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Thread: Bullet Ride's E21 Restoration Project

  1. #51
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    Soooo..... over the past month I've been picking away at the front end.
    I started by removing whatever I hadn't removed from the engine bay and doing some exploratory wire wheeling...








    Front fender areas needed some small patching...








    Ok... maybe some not so small patching...











    The frame rails needed patches in a couple sections as well...






  2. #52
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    Next I tackled the lower rad support, which was rusty beyond patching. Before I cut it off, just in case, I welded a brace across the frame rails... then sawzall'd away...





    The new patch from W&N looks like this...





    Unfortunately it's only a skin... no back bits where the rad mounts are...





    So I welded on a back plate and cut off and re-used the rad mounts...





    Little prime for a good time...




    Next up was the fenders. The after market fenders didn't have the best fitment. The driver's side was ok, and after a little bit of muscle I was able to get the fender gap between the door reasonable...






    Unfortunately the passenger side fender could not be made to fit properly. This is a picture from a while back before I had stripped the car down...





    That gap is gross...





    So since the original fender was still in good shape other than the typical rusty bottom, I cut the bad part off...








    And then...



    That's all for now!

  3. #53
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    I never did post these pics... the bottom corner of each door needed a small patch. They both basically looked like this:


    After cut and clean up...





    Cut patch to fit...





    Weld a little...





    Grind a little...






    Good enough for me!

  4. #54
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    So...Back from the dead... between being crazy busy at work for the past couple months and getting engaged I haven't had any time to work on the car. Fortunately I did have time to FINALLY find a local shop to do the final body work and paint on the car for a reasonable price.

    It was definitely a lot harder than I had expected. It seems as though body shops (around here anyway) don't like to do these sort of middle of the road jobs too much. It's either a collision shop that only wants to fix fender benders, because that's quick and easy cash, or a restoration shop that wants to do the whole car from scratch and will charge $15-20k for a paint job.


    The car is scheduled to go in at the end of April, so now I have a deadline to scramble and get all of the little details left cleaned up and get the car back on it's wheels!

    Since yesterday was a beauty, I was able to weasel the car around in the shop and turn it around to get the nose pointing out... and then spent the afternoon blasting the nose panel and the valance with a princess auto media blaster to help prep it for the paint guy (to help bring down the labour cost). The only reason it took the whole afternoon is because blasting requires lots of CFM. I have a 60gal compressor and I could get about a minute of blasting before the compressor would kick on and then I'd continue to blast for another couple minutes before I'd stop and let the compressor fill back up and then cool down for 5-10min.





    After having used it, I can definitely see how getting a shell blasted down to bare metal is worth it for big projects. You really need it to get into tight spots, and it it cleans it up really nice.
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 03-02-2018 at 10:07 PM.

  5. #55
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    really looking forward to more pics after blasting. thanks for the update Bullet!

    *congratulations on the engagement

  6. #56
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    When you say 300 gallon compressor, is this a typo? I am planning on blasting the engine bay of my car as well in the spring with a 30 gallon compressor. If you had trouble with a 300 gallon unit, my 30 gallon will be useless. Please also post more pics of the finished job.

  7. #57
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    Quote Originally Posted by EauRouge2002 View Post
    When you say 300 gallon compressor, is this a typo? I am planning on blasting the engine bay of my car as well in the spring with a 30 gallon compressor. If you had trouble with a 300 gallon unit, my 30 gallon will be useless. Please also post more pics of the finished job.

    Brain fart... thanks for catching that. Not sure why I was thinking 300. It's a standard 60gal single stage compressor.
    The blaster that I'm using consumes 23cfm at full throttle @ 90psi which is quite a bit. The compressor only puts out about 11cfm @ 90psi so there's no way for it to keep up or get ahead of the blaster.

  8. #58
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    So this old gal needed to have her expensive... rusty... euro front bumper fitted up just to make sure everything was copacetic before it goes off for paint...





    Since the bumper didn't come with any brackets... and because the euro brackets don't fit with the US spec front valance without cutting and welding... and because the only after market option I could find online was going for $200 USD... I set about making my own brackets for next to $0


    Taking a page out of the "tucked bumper" crew, I decided to re-use the stock bumper shocks which were otherwise garbage at this point. I carefully drilled a small hole into the shock while holding a rag around the drill bit to keep from getting sprayed when the pressure released.


    After draining and compressing the shock as far as it would go I chopped off the crimped end of the outer tube so that I could pull the inner tube out...





    In order to get the inner tube out I got a piece of scrap 1"x1" tube and tack welded it to the inner tube...




    Then clamped the tube in the vise and tapped on the outer tube until the inner tube was out...




    Repeat for the other shock, rinse them out with some brake cleaner and now you have two nice tubes to bolt back in...




    *Remove the O-Ring from the inner tube for the next steps*

    I slid the inner tubes back in leaving them sticking out a bit so I could grab them. Then I put the bumper on using the side bolts, and a jack stand and piece of wood to get the bumper approximately level and made sure the sides lined up with the wheel well as best as they could...




    Then I got a piece of 2"x0.125" flat bar about 7" LG and pre-bent it a few degrees, maybe 5 degrees if I had to guess. Then I clamped it to the inside of the bumper so that the mount hole was well covered and there was material all around the inner shock tube. While it was in there I marked the bolt hole and as much of the tube as I could reach with a marker.

    Then I took it off, lined up the tube with the marks and added a few tack welds to hold it in place...




    Put it back in the bumper and check that the angle is parallel with the profile of the front valance, adjust if needed...




    You can see that the plate is slightly rotated in order to get good coverage on the bolt hole. The square is where the stud goes through the bumper...



    Then repeat for the other side. Put them back into the tubes, put the bumper back on and make sure that where you marked the bolt hole still lines up and adjust if needed. Fun fact...you can even not pay attention and cut one of the inner tubes a different length and it will still work. Drill the holes and square them up with a small round file... or just drill oversize to clear the square part of the stud...



    Final test fit...







    Then for shits and gigs I put a few extra pieces back on... holy smoke it actually looks like a car!




    The only thing I'm going to do to finalize these is when I pull off the outer body I'm going to drill a clearance hole and weld a nut to it so that I can crank a bolt against the inner tube to lock it in place. It's pretty rigid as is, but the bumper might sag in the middle over time if the inner tubes aren't locked down. And when I reassemble I'll put the o-ring back on the inner tube to help keep moisture out so things don't get too rusty.

    That's all for now folks!
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 03-08-2018 at 10:51 PM.

  9. #59
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    Awesome thread, thanks for sharing all your progress here for us. It's good motivation for me to get going on my projects.

  10. #60
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    So with 3 weeks to go until the car goes into paint, I've been trying to tidy up all the little patches and things that I can do to make the job easier for the body shop.

    There was a small spot at the bottom corner of the passenger side A-pillar that was right beside the windshield that I knew likely crept under the seal, so I decided to remove the windshield to look at it...



    Shit...

    ... and to make things worse, as I wire wheeled the rust and paint away it became obvious that the previous body shop that painted the car had already "patched" this spot. I used air quotes because the patch was sitting on top and had been blended in with body filler. This means that it was likely still rusting beneath the patch.

    In order to fix it the dash had to come out. Not too tough, took about an hour and a half, but mostly because I didn't have any instructions to follow...

    Dash makes a good beer holder...



    However, with the dash now out...



    Shit!... What a hack job body shop that place was!

    After various levels of swearing and dirt kicking I got back at it and chopped out what needed to be chopped out in the corner...



    The pinch seam along with the contour of the A-pilar and cowl was going to make this a tricky fix. Short of having a clean section cut out of a parts car, there aren't any patch panels available for this area that I'm aware of.

    So I started looking in my pile of scraps to see what I had....
    Fortunately I still had the rear tail panel that I had cut out...



    Around the tail lights is a nice pinch seam, so using that I was able to get this piece...



    After a bunch of cutting and trimming and adjusting and more adjusting... and more adjusting... I had this little piece...




    And got it glued in...




    Then I filled in this part...



    But made a new piece to bridge the pinch seam...



    That bottom corner was going to be another tough spot... to make a piece with that bend and profile would be a challenge...

    ... back to the scraps...

    The corner of the tail light had a similar profile...



    Could work...



    Done! ... only took 7hrs



    Now to fix that hole in the middle. I suspect it's also got a patch glued on top from the previous body shop

  11. #61
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    Bummer that you found the rust but strong work on the repair so far!


    MJ

  12. #62
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    Damn, man! That’s truly impressive!


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  13. #63
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    Great work and progress! Following this post and looking forward to the finished product- inspirational!

  14. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by mjweimer View Post
    Bummer that you found the rust but strong work on the repair so far!


    MJ
    Quote Originally Posted by MortyCrock View Post
    Damn, man! That’s truly impressive!


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Quote Originally Posted by Bonsaibacker View Post
    Great work and progress! Following this post and looking forward to the finished product- inspirational!
    Thanks guys.... I'm almost there.

    Feels weird to think that in 3 weeks it's finally going into paint... 3 years of occasional evenings and weekends to get it to here. Hopefully it comes out the other end looking good

  15. #65
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    What are your plans for the drive line?

  16. #66
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    Quote Originally Posted by EauRouge2002 View Post
    What are your plans for the drive line?
    I've got an EFI M10 that I want to clean up and toss in, but want to do redo the harness and run megasquirt.
    Nothing serious to start, just a set of long tube headers, maybe a cam. I just want to cruise around in it.
    Down the road I'll probably want to slap a turbo on it... with all the turbo cars these days there should be a nice supply of quick spooling units for 1.8L sized motors readily available

  17. #67
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    So it's crunch time this week... car is shipping out on Saturday for paint.
    Last Saturday I finished up blasting what I could in the engine bay with my cheap princess auto gravity tub. It cleaned up pretty good, it's not perfect but it's way cleaner than it was and should hopefully help out the paint shop so they don't have to spend as much time cleaning it up...





    You may have also noticed that I attempted to smooth out the seam on the shock tower... top tip... don't try to weld the whole thing lol ...



    Sidebar...I also bought a bunch of gaskets and other random sh!t I'll probably need for the car from rockauto wholesaler closeout some legit deals... spark plugs for like $0.50 lmao...



    Then I bolted the front subframe back up to the car... thankfully it still lined up... I was lowkey worried after the car had been on dollies/hoist for 3 years with all the hammering/cutting/welding going on
    Then the steering rack and u-joint...




    Then the old, crusty front suspension went back on... for now...





    I cleaned and coated up the insides of the front fenders...





    Then bolted them back up and slapped the wheels on...







    Shit.. almost a car again lol.


    I was cleaning up and coating the rear wheel wells last night. Will work on putting the rear subframe back in tonight... might even be sitting on 4 wheels!!

  18. #68
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    Update:

    Stopped by the body shop today...bodywork is underway!

    Attached Images Attached Images

  19. #69
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    really good job, i'm looking forward to seeing painted. i am just starting the strip down of my 320 so this is a big help on where the rot is, i am the victim of rose tinted glasses as well, i keep finding more rot the more i look. keep up the good work, the ramps are awesome also unfortunately i don't have the room.

  20. #70
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    Stopped by the body shop again last night and it's almost ready to go into the booth, little bit of work left to do...





    The main reason I stopped by though was because he mixed up some paint and test sprayed the underside of the hood so I could make sure that the colour was ok...





    Opalgrun is a hard colour to photograph. In certain light it's almost grey, hard to catch that slight hint of green, but it looked pretty bang on to me. Looking forward to seeing the whole car sprayed in it next week!

  21. #71
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    You're in the home stretch now. I'm really impressed with how well you cleaned up that lower windshield cowl rust, nice job!

    Stancing is for drivers trapped in an abusive relationship of their own lives.

  22. #72
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    Quote Originally Posted by Manny G. View Post
    You're in the home stretch now. I'm really impressed with how well you cleaned up that lower windshield cowl rust, nice job!
    Same here.. I have an ugly looking spot in exactly the same spot and really dreading getting into it!

  23. #73
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    So I've been too busy the past month to get much work done on the project.
    I realized I forgot to post pictures of the car after paint. I'm pretty happy with how the paint turned out. There are a few spots in mostly hidden areas that could have been done better, but overall it looks great!








    In terms of work that's been done lately, I started cleaning up the gas tanks so I can refinish them and get them bolted up with some new fuel lines, pretty boring stuff... so no pictures of that.

    I want to install a late model E30 high pressure, in-tank fuel pump so that I can run a single pump and an E30 in-line fuel filter where the old external fuel pump use to be. I might have one kicking around in my parts bin.

    In the past week or so I started working on the dashboard... it was so cracked that I figured I may as well try and repair it... I couldn't possibly make it any worse than it already is lol. Worst case scenario there's a dash cover available for the E21's that apparently fits and looks pretty good for a reasonable price.

    Anyway... so I stripped all the vents and ducting off the underside of the dash...



    Then gouged out and sanded a few cracks to try a couple patches...



    I filled them with bondo glass, basically bondo with some fiberglass in it to give it some strength...



    After it dried I sanded it and it seemed like it should work out so I gouged out the rest of the cracks... yeah... pretty bad right...



    Then filled in...



    And that's how it's sitting in the shop as I type this.
    I'm going to head out to change a wheel bearing on the DD, then start sanding the dash and adding another coat where needed. Once it's nice and smooth I'll sand the entire dash and hit it with a couple coats of primer. I bought a can of duplicolor black vinyl spray paint... we'll see how that lays out and cures. If it's crappy I can always re-sand spray it with some other product.


    Stay tuned.

  24. #74
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    Looks great! Keeping the photos coming as you make progress!


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  25. #75
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    Summer has been pretty busy with vacation and family events, but with only a month until renovations start on my new house, I need to get done as much as I can on the car because my time for the car is going to be pretty limited for the next 6 months probably.

    Dash bondo sanded using various grits until smooth...



    After a couple light coats of primer it was looking pretty good...



    I sanded again after primer with some 400 grit (I think?). I wasn't able to find the vinyl texture spray paint at the local store, I know that they use to make it, but maybe it's not as commonly used anymore. So my next option was to spray some bed liner for some texture and then top coat with black paint if needed.

    I didn't get a picture of it, but I was having an issue with laying down a medium to heavy coat of the bed liner, I was getting bleed through where the bondo was. So then I sanded again and gave a good coat of sealer hoping that would help...



    As you can see from this pic... it didn't help... a light coat would go down fine, but there was something about a heavy coat that caused bleed through and the bondo would stand out (shiny).



    So after some more sanding I went with only light coats and eventually got the dash looking pretty good...



    Then cleaned all the ducting and re-assembled...



    I don't recall exactly how I got the dash out in the first place, but putting it back in was a bit of a hassle, maybe it was the 10 coats of paint that made it thicker lol... but it just seemed that there was no way to get it back in easily. Eventually I was able to wedge it back into place but it was a struggle...



    With the dash back in I worked on gluing the a-pillar vinyl back on, as well as the edge of the headliner so that I could re-install the door seals. Good thing I bought that mastercraft clamp set on sale at Crappy Tire...



    I also welded in a brace between the rear shock towers in anticipation of mounting the battery in the trunk and making a bracket I can bolt to the brace...



    After that I coat the trunk in POR15 and bed liner...



    I started cleaning up some of the trim work and re-installing. Here you can see the rear windows, bump strips and rear lights installed...



    In preparation for re-installing the brake lines, fuel lines, fuel tank... I removed the rear end, cleaned up the underside and worked on getting a fresh layer of undercoat on...



    I also removed the rear end because I got some tasty treats in the mail.
    BC Racing coilover kit and garagtastic subframe and trans mounts...






    Some more tasty treats showed up recently as well...



    I got this 2nd hand from a guy that was going to boost his E30, but it's brand new, never used. It's a MS3 megasquirt with the expansion card, universal wiring harnesses, and some other goodies I can use (crank sensor, TPS with adapter for 325i throttle body). After a bit of research I found out that some of the MK4 golfs have a 4 tower coil pack with internal igniters which is perfect because the MS3X can run that directly without any additional hardware. So I'll have to find some time to go to the wreckers and see if I can pull one, if not then buy one online. I still need to get a wideband O2 kit and a trigger wheel, but other than that I have pretty much all I need for the EFI now.

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