My 1988 320i Touring Project: Ambitious but Rubbish

[Roadrunner]

Before taking the touring in to the shop, the carpet desperately needed to be addressed. The entire driver’s side foot well was soaked in coolant, and there was no way to properly clean it up and assess any damage below without removing the carpet. Removing the carpet involved first removing the front seats, seat belt mounts, centre console, shift boot and knob, e-brake handle and cover, kick panels, clutch stop, gas pedal and gas pedal stop, and pulling the sides of the carpet out from underneath the trim pieces. This DIY was helpful. Then, after some deliberation about whether I was crazy enough to take out the dashboard, the carpet was carefully cut as close as possible to the heater core and pulled out. Check out my new minimalist interior:



To restore it to a (temporary) driveable state, all that was required was to bolt in the front seats, reattach the seat belts, pop the clutch and gas pedal stops back on, reattach the gas pedal, put the shift knob on, and put my all-weather floor mats back in place to protect the floor. It sounds like a longer list than it really is. And after that, in between working on the car and driving it (the touring is my daily driver after all) it was only really the seats that were in the way each time.

With the carpet out of the car, the coolant was rinsed out and the carpet was left to dry for a few days. Then I gave it a thorough vacuuming and cleaned the areas that were still dirty with carpet cleaner and a scrub brush. All traces of the coolant are gone, and the carpet is the cleanest it’s ever been since I’ve owned it.

As expected, there was a pool of coolant on the driver’s side floor underneath the carpet. I soaked up the coolant, vacuumed the floors, and wiped them down with a Simple Green and water mix. It was good to see that, other than a few obvious problems, the floor was in solid shape.

The factory-installed tar on the floor of the front driver’s side was cracked and saturated with coolant. It was easy to peel it off so that I could clean up the coolant under it. I put the red drain plug part back in and threw the rest away.



After peeling back some rubbery, painted sealant on the floor that looked rusty, I found a rust hole in the corner – not surprising, since there was so much rust in that area on the exterior under the fenders.



On the driver’s side firewall, there was another big section of rust that punched right through with the slightest bit of pressure. Any idea what could have caused this weird rust hole?





Since I can’t weld new metal onto these areas myself, I might get these areas fixed at the shop as well. There were a few areas of surface rust that I will treat later. The area around the gas pedal is not too bad. I will get to that coolant leak soon – almost there!



I pried up the tar from the back driver’s side as well, which was partially soaked with coolant. I’ll try to get the remaining bits off with gum remover or something later. This section looks really clean in terms of rust.



The stereo installer (previous owner) put the CD changer under the driver’s seat (and an amplifier under the passenger’s seat), crushing both of the rear heat ducts. He also drilled into the floor to do so, with all of the screw holes now rusting.



On the front passenger’s side, there was also significant rust under the factory sealant along the side by the outer corner. I scraped away at it and left it as is for the time being to get an opinion on fixing it at the shop.



The back passenger side section had one rust spot that I will take care of soon:



I’m now deciding if I should take out the rest of the original tar for the sake of balance / completeness, and figuring out what to replace it with (probably Dynamat).

With the touring in the shop for a week now and still no word from the insurance company, it seems like it will be quite some time before I get it back. So in the meantime, to alleviate my withdrawal symptoms, I'm getting everything set for the next round of projects. :razz:

[Roadrunner]

Interested on how much that front 'cab corner' rust repair will cost...

I'm hoping to find that out soon. The touring is in the shop right now to get the areas damaged in the storm repaired, so I've asked for quotes on any areas in need of major rust repair as well while it's there.

[15Michaeljoseph]

Interested on how much that front 'cab corner' rust repair will cost... my car has the same rust, and i basically did the same temporary fix.

Sent from my XT1064 using Tapatalk

[Roadrunner]

Continuing from where I left off, now that the old fenders were off, it was time to address the rust on the inner fenders.



The areas with minor surface rust were cleaned up with a wire brush, prepped, then sprayed with Tremclad to slow any further rust development. I'll be oil spraying these areas after the paint is done.

The worst areas by far were at the bottom corners between the wheels and the doors on both sides of the car:



It took a while to clean out all of the debris and flaking rust:



Bonus picture – a honey bee from our apiary stopped by to check out what I was working on. She must have been desperate to investigate an image of a flower on a rag. :|



The rust holes were prepped and coated with POR-15 to at least slow down the rust until I’m able to get them properly repaired. I may end up getting this area fixed when I get the fenders painted.



The backs of the new fenders were coated with POR-15 for rust prevention. It was nice to see the pristine, shiny metal on the new fenders compared to the badly deteriorated old ones. I pried the black trim pieces off of the old fenders, which I'll reattach after the new fenders are painted.



Finally, it was time to put the new fenders on. I needed a hand to get the new fenders seated properly – they needed a fair amount of pushing and prodding near the door and the front grill area to snap into place. Then it was just a matter of following the previous steps in reverse. Since the original putty under the hood attached to the fender had to be removed, that area was sealed back up with clear Automotive Goop.



With the bumper back on and both new fenders on, some of the missing or unusable hardware on the inner fenders still had to be replaced. By that point, I was too lazy to jack up the car yet another time.



I can’t wait to see what the touring will look like once I get the fenders painted! :) Next up: removing the carpet to clean up the coolant leak and examining the condition of the floor.

[Roadrunner]

The next project on the touring was replacing the front fenders, another project that was long overdue. The fenders we ordered from BMW were on back order and as such took quite some time to arrive.

If you look carefully, you may see a small amount of rust on the driver’s side fender...



There are a few spots on the car that were poorly touched up before we bought it - the areas were not properly prepped before they were painted, and the paint had started flaking right off. At least I was able to get rid of one of them on this fender:



I followed this DIY guide for removing front fenders. I was reassured that I could do this job myself in a few easy steps.

Step one: a) remove the screws from under the hood. Got it. The part that was not mentioned in the DIY is that if, like me, you’re removing the original fenders, they’re sealed with putty that has been hardening for almost 30 years and needs to be chiselled out before you can access all of the fender bolts under the hood. Here’s one side with the putty removed:



Step one: b) (optional) Notice that a mouse or chipmunk has chewed up something in your engine bay that looks important. :puppy: Mentally add it to the mounting list of items to address later.



Step two: remove inner plastic fender. Obligatory PITA for this step: Some of the pieces of hardware on my car were so badly corroded and falling apart that they had to be decommissioned. Luckily, we live close to a scrap yard with an E30 that had the hardware I needed. I also learned that it’s possible to remove the inner fender with the wheel still on the car, but it’s much easier to do with the wheel off, which means I also had to learn how to jack up the car and remove the wheel at this point. Here’s the removed inner fender (can you tell we live on a dirt road?):



Step three: remove the two inner fender bolts. I had to use the longest socket extensions I could find to have a hope of reaching these. Just to make sure this step wasn’t too easy, I ended up finishing this part of the job on one side at night with a flashlight.



Step four: remove lower fender bolt. I wasn’t sure if I did this step correctly, because there was so much rust at the bottom of the fenders I was removing that parts of the fender were falling off in chunks:



One bolt at the bottom of the fender was so badly stripped and rusted that it seemed impossible to remove (it turned out to be the same on both sides). I tried countless types of screwdrivers, pliers, Liquid Wrench, PB Blaster, praying, swearing at the thing – nothing helped. I asked for help and the problem was solved at last. The solution: cutting a new notch in the screw head with a Dremel cutting disc, making it possible to easily remove the screw with a flat head screwdriver.

A pro tip I was told about from a retired armourer on a firearms forum: whenever he had stuck metal fasteners in a firearm in his shop, they would use tincture of iodine, a formerly well-known solution that apparently works far better than the commercial stuff out there today. All you do is soak the fastener thoroughly with tincture of iodine and it will pop free easily 24 hours later; however, if you leave it on for longer than 36 hours, it will transform into a thread locker and rust the fasteners together permanently. A few old farmers confirmed that they used to use it all the time, but it’s hard to find these days. I’ll file that away for next time.



Step five: remove the bolts behind the plastic bumper trim. Do not forget the washers on one side when reattaching this part later, realize that the bumper doesn’t line up properly, and have to redo the whole damn thing.



Step six: remove the bolts on the lower front edge of the fender, which requires removing the grill. I feel like I got off easy on this step, since it only took a few seconds to remove each grill.



Step seven: remove the fender! Yeah!!



More coming soon...

[Roadrunner]

Thanks for the reply! :)

In his defense, it doesn’t seem like it will be that easy in this case. From what I understand, since my car doesn’t have AC, it’s likely that it has a heater core that sits much farther back than in E30s that came with AC, and it would hit the steering column instead of just sliding out. The options he explained to me to remove the heater core are to either remove the dashboard, somehow remove the “unremovable” steering column bolts, or carefully cut open the heater core box. Here's a thread from someone who chose the "C-section" method to remove the heater core in a non-AC E30.

I also have to find out what type of inlet pipes I need (aluminum or plastic) so that I can order them. I just found this guide that shows how to determine the part I need which should help.

[bangn]

wouldnt your first job be to do the heatercore?

sounds like your other half is making excuses about it, nothing really to think about.
Buy a heatercore
Buy 4 O rings

Its held in with 4 screws plus 1 screw for a clamp on the metal lines, undo an electrical connector, take the two hoses off in the engine bay and pull it out being careful not to spill any coolant.

thats it. They are a bit of a PITA to replace however, at least they are in RHD cars. because of the weird pedal box setup

[Roadrunner]

My first job on the touring was going to be installing cup holders. With no functioning heater and no AC, I figured that being able to have hot and cold drinks in the car without risking spilling them all over the place would be one of the quickest and easiest ways to improve the driving experience. Mechanical expertise required: a pulse. Seriously, all you need to do is press fit the cup holder into the centre console. I figured even I couldn’t screw that up. Here’s my beautiful new E30 cup holder from GearSwitch:



Unfortunately, it got held up at customs for quite some time, so by the time I got it (spoiler alert) I had already torn out the interior of the car to work on some other things, so that job would have to wait. Fast forward to when I removed my centre console, and I realized that I never would have been able to simply press fit the cup holder in: my car had a cassette holder in the centre console which needed to be removed, and the cup holder was not designed for that version. I’m probably going to glue the cup holder in with Automotive Goop and shim it inside the console to keep it stable.

The second job I decided to tackle was replacing the window crank handles. One of them was broken in half, and two of them were missing the screw cover caps. Mechanical expertise required this time: using a screwdriver to remove one screw. Can’t get much easier than that. The only problem was that the new window crank handles I ordered from BMW didn’t come with the screw covers, which was the main reason I ordered them. *sigh* Well, #*@%. You can’t win them all, I guess. At least the broken one is now fixed.

Next up, the front wiper blades were in need of replacement. While I was at it, the wiper arms were rusty and chipped, and the caps were faded as well, so they got removed, sanded down, primered and spray painted back to a matte black before the new wiper blades were installed. Here’s what they looked like before:



After:



The antenna on the top of the car was also looking worse for wear, so it got the same treatment. Before:



I ordered a replacement for the rear wiper blade, since I was already replacing the front ones and the back one was worn out. Upon inspection, the splines inside the rear wiper arm were shot, so that will need to be replaced. No wonder it hasn't functioned properly since I’ve owned it - it drops below where it should stop and hits the paint. Also, there’s a problem with the rear washer fluid tank that I’ll have to figure out later once I wrap up some of the other projects I’ve started. Add it to my list of failed projects. Actually, I prefer to think of them as “on hold.”

Finally, a slightly more ambitious job, since I’d exhausted my list of the easiest to accomplish tasks by this point: replacing a cracked taillight. I could take care of a problem that would quickly improve the appearance of the car while stopping water from pouring in and doing more damage. Replacing the taillight itself was actually easier than I thought.

The problem (I know, you probably saw that coming) was that the previous owner had a stereo system installed with the subwoofer tucked away into the access panel right in front of the back of the right taillight (the very tail light that happened to be broken) - a great spot for it, as long as you never have to change a light bulb. The subwoofer installation was packed in with Dynamat. As it was a hot day, the Dynamat melted into sticky tar that got all over everything when I unsuspectingly removed the access panel:



The clasp to open the access panel is now broken…



…because of all the goo covering the back of it:



No idea what to do with this whole mess:



On the bright side, I now have a crack-free rear taillight (just ignore the other problems I’ve unveiled in the process ):



Coming soon: replacing the front fenders and removing the carpet to clean up the coolant leak!

[Roadrunner]

Meet my 1988 320i Touring. I’ve decided to start a thread to document my progress on gradually restoring it to its former glory. The goal is not to make it perfect, but to improve it for my personal enjoyment of it as my year-round daily driver, and to keep it in good shape so that it will be able to stay on the road for many years to come. I’m sure there will be plenty of laughs and mishaps along the way as I try to figure everything out. Comments and suggestions are welcome!



A very brief background: The car has been in Canada since it was imported from Germany a number of years ago. The previous owner made a few changes to the car, including having it lowered, a custom stereo installation, and a new exhaust with a Magnaflow muffler. Otherwise, not a lot has changed over the years. It seems to be in fine shape overall for a car of its age.

I’ll admit: my decision to start working on the touring started as a joke. Usually my other half takes care of our cars, with several classic BMW projects of his own at any given time that he’s either intending to keep long term or fix up and sell, and my contribution has historically been to stay out of the way and remain supportive even when our front yard starts to resemble a used BMW dealer’s lot. (The touring was a car that he had originally intended to flip, but we liked it too much to see it go and we knew we’d never find another one like it, so we got rid of my previous car… but that’s another story.)

The most pressing issue with the car since I’ve owned it has been a serious coolant leak from the heater core. I kept hearing that he would fix it, as it would be too expensive to take it into a shop to be repaired. I thought that driving and being a passenger in the car in the punishingly cold Canadian winter climate would start to persuade him to actually begin fixing it at some point, but... I was wrong. After the second year of freezing my ass off for the entire winter driving season, here’s how the conversation went down as far as I remember:

Him: You don’t really seem to like driving the touring.
Me: That’s only because there’s no heat in the car and I have mild hypothermia right now just thinking about it!
Him: Oh, yeah… I’m working on that.
Me: Umm, have you ordered the parts yet?
Him: Not yet. Trust me, you have no idea what you have to do to even *find out* what parts you need! First you have to… [Insert half hour of technical descriptions I don’t understand here]… and if you haven’t died from that part, then you have to --
Me: Alright! I get it. So, why don’t I just take it somewhere to get it fixed?
Him: That would be way too expensive.
Me: Okay… so… you’re still going to fix it someday?
Him: For someone who thinks it’s so easy, I don’t see you doing anything about it!
Me: Fine!! I’ll just fix it myself!
Him: …(pause)… HAHAHAHA!!! Go ahead.

Then, instead of backing out of that ridiculous statement, I thought, why the hell not?

Okay, so maybe I bit off more than I could chew with that whole idea, seeing as though my mechanical skill was, um, pretty much non-existent up until that moment. So I decided I would start small and learn as I went, with the goal of gaining the skills needed to figure out how to fix the heater core issue before my man fixed it. I figured out there could be a few possible outcomes:
a) He fixes it first. The job gets done faster than it would have otherwise.
b) We end up working on it together. We set aside our differences due to our love of E30s, the story gets turned into a romantic comedy, and the job still gets done faster than it would have otherwise.
c) I fix it first. Hell freezes over, and the heater core issue is fixed at last.
Either way, I don’t turn into a popsicle next winter every time I get behind the wheel and my car slowly gets improved. Everybody wins. :)

A few months ago, the touring was *this close* to being totaled in an ice storm (see my thread about that here):



While that incident did damage to the car that I’m still working on getting sorted out (more about that later), it also solidified my intention to fight to keep the car on the road.

Another short-term goal that I’m working toward is to get the car into decent-enough shape to bring it to Tedfest, a classic BMW show in Mississauga, Ontario (near Toronto), which is about a month from now.

More to come soon on my progress so far…