Irish44's '77 e21 320i build - with M42

[TimbyMaTombo]

You may have been asked this in your other build thread, but what are all the bottles hanging up for? Improvised organization of random small bits?

[irish44j]

You may have been asked this in your other build thread, but what are all the bottles hanging up for? Improvised organization of random small bits?

yep....nuts and bolts and other small stuff. An old trick learned from my grandfather. And a good use of all the empty baby food jars one gets having two little kids :)

[irish44j]

So today I managed to get a "lease" on the other side of my garage from my wife, who usually parks there. This allows me to have both project cars in the garage at once. So, the e21 got to come up front. Didn't have any buddies around, so just hooked it up to the 4Runner and towed it out with my wife's friend steering it. The 4Runner BARELY fits through the gate to my backyard, so it was a tight tow.



In the garage with the GT6



I love working on small cars....so much space



Did some inspection and a little work on it as well, after doing some exhaust welding on the GT6 (not fun)

Pulled off the license plate mount and the finishing piece on the back. A little bit of rust there, but not much. Pretty pleased to find that.



Also pulled off the trunk seal, and there's some rust under there but nothing through, and it'll clean up fine with a wire wheel.



First order of business was to pull off the front bumper. Not only is it hideous (10x worse than an e30 diving board), but it sticks out a foot and takes up valuable garage space. Not sure what I'll do for bumpers....tuck the stockers, euro bumpers, no bumpers. But for now....no bumpers.





Much more svelte now



So there's the engine. Already have a couple people possibly interested in buying it, so that's a plus.



Also, it has a Stahl header, which will be sold with it (depending on offer) or separate, since I've already had a few people ask about it. Nice find.





So that's it for now. Baby steps to get going on this. Once I get the engine out in a few weeks I'll get moving more rapidly on things, I think.

Oh, and the spare tire....old school

[Dj Buttchug]

subd

[irish44j]

Will try not to disappoint, though I don't think this one will go at the same manic pace that the e30 did, lol.

[irish44j]

Spent my evening on my back. Not with my wife, but with the car....unhooking the exhaust, driveshaft, shift linkage (all very oily and greasy), electrical, cooling, pulling the radiator, etc etc. The engine is sitting on the mounts with a jackstand under the tranny now. So, I should be ready to hoist the engine out this weekend.

(I'm sure I have totally forgotten one little stupid thing attached to the engine that will turn out to be a major pain in the ass to remove when I hoist the engine halfway up and then realize it. But I hope not, lol)

yay for tools and mess





also happened to notice this:



hmm....since I didn't know what e21 seats look like and these "matched" it seemed.....but now that I actually look at them, looks like someone put some e30 comfort seats in it, with their own seatbelt receptacles, lol. Whatever, wasn't planning to use them anyhow.



radiator out. When I drained the coolant it looked brand new. Good sign for the next owner of the engine....



one last thing: I really hate this thing for some reason:



Main task this weekend should be changing an aluminum radiator and M20 expansion tank into the e30 (freeing up my M42 rad for the e21 eventually). But we'll see...

[irish44j]

So got the engine out in an hour today (and most of that time involved trying to figure out how to get my hoist out of its storage spot boxed in by the car on jack stands, lol).

Nothing terribly interesting happened except having to jury-rig my chainfall since my hooks wouldn't fit in the little tiny lifting eyes on the block. I need to get some smaller ones because I have this problem every time I do it and end up fabbing up attachments using other stuff.

In the topic of "little things that I love that BMW thought of" - the front lip of the e21's engine bay, right in the middle, is bent toward the front of the car (coming from vertical on the edges). I'm quite certain BMW did this so that when you lift the engine out (or in), the oil pan has a nice "sloped" edge to slide down rather than getting hung up on a vertical ridge. I can't see any other reason for it, so that must be it :)

Anyhow, some pics as usual.

you can see the oil pan against the "bent lip" here, kind of










time to start cleaning I guess...

[irish44j]

So today I got out the hose and some brillo pads and did some scrubbing in the engine bay to see what I have to deal with in there. The prognosis: Not too bad, actually. No rust-through anyplace. The worst part was the battery tray, which I ripped out anyhow (battery will go to the trunk). Still need to get the grinder out and grind off all the mount tabs at some point. Removed a few other things, etc.

The main rust areas look to be the front left corner behind the battery tray (just some peeling paint and a bit of rust), the driver's side frame rail down below the BMC/CMC/BB, and an area on the passenger inner fender where heat from the header peeled the paint up and caused some rust. Otherwise, everything is surface rust that should clean up pretty easily with a wire wheel.

oh, so here's a question: Anyone know what this is? It's a hardline that goes up under the radiator support and ends on the driver's side (wasn't attached to anything), and then runs back to the back of the car someplace (didn't investigate yet). Can't think of what it could be.



and some pics of the bay "cleaned up"

frame rail rust


up by the headlight


subframe is in very good shape and cleaned up nicely


passenger inner wheel well

[jhaurimn]

Nice progress ! At first I thought it was going to be Swiss cheese but I'm glad it's mostly surface rust. E21s are awesome

[irish44j]

After finishing my e36 radiator install in the e30 today, got down to a bit of work on the e21. The evening turned out to be 65 degrees (crazy for mid-August in DC) and quiet with nothing going on. Perfect for a few brews, some music, and car stuff.

Earlier in the day I finally pulled the rear bumper, which was really simple. I continue to be amazed that on a car that is 36 years old every nut and bolt still comes off perfectly and easily, no matter if it is coated with 36 years of grime, rusty, or whatever. Still have yet to have one strip, shear, or otherwise be unable to remove one. Anyhow, bumper off, giving me another few inches of space in the garage with the door shut. The metal behind the bumper is in pretty good shape with a bit of surface rust in a few spots, but nothing too bad.

Also took the taillights and side markers off.







In the evening I took off all the door mouldings (a few rust spots behind them, but not too bad) and clips for them (all bagged so they don't get lost), took off the door cards and inside handles, the side mirrors (still in almost mint condition, amazingly), seatbelts, and various other interior things.

Good time to mention that I am picking up a driver's door, hood, and windshield from a local guy parting out an otherwise goner e21. My driver's door has a dent down the side of it and also dented under the mirror. Rather replace than fix. This hood should have less rust than mine (which isn't terrible in its own right).

Then spent some time taking out the HVAC fan and wiper assembly, which is a pain in the ass if you haven't done it before, but will be easy if I ever do it again, lol



nasty in there, lots of debris, some old wasp nests, etc etc. But not rusty, so that's good.



interior getting more bare, and not finding any surprises so far..

[irish44j]

So I'm kind of ADD when it comes to bodywork. I tend to jump all over the car and do little areas to keep it interesting, and eventually "fill in the blanks" as I go along, lol.

I've already done most of the trunk and taillight areas (no pics for some reason, oops) and they cleaned up pretty well except for some heavy pitting and pinholes under where the 320i badge was. Also some rust-through on one of the drain rails in a difficult area right over the fuel expansion tank thing. Ryan was nice enough to cut a 6" length out of his rusty parts car (somehow NOT rusty), so I'll cut this area out and weld the new piece in rather than trying to patch it.

yum


So also did the front radiator support and chassis front. Almost all just surface stuff, so I cleaned it up good, hit it with some POR-15 and primer, and should be good to go. That said, I'm a bit concerned with POR-15 as a basecoat since I've heard some rumor that paint doesn't like to stick to it all that well, even when scuffed up. I'll use the engine bay as a test case and see. Any thoughts on that from the peanut gallery? Bodywork and rust repair is not really my strong suit. On the e30 it didn't have to look good since that's a rallycross car. On the GT6 we just cut all the rot out and put in fiberglass panels and floors and called it a day forever. Here I want to do things the "right" way, or at least somewhat close to it!







On the rear windowsill, where the worst rust on the car is/was, I ground everything down to bare metal, cleaned out all signs of rust, used some Metal Ready, and POR-15'd it. Then over a few days I filled and sanded a few times and it's looking pretty legit I think. I do have one small hole to patch at the front end.

after grinding/sanding



trouble spot



built up and primed



Tomorrow I get 3 tons of gravel delivered to clean up my side "driveway" to the back yard shed from being a mud pit, so I'll be doing manual labor. We'll see if the car gets any work. Taking the day off work with the wife and kids out of town, so who knows...

[phenryiv1]

We applied bedliner right over POR15 in the floor of the yellow car and the bedliner stuck quite well despite bedliner having a reputation for liking only freshly-scuffed or primed paint (as opposed to something like RustOleum spray bombs). If the bedliner stuck to it you should be good, I would think.

Maybe do a test off of the car?

[Galicianslash]

sub'd, keep up the good work

[irish44j]

A few updates. I finished off the passenger-side window sill and it came out pretty good if I do say so myself. Also started with some welding and grinding on the other side (no pics)



Today I ran out for double-bmw duty. First went out to Pat's to help him and Nick work on Nick's rallycross e28. I spent most of the time rebuilding the CV axles with Pat while Nick installed some swaybars. Need to get Nick ready for the rallycross in 2 weeks since he's one of the top cars in our class (just behind me and Roberto in the season points) so don't want him to have to miss an event or have stuff broken. dirty e-thirties honorary member and all ;)



Then I ran by Ryan (dirty30 on r3v)'s place in Winchester to pick up a load of parts from the really nasty e21 he bought a few weeks back to part out. For very little cash I managed to pick up a hood (much nicer than mine), a door (less rust but more dents than mine, so not sure which if either I'll use), a windshield (mine has a small crack, so worth having a spare), windshield trim, etc (still new), and a BMW legit front lower valance in great shape other than one little ding in it, which is MUCH better than my beat-up and rusty one.

His parts car clearly had lived a few lives in several different colors....white, red, olive green, and most recently some metallic blue....so I'll have some sanding to do for sure, lol.

The parts car:



Loaded up in the truck



Getting the super-big e21 hood up on the roof proved interesting....it was just the right size to fit over my 48" Yakima bars though.



aside from my load straps, put on some heavy zip-ties on it as well, since I planned to do 80+mph on the way home, lol.



On the way home I rolled for a while with this lovely e28 535i that literally looked showroom-new.



So here's the stash:





Hood looks good on the front and the rust on the (red) underside isn't as bad as it looks

[dirty30]

Viper GTS blue baby!

Seriously though how gross was that poor parts car!