Project Armo "330i" M-tech 1

[Skarpa]

All I can say is you should be extremely proud of your work and this is what loving a car is all about , this is a huge inspiration to us car guys and gals, definitely my favorite project car I have read.

Wow, thanks for your kind words!

[Mkcustoms88]

All I can say is you should be extremely proud of your work and this is what loving a car is all about , this is a huge inspiration to us car guys and gals, definitely my favorite project car I have read.

[Skarpa]

Nice progress and I really like your idea of only placing the sound deadening material where it is needed. Most folks don't realize a well placed piece of this material will dampen an entire panel (and save money and time vs. covering the entire panel).


For my E21 restoration I used this insulation on the entire firewall within the engine bay:

https://www.deipowersports.com/products/thermal-barriers/extreme-heat-barrier

I used the self-adhesive version and it installs similarly the sound deadening material you used...a small roller presses it into place. I don't know if you can get this exact product overseas but you should be able to find something similar.


Your idea for using a panel welding product to set the body screws seems like it will work well - great idea.



MJ

Thanks! And thanks for the tip on the insulation.

[mjweimer]

Nice progress and I really like your idea of only placing the sound deadening material where it is needed. Most folks don't realize a well placed piece of this material will dampen an entire panel (and save money and time vs. covering the entire panel).


For my E21 restoration I used this insulation on the entire firewall within the engine bay:

https://www.deipowersports.com/products/thermal-barriers/extreme-heat-barrier

I used the self-adhesive version and it installs similarly the sound deadening material you used...a small roller presses it into place. I don't know if you can get this exact product overseas but you should be able to find something similar.


Your idea for using a panel welding product to set the body screws seems like it will work well - great idea.



MJ

[Skarpa]

The car is coming together little by little. I went around the whole car tapping on every panel and added pieces of sound deadening on all the panels that sounded "boomy". Hope that brings down the noise slightly. I have no interest in plastering all surfaces with soundproofing.






After that I went through all the threaded holes in the body with a tap to make sure there's no paint and emptied four spray cans of rustproofing oil and wax in all the body cavities etc. Then it was time to move on to more rewarding stuff ie. bolting stuff on.



The firewall heat shield needed to be slightly reshaped where I made extra space for the exhaust manifold. Also, the prefacelift and facelift seem to have a slight difference in the position of the body screw above the exhaust manifold so I had to drill a new hole to the heat shield. It would surely be better to have it farther away from the exhaust manifold so if I had noticed this in time, I'd had moved it when doing body work.


The firewall insulation has some model year differences as well. Apparently the facelift has body screws at the side edges of the insulation, next to the wheel wells as the insulation has holes for them. The prefacelift does not. Still, the insulation is held in place quite all right without them except on the driver's side where I needed to cut it up quite a lot because of moving the brake booster. I'll need to come up with some additional fixing there or remake that section of the insulation completely. I also need to come up with some insulation for the passenger's side where I cut off the battery tray. If you have tips of some good insulation products, I'm eager to hear. The specs are as follows: Thickness of about 10 mm. It should be self adhering and the top side should be neat without large manufacturers logos etc.





I bent the rear brake line into shape except I still need to drop the rear axle to get the rear end into correct shapel


I also fitted the battery accessories in the trunk.


There's a minor setback as even the new wheel well panel doesn't seem to to have the body screw for the main power cable cover and I didn't think of adding it wihen doing body work. I sure don't want to start welding now so I'm thinking of welding this together and gluing it in place with panel adhesive:


I'll need make a few more right away. The underside of the fuse box was so badly rusted that I didn't even realize that there was supposed to be two body screws above the driver's feet for a relay bracket. Although, at the moment I'm living a MIGless life as I neede to say goodbye to stuff like MIG, air compressor, engine hoist, mill and lathe when changing the employer. I'll need to borrow or rent a mig from somewhere. Currently all my spare money goes into the remaining parts purchases for the project so at the moment I cant buy a MIG unless I come by a good used one on the cheap.

[Skarpa]

So last week I picked the car up from the painter and started the assembly by gluing sound deadening to the body. I followed the original placement patterns. I scratched my head for a minute on why is there a hole in the sound deadening behind the throttle pedal. Then I came to conclusion that it's to prevent water seeping down from drivers shoe from creeping under the sound deadening and corroding the floor. There's also a water drain hole near the drivers heel.




I think I'll add patches of sound deadening to the panel behind the back seat. It feels kinda like a drum skin.

[Skarpa]

Paint looks great! I can't wait to see this start coming together. Hopefully you get a perfect day to get it home.


MJ

Thanks! This week it's actually great weather in Finland. Cold sunny days after a long period of warm rainy weather. Will pick the car up on thursday.

[mjweimer]

Paint looks great! I can't wait to see this start coming together. Hopefully you get a perfect day to get it home.


MJ

[Skarpa]

I switched the employer and my previous employer suggested that I use my annual vacation at the end of the employment since things are a bit slow. So I've had quite a lot of hobby time but nothing to work on since the car is at the paintshop. For starters I cleaned and organized the workshop and arranged a bit more working lights, tables and such and hanged some of my tools on the walls.



The shop is not my own and I'll probably need to leave it at summer so I didn't see too much effort in decoration but now It'll be much more comfortable to put the car together. Next I took pretty much all the parts to the shop, checked all the boxes, organized stuff better and went through everything cheking I have all the bits and parts that I need. I still found some things I need to buy. I also bought various tools, accessories and chemicals.






(I'll need to clean up that plastic inner guard)


I splayed out most of the parts one group at a time and checked side by side with the online spare parts catalogue checking that I have all the things I need. While doing that I bagged all screws and fixings related to the part group in question and wrote down the tightening torques where needed so it should be relatively quick to put together. (well, quick in relation to the normal glacial pace of this project, anyway) One of the air guide plates of the gas tank was cracked and I got a new one but it was in metal so I painted it black to match the other side while I painted some other parts.



For ages I've had a Walbro 255 lph fuel pump for the project. I wasn't worried about possible switching to E85 either because when I bought the pump the Walbro's stand was as follows: "Walbro fuel pumps are designed with components that prevent pH from being a problem, making them truly 100% ethanol compatible. This means not using copper commutators, for example." Later, Walbro has issued actually E85 proof pumps and the 255 is no longer considered E85 compatible. Some people have used them with ethanol for a long time with good results but I've also read about worse experiences. Replacing the fuel pump sucks so I decided to invest in peace of mind and replaced the Walbro with AEM's E85 pump.



Another thing that was nagging at me was the poor condition of the M-tech 1 front valance so when I was offered one in excellent condition, I went for it. The valance includes the bumber and most of the M-tech-specific trim and accessories and even the color is the correct so it was a lucky find. I'll just need to check it matches with the other parts.


Too bad that this valace didn't come with the brake air ducts. I've been missing the left one. I think they were NLA for a while and I've been trying to find a used one with no luck but they seem to be available again so I ordered a new one. Now everything is getting ready for the body to come home and the painter sent me happy news with perfect timing:







Now I'll just wait for a good dry cold winter day and get the car home and start assembling.

[Skarpa]

I got the car on wheels again. It's been a while since the last time.


I gave my little finger to sticker tuning.




The suspension color was inspired by the Team Jägermeister.





Now that the body was ready for painter, I had a look at the front fenders. The day I bought the car, a Mercedes driver bumped into the front corner bending among other things the front fender. Since then the fender has been bent. I just tapped it a bit into shape with a rubber mallet. I've had a straight replacement fender for quite a while but having a closer look at it, it had a lot of hidden rust. Especially in places where the metal overlaps and it's not easy to repair well. I decided to try and straighten the original fender which had only a little rust.





The dents don't show well in the pictures but all the faces from the wheel arch to the top of the fender were bent with a sharp crease going across them. After a while of careful tapping with various hammers and dollies the fender turned out surprisingly good taking into account that I have no former experience of panel beating. Half of the work was repairing the marks left by my previous crude work with the rubber mallet.



Both the fenders had a little rust at the rear end of the wheel arch while the drivers side had a rust hole in the front as well.













Then it was the time to take the body and the fenders to the painter. Damn, I lost by a few weeks to project Binky!



It was a good day for transporting with nice dry, cold winter weather. In return I received the separate parts with damn fine paint. (pictured in previous post) The paint is better than I dared to hope for with very deep red shine to it. 5/5

[rzerob]

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Every where we go.

[Skarpa]

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

[Skarpa]

Looking great

Nice.

Thanks!

[rzerob]

Nice.

[eternal24k]

Looking great