4drPwr's 89 Alpine Project - Back from hiatus

[4drPwr]

Hello everyone, I'm an E30Tech-er and R3V lurker. After awhile on the forums I decided to make my own project thread over at E30Tech, and figured I'd post it for your perusal here, as well. This first post is a couple of weeks old now:

The first project for your consideration: Original moonroof restoration!



So it began when I saw this thread, and the moonroof contained within for such a great price:

http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84110&highlight=moonroof

E30 moonroofs that I've seen for sale usually go for $500 easy, even $600 or so, and most don't include the headliner/privacy slider panel, which this one did. Obviously, I carpe diem-ed that shit and got it shipped here by greyhound bus parcel express. If you glanced at that thread at all and saw the pictures, you'd see that the glass panel had some awful chipping of the trim going on.






Obviously needed some work. As luck would have it, I do work, son:

The first step was to get the area immediately inside of the trim masked off, so I could refinish the trim. I decided to mask the whole panel off to save me some time later since it would have to be done at some point.

As luck would have it, I'm a DaVinci with masking tape, but for the very few places where I didn't get a perfect line touching the trim, including corners, I used a razor blade to make sure no inkling of tape was touching trim, and yet no glass was exposed. I have mild OCD for E30 projects.

Those of you familiar with JapAndrew's restore thread will know, as I do, that he completely removed the trim, restored it, then re-siliconed it to the panel. I am not him, and I am smarter and lazier than the average bear. My trim was perfectly well adhered so I saw no reason to fuck with it. I started sanding it down with an aggressive sanding sponge, and quickly saw how tedious it would be.

I quickly turned to modern chemical solutions for everyday problems:

I don't fuck around. I put the foam on my garage floor, put a garbage bag over that, and the panel on the bag to minimize mess.

The aircraft stripper had a field day:



The black muck in this picture is small piles of whatever formerly resided on the trim, after being nuked with aircraft stripper, and scraped off with a razor.

Time to do the same for the underside of the panel/trim. It was more of the same, so I didn't take any pictures. After I cleaned all of that shit off both sides and all the trim, I took to sanding the trim so it would be ready for paint; it came out nicely:








At some point during this couple of days of work, I was pleasantly distracted by noise outside the garage, and a knock at the door. I was greeted by this...I wonder what's inside?

It's very easy to get gifts for Thanksgiving, you just have to buy them for yourself:

In no particular order, you are looking at:
1)Front driver side euro plastic bumper trim (I bought the full set awhile ago and nearly immediately gouged that portion by accident. Finally pulled the trigger to replace the eyesore)
2)Front (short) and rear (long) OEM BMW sunroof seals. Always wanted to replace the ones on my steel sunroof, so with a glass moonroof going in it was the right time to do them. The moonroof uses the same gasket mounting lip as an OEM panel. These suckers were about a benjamin together
3)OEM BMW floor mats for a sedan/coupe, with securing hardware, in Indigo (to match my interior)
4)OEM rubber thingy that goes around your gas cap, mine was icky
5)Brand new OEM mud flap set, front and rear for the impending salt and crap that will be on the roads. I have a thread in the appearance section if anyone can help sort through the jigsaw puzzle of mounting hardware that was included...

That's all for now, but I have a bunch more pictures to put up a bit later, and will hopefully take some more as I'm hoping to start painting before the inevitable food coma sets in. Happy holidays to all.

[4drPwr]

It's been a long time and I've been held captive by school, finals, and general lack of time. Many updates to post, so allow me to start:

I left off with the trim on the glass panel sanded and ready for paint (see end of original post). Planning to paint everything in one go, I moved on to cleaning and prepping the privacy panel for paint/resto:



It had come to me with a very flaccidly attached rail system, so I took it to a sunroof/custom auto shop I was lucky enough to find near where I go to school. They used some wood and new rivets to reattach it nice and solidly, although they did a poor job of dealing with the cloth they had to move, which can be seen was simply glued onto the top of the panel, instead of tucked back in properly, illustrated here:



You can clearly see the tan fabric on the bottom of the panel, glued in place. One of the mounting points came to me with cracked plastic around the rivet point, and at some point I introduced a crack to the other side:





This had to be fixed for longevity's sake, so I poked around the garage, planning to use some two part epoxy. I instead found "JB Quik(Kwik?)":





This set very nicely, so nicely in fact that I was struck with an idea, and decided to re-do their job of tacking the cloth to the panel. Pulling it off the panel, I found it could easily be re-tucked under the plastic top portion, albeit a bit loosely. JB Quik/Kwik and some popsicle-stick spreading later:



You can see the residue of the shop's glue on the top of the panel, which I attended to later. The JB whatever did a nice job of sealing the fabric into the space, and would later be painted.

If you noticed earlier in this post, the headliner fabric of the privacy panel was pretty dirty:





Hoping it would wash out, I mixed up some oxyclean in a spray bottle, and started tooth brushing, which came out pretty well:







Even the edges cleaned up decently, which were really filthy when I started. I wasn't so worried about the stains that wouldn't come out, as I correctly guessed that they were so dirty in the first place because they must have contacted the rails for the old headliner in the previous car, and would be hidden from view when installed anyway. The black plastic top of the privacy panel was a bit stained as well, but a little cleaning and the requisite pre-paint sanding cleaned it up very well. Forgot to take intermediate shot of this; original condition:



Now it was time to paint:











Now at this point I ran out of the half can of duplicolor self etching primer I had started out with, so I went to the store and got what I thought was much nicer quality rustoleum bare metal primer to use on the top of the glass panel's trim when it came time to flip it over and paint the top. More in this mistake shortly.

The fruits of my labors:







Soul crushing defeat in 3...2...1...: The rustoleum primer really did a number on me. Apparently it had a much different flashing characteristic than the duplicolor I had used on the top. Thinking the whole thing was primed and dry on both the top and bottom, I began laying down my SEM trim black, which is a nice quality paint that I've used many times before with great success. Letting everything "dry" overnight, I begin handling it and removing my masking tape. The bottom ended up coming out absolutely great (where I used the duplicolor primer): nice and dry, even finish, and no chipping, basically SEM at it's finest. On the top I was not so lucky. Looking at it crooked yielded blemishes and nicks, don't even get me started on what it looked like after the tape was removed. Long story short, the primer had not flashed properly, and was still an almost gummy consistency, leading to disaster. I really wanted this to turn out well, so I bit the bullet...



...and stripped, remasked, and repainted the entire thing, this time with brush-on, oil based, bomb proof rustoleum black enamel.



I kid you not, sitting as you can see in my room in the (room temperature) basement, it stayed tacky for two god damn days at the least. The end of thanksgiving break came and went, and I left with a sad face and no moonroof installed. About two weeks later I came back for a three day weekend to study for finals and put another coat on, which dried much faster thanks to the help of a small, delicately used space heater. In the end I was happy with the oil based rustoleum. The finish was glossy and not as uniform as if I had used an aerosol paint, but it's tough as nails and probably better suited to long-term exposure to the elements that the outer/top trim will see.

During this whole debacle I also got a couple of other things done, namely replacing the gas cap condom thing. Old and new:





I also started preparing my high beam smoking plates that I got from Newman awhile back. Scored vs non-scored:



Fully scored:

[4drPwr]

The moonroof was installed the weekend I gave it a second coat of enamel, when I came home to study for finals. That weekend I also installed the brand new mud flaps front and rear that I bought. I'll post up the pictures from that tomorrow, but for now I have a couple of shots of the 1980 gray market euro 635csi that I bought, and some people had been interested in seeing.



That's my family's "backup" car behind the 6er, a 1978 Plymouth Horizon with 48k original miles. It was voted car of the year by someone at some point. The color, as well as lack of almost anything other than four wheels, some doors, and an engine led my friends to affectionately say the car came from the Vietnam war. Supposedly the lore states that the .50 cal was removed before public auction, although there are still some bullet holes to be found here and there. Kidding aside, it starts up religiously after your 9th pedal stomp and 3rd crank. Ironically Plymouth sourced the engine for the Horizon from VW.



This thing is all German, except for the cluster. Being gray market, it was never federalized.



Close-ratio dogleg:



And the M90 in all its lurking, primitive glory:



Tomorrow will yield the aformentioned sunroof installation pictures, as well as the mudflap installation pictures, and bonus E30 with reindeer costume pictures.

[george graves]

Nice work - I like your attention to detail. Subscribed.

[4drPwr]

Nice work - I like your attention to detail. Subscribed.

Thank you very much, George. My car is one of the things I most enjoy in my life, and I treat it and anything I do to it accordingly.

[4drPwr]

As promised:

While up at school a couple of weeks ago, I was struck with an idea. A trip to my nearest Christmas Tree Shop and $7.99 later, and the dream was realized:



Driving through the center of UConn's campus would always net me a few people poking their walking partner and pointing at my car, lots of smiles, and even a few waves and laughter here and there.





Happy holidays all.

[Court M3]

Nice write up. Doing the same over the holidays myself.

[4drPwr]

So at this point I think we've all realized that I'm awful at keeping this updated. Time to put up the long overdue pictures that I took when I installed my moonroof. Unfortunately I don't have many pictures since it's pretty straightforward. Here's what I felt was pertinent to document:

First I unclipped the headliner, pushed it back, and undid the 6 screws (3 on each side) that hold the sunroof panel to the sliding/tilting mechanism. Lot's of good pictures and an explanation can be found at this gentleman's site: http://e30.bmwdiy.info/sunroof-adjust/index.html

With that out of the way, I had to figure out how to get my privacy slider into the roof cavity, and more importantly, onto the rails that go all the way back to above the rear seats. You can see why I needed to do this because of the construction of the slider:



These plastic...sliding facilitators...attach to the metal extensions on each side of the privacy slider, shown here:



Once attached on the metal extensions, they fit over the actual rails of the sunroof mechanism. Those are the only pictures I have of them; both the facilitators and the slider were cleaned before they were installed, don't worry.

The following pictures aren't necessarily in order of execution, but are ordered to best illustrate what I had to do. The rails that extend into the roof cavity are obviously secure throughout the course they run, so getting into that cavity to remove them nicely wasn't an option (it's about an inch or so of space that's a couple of feet deep). With the whole system in it's closed state (minus the sunroof panel, which I had removed), I unscrewed and removed the two small plates on either side, as well as the much longer plates toward the front of the car that cover the sunroof cable. With this done, it was time to tackle the covering for the actual rails. It's attached with a screw or two, but is also semi-riveted/adhered down somehow. I had to get them up to install the slider, so I ended up unscrewing them and then prying them up:







I know it's a bit barbaric, but I couldn't see any other way of getting them up to get enough room to sneak in the privacy slider. I also made sure that it looked like they would bolt back in well enough (the two small plates also install over their ends). With them pulled up I cranked the assembly to the "tilt up" position and then a little more in order to ease the cable anchors off so I could remove the old headliner and install the slider:



After that it was just the opposite of disassembly to put everything back together: ease cable anchors back onto the rails and below the covers that I jacked up, bolt covers back down, install front plates, install two smaller plates, install moonroof panel (1mm raised in the back, 1mm sunk in the front). Then I noticed that the rollers used for the previous fixed headliner both protruded into my new view of the sky, as well as rubbed against my privacy panel:



They were no longer necessary so I cut them off and filed them down a bit:



Installed:



I apologize for the sparse pictures, but it's really pretty intuitive once you get in there; hopefully my descriptions are enough pointers for anyone else who performs one of these installs.

I'll leave with a bit of a teezur:



This is a picture from my friend's for sale ad for almost two years ago. BBS RZ378s, 15x7, nice dished out lip, OEM qulity, pretty light. No one on the forums bought them back then and I couldn't afford them at the time. This summer I picked them up with the finish in sorry condition for $225. They've been at the powder coater for awhile and I'll be picking them up this week, along with my de-textured replacement front valence. Hopefully tomorrow will yield some nice pictures of some true panda shoes ;).

[Huff]

Cool write up!

[4drPwr]

Cool write up!

Thanks!

Got around to driving the hour each way to the powder coater to pick up my wheels and valence. Enjoy! (I am :D)











The valence was stripped to bare aluminum and then powder coated, no rock guard here. Both the wheels and valence are a color that I chose from several swatches that seemed to match Alpine White II the closest, as direct match powder was too hard to get. I'm not worried about the wheels matching so much as I am about the valence, since it's large and will be touching OEM colored areas. Fingers crossed on that. Anyway enough delay, here are my babies :-D.















And the money shot:



Almost a whole dollar!

Unfortunately the wheels will be sitting right where they are for several months, until the summer (and my associated job) are well under way so I can afford tires. I wouldn't run these right now anyway due to the shitty season, although the powder should be robust enough. For anyone wondering, I disassembled the center caps and had the outer metal portion coated to match the rest of the center, but I still have to finish prepping the plastic piece and get some paint on them. The valence may go on sometime this week before I go back to school, it may not. Hopefully in the near future though.

[kronus]

white wheels is best wheels

[idriverealslow]

nice work

[davey101]

oh shit! awesome work man, your car will look amazing with those wheels

do you go to the uconn storrs campus or the one in stamford?

[4drPwr]

Got some work done today in preparation for the engine removal tomorrow, took a couple pictures of the aftermath:

Drained coolant from the block and radiator/hoses:



Someone wasn't using OEM coolant...

Disconnected the exhaust from the manifolds...with a sawzall.



Anyone want an E24 muffler?



I'm not being the most delicate with the prep for this removal since I'm only really concerned with the block, head, and a couple of ancillary components, the wiring is going to be scrapped and most items like sensors, etc will be replaced with new when the engine is converted to M1.3.

Got the crack free dash out a few days ago:



And here's an idea of what kind of "care" this poor car was subjected to, and why the guy I bought it from (2nd owner at least, maybe 3rd?) wouldn't sell it to anyone to be used as a daily:









This is a peek-a-boo from the front passenger wheel well, where you can see up to the spark plug coil and hood structure:



One of the more flattering portions of the undercarriage:



Went out and bought a Duralast/Autozone engine stand tonight and put it together in preparation for tomorrow; I'll try to take some pics during the process.

[4drPwr]

Today a friend from E30Tech drove about 1 hour and 20 minutes from west hartford to help me get the engine out of this hulk in my driveway. As was probably expected, we were filthy and I took no pictures except for the aftermath. I had gotten a lot of things disconnected before they got here so it only took us a few hours, half of which was spent getting the block (semi) successfully on the stand. Here's what we toiled for:

Temporarily mounted on the stand, and quite precariously at that:



3.5 liter heater:



And one more for fun:



I've got my work cut out for me in order convert this to M1.3, but it'll be a labor of love.