JackBenny's 1991 318is Project

[Simon S]

Yay !! :up:

So looking forward to seeing this one come together..

[bejbis]

Looks great Jack. Can't wait to see it going. I just finished my adapter harness. I hope it works

[jackbenny]

Thanks guys. I got some more pictures last night and I'll try and upload them tonight. I'm sad I couldn't be there but we will be reunited soon.

As far as the other bits received, I'll say that there will be some tasteful accents with a slightly more modern material.

[jackbenny]

So I got the remainder of pictures and I'll go ahead and post them though some will be repeats. There will at least be a progression of what happened.

The car was taped off and new undercoating/rock protection was added. I wanted the protection on there because, 1) I like it and 2) It helps hide the flaws on the rear valance.







This valance really was a miserable part of the body work. I'd guess 80% of the bodywork was in this one spot...and its still wrinkled. The good news is that it will be hidden by the bumper. All of you guys with straight rear valances count your blessings!



That's quite the colorful wrapping eh?



The front valance was touched up as well since we ground some of the texture off trying to reshape it. I look forward to getting it back on the car so the front end will begin to take shape.



Redneck ventilation at its finest...



There's a whole lot of money on the table.



Let's lay down some paint.























Looking Good but need moar gloss!











Still like this pic a lot for some reason...



I'm really glad I stuck with white.





The bumpers and is lip still need to be painted as do all the shadow line but the bulk of the car is ready. In february i will go down and put all the panels back on as well as my new headliner (provided kevin emails me back!) and all the glass. So hopefully by march it will be back home and we can get that s52 purring.

And maybe some pictures of the new toys if I can get my wife to spare a moment and take some pictures. ;)

[jackbenny]

Looks great Jack. Can't wait to see it going. I just finished my adapter harness. I hope it works

So do I! I want to hear when I show up to McAllister's next month to finally meet all you guys!

[ck_taft325is]

Nice, JB! No orange peel (that I can see in the pics) which is ALWAYS a blessing. Looks amazing. Can't wait to see that thing running!

[jackbenny]

Nice, JB! No orange peel (that I can see in the pics) which is ALWAYS a blessing. Looks amazing. Can't wait to see that thing running!

It's got a bit of orange peel in there but with all the wet sanding and polishing it'll be nice and shiny.

I really wish i was back home so i could play with it!

[Huff]

Man.. I might have to head over where ever you show this thing off. It would be cool to get a side by side photo with your car and mine.

[jackbenny]

Man.. I might have to head over where ever you show this thing off. It would be cool to get a side by side photo with your car and mine.

Did your wheels get in yet? I wants to see the purdy!

[sonnyqm3]

You said it needs more gloss. I use PPG paints at my shop and there clear is decent. I would recommend to try out the Auto Glass clear. It a great clear and gives the paint a very nice gloss.

BTW, your build thread is awesome.

[sonnyqm3]

It's got a bit of orange peel in there but with all the wet sanding and polishing it'll be nice and shiny.

I really wish i was back home so i could play with it!

From my experience the orange peel is usually from the clear or maybe the type of spray gun you use. still an awesome build.

[TwoJ's]

It's got a bit of orange peel in there but with all the wet sanding and polishing it'll be nice and shiny.

I really wish i was back home so i could play with it!

Okay, now that you've gone through most of the process, I'd like to ask you a couple questions... How many man hours do you think were spent sanding on the car -- including body work, blocking pre-primer, after primer etc.? Do you think you'd ever do a project like a respray again?

I ask this because if you remember, I recently did pretty much the same thing to my car. I had quite a bit of little dings to repair -- one bad one that was below the rear license plate and above the bumper. I did 95% of the body work, and since I was new I would say I did every single spot at least twice, if not more before I was satisfied with the result. Then we sprayed primer, blocked it, found a couple dings I missed, sprayed primer again, blocked it again, and then had to block/cut/polish/wax after paint. I don't even want to know the amount of time that I put in to it, and I can say with relative confidence that I will never do a respray myself again.

Anyways, it looks like it turned out well for you. I know you haven't seen it in person yet (I think at least), but do you know if there is any dust that settled in the paint? I'm curious because I set up an elaborate makeshift booth in my garage, and cleaned absolutely meticulously and still had dust in a few spots.

And it's hard to tell from the pics, but your orange peel doesn't look quite as bad as mine was. I hope or your sake that it's not as bad, because blocking with a minimum of 1200 is a slow, disheartening process. BUT, the light is at the end of the tunnel! Once you get it blocked and do that final pass with the high speed buffer, you will be so satisfied with the result.

Also, a separate thread for the e21 would be great. And if you haven't found a solution yet, I would just say if it's hard to find, just make your own linkage for the carbs.

Good stuff Josh, let's get some pics of it being assembled!

[jackbenny]

Okay, now that you've gone through most of the process, I'd like to ask you a couple questions... How many man hours do you think were spent sanding on the car -- including body work, blocking pre-primer, after primer etc.? Do you think you'd ever do a project like a respray again?

I ask this because if you remember, I recently did pretty much the same thing to my car. I had quite a bit of little dings to repair -- one bad one that was below the rear license plate and above the bumper. I did 95% of the body work, and since I was new I would say I did every single spot at least twice, if not more before I was satisfied with the result. Then we sprayed primer, blocked it, found a couple dings I missed, sprayed primer again, blocked it again, and then had to block/cut/polish/wax after paint. I don't even want to know the amount of time that I put in to it, and I can say with relative confidence that I will never do a respray myself again.

Anyways, it looks like it turned out well for you. I know you haven't seen it in person yet (I think at least), but do you know if there is any dust that settled in the paint? I'm curious because I set up an elaborate makeshift booth in my garage, and cleaned absolutely meticulously and still had dust in a few spots.

And it's hard to tell from the pics, but your orange peel doesn't look quite as bad as mine was. I hope or your sake that it's not as bad, because blocking with a minimum of 1200 is a slow, disheartening process. BUT, the light is at the end of the tunnel! Once you get it blocked and do that final pass with the high speed buffer, you will be so satisfied with the result.

Also, a separate thread for the e21 would be great. And if you haven't found a solution yet, I would just say if it's hard to find, just make your own linkage for the carbs.

Good stuff Josh, let's get some pics of it being assembled!

You know Jordan, I've been trying to calculate how many man hours we've put into the car. Each trip we had 3 to 4 people working on it and I did a bunch of prep before I dragged it to Louisiana. Probably a good 3 to 4 hundred hours. Believe it or not aside from that rear valance it was quite theraputic. I could afford to take my time because it isn't a daily so when ever I got frustrated, I could just walk away.

As far as the paint, my uncle is quite a talented shadetree painter. This is his third car and he keeps improving. It was cold when they painted so they used an activator rated for 60 degrees i believe, it was the lowest temp available for that paint system. I think this helped. According to my father there were two tiny runs and a few fuzzy particles and that was it. The orange peel is not too bad, i think the camera makes it seem worse than it is. The good news is that my wife enjoys wet sanding so that may help the burden of finalizing the finish.

Will I do another respray. Its funny you ask. After my father's 2002 gets completed (we bring it to the barn in March), my wife wants the E21 resprayed the same color. There isn't much work to do to it so I don't anticipate blowing it apart to the same degree I did the 318 but it had a cheap respray and she wants the car to stick around for a while. who am i to argue? :p

I figured out how the carbs work and just a modification or two are need to fix the existing linkage. I felt stupid once I figured it out as it is rather clever. I'm hoping work will calm down so I can get some of the maintenance out of the way before the baby comes.

I've got a trip scheduled in february to go and install my new headliner from kevin chinn, and some other parts. In march when we bring the 2002, we will assemble to e30 and i will take her home.

when i get back, i'll take some pictures of the goodies i got as well as some interior ideas i have for some feedback.

too bad its so damn cold here in hamburg that i cant hit the salvage yards!

[jackbenny]

Cluster Foxtrot

With the cold weather and laughable "snow storm" we received this weekend on the gulf coast, I decided to spend some quality time inside the warm house and work on my instrument cluster. I had performed some work on my original cluster, adding trim rings, replacing the SI board, changing the odometer gears and painting the needles. But the speedometer never worked and the tach started working intermittantly.



About a year and half ago, I acquired a supposedly working cluster. It was in a bit nicer shape than my original cluster so I decided to transfer over all the good parts and repaint the needles.



The first step was to take apart the original cluster in order to raid it for parts. There are plenty of write ups out there for this and they are all great.



I had a brand new SI board in that cluster so I pulled that bad boy out.



Success!



I now focused my attention to the trim rings I had installed. These are the brushed aluminum kind and I picked them up off ebay a couple of years ago.



They eventually popped out with some persuasion.



The cluster was disassembled further to get the odometer gears and to take a look at the tach.



The other cluster was also disassembled in the same manner. Note the fact that this cluster has both of its mounting ears. The trim rings were reinstalled on the new cluster.





As I took apart the new cluster further, I had some difficulty taking the speedometer out. hmmm, this cluster has a plug that my orginal cluster didn't have. Could this be the source of my non-functional speedometer?!?



With the speedometer removed, I began work to transfer the new odometer gears to the new cluster.

All the good odometer gears removed from the old cluster.



And all the gears removed from the new speedometer. The new gears are not compatible with that brass nub so you have to remove it. I used some wire cutters I had laying around and snipped it off.



Then the new odometer gears were installed on the new cluster's speedometer.





I had a choice of two colors for the needles: red or orange. I decided to paint one of the old cluster needles to see the difference. The wife liked red, but I preferred orange.



The taping of the needles began. I used paint pens this time to see if it produced different results. Sadly, it seems those pictures didn't upload last night so ...



....to be continued...

[e30guydownunder]

That green plug you have pictured is the plug required for cruise control. The cruise plugs in there to get power and a speed signal.