My '75 2002 Sleeper

[tinkwithanr]

The rest of my time has been spend stripping the car down to bare metal. After finishing all of the exterior surfaces, I started working on the underbody. The sand blasting process worked great for the surfaces with just paint and bondo (in some cases LOTS of bondo lol), but it was pretty much useless on anything with rubberized undercoating. Which is the entire underside of the car. Because of this, I had to bust out the 4" grinder with the wire wheel attached and strip off all the rubbery material. This leaves the base metal primer, which I'll sandblast off as a final step.


Here's a pic of the underbody after stripping off the rubbery undercoat. It's kinda hard to see, but the grey/greenish area's are the base metal primer ready to be sandblasted. The lighter grey area is already sandblasted metal, and the black is an aftermarket undercoating from my previous repairs. It will also be coming off to bare metal, but it needs to be ground off still.





What does half a car worth of undercoating look like?? This, the pile is about half and inch thick.





After spending a few hours working on the bottom of the car, I turned my attention to the rear fender wells. The first picture is after I wire wheeled out all of the undercoating. This showed me what places were rusty and needed attention.




For my rear suspension, I'm going to be running a true coilover that ties into the roll cage in the trunk area. This means that the stock spring perch and reinforcement are just taking up space, so out they come.






With the inner section cut out, it just left the spot welded attachments which gave me a great chance to use my new spot weld cutters. Here you can see the individual spot welds on each piece.





First I punched the center of each spot weld so the cutter could locate properly.





And here you can see the cutter. The center rod is spring loaded, so it helps to locate the cutter without drilling into the second layer of metal.





As you push the bit in, the rod retracts keeping the bit centered.





Now all that was left was to drill out all the spot welds for the spring perch support.





Bottom Side Done:





Top side Done:





After removing it, I'm really glad I did. You can see all the rust that was hiding underneath it. Luckily with the perch out of they way it will be very simple to patch it and tie it into the cage with my shock mount.








The next steps are to remove the spring perch from the other side (passenger) and then sandblast the underbody for hopefully the last time. Then I just need to blast the interior, which shouldn't take much time at all thanks to the thin layer of paint, and the trunk.

[tinkwithanr]

So it's been a while since I had an update worth posting, between the crazy hot weather and my work schedule it's been hard to make any noticeable progress. Luckily today I managed to knock out enough that it was worth it to catch you guys up.

First thing first, the rest of the Turbo body parts came in from Blunttech (thanks again Steve). All together the kit consists of:

4 fender flares:




Rear Trunklid Spoiler:




Front Spoiler/Lip:




Gasket for between the Body and Flares, along with mounting nuts:





Sadly the Front Driver Side Flare is currently unavailable from anywhere. Supposedly BMW has then in production, but there is no telling when they will be available again. As of right now it's not holding me up, since mounting and trimming the front fenders won't take to long (the time consuming part is going to be the rear flares). Worst case scenario is I'll end up having to get a reproduction and use it until the OEM piece comes back in stock.

[Simon S]

ditto..

Wow.

[CorvallisBMW]

Wow, this build is amazing! I'm in awe of your fab skill and determination. Keep it up!

[VinniE30]

This is insane. That's a ton of welding work. You're basically building a 2002 from scratch. Hats off to you man!

[tinkwithanr]

Sorry guys, nothing really exciting to post. I just got back from 10 days of vacation so she's still about 50% sandblasted. I did get some more body parts in while I was gone, so you can expect a small update in the next day or two.

[GDA]

Awesome work and skills!

Great to see you refurb tools and then start using it on the project. Sub'd for future updates.

[Kevinxkrazy]

any updates?

[Kevinxkrazy]

Every time this thread gets bumped it's exciting to see all the progress!

that's exactly what i was thinking lol

[mikeedler]

Just got done reading the complete thread (never saw it before). Great work-- Seems like you are in a similar situation with the rust I am in with my 55 Bel Air.
Keep it coming!

[FredK]

Yeah, the spotweld cutter will be way easier to use, and will disturb the least amount of metal underneath.

Every time this thread gets bumped it's exciting to see all the progress!

[drumad]

Believe it or not this is my first build, pretty much learning as I go.

Well, I suck then. I'm also poor. Proceed with the build sir!

[tinkwithanr]

Believe it or not this is my first build, pretty much learning as I go.

[drumad]

Obviously this isnt your first time doing a build (if it is, bravo).

You got any links to other work you've done?

This is quite amazing.

[tinkwithanr]

You sir have some serious skills! :bow:

This car will be epic when finished, keep up the hard work!!! :up:

Thanks for the compliment! Hopefully the car will live up to all the hype lol.

great job so far

Thanks man!