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Thread: Bullet Ride's E21 Restoration Project

  1. #1
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    Bullet Ride's E21 Restoration Project

    I wanted to start a build thread for this thing, partly to help motivate me to do work... because this project has taught me that body work is the worst and that I hate doing it lol, and partly because I feel it might be useful to help collect and document my thoughts, successes, and failures with the project as it moves along...with hopefully not too many failures . So lets get into it...

    This was the car when a local BMW fanatic sold it to a friend of mine back in 2013...

    tumblr_ot3691YcaE1wuk4k7o3_1280.jpg

    Other than the rear tail panel rust the car looked clean in the pics, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want it... I had almost bought an E21 the year before...

    tumblr_ot3691YcaE1wuk4k7o1_1280.jpg

    My buddy had some big ideas for it... but unfortunately space restrictions forced him to sell it, he knew I was interested, so he offered it to me for a price that I couldn't refuse. I went to go look at the car, it ran well...it started... it stopped... the rust didn't look THAT bad... so I bought it! Then it sat for a while we were building a shop. In late 2014 the shop was mostly done, and I was ready to start working on this thing...


    tumblr_ot3691YcaE1wuk4k7o5_1280.jpg

    For this project alone I'd say it was worth buying the hoist...

    tumblr_ot3691YcaE1wuk4k7o6_1280.jpg
    tumblr_ot3691YcaE1wuk4k7o7_1280.jpg

    In retrospect, if I'm being honest with myself, when I went to go look at this car I was looking at it through rose coloured glasses. I really wanted it, so I glazed over a lot of the rust when I was inspecting it. At first glance a lot the rust only looked like surface rust. The lesson I learned on this car is that a little bit of poking goes a long way... because once I had the car on the hoist and I starting poking around with a screw driver I quickly found that things were worse than I thought...


    To be continued soon
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 07-14-2017 at 11:24 AM.

  2. #2
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    Salivating. We don't get nearly enough photos of rust repair around here!

    I love it because it all makes me feel better about the condition of my own car

    (I've been getting my fix lately from this thread over at http://www.e9coupe.com/forum/threads...oration.23137/ )

  3. #3
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    So what was I really working with? You've already seen the rear tail panel rust...my guess based on what I could see is that at some point in the car's past it got rear ended it or the owner reversed into something at low speed that creased the panel slightly and cracked the paint allowing moisture to get in and the tail panel rusted out.


    In the trunk there's a bit of rot where the passenger rear wheel well meets the rear seat, fortunately the shock towers looked good...

    tumblr_ot36gdKkvf1wuk4k7o1_540.jpg

    Driver's side frame rail has a soft section that will have to be cut out and patched...

    tumblr_ot36gdKkvf1wuk4k7o3_400.jpg

    Driver's side foot well fell apart pretty easily in the typical E21/E30 rust zone and fender bottom had typical rot...

    tumblr_ot36gdKkvf1wuk4k7o4_1280.jpg

    Passenger side frame rail had soft spot as well and looks like it might have hit a curb or a something at some point as there was a pretty big dent in the leading edge of it...

    tumblr_ot36gdKkvf1wuk4k7o5_1280.jpg

    And passenger side foot well was same as driver's side...

    tumblr_ot36gdKkvf1wuk4k7o6_1280.jpg

    Driver's side rear jack point turned into a hole when I poked and scraped around it...



    Same thing again on the passenger side...



    The rear subframe, nice and crusty... mostly surface rust though so not a big deal to clean up...



    Front subframe... same as rear... nice and crusty...



    At this point I was a bit torn...I felt like I had bit off a bit more than I wanted to chew and was wondering if I should continue. I had done a bit of patch work before, fixing the floors on my E30, but never any real body work.

    I figured that I should at least try my hand at it and since the car was so cheap to begin with, it would be good candidate for learning how to do basic bodywork... so I soldiered on...


    Stay tuned
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 07-14-2017 at 11:31 AM.

  4. #4
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    I'm in the same boat. I plan on removing the front and rear subframes, having them blasted and rebuilding them with new bushings form Eurometric. Then I'll pull the carpet to tackle the bad floor pan spots. For me any cosmetic bodywork is last ion the list. Just want to make her safe and driveable. It'll just take time and if it's not your daily then no pressure. Subscribed!

  5. #5
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    So the tear down ensued with the usual protocol of bagging and tagging and taking pictures to try and remember where and how things go when it comes time for reassembly.

    I started by ripping out the seats and carpet. Fortunately under the carpet to floor looked to be in good shape other than the spots I already knew were rusted through...





    Then the tail lights came off along with the ugly, US spec diving boards. I decided at that point that if I'm going to be doing body work on this level that I should probably look into a Euro bumper conversion...



    Then some front end disassembly...



    The panel bonding goop they used on the front fenders was some pretty mean stuff. There are a few spots behind the fenders that need to be patched, but nothing major...





    And off with the hood, rad and headlights...

    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 07-19-2017 at 08:01 PM.

  6. #6
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    That looks scary. I was nervous about some minor floor pan rust on my sapphire blue car, but your car is on another level. Hopefully it teaches you a lot. I couldnt take a project on like that with the skills I currently have.

  7. #7
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    You know, a friend has a totally rust free '82 henna body here in Eugene which I'm sure you could have for the favor of freeing up the space. I don't know where "The Garage" is so don't know if it's practical or not but I do know from growing up in Minnesota and dealing with rust that you're never really done. "Scab-picking" was the phrase used then. The more you pick, the more you find that you need to keep picking.....it starts to get painful!

    An alternative is just to shop cl around here (most everything is rust free) and if you find something, have it shipped as a running car. I just paid $1200 to ship a car from Long Island to here. Seems like that would be money well spent compared to chasing rust problems unless the car is really something special. Glad to help if I you happen to find anything around here!
    Last edited by allan633; 03-09-2017 at 12:33 AM.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by allan633 View Post
    You know, a friend has a totally rust free '82 henna body here in Eugene which I'm sure you could have for the favor of freeing up the space. I don't know where "The Garage" is so don't know if it's practical or not but I do know from growing up in Minnesota and dealing with rust that you're never really done. "Scab-picking" was the phrase used then. The more you pick, the more you find that you need to keep picking.....it starts to get painful!

    An alternative is just to shop cl around here (most everything is rust free) and if you find something, have it shipped as a running car. I just paid $1200 to ship a car from Long Island to here. Seems like that would be money well spent compared to chasing rust problems unless the car is really something special. Glad to help if I you happen to find anything around here!
    "The Garage" is located in Southwestern Ontario in the cold, salty North of Canada.
    E21's are somewhat rare around here, probably because they've all rusted out and been sent to the scrappers.
    I certainly appreciate the offer, and would entertain the idea of seeing some pictures of this rust free body that could be had for a case of beer
    ...that's like finding a unicorn around here lol.

    Believe me, I've thought about what you've proposed more than once so far during this project... the next time I'm interested in a classic car project I'm flying your way and driving a car back

  9. #9
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    So seeing as the rear tail panel was the main eye sore, and because the car came with a brand new OEM replacement panel that's where I decided to start my bodywork adventure...

    Boot lid removed...



    Then I began wire wheeling the tail panel joints... and uncovering more rot along the way... or as Allan called it... scab picking ... but nothing major...








    I didn't really take detailed pics of the tail panel removal, it's pretty straightforward for the most part, it's just very tedious and you need to restrain yourself from being a ham-fisted brute because it's easy to bend things out of shape on these old, thin metal cars. It's mostly a matter of finding all of the spot welds and drilling them out. Once you do that and make a couple cuts with a cut off wheel you end up with something like this...



    Where the upper tail light frame meets the rear quarter panels the joints are brazed, so in order to get those bits out a torch was required.

    It was somewhere around this point where I received a package in the mail from Australia...



    I had been looking for a set of Euro bumpers for a while at this point and full sets were hard to come by. These ones definitely photographed better than they look in person. There are some dents and scratches and a couple spots that should be repaired, but overall not too bad, I suppose in the future I could send them out for R&R or just fix them as best I can myself and maybe paint or powdercoat them.
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 07-19-2017 at 08:07 PM.

  10. #10
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    Damn, you are getting right on it!! Nice!

    Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by allan633 View Post
    Damn, you are getting right on it!! Nice!

    Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk
    lol I wish!

    I've been working on this car here and there for the past couple years. I'm wanting to get the bodywork finished this year though, hence the build thread to help motivate me to do work and post updates.

    Right now I'm just catching you guys (and girls...if there are any) up on what I've done so far

  12. #12
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    Very nice, I am in the process of doing the same thing. I have floor pans, wings, and euro front valance and rear.

  13. #13
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    So what happened next...

    The OEM replacement panel that came with the car was a US spec tail panel. For those of you that know these cars, this is a bit problematic because US spec tail panel is different than the Euro tail panel in order to fit the shocks and the bigger bumpers.

    You can mount Euro bumpers to a US spec tail panel and it looks ok...



    But it doesn't look proper because there ends up being a big gap between the bumper and the rear valance... something like this...



    The easy solution would have been to just sell the US spec tail panel to someone else who needed it and buy an aftermarket euro spec tail panel from Wallothnesch... I was already ordering patch panels from them anyway. Unfortunately I was too cheap to want to pay more for shipping and risk having the panel arrive damaged. After looking at the tail panel for a while I figured that I should be able to make it work.

    Then more parts arrived... New front fenders, rocker patch panels and Euro rear valance side panels...all from Wallothnesch...



    After cocking about with the new parts for a while I got back to work. I decided to drop the rear subframe out because it'd make it easier to work on the under body... and because it was going to be torn down and refinished anyway...



    However I still wanted to be able to move the car around the shop so I needed to come up with something. A quick trip to the local hardware store and I came home with a couple of 1000lb moving dollies (one for the front end later). With the car stripped down I figured they should be more than adequate seeing as the car when assembled wasn't a whole lot more than 2000lbs dry anyway...

    A couple of measurements and some wood scraps lying around from building the shop and I came up with this...




    How is that supposed to work you might be wondering?
    Like this...



    Basically it clears the spare tire and rests on the frame rails. Works like a charm...



    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 07-19-2017 at 08:11 PM.

  14. #14
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    Are you going to shave the rear side markers to go along with the euro theme? I strongly considered doing it to my sapphire blue car since the lenses are cracked, but I'm not a good welder.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thecatmilton View Post
    Are you going to shave the rear side markers to go along with the euro theme? I strongly considered doing it to my sapphire blue car since the lenses are cracked, but I'm not a good welder.
    Yep!...Those things look ugly.
    If you look closely in the pics I wire wheeled the paint off around the holes

  16. #16
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    After that the front end got the same treatment.

    Once you drop an engine and trans with a hoist you can't go back, it's so much easier...



    The set-up I used to wheel it out from under the car...



    Success



    After some more carpentry I decided to start breaking down some mechanicals... anything to avoid doing body work lol



    After getting the old crusty exhaust manifold off I test fitted the 4-1 header that I bought from Tubular Automotive (the company that use to make the long tube headers for Bavauto). Should hopefully sound tasty with a nice cam, resonator and muffler...



    After making engine noises with my mouth into the headers for a while I got back to work and broke things down further...



    Then I went after the rear subframe...



    One beer later...



    Fortunately at the time I was working at a place that had an industrial sized conveyor media blaster for cleaning structural beams. A couple passes through and my sub frames came back in pretty good shape...



    After that I tried to tackle breaking down the rear trailing arms. The castle nuts... which I should have attempted to crack loose while the car was in one piece... even though I doubt I would have been able to... proved to be quite the challenge. I ended up making a quick fixture to hold them solid for some hamfistery...



    After copious amounts of PB Blaster and heat were used... and after buying a bigger breaker bar and shearing a 3/4 to half inch reducer I decided that the nut needed to be destroyed...



    We ghetto-rigged it onto a milling machine and proceeded to mill down the side of the nut...



    We milled it down until we were about two C-hairs from the threads, at that point a simple tap on the side with a cold chisel and we busted the nut. The process then had to be repeated on the second trailing arm
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 07-19-2017 at 08:22 PM.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thecatmilton View Post
    Are you going to shave the rear side markers to go along with the euro theme? I strongly considered doing it to my sapphire blue car since the lenses are cracked, but I'm not a good welder.
    Just cut two more holes and add front side markers for the real gray market theme



    I am amazed how rusty the bottom of that car is compared to how it looks from the front and sides. Progress looks great
    Last edited by hotdish; 03-13-2017 at 04:12 PM.


  18. #18
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    Getting back to the body work...

    After examining the rear panel weldment I found that the valance was a separate piece, so drilling out all of the spot welds allowed me to do this...



    And when combined with the Euro rear valance side panels it looked something like this...



    Not too shabby! It would just require a little bit... or a lot...of finesse to match everything up, a couple of patches to close off the holes where the bumper shocks would come through and then figure out the mounting locations for the Euro bumper brackets. Seems simple enough

    The rest of the tail panel seemed to fit in ok as well, the brazed joints on the rear quarters were a pain to carve all of the old material out of though...



    Then I wanted to see how the bumper would roughly fit up and get an idea of where the valance would sit, so I used the jack, jack stands and a few more clamps...



    This is what things look like underneath with the Euro bumper and the US trunk...



    And here you can see where the bumper mounting bracket sits, just a little bit past the back of the bumper. I figured that I could box off the frame rails where the shocks use to mount, weld an extension and tie it into the valance to give it some rigidity to help support the bumper...



    After that I worked on getting the top half of the tail panel fitting properly to tie the rear quarters together as they are pretty flimsy when the tail panel is cut out. Once I got it fitting to my satisfaction I tacked it in place and checked to make sure the tail lights fit. I also put the trunk lid and latch back on to make sure that it would align and close properly but never took a picture of that...



    So far so good at this point
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 07-19-2017 at 08:28 PM.

  19. #19
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    So after getting the tail panel welded in I started getting lazier at taking pictures.... so I am missing some details... but what I do have pics of...

    I had to do a patch on below the rear left light...




    I had to braze the joints above the tail lights... probably easy on perfectly clean steel... but a MF on 30yr old steel that's way to tightly shaped to prep perfectly...I got 'er done though...




    Then I closed up those ugly rear side markers...



    In order to execute my plan for the rear valance the trunk needed to be closed in. Some sheet metal and a bunch of spot welds later... and the boot lid makes a reappearance...




    Then I let the old girl get some fresh air on that booty while I gave the shop a much needed sweeping...
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 07-29-2017 at 12:14 PM.

  20. #20
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    Awesome work! I am doing a similar job on my car at the moment too.
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  21. #21
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    Nice work!! Keep going

  22. #22
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    Do you happen to know what the goop is called? I have to replace my front fender after I got hit on the passenger side. Have the new fender nice and painted, just need the goop to fasten it back on.
    "I'm not sure what's going on, but I object!"

  23. #23
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    I think that goop is called butyl tape...

    Max

  24. #24
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    Interested to see what you do to fill the trunk floor gap. I'm just now beginning to put the parts together to convert my rear to Euro... and I cant find a Euro trunk floor panel anywhere, NLA.

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  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Manny G. View Post
    Interested to see what you do to fill the trunk floor gap. I'm just now beginning to put the parts together to convert my rear to Euro... and I cant find a Euro trunk floor panel anywhere, NLA.
    You can see in the pictures above, I just closed it off with sheet metal as if it were a US spec trunk.

    There will be a gap between the valance and the back of the trunk when looking from the beneath the car.

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