My '73 Roundie Revival [BMW 2002]

[CubbyChowder]

don't let your dad sell that benz! god what i'd do for a rust-free w108, a v8 one too!


i like your peektures, and the scale of the work you're doing. can't wait to see more. ps.. you know this thing deserves better than diamond racing steelies.

He's liking the car more and more as he drives it and fixes little things here and there. He'll probably keep it for a long time.

Thanks and yeah I know it deserves better wheels haha I explained that in my post when I first bought them. I figured I'd get them for now while I'm building the car and run them for a while and I can always upgrade down the road. I originally bought a set of BBS RM's that I was going to rebuild with bigger lips but I ended up getting scammed and it was a huge mess, so I settled on these for the time being until I can afford and focus on a better set of wheels

[CubbyChowder]

Time for an update, this is a good one :)

First off, got to work on this area:



Got it all down to bare metal and rust free:



And primered. Now all I have to do is get the engine bay prepped and primered and the front end will be ready for the engine and paint!:



Then I finally reached a point in my build which I've really been looking forward to, I decided it was time to get started on the fenders. All this paint/rust removal was getting really tedious and unexciting, so I needed to do something exciting haha. I whipped out my grinder and got to work. Decided it'd be best to start off by hacking off the original fender lip:



And off it goes, no turning back now!:



Had to cut out a small rusty section in the inner wheel well, I will weld in new metal shortly:



Mocked up the MK1 fender. I measured everything by eye haha it just seems to work best for me sometimes:



Started cutting more:



Got everything lined up, it all looked good, so I started welding small sections:



Took my time and only welded in really small sections so it took forever. I got it all done though, and it's a bit rough in some places, the whole process was surprisingly difficult:




Then I couldn't help myself, I had to mess around with the wheels and see how it would look. I'm super hyped on it, I think it's going to look awesome. Possible aired out bagged stance? :D:



More realistically, the stance would be more like this if I end up going static. Still pretty awesome to me:



While I was working on the fender, my dad wanted to help out, so he started disassembling the engine and washing it down. I'm not going to rebuild it, just replace all the seals and gaskets and whatnot. Check out our modern engine hoist haha we're getting a proper one very soon:






Getting excited now!

[freeride53]

Looks SOOOOOOO sick.

[deutschman]

Nice!

[CubbyChowder]

Alright got a little bit of work done today. Mainly just grinding away at the welds, lots and lots of grinding.

But first I had to deal with this area. The MK1 fender had a little section which bulged out a bit, so I had to cut that out because it wouldn't work with the '02 body. So there was a gap:



So I had to make this janky little piece of metal, it actually fit in the gap perfectly:



Welded up, looks kind of rough. Whatever, still learning:



So then I started grinding down the welds:



Hit it with a flap disk, this whole process took forever:




Then I brought the fender down to bare metal in preparation of filler and primer, the black paint that was originally on there chipped off really easily, so I don't trust it:





It looks kind of rough in the pictures, but I really think getting it to look good is totally doable. I want it to look as if it came that way from the factory, so we'll see what happens.

[semaj4712]

Thank you! I shoot with a Canon T2i with Magic Lantern firmware installed. Majority of these pics were taken with the stock 18-55mm but lately I've been shooting with my 50mm f/1.8 (which are the noticeably better looking pictures with more depth of field). I decided I'm going to start using the 50mm more, I just love the way the pictures look.

Oh nice, yes 50mm = less glass > than zoom, primes always look great

[CubbyChowder]

^^totally agree

Got back to work on the fender. This thing is taking a lot longer than I anticipated, but I've grown to expect that with every aspect of this build so I'm at peace with it. I'm sure every fender from here on out will take half as long as the previous one.

However, I was not so at peace earlier when I started working on the inner wheel well area. I wanted to weld it back to the fender so it can all be connected again, like it's supposed to be. I started hammering it a bunch, cutting it into sections so it'd be easier to bend and then started welding it to the fender. This proved to be the hugest bitch ever and was very frustrating since I had to basically curl up inside the wheel well area with my huge welding mask which got caught on everything and I had to push the metal with one hand while I welded with the other haha I was a mess. It wasn't really working out at first, but I eventually started getting the hang of it. I didn't finish this area today because I got sooo over it, I'll finish it next time I go up so I can grind it down, hit it with some seam sealer and be done with it. Sorry for the rant, this is the area:



Decided to work on a different section of the fender since it all has to be done anyways. This is the rear area of the fender, which has a gap between the MK1 fender and the '02 body:



Started grinding away at a piece of metal little by little until it fit the gap perfectly, ended up with this:



Tacked it in:



Welded it up:



And ground it down. I was pretty happy with how it turned out, it cheered me up a bit from being all flustered with the inner fender area haha. I cut the bottom too to flow with the body:





This is what the bottom of that area looked like:



So I wanted to fill that gap with metal so it flowed well:



Welded it up, ground it down, and ended up with this. Needs a little more work but I think it's pretty much there:



So next time I go up, I will be focusing on the front of the fender where the bottom meets and make it flow well with the body (sorry I keep saying "flow" so much haha). It looks like this:

[StealthiE30]

WOW you have mad some amazing progress thus far! Cant wait to this 2002 finished. Good work dude!!! :bow:

[XW70]

those guards are going to come out amazing. you have skillz!

[CubbyChowder]

So progress has been really slow lately, I took a small break because I was starting to get a bit burnt out and frustrated. This fender has proven to be a pretty difficult task, but it's starting to come together and I know the next fender will go way smoother.

So the front of the MK1 fender flare started off like this, so I had to blend it with the body:



I made some metal pieces and welded them in. This is after a bit of grinding:




And smoothed it out. I wanted the bottom of it to follow with the angle of the body (it will make sense in the first picture) and I think overall it's pretty much there. It needs a little bit more work but I'm pretty happy with it:





I've also been welding the inner fender back to the outer fender but don't have pictures yet. I'm going to hit everything with some seam sealer tomorrow so it's sealed and then I will start on body filler and hopefully get everything looking good!

[mtlbloodshot]

SUB'D Awesome work keep it up!

[audiquattrot]

great work!!!

[Zreberlcoe]

This is awesome work! You have inspired me to do something of the same extent to an E30 one day, or finish my dads beetle that has been sitting in the garage since I was born. keep it up I would like to see the finished product!

[CubbyChowder]

Thanks for the awesome comments guys.

Alright, got some more work done. I got the whole inner fender welded and seam sealed. It looks a bit rough, but I think it will do the job. I don't even want to think about that process anymore haha it was so frustrating:



Then I wanted to try out some body filler work, I have a tiny bit of experience with body filler but have soo much room for improvement. I figured this would be some good practice. I wanted to smooth some of the trim line holes that I welded shut on the upper part of the quarter panel. First I got rid of every little speck of surface rust in this area and then spread some filler:



Took my time and slowly starting block sanding it down with 80 grit followed by 220 grit (not really sure if this is the proper way to do it, but it seemed to work):




Masked off a small section so I can get that area in primer, I'm tired of seeing surface rust gather on all this bare metal, at least this section will be good to go now:



Primed it and I'm pretty happy with the results. It's not perfect, but at least it's better. I will perfect it all at a later time once all the body work starts to come together. Don't mind the upper right section that didn't get painted, I still have some filler work to do there:

[HighschoolE30]

SUB'd for sure... Awesome so far.