ROUND 4! 88 Lachsilber / Cardinal IX coupe

[bradnic]

Yeah it's gone. Apparently some local dad bought it for their 16 year old...
Here's a pic of that car's rear underside:


sigh.

On this end, dealing with bad brake hard lines. pass rear brake line is leaking, turns out there's a slow drip in a rust area. picked up some copper/nickel line, fittings and tools. will post the results. just repairing the one line for now.

Hoping this is the only line with a major problem. Plan is for a complete fuel brake and fuel line replacement after the de-rusting work is done.

[bradnic]

dealing with bad brake hard lines. pass rear brake line is leaking, turns out there's a slow drip in a rust area.

Hoping this is the only line with a major problem. Plan is for a complete fuel brake and fuel line replacement after the de-rusting work is done.

Well this turned into a bit of drama. More follows, but TL-DR version:

basically the rear lines appear to be rusted out from the inside, and if they get stressed or torqued in any way they break. you get a nasty little chain reaction too - you keep breaking the line you're connecting to, until you end up at an unreachable part of the car. bad news.

To be specific, the right rear hardline started seeping brake fluid near the outer rubber brake hose. Guess I must have cracked it when replacing the outside brake hose. I had picked up the required flaring tools and M1-3 fittings so I wasn't too concerned. I even found some coated steel 3/16" line at my local auto parts that was almost a perfect match for the OEM lines.

So went ahead, fabbed up and replaced the damaged line.


Unfortunately, when I got to the inside hose to tighten it down, the pipe it was connecting to broke. There was still enough of this inside hard line left to mate it up though, so I cleaned up the end that broke off and put a fitting on it. You can guess what went next - the other end of the same line broke, this time right at the 3 way fitting above the diff.

Fortunately a good bud has a lift and heated garage... so I drove her over, then pulled the cat back and exhaust shield to see if I could access the lines above the diff. The other side of the rear hard lines was still intact, as was the front to rear brake line. Since the 3 way fitting was bolted to the chassis I took a chance and successfully removed the broken fitting with a 6 point deep well and an extension. Definitely got lucky - could have easily gone differently, in which case I would have needed to pull the subframe and fuel tank.


Install of the replacement line was tricky due to poor access for a flare wrench to tighten. Still looks like absolute cr@p. camera focused on the ebrake cable instead of the brake lines unfortunately, but you can see the new line and fitting.


Can't wait to start de-rusting - check out the exhaust area. funny how the bottom of the driver trunk well is intact, but the side is rusted through..



Didn't want to put the rusty old cat back on again, so went ahead and installed the eberspacher I was saving for next spring.



So unplanned repair bullet dodged for the most part I guess, though the new exhaust goes through a winter right away which sucks.

[aberg83]

Nice! Subscribed!

[e30m3s54turbo]

Brad, I get to see your skills at work. It is great you are saving it. Subscribed!!!

[AWDBOB]

The same brake line was bad on my car!

Restoration looks great, man, keep up the good work!

[bradnic]

6 month wait. inner rockers!! need to find a passenger repro outer as they are NLA. The current one's repairable, but seems to me it would be easier to just replace it.

[bradnic]

Death blow - maybe

In the end I may be kidding myself though - I haven't pulled the carpet yet. Lord knows what a mess is waiting there - the patch underneath is a dead giveaway.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Well I finally got around to pulling the carpet and padding to do a thorough inspection of the floorpan. I'm not a happy camper. There were a couple of small patches under the car that should have warned me. PO or their predecessor did a good job of hiding the rust damage, gluing 26 gauge steel sheet over alot of the rust spots and sealing everything up with a caulk gun.

Memo to self - NEVER buy an IX again without first pulling the seats and carpet.

I'm pretty devastated. This is way worse than what I was expecting. On the plus side the transmission tunnel looks intact. Unfortunately I have perforations on both front outside corners that have been covered with patches. By far the worst part is the passenger front floor pan though.

Passenger rear - not bad, but it was soaked with water.


Driver rear - 1st patch. Untreated steel (well I guess it's galvanized)


Driver's front floorpan area - soaked in water.


Driver's outside corner


And... the passenger front floor pan - note the long patch along the trans tunnel


Passenger outside corner - perforated


Pull the patch and .... disaster.


Could use some advice. Right now I assume she's beyond reasonable cost to salvage.

[mgoblue]

ouch

[bradnic]

Well I'm gonna stick with it. I posted for help and received some helpful responses. Have also seen lots of examples out there of rust fixes. The UK web sites are the best.

E21/E30 specific rust repair examples:

Pedal floor pan repair on JGood's M60 build
1st post on Brian's amazing M3 'minor rust repair' of course
320i floorpan resto on bfc
And a new Euro 320i build thread from Brandon.

Gonna need some advice on the frame rail as I know that part is NLA. It's still sturdy but heavily rusted so it's obviously thinned out a bit. Not a good thing for a structural member lol.

[bradnic]

Have also seen lots of examples out there of rust fixes. The UK web sites are the best.

The "Making panels thread" that blew me away. Incredibly inspirational work.

and... an E30 Touring de-rusting project in Warsaw. Awesome stuff. So much to learn about E30 rust repair.

EDIT: found another touring resto thread I had seen a couple of years ago. on stanceworks (gag)

EDIT2: and another IX de-rusting project on r3v

[bradnic]

So I'm going to have front floor pan sections cut and shipped to me rather than cutting in large flat patches, which a lot of folks have done and is perfectly reasonable. Then again I'm clearly OCD inflicted so there it is. I've got a WTB thread and have connected with Jayson in CA.

Looking forward to it as I am going to want the the pans to come with the frame rail sections underneath them. That way I can weld up the frame rail to the remaining portion in front of the firewall. It also preserves all the drain channels stamped in the sheet metal - something that concerned me quite a bit as I don't want to do this repair again - not for a very long time.

Here's the WTB thread and pics of the pieces I want to get. Floor pan pics courtesy of xworks..

[IMG]

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[bradnic]

Anyone bought these off ebay.de? Made in Austria, apparently ebay user fastn1oud makes them by hand. friggin expensive though. $158 + shipping. wow. Definitely seems like something you should make yourself with a harbor freight brake, right Brandon? :-)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=271525386876
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Reparaturble...-/271525388900

[bradnic]

Well I've sourced some floor pans. Anyone know for certain if 2 and 4 door floorpans are the same? Certainly appear to be.

We had heavy rains yesterday and the car was parked outside. Front driver footwell was flooded with about a half liter of water. rest of the interior was dry. Took a hose to the cowl and I did see a slow drip inside coming from near the wiring harness area under the fuse box. Doesn't look horrendous, but clearly I need to strip the car down to take a good look at things.

Also went back and checked out some of the E30 body repair videos out there on YouTube. This one's pretty good - just mute it.
Youtube E30 UK coupe body repair part 4

[bradnic]

Another IX inbound - will be up for sale..

Well looks like we're getting another IX. Wife insists we go "up-market" and get something with less rust. I'm not gonna say no.

Will be putting this up for sale in the next month or two with boatloads of spare stuff, body panels etc. PM if interested.

[bradnic]

This just got delivered



The good:
- absolutely zero rust on body and underneath
- all original body panels with vin stickers
- mostly unmolested
- armrest rear seat with ski bag
- clean title, quick and easy transaction

The bad:
- typical later model de-contented IX coupe (no heated seats, comfort seats, manual sunroof, no pop-out rear windows)
- A/C engine compartment bits missing. I'd swap the compressor anyway, but not I need to find the A/C compressor bracket, hoses etc.
- came only with studded snow tires..
- crack in windshield (which I knew about)
- brilliantrot color code (not my cup of tea for an IX coupe)
- total shit respray in some calypsoish color
- brilliantrot bumper doesn't match the respray color
- missing trim, parking lights, fogs etc.

Plan was to swap over all the mechanical bits and sell the Lach IX coupe. Not sure what I'm gonna do yet though. Not feeling the love for the replacement car yet.