The complete repair, rebuild, repaint, and v8 swap of my early model sedan

[dp2275]

damn dude, sorry to hear. take a break and bring the track car down to hershey and autocross with us this weekend!!

[OoPEZoO]

Ouch.....Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug. In the grand scheme of things, if thats the worst that happens, you are still in pretty good shape. Take a breather and start with a fresh head.

[BrewCity11]

Dude, you're doing so good on this project. Don't let a speedbump(s) drag you down too much. Get back to work, my entertainment relies on you doing work, son!

[BoxDriver86]

Take a day or two off from the project and try not to think about it. Since you're in the habit of working on this thing on the regular, you'll start to feel like you should be doing something else and get re-motivated. Works for me at least...

Sorry to hear about about all of the troubles. Look on the bright side...a year from now you can joke about this and you definitely won't make the same mistake twice.

[dirty30]

Been a while since I've updated this. It's been a disaster lately. Currently sipping on my third Jack and Coke as opposed to working in the garage, because I need a break. If you're looking for a cool update or anything other then useless ranting, do not continue to read.

The engine bay is basically finished. The engine was fully mocked up, everything was routed properly, the details were all worked out. So I yanked the engine and began prepping the engine bay for paint. Meanwhile, my good friend who is doing most of the body work and teaching me how to do it as we go, was working on prepping the rest of the car. Filling all the dents, sanding, etc...

We started on the driver front door. This was a replacement door, as the original had too many dents. The replacement door had two dings and some rust at the bottom. So we spent 10 hours or so cleaning, repairing, hammering, filling, sanding, etc... getting this door perfect. It was ready to be wiped down and painted basically. Then, it fell off the stand, and the bottom corners smashed in, rendering the door useless and all that work wasted.

The next day (yesterday) I met up with a guy who had dent-free fenders for sale, to replace my not so perfect fenders. I got them, handed over the money without taking a close enough look at them. After washing and installing them today, I now see that both are basically unusable. Not so dent-free. My originals are actually better. $130 down the drain.

So today I venture to the junkyard to retrieve a driver side front door, and possibly a set of fenders. I go to the biggest junkyard in PA, which has on average about 3 billion e30's at any given time. Of course, not a single sedan. Nor a straight fender. Drive another hour to another junkyard, same deal.

Call up Chris at CR's Wholesale, he has some. Should have went there to start. Drive 2 hours to get there from where I was, tell him I need a drivers front sedan door, he finds it, shows it to me, and I buy it. Get home (300 miles and $90 worth of gas later), clean the door, swap over the hinges, mount the door. Then I tried to close the door. It was only then that I realized it's about 6" too long, BECAUSE IT'S AN F'IN COUPE DOOR. IT DOESN'T FIT MY SEDAN BECAUSE IT'S NOT A SEDAN DOOR. THEY AREN'T INTERCHANGEABLE, BTf'nW. How do you even look at a coupe door and not realize it's not a sedan door? I don't know how, but I did it. That's my sign, it's time to take a break from the car.

Unfortunately, I'm on an 11 day vacation from work, that I planned in order to get some major work done on the car. Bad timing.

Had to deal with the same thing as far as the fenders go. My body guy told me to get some used fenders because the original sheet metal always fits better. I found a forum member here selling one that was in "geat shape" so I drive through Fairfax traffic to get to his house only to find it was rusty and had dents all over it. The lip had been pulled by a tire also. Next was a pair of fenders from another member here. I met him about two hours from my house and only when I got home did I realize that the entire lower section had rusted and fallen off at some point but the rust line was so perfectly straight it looked fine at a glance!!

CR's is a great little spot for E30 stuff but his only downfall is he has so much stuff there and none of it is catalogued so if he says he has what you are looking for come with tools, you might have to do some wrenchin! I called him about fenders and he said plenty so I drove about 2 1/2 hours up there only to find out one was off the car in the shed, the other was on the car down the road still bolted in place! Since I wasn't prepared to do any work he lent me tools, gave me the key to the gate and sent me on my way. I'm thankful there are still people doing business like that.

Shit's gonna happen!!

[Thizzelle]

tell that ass to ship you the right door

[JGood]

Geez, didn't think there was so many people still reading this thread, LOL. Thanks for the kind words guys, greatly appreciated.

I woke up this morning, pulled the stick out of my ass, called up CR's, and told them about the mixup. We had a good laugh about it, then I drove over there to swap the door with a sedan door. While I was there, I found mint fenders. Got the door and the fenders cheaper then the shitty fenders I got from the other forum member. Chris and the other guys at CR's are great, an absolute pleasure to deal with, I didn't mean to place any of the blame on him... it was 100% my fault. Same with the fenders. I had the chance to look at them, but I didn't. Lesson learned. Time to finish prepping the car for paint :)

[Farbin Kaiber]

Shorter breather than I had prescribed, but it seems to have cured the illness.

[dirty30]

Geez, didn't think there was so many people still reading this thread, LOL. Thanks for the kind words guys, greatly appreciated.

I woke up this morning, pulled the stick out of my ass, called up CR's, and told them about the mixup. We had a good laugh about it, then I drove over there to swap the door with a sedan door. While I was there, I found mint fenders. Got the door and the fenders cheaper then the shitty fenders I got from the other forum member. Chris and the other guys at CR's are great, an absolute pleasure to deal with, I didn't mean to place any of the blame on him... it was 100% my fault. Same with the fenders. I had the chance to look at them, but I didn't. Lesson learned. Time to finish prepping the car for paint :)

godspeed my boy

[JGood]

BMW art car... am I doing it right?






Straight fender and door (the replacement, replacement fender is actually the same color and pin stripe as the replacement fender that was wavy, ironic!)




Engine bay, still working on getting it smoothed out and prepped. Luckily the engine is massive so you won't see many of the ugly seams. This is one of those things that if I could start over, everything would be done much cleaner. Oh well, I learned a lot doing this and the next car I do will be better.

[dirty30]

Engine bay, still working on getting it smoothed out and prepped. Luckily the engine is massive so you won't see many of the ugly seams. This is one of those things that if I could start over, everything would be done much cleaner. Oh well, I learned a lot doing this and the next car I do will be better.

Seam sealer!!

[JGood]

It's completely seam sealed! I went light on it so Garey wouldn't make fun of me again, LOL!

[blueapplesoda]

This is inspiring me to start what bmwmech is doing... I have a crashed m3 and a nearly flawless 84 eta. I think its about time.

Amazing work for a first time deal. I remember when my welds looked like that! hehe

Keep it up, I'm looking forward to reading more about your car. Are you gonna keep those Taurus side skirts? I remember I had a set of those :)

[einstein57]

I can't believe i've never seen this thread. You are crazy man. I would have just shipped a shell from cali. lol.

[efficient]

damn.good progress