out of sight

Update, carpet removal

the red line is about where i made cuts, i linked holes in the carpet that were already there making sure they would be hidden when everything is together

this shows more of the cuts



and a few removal shots


and here is the bit of carpet left in the car from the cuts


now the interior is as disassembled as it will be, so completed shots will come later in a seperate post, soon hopefully

[NC325iC]

Shadowlining a car is all pretty much the same with either car you have, just have to carefully pull the trim off the car and paint it up, josh has a good thread where he paints the side molding that i follow. many people do it on the car, i chose to take it off, much of it was already off.

Josh's Thread on Painting Trim

i dont feel like going over removing each individual piece of trim, the outer trim i dont even know how to put back on let alone take it off. any who i will be prepping priming and painting all the trim tonight

Here are the peices to be shadowlined


i did a good bit of the trim before running out of my first can of paint and primer. i finished the interior trim bits (along the door panels and rear panels) the lower ext peices along the doors and the rear vent assembly trim. the last bit will need a bit of touchup some tape got in the way a bit. overall a good finish.

Heres a couple of prep pictures, prep was done with a brillo pad basically just scuffing up the surface with a bit of water in the mix.

a before prep and after prep comparison of the door trim

shots of different pieces after prep


here are 2 sequences going from after prep to finished product
first the vent window trim


and second the front door trim
normally i would have put small holes in the back side of the trim to hang it and paint it but i didnt have a drill with me so i found a box and put it on the box how it would mount to the car


and here are some completed shots
[URL=http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y70/gotohllcarolina/Coupe/Shadowline/?action=view&current=P1010004.jpg][/URL

and here are some with the interior trim mounted back to their panels
(same pic with flash)

[NC325iC]

Update: Was out of town most of last week, placed an order for a black cloth headliner with creative options, also have some things coming that will be installed at a later date.

I've been working on a few rust spots along the rain gutter where the trim attaches.

If anyone has any tips on making sure they dont come back i'd appreciate it.

I've ground out all the rust i could see and did a few random spots to check for rust that i wasn't seeing, it looks like I've gotten it all and so far ive sprayed some self etching primer that i was using for shadowline on there to keep it from rusting until i get a final solution. I know alot of people use POR15 but would it be to thick to use here? i would like to be able to get that trim back on.

The self etch primer and black paint over top seem like it will work well, it looks good too

[NC325iC]

Update: Im almost done with the bits of rust and almost done painting the trim, should finish up the trim today, and hopefully the rust in a day or two.

all my new seals got in this weekend too, once the rust is fixed im gonna clean the car and seal it up.

[NC325iC]

Update: My brother bought a house with a 2 car garage and as hes not big into working on cars, it is basically my garage (i live in the house too).



got a few important parts in and a couple not so important ones too.

1) HEADLINER: it got here a couple days ago after several weeks of waiting.

2) Power Sunroof components: got them on ebay, i plan on weighing both the power mechanism and the crank mechanism to see the weight difference. i know people have weighed the sunroof assembly as a whole but im curious to the weight of the electric motor compared to the crank.

3) New side mirrors on their way

4) Analog clock, i decided i dont really need an obc and for now i think the analog clock would be the best thing to put there.


5) sub box and speakers: thanks to luke for those, they came a while back but i just found the pictures


6) z3 antenna base


7) e36 window switches

I just cleaned up the carpets yesterday and expect to start the dying process today, hopefully the gray i chose looks decent with the rest of the interior. I tried dying the rear parcel shelf yesterday and it turned out looking kinda weird, and thats a generous judgement.


everything cleaned, only parcel shelf dyed


left half dyed right half clean

I have put the trim around the windows back on, save the right side outer peice and both pieces behind the vent windows (need clips). For the most part the trim around the windows comes off just like on the vert, except of course piece that goes on the top of the window frame and the outer piece on the vert stops at the top of the windshield but the coupe's continues to the rear windows. The outer peices were really the only ones that took any thought as to mounting them since i wasnt there when they were removed.


shows the shadowline trim pretty good i guess

Chris

[Court M3]

Nice time line project!

[NC325iC]

thanks man, it should turn out well.

im headed back to Hickory NC (where i bought the car) to pick up the rest of the parts from MitchM, we were in kind of a rush when i got the car and left a bunch of stuff there including some powerslot rotors, calipers with SS lines, euro bumpers, several interior trim pieces. alot of stuff really. I'll be glad to finally have everything here, and hopefully this weekend i can start on the headliner project which is the one thing between me and getting the weatherstripping and interior back on the car.

[Philipangoo]

the seats in you vert loook so damn nice ! were they recovered ?

[NC325iC]

yeah i bought new leather for them from creative options and recovered them about 3-4 years ago.

[NC325iC]

Picked up the euro bumpers today as well as a spare set of calipers and SS lines. Girling fronts ATE rears. same as whats on the car now, both cars actually. I will probably take them apart and take them into work with me sometime soon and sand blast them then powder coat them, probably black i dont know what other colors we have at the shop

[NC325iC]

Did some work on the sunroof using James' thread as a guide and i just have to say its a little incomplete there is more required to do the swap, nothing too major though just a couple holes need to be drilled.

So here is basically how to do it, most of this i found out from a thread that someone showed me on e30tech. And remember i have no headliner in currently, to do it you would need to gain access to your sunroof actuation area, aka remove the front headliner panel.

1) undo the manual crank by unscrewing the flat head screw in the middle, it doesnt really look like a screw it looks more like a set screw for some adjustment, but it isnt.


2)Drill out the 2 rivets that hold the mounting bracket on, and take out the 5 hex head screws. The mounting bracket should come out. Everything thats coming out is now out.


3)If you havent already done this, Repeat step 2 on the Power setup you have to free the power mounting bracket from its tubes.


4)Now, using those hex head screw position the power mounting plate into your car and line up the rivet holes in the tube plate and the mounting plate. now you will notice there is some material showing through the forward hole in the mounting plate, mark around the edge of the hole onto the copper plate.



5) remove the mounting plate and cut that section off the copper plate, it should be a triangular shape with a single hole in it. clean up your edges, dont want any burrs.

6)take your power motor and hold it in front of you with the part that would be closest to the sunroof up, insert one of the mounting screws into the hole that you see as being on top. Now screw this into the corresponding hole in the copper plate, making sure the cables properly engage with the gear on the motor.


7) The other 2 mounting holes will be so close to fitting that you will want to shoot someone. Put the gun down.

8) Since thest 2 holes are so close to the old ones i wouldn't recommend drilling and tapping new holes in the copper plate, i would recomment drilling clearance holes and using a nut and bolt to hold it in plate, or a screw and a body nut (those threaded sheetmetal things that bmw uses everywhere). so go ahead and drill the holes and test fit the 2 nuts and bolts or whatever you decided to use.

9) you need to have your sunroof at one of the stopping points, either fully open, full closed or vented, you should also get your motor to the corresponding point by hooking it up to power and ground and using the switch to get it there. If your sunroof isnt at one of these points while its test fitted use the manual operation feature (aka an allen wrench) to move the sunroof motor until the sunroof is in the right position, DO NOT USE THE MOTOR if they are at different points in sunroof actuation the motor will not stop when the sunroof does and you WILL BREAK SOMETHING.

10) mount the mouting plate with the 5 screws (you should have finished test fitting and removed it by now) and using that same screw first mount the motor up. Make sure everything is tight and give her a test.

11) did it work? run your wiring and put your interior back together with the correct panel.

i will edit this as need be, i havent finished yet but this is my plan of action.

[NC325iC]

Update: I "Finished" the sunroof upgrade but my sunroof motors seems to be locking up when spinning clockwise, so we'll see what happens there.

I finished my POR-15ing the small bits of rust that i found under the carpet, probably 10 spots smaller than a dime and another 3-4 quarter size spots, none of it was very deep rust. I used the bit of sound deadening i had left to fill the space between the factory stuff. and re installed my carpets.

extended the wiring for the window breaker so i could have it in the console not the dash.

i plan on wiring up my e36 switches and euro clock today.

pics up later.

[NC325iC]

no pics yet, i keep forgetting to take the memory card back to the garage.

change of plans with the sunroof, while taking out the sunroof stuff for headliner prep i noticed how easy it would be just to replace the tubes (and copper plated... plate) so i did that so no more mounting issues should arise with the motor, after all that work too.

i wired up the e36 switches both windows work well, though pass side window doesnt go up very well seems like the motor is working but the window is sticking.

i havent found ANY obc wiring in the car so i havent been able to wire up the clock yet, if i can find the obc wiring farther back in the car i will run wires to there so the fuses all make sense with the manual.

[NC325iC]

finally got the camera card down to the garage.

I have been working on my headliner and today am about 90% done with it. All that needs to be done now is the headliner panel, then the interior can be reassembled. Its not a perfect job (you can see a little bit of the yellow padding around the sunroof opening where i cut a little too much. I plan on putting a bit of material under that to make it less noticeable. there are a few small wrinkles here and there but i am more than happy with it.




you can see the contact cement i used, its dap weldwood, but not the landau stuff people keep touting, its a brush on contact cement that is available at ACE or other hardware stores. I used this stuff 5 years ago on my convertible top and its been perfect since, holds strong.

Just a couple small tips on doing the headliner. This is just how i did it not how you have to.

1) Get a shitload of binder clips to mock up your headliner, i used 6 boxes, 2 of large and 4 of medium sized clips, and yes i used every last one of them.
2) Once you have the headliner mocked up the way you want it (make sure it is the way you want it) you can start gluing. I started at the rear, i glued the bottom of the c pillers and the rear edge at the same time. I only worked about a foot at a time.
3) i liked to do one opening at a time so when i was done i could put the weather stripping on to make sure pressure was kept there.
4) back to front, rear windshield then rear quarter windows, then doors then sunroof area.