Beater 325e revival Project - no e30 should be left behind

[gnmzl]

Thanks guys, it really has been harder and more time consuming than anticipated, but seeing results is really satisfying. Having said that, progress is slow, but I am making progress which is important. Kind of tired of preparing for putting in the floor, but in this line of work, preparation is key, so I'm trying to keep myself motivated to plow on. And yes, getting the undercoating off is such a task on its own, I found out for myself it's not that annoying if I strip a portion each day and first work my way around the areas that I need to work on next. Kind of like a strategy game, if you'd like, haha.

So, being on the subject of undercoating, while taking out the donor floor, one of the bolts holding the bracket for the brake line and fuel lines wouldn't come off, so it was time to take it out. The sheet metal around the body nut looked kinda sus, so out with the wire wheel and viola - RUST.
That's what it looked like before wire wheeling.



Luckily, the same location on the original floor was not rusted, by magic. So cut it out and prepare to fit it onto the donor floor.



Cut, fit and weld in (that went surprisingly fast)



Back side with some control welds over the areas with not as good penetration.



Ground down and some primer on it. Sorry for the bad photo.



Made another repair on the section which is over the cross beam connecting the trans tunnel and inner rocker. Not much pictures of the process though as it also went very quickly and I keep forgetting to take pictures.

Side from the bottom



Side which faces the cabin



Another very small spot, which I didn't cut out but just welded onto.



And another spot right behind the last big patch I put in.



Finding rust around the captive nut for the fuel/brake line bracket made me dig around the other ones too and sure enough, that is what I need to deal with next. Already drilled around one and remembered to take a pic.



That's all for now. Hopefully I'll have some more soon, despite the freezing cold weather.
Until next time.

[ZEKTI]

I hate rust too. Good progress!!

[gnmzl]

I hate rust too. Good progress!!

Thanks, man, feels like I've done a ton, but there is still a long way to go.

Did some minor stuff on Saturday. Getting tired of working on this floorpan to make it good again, so not too much work done. Having a birthday on Sunday also didn't help my motivation.

Anyway, progress is still progress!
Picked up where I left off with the stud and mounting point situation for the brake and fuel lines. Removed the rotted out ones and made the ones from the original floorpan fit. Used some souvenir magnets I had laying around.



View from the other side.



Welded in.



The welds cleaned up well, despite being too high. Had some issues with wire speed, not sure what's going on. Maybe it was because I didn't preheat the metal and it's cold already.



Other side cleaned up well too.



Replaced this flange for the seat mounting point, as I had to cut it while removing the floor from the donor car. It was in bad shape anyway.



While cleaning up the welds, I noticed a small bubble on the undercoating, took a screwdriver to it and .... what do you know - more rust....



Right now I'm contemplating on removing the whole undercoating in one go to see what actually remains to be done and get it done before the Christmas holidays.

Until next time.

[mjweimer]

I'm admiring your fab skills and feeling your pain. That rubberized undercoating is a blessing and a curse...I chased many of these small spots on my car for weeks.

Don't know that I would strip the whole chassis but it might be time-saver to do large areas known for rust. I say this because the factory e-coat under the rubberized stuff is robust and hard not to break through when wire-wheeling/grinding...and it would take some serious time to prep, prime, and paint the whole under-side.



MJ

[gnmzl]

Happy New Year, r3v!

I'm admiring your fab skills and feeling your pain. That rubberized undercoating is a blessing and a curse...I chased many of these small spots on my car for weeks.

Don't know that I would strip the whole chassis but it might be time-saver to do large areas known for rust. I say this because the factory e-coat under the rubberized stuff is robust and hard not to break through when wire-wheeling/grinding...and it would take some serious time to prep, prime, and paint the whole under-side.



MJ

Thanks man, yes exactly. That's why decided to poke around known bad areas, wire wheel where the undercoating is obviously failed/crunchy and leave the rest alone. There is no way in hell I can do a better job than the factory so would like to save as much as possible of the OEM stuff.

I had was a lonely B-day thanks to lockdown, but the boys got me a nice complete e30 trunk tool kit, which they noticed was missing in every one of my e30s. Not only did they go through the trouble of hunting every piece down, but they also polished them as good as they could.
That warmed my heart, really! Here's what it looks like.



Now, onto the main character in this thread. The lip at the back side of the floor was looking too pitted and thin to be left alone.



Decided to repair it as it is a simple shape, which was quick to make.



And also quick and easy to weld in



Ground down as flush as I dared

[img]https://i.imgur.com/FEpM9wt.jpg?1[/img]

Back side wasn't too bad, so took down the most protruding welds and edges.



Started taking off the undercoating from the front half of the floor and took a closer look at the big tin cap of the rear section, which was used to drain the paint on the production line. Didn't look that bad from the underside, coat peeled off the protruding parts of the cap, but they were solid despite some surface rust.



A quick poke with a screwdriver from the cabin's side revealed a different truth.



Off with the cap and the sealer, forgot to take pictures of the rot, but here's one of the already repaired drain hole.



And from the bottom side.



Quite happy with how it turned out. Got an OEM replacement for the cap too, it was surprisingly cheap at 8 euro.




Now is the time for some facepalming. in the previous post, I showed how I managed to repair the mounting points for the brake and fuel lines and was very proud of myself.
Weeeell, now I tore them off.
Because I remembered (yes, had forgotten) I want to put in a modern day ABS system in the car, from an e46. Which requires an additional brake line, as this ABS uses one for each wheel, not like the original one in the e30, that uses one line for both rear wheels.
Having realized how I wasted time, made the quick executive decision to act immediately and replace the original threaded mounts with the required studs in the correct location for the e46 mounting hardware.
Onto pics.

An overview of what I had previously made with the mounting hardware I wanted to attach. Note there isn't enough space to attach the hanger to the original thread.



Out with the grinder and welder and soon enough



Cabin side



Furthest back mounting position



Cabin side view



I did these in big patches, because I saved the original ones in case they are needed for another e30 in the future. Currently doing welding repairs on TWO of my mates' e30s and another one is in the waiting list. I guess people like how I mend e30s.

And how the mounting pieces for the lines attach to the floor. Very pleased with the result.



Did two more up front, but only have the view from the cabin for some reason.



So, with this sorted out and the majority of undercoating gone, started to fit the floor to the car. Unfortunately, it has twisted from all this moving around and flipping over and of course from all the welding. This made things quite difficult, but managed to have it fitted. Started cleaning up for the welds when I found more rust on the car, where the bracket for the heat shield is attached. Exactly the same as the passenger side, so should have seen it coming. Naturally, this halted my enthusiasm and took a brake from this.

Something not welding related - I've always loved the look of the police cruisers' steelies and caps in the US. Since the plan for this car to be on steelies, this was the perfect opportunity to mimic that look. Spent about a month looking at caps from many makes - LADA, Trabant/Wartburg, Moskvich, Opel, Mercedes, FIAT, etc. Then I remembered, there used to be a steel cap offered for e28s. Luckily found a set in Germany for a very good price (they are not mint, but in really good condition).

On the e28, they are offered with a specific 14 inch wheel, which worried me - could that mean they wouldn't work with another wheel, say 15 or 16 inch? My desire is to run 15s with meaty tires, so was hoping for the best. From what I could tell in the pictures, they use the wheel bolts to attach, not the wheel itself. So a deal was made and just before New Year's Eve I got these.



One of my mates' e30s is sitting on 15 steelies from an e34 (5 lugged already) and was begging me to test fit them



They mount solid, but are not flush with the wheel, about 2mm apart. A small rubber strip will fix that.
Needless to say - I love how they look!

Let's finish this post off with some other news.
Just before Christmas, a friend sent me an ad about a car he knew would interest me. So naturally, I had to go and buy it.

Here it is, it's a fully operational, running and driving (and donuting and drifting and burnouting) donor car, it's only on the trailer because it's unregistered.



What made me buy it was this lump



It is NOT for the car being repaired in this thread though, just wanted to share.

[gnmzl]

Hello R3v,

Despite slacking on updates, I've been working on it like crazy for the past year. Can't believe it has been that long actually.
Pictures on my phone were piling up and I always thought I'll just drop a huge pic bomb update "one day".
Joke's on me - my phone died recently and berried all of them with it, got annoyed and stopped taking pictures after that, but some guys pitched in and sent over whatever pics I sent them over the months.

I'll try and update the story chronologically and insert some pics along the story.

Here goes:
Last update on here was that my motivation was getting thin for this project. That was because getting better with the welder lead to the fact I didn't like the previous work I'd done on the car. Also, that floor I spent almost a whole month restoring wasn't very good when I looked at it - so full of patches I might as well have repaired the one on the car.
FORTUNATLY some good deals popped up and I ended up buying two other donor cars and a separate set of doors, hood, trunk and sunroof panel.
One donor car provided a whole MINT floorboard, with the exception of the corners in the feet of passenger/driver and a small random hole, and a presentable rear axle assembly.
Another donor car provided a straight rear panel, rear valance, power windows for the front and power sunroof plus a very desired complete AC assembly for a six cylinder e30, which is rare over here.
Selling off the other stuff from the parts cars didn't bring me too much money and I didn't break even, but did good enough to call these acquisitions a bargain.

At the time, the wonderful world of invisible weld repairs had started to interest me a lot, so naturally I started over and redid all of the work previously done, making it as good looking as possible. Ripped off the passenger side floor as a whole as well and replaced everything as one unit. It wasn't actually that bad, the tough part was getting all the creases to line up.

Caved in and disassembled the whole car - glass out, everything out, including the engine. Look at how dirty and oily that MF is



Removing the sound deadening in the engine bay uncovered a big surprise which wasn't visible from the inside.



Cut out a piece from one of the parts cars and made it fit. Overlapped at the top because it was the easiest thing to do. Sealed it off good after that.



And welded, plus welds finished as best as I could.



Went back and redid the firewall piece at the driver's footwell too, but no pics of that unfortunately. Here's a shot from the outside instead. There was a hole above the gearbox too, revealed after removing the deadening.



At this point, the floors were ready to go in. It took me about a month (!!!) to make them fit correctly and welded them in over a weekend to avoid warpage. The result was very good, but only have pics of the finished and painted product.

If you know where to look closely, you can see where the welds are. Super proud of that job.




On this pic we can see I had already made the holes for the AC tubes on the transmission tunnel (used a template but still a bit off unfortunately) and also for the side blinkers which were required in some countries like the UK and Italy. I smeared BMW OE seam sealer on the factory spots as well on some of the welds I did just to be safe, using a special 3M gun to do that (a buddy working in auto collision lent me one)



Here's a shot of one of the corner panels I made




Next was the rear quarter panel and valance, unfortunately no pics, apparently I hadn't shared with anyone the progress on that. I was in a rush to finish it too, because I had a deadline to meet - the car was sent to a frame machine to have the small impact damages front and back pulled, which turned out with great results! I wouldn't be able to tell the car has had an accident if i didn't know already!
After the frame machine, I had the car painted despite I didn't want to. It just was too many different colors at this point and would be a pain to pass tech inspection.
We agreed to only have the roof, rear quarter panels, valance and rockers painted. The doors, hood and trunk I bought are supposed to be the same color, so with the intent to keep the beater look, I only had these panels painted.
BUUUT then the car sat outside the workshop for a while and someone keyed the left side. THEEEEN a bunch of exhaust pipes fell onto the left side and dented the quarter panel and both doors. AAAND it picked up quite a lot of scratches and small dents just from moving around the shop and/or working on and around it.
Not mad though, it aligns with the beater theme anyways.

Put in the wiring harness along with the wiring for the power windows and sunroof, added an extra wire for heated mirrors through a switch and some other stuff. Next was putting in the headliner, so that glass can be reinstalled.

You can see in this picture that I went a bit overboard with dynamat. This car has always been loud in terms of road noise, no surprise with all the holes, so this time around I want to make it a pleasant cruiser.




Turned out good enough, I screwed up the corners for the sunroof ofcourse but that's fine




Time to blow the HVAC apart and give it a clean, plus replace all the nasty foam with fresh stuff



Put it in and install the dashboard.



A random shot of the car - you can see how I tried to repair a flaw in the newly acquired door. First time around it was perfect but then the bondo made a weird reaction with the filler primer and fell apart. Second time around I just half assed it. The car is already 5 lugged in the front and a pair of new billies were installed along with some H&R spring I already had, they used to be on my e28 and my white e30 before that.




As you can see, I strayed a bit away from the super budget oriented build, but it is still a very affordable build.
Things are going slower than I wished at the moment, but progress is still being made.
What still needs to be sorted out:

- Finish up AC installation
- Brakes, currently non existent
- Fuel tank, fuel lines, fuel delivery
- Rear axle install
- Fix front quarter panels
- Fix headlight wiring and add AC wiring
- Finish interior bits - sun visors and check panel trim, rear parcel shelf and speakers, some other small pieces

AND of course! The engine needs rebuilding. Still haven't touched it, it sits on a cart. Plans are to rebuild it after everything else is done.


Hope you enjoyed this overdue incomplete update.

[Reichart12]

This has to be one of the most involved rust repair jobs on r3v. Keep it up!

[rms]

Wow, nice job!

[ethirty-eric]

1st post.. Subscribed. Great metalwork.

[mjweimer]

Good work takes time and you clearly are doing some seriously good work with the rust repair. I also like this idea of the dog dish hub caps from the 5 series...seems like you have wider wheels on the front now?

[gnmzl]

Thanks guys, it really was a TON of work, but the satisfaction justifies it. Also, people are now queuing up to have their e30s de-rusted by me, which is flattering. I may start a separate thread for other people's cars or just continue here, we'll see.

Good work takes time and you clearly are doing some seriously good work with the rust repair. I also like this idea of the dog dish hub caps from the 5 series...seems like you have wider wheels on the front now?

It's actually a plain 7x15 et20 steelie from an e34 with a 195/65/15 tire. It was a spare so is still nice and shiny. The 5 lug kit we made brings it out about 10mm in total, which is very close to the 7x15 et12 wheels I previously had on the car.

I had some stuff done over the weekend, but of course didn't get any pictures, lost the habit I guess. I'll snap some tonight.

[moatilliatta]

Good to see you keeping at it! Looks like the body is starting to come together!

[efficient]

Where did you get the headliner material? Is it difficult to install?

[gnmzl]

Good to see you keeping at it! Looks like the body is starting to come together!

Thanks, I keep finding small areas that need attention, but the heavy lifting is done and that is the best feeling in the world.

Where did you get the headliner material? Is it difficult to install?

I removed the original headliner and brought it to an auto upholsterer. She made a precut headliner out of thin vinyl with about an inch extra material all around to make up for error and shrinking over time using the original headliner as a template. We got it right on the second attempt, here it is laid out on my e28's hood, only picture I could dig up.



Installing is fairly easy, this is my third headliner install and I use a total of 96 money clips to keep the ends wrapped around the edges. In terms of glue, contact adhesive works best for me, the kind you brush on both surfaces and leave for about 15 minutes, then press together firmly. What is important is to make sure the two metal springs that hold the headliner are really good in place without play before you start stretching it. I always start with the rear windshield, then both rear sides, putting the money clips tight together without any spacing. When I do the rears, I leave it for about 3 to 4 hours so that the adhesive cures enough to be able to take out at least half of the clips and reuse on the front sides. While doing them, I stretch out the front windshield portion with 4-5 clips to hold it in place roughly where I want it to be. When the front sides are glued on, the front windshield is next. I wait till the next day to do the sunroof as the last part of the install and it is the most nerve wrecking too. Still haven't figured out how to do the corners correctly, but getting there. This time around I cut the material that wraps around the roof and under the sunroof rails every inch and a half and used the pieces to tug in the direction I want the headliner to smooth out. Can't really describe it, maybe next time I need to do a video or picture tutorial.
Last step is to feel around behind the headliner and carefully make holes for the handles, dome lights and rear blinder hooks if you have them.
Oh, the spongy material behind the C-pillars always falls apart when you take the headliner out. They sell only one side and I had previously used two of those to make the other side by cutting and glueing together. This time around I just used a thick heat/niose insulation foam with adhesive tape on the back to cut out both C-pillar forms and it turned out pretty well.



Over the weekend, I removed the subframe yet again to weld in the reinforcements, which I had laser cut. Cut outs weren't a perfect fit, but nothing a few minutes with a grinder wouldn't solve.
Brushed on some rust preventative paint, looks worse in person but will do the job. Not too concerned about detachable parts at this point.



My buddy produces these fixed camber plates. They are useful if you want to compete in a stock time attack class over here, because you are not allowed to have camber adjustment. These are however legal.
Not that I want to race the car, but some additional camber over the stock settings one is welcome. On a stock ride height e30 with stock suspension, they translate to -2 degrees upfront total camber per side.



To install them, you need to punch out the stock studs and bolt the plate in their place with some washers and nuts.



Next I threw together this sketchy bracket and painted it even sketchier. It's for the mk60 ABS from a late model e46 that I want to convert the car to. So, if I want to make the brake lines, I need to know where the ABS unit would be - a sketchy bracket will do and it can be remade after the fact if need be.



It puts the ABS unit right between the air box and the shock tower. This picture shows whet it would look like from above.



Also took a quick snap of a small mod I made while working on the inner rockers.
I always wondered why BMW decided to have the sunroof drain in the rockers, relying on these tiny holes to drain out of the rocker. I wasn't going to have all the work I did ruined because of that, so I punched a hole in each pillar and drove the sunroof drain out. When the fender is installed along with the fender liner, is it both protected and capable of draining the water safely away from the body of the car.



Hope you like it.

Next on the list is add some fuel hardlines and brake lines.

[gnmzl]

Hi r3v,

yesterday eve I was looking at a buddy's e30 and realized I missed something. Since all my e30s are with manual racks, I never thought of the power steering fluid reservoir placement. So, while the wires to the relays may be extended, I am hesitant about moving around hydraulic fluid hoses.
So the ABS unit needs to be in another location, hence I made a new bracket



Which places the ABS unit beneath the brake booster. There's enough room to have the wiring for it and the tubes routed and the fuel tubes (which I hastily installed have enough space to put the fuel hoses on.



Just have to add a hole for a rubber bushing that will attach onto the small bracket for the brake pressure regulator. It will be obsolete after the e46 ABS install. Then some welding, grinding and paint should do the job.