Ryan's Hennarot 318is (s54, slicktop conversion, MT2)

[rjmcdermott81]

mt2 arrives.


My friend also suckered me into buying his 911 that I painted the spoiler for... I needed something fun to drive while waiting on this dang e30

[rjmcdermott81]

Now, first step was to build up the valley where the roof/sunroof met. I didn't want to fill it with pure filler because I was concerned it wouldn't have the structural integrity required. I filled it first with "kitty-hair" or fiber glass filled polyester resin. Great stuff to work with.

[rjmcdermott81]

Next I attacked the rust. The only way to do it right was to cut it out and weld in new steel. I have a MIG welder but I didn't have any idea how to use it. I learned big time on this project.

Cutting the bad stuff out


New panels welded in. I had to do this on both sides.



Welds ground down and cleaned up:

[rjmcdermott81]

At this point I figured it would be just as much work to put the sunroof back together as to convert it to a slicktop. Naive. I think it would have been way way less work to just clean up all the rust and put it back together. But what the heck...I dove in.

I started by panel bonding strips of steel to the edges of the sunroof to make it fit snug. I used 3M 2-part panel bonding adhesive that they use in new cars to join all sorts of panels. Between this, and the snug fit I feel pretty good about it's longevity.


After tons and tons of grinding. I mean probably 10 hrs of grinding... I got it close enough to wedge it in.



Bonded in with panel bonder


I filled this gap with steel wire and panel bond

[rjmcdermott81]

Last piece was the roof. This is when I took the headliner out and discovered just how bad the roof was. Nothing too bad, but rust all over between the sunroof cassette and the roof.





Eventually I decided the only way to fix the rust 100% was to pull the sunroof cassette out. This was a huge PITA. Drilling out all the spot welds, cutting through all the glue.

[rjmcdermott81]

I scored some stitched seat covers from the forum for the front/back

[rjmcdermott81]

Painting the front valance.




Here you can see the oil cooler mounting

[rjmcdermott81]

On to the front of the car. My fender from ebay...when I started to block it I realized it had been painted before and the body work wasn't stellar. In places I had grind out all their body work and build it back up but it was worth it to get it straight.

[rjmcdermott81]

I'm working from easiest to hardest here so I can learn as I go. I was able to hammer and dolly the back panel out pretty good. Just needed some filler to straighten it all out.

[rjmcdermott81]

Doing a panel at a time, doing the body work and then sealing with PPG epoxy primer. I started with the trunk lid and the inside of the trunk. Just a bit of surface rust here and there in the trunk where the paint scratched.

[rjmcdermott81]

Starting to investigate the rust bubbles a bit here. At this point I'm still thinking it's probably no big deal

[rjmcdermott81]

At this point I joined the VIP membership at learnautobodyandpaint.com and started to learn more about bodywork and paint.

As a first test my friend asked me to repaint the spoiler on his 911 because the paint was cracking a bit. Brave man... I screwed it up several times (solvent pop, fisheyes, etc.) but it was small so I was able to redo it a few times and learn. This gave me confidence to really dig into doing my car myself.

[rjmcdermott81]

The minute the car was running I decided it was too ugly to drive around. I took it to the body shop that painted my last e30 and I didn't get a clear price but it sounded like it was going to be 7-8k. And that was before I knew about the roof rust.

So I figured....well....why not try to do some of the work myself.

Stripping the car down. You can see I've replaced the fender with one from ebay and the trunk with a spare that came with the car that was still covered in a bunch of dings:






Some obvious problem areas - rust bubbles on the roof, jacked up door from someone knocking the lock through, and the back was pushed in slightly under the left tail light.

[rjmcdermott81]

Getting the exhaust all buttoned up. I scored a NOS racing dynamics valance and had the exhaust fitted to that. This will have to be dealt with later since I switched to an mt2 plan, but damn it looks good.

[rjmcdermott81]

Starting to button up the wiring, brakes and coolant system.

Squeezing the harness against the firewall was really tough. One member ran it directly behind the block between the engine and firewall but I'm concerned that will be prone to wear and tear over time. I ran it above the valve cover as you can see here:




You can see that I don't have much to work with. I can just get the e46 ECU plugged in in the glovebox. Eventually I may extend some of the wires but I didn't want to modify the harness early on before I worked out all the kinks:


Extending the MAF wire is necessary. I used marine connectors everywhere and it was all very easy








I used a 2002 brake booster but the attachment fork for the pedal came up short. Rather than cut and weld a new piece on I wanted to keep the integrity of the existing booster. I had a local machine shop cut the attachment you see here:


Once I tested fit they welded it in place for extra measure:




I will say...the 2002 booster is much much smaller than an e30 booster but it was still very wedged in. Getting the air intake on was a big battle.

I used a VAC adapter to run the e30 temp sensor and a secondary temp gauge


Here you can see the coolant system buttoned up

• Mishimoto radiator
• e30 early model coolant reservoir
• 2 x electric puller fans with a relay wired to the ignition - (I had to cut the nub off the water pump)