First, pulled the windshield now that I set up a rack in the shed to hold all the glass pieces. Happy to say that there is no rust around the windshield frame, it looks nice and fresh.
Also did some more detail rust work, this time on the passenger's roof gutter, a-pillar, and b-pillar. Got them all cleaned up and primed/painted and they look pretty good. Also pulled the chrome trim off the doors so I can paint under those pieces.
Then decided to pull the carpet. I've been holding off of this a bit only because it's always what results in bad things being found on old cars (like rust). In this case though was pleasantly surprised. As I mentioned earlier, this is a non-sunroof car and didn't seem to have any leaks after sitting for many years (interior was bone-dry after 2 weeks of heavy rain before I bought it). On the 320i I guess they went all-out with soundproofing/cushioning, because there was carpet, with a layer of foam under it, with a layer of heavy rubber/foam under that, and then the tar-coating on the floors themselves. The carpet was kind of dingy but not too nasty (got thrown out though) and the foam below it had kind of deteriorated so it is gone too now. The heavy rubber base layer is in really good shape, though on the passenger side there was some moisture under it (probably because it can't evaporate through the rubber). Not too much though and no mold. I'll air those out and clean them up good and re-use them I think.
Now to the floor itself. First of all, the p/o's widow said she "thought" that the floors had been replaced a number of years ago, but I can find no evidence of that. I'm quite certain they're original so maybe she meant some other part, who knows. In any case, there is almost no rust anywhere on them. The only rust I can find is in the gaps between the tar sheets, and it's negligible surface rust. Just to check I cut back the tar pieces about 1-2" around all the edges (where water would have been most likely to get in) and removed those strips. No rust underneath, only pristine, painted metal. This is great news that means I probably won't even take off the tar covering. I also checked the underside of the floorpan very carefully to see if any rust was starting on the underside, and there are a couple very small spots but otherwise the underside of the floorpan looks great as well.
I'll clean/sand all this in the next few weeks and will probably POR-15 the entire floorpan.
As mentioned earlier the p/o replaced the original seats with some later e21 seats (which, oddly, required a 2" steel "lifting block" on the outside footings on each seat). Wierd. BUT on the driver's seat the front two mounts are toast. The outer one is kind of bent and the inner one is totally ripped apart. Guess I'll be doing some welding there. But I would have anyhow since the plan is probably to use e30 Recaros or something similar when I put all this stuff back together. The e30 seat mount tracks are about 1" narrower than the e21, so some fab work will be in order. That's a long way down the road, however.
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