Sound Deadening Removal. YUCK!

This post is along time overdue. Work and mountain biking season have teamed up to dispose of all of my time. We had a beautiful weekend and I just couldn’t resist spending half a day scraping sound-deadening material out of the inside of my bimmer.

What a horrible process. I started with the floors in the back of the car. That was best done by using the dry ice method. I had three bags of dry ice that I set on different spots on the floor. After they’d been there a few minutes, I moved one and chipped out the sound deadening material from under it. Then I’d move the next bag and chip out what was under it, and so on. I probably would have done better with just two bags of dry ice. Three was overkill.

The part of the car behind the back rest of the rear seat was easier and harder at the same time. The dry ice didn’t really help here. I just took the scraper and scraped it off. The stuff was still gooey, but it came of pretty cleanly. It left some adhesive film on the metal, but I should be able to get that off with some goof-off and elbow grease. It scraped off pretty easily. I got both rear sections of floor done and about 60% of the seat back area. I still need to do the part of the wheel wells that poke into the cabin.

I’m contemplating taking the sunroof framing out. I read the article in Grassroots Motorsports about their spec E30 build and they said it was pretty easy. There are a few spot welds and a bunch of glue to be removed. I looked at the 2002 and it is close to the same. There are metal tabs that come out from the corner of the roof to meet the sunroof frame.

My sunroof panel is currently glued in place with Permatex adhesive silicone sealant. There are a few guide screws that press up on the panel from the sunroof frame. They were mostly there to hold the panel in place while I glued the sunroof panel in place.

Eventually I’m going to weld something in place to cover that hole. Right now I’m going to leave it glued. When I get the body sand blasted, I’ll make a new panel and weld it in. GRM just took a sheet of steel and riveted it to the roof. I’d like something a little cleaner than that if I can.

I’m hoping to get some more time working on the car this afternoon. I know tomorrow I’ll have much of the afternoon to work on it. With two more days of work I should be able to get all of the sound deadening material out of the car. Since both passenger side floor panels are going to be replaced, that should not be too difficult.

I’ll have photos up tonight or tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Pete

No news is bad news?

Sorry folks. I haven't had time to even LOOK at my 02, much less turn a wrench or beat a hammer on it.

I just started a new job (same company, new boss) and my learning curve is super steep. I'll get back to it when I get home from the Motherland.

Pete

Santa Brings me a New Starter!

I'm too old to believe in Santa. Sorry. Greg sent me a starter out of the kindness of his heart. It arrived yesterday. I'm hoping to install it tomorrow.

Life is good!

Pete

Rust control.

That's something I'm going to be doing a lot of with this car. Hopefully I'll get it under control soon. At the moment I'm taking advantage of the warm December weather to use chemical rust converter to "fix" some of the rust that I've got. It really doesn't fix it, but it helps make it so the rust problems don't get any worse. Who'd have thunk that we'd have 68 degree weather in December? What a strange winter we've got.


These are the before pictures. They're pretty depressing. There are two rust holes in the hood. The trunk is ugly as heck. They look a lot better, but won't be perfect until they're completely stripped, sand blasted and have some metal replaced. At this point I'm just putting my finger in the dyke. (Sounds kinky).


I've got at least one more day of warm weather before it gets cold. I'll probably top coat this stuff with some rust inhibiting paint that will keep water off. I'm aslo going to attack the rust on the driver's side quarterpanel. It is really bad and needs help bigtime. Once that is done, I need to clear out the carport of parts so I can push the car back up under the roof. It'll take at least three of us because this thing isn't moving under its own power.



I guess that's it. I'll have more info later today. I think I'm about to have a starter drop into my lap. :D

Later!

Pete

Lots of little things....

I had a busy week this week and didn't get as much done on the car as I'd like. It doesn't help that the days are so short this time of year.

I got most of the gas out of the tank. I can't really get more unless I pull the tank and dump it out.

With Christmas right around the corner, I don't have money for a new starter. The manual I've got has directions for how to rebuild a starter. I might give that a try and see if I can free it up a little. It might just be seized. It might not be burned out or worn out. It has sat for a while.

While the gas was siponing out, I removed all the external trim. What a freaking mess. I'm leaving the trim off, so I just tossed it. It wasn't in good shape at all. It looks much better with the trim off.

I'm probably going to work on stabilizing the bad rust spots on the outside of the body when I wrench tomorrow. It is supposed to be close to 70 degrees, so I can use a lot of the rust treatment products.

I got everything cleaned out of the trunk. There are a few rust holes at the back of the passanger side fender well. The spare tire well also has holes. I'll be cutting that floor out and putting sheet metal in. I'll put new framing in for the fuel cell, so that whole floor is coming out.

The bumpers are now off the car too. It looks so much better without those huge things hanging off the front and back. The newer 2002's in the US had these HUGE shock ubsorbing bumpers that were ugly as heck. They're not going to do much if an SUV plows into me anyways.

I know these are all little things, but it is nice to get them done.

Tomorrow I'll work on stabilizing rust spots on the outside of the body. I'm going to put the passanger seat in the driver's seat slot. I'll also pull the starter and see if I can free it up.

It should be a beautiful day tomorrow, so I think I can get a lot done.

Thanks for reading.

Pete

Holy floorboards, batman!

Well the interior is mostly out of the car at this point. I took the seats and carpet out along with as much of the other stuff covering the floor as is possible. That process went remarkably well.

I did find that much of the passanger side floor is missing. The car was parked with the passanger side slightly downhill and the sunroof leaked, so the water puddled there and rusted through over the two years that it sat at Tim's house. I'm sure it started earlier than that, but that those two years were the big problem.

The shot on the right shows the holes in the floor. A good stomp and I'd bust it straight out.

I'm very fortunae that it is possible to purchase new floors from Europe. I may decide to cutt the floors out and weld new ones in myself. I think that would be much cheaper and should work well in the long run. I'd be able to fab the floors up so that they had more metal to overlap and weld into place. That would also save me 95 Euros per panel (4 are required). I'd be able to spend that money on other parts that I can't fab.... like fenders and the front nose.

I may find that I cut out the floors before I have time to weld them up in order to get some rusty metal out of the car. That will give me the opportunity to evaluate how much the rust has gone into other parts of the car. I need to make sure that this portion of the frame rail is strong and that there's enough metal to weld into.

On the mechanical side of things, I got everything ready to actually start the car with 2 exceptions. 1) There's still 12 gallons of 2004 vintage gasoline in the tank. My guess is that it isn't going to burn for squat. My friend Beej said I could take it to his gas station and that they'd dispose of it for me. I'll do that on Friday.

2) The starter is seized. I get voltage to it, but the lights dim because the motor is completely frozen. I'll have to get a starter. One of the ECE guys hooked me up for a local source for one. Universal Auto Parts in Centerville has one in stock that they can sell me. I'll try and pick that up on Friday.

One last thing. I saw that BMW Classics had a rebuilt wiper motor on Ebay for sale at a price about 85% cheaper than new. I am going to jump on this and pick that up. That will give me everything that I need to put windshield wipers on the car. I'm more than a little happy about that too.

I guess that is all I have to update at this point. Thanks for reading.

Pete

Interior, Gas Gauge, Starter: Good news and bad news

Good afternoon.

Well I didn't get much time to work on the Bummer* last week, but I did get an hour or so today.

I stuck the battery in and hooked it up and got good news and bad news. The good news is that the gas gauge works!!!! The bad news is that it registerrs Full. That gas has been in there for at least two years. I was going to say that there's no telling what state it is in, but I'm wrong about that. It is going to be bad gas and I'm going to have to drain the tank. That means getting a few big gas cans and carting them to the waste disposal place this weekend. GGGGGGGGGggggggggrrrrrr.

I took the passagner seat out so that I could get to the back seat. The mechanisms on the front seat for folding forward is pretty much toast. I yanked the seat out and then gently took out the rear seats. Though dirty, the vinyl appears to be in perfect shape. I'll unhook that tomorrow and send it off to Greg on Friday when I get paid. :D

I also found an alternative ventilation port under the rear seat. The driver's side floor had been welded up and resealed. The passanger side was weak, rusted and had a 1"x2" hole in it. I'll weld that up when the time comes. For now it lets a nice breeze into the cabin.

I thought I'd see if the motor would turn over. No such luck. My guess is a bad starter or starter solenoid (sp). I didn't get a click at all when I turned the key. All of the interior lights dimmed like it was sucking amps. The battery is a brand new optima, so I'm relatively sure it isn't that. I'll read my trusty manual tonight and see what's involved in changing out the starter and its solenoid.

The rest of the carpet comes out tomorrow to survey the additional foot ventilation that might be around under there. I'll document what I find when I have a little light to photograph.

On the good side, I did find a 1979 quarter under the back seat. Thanks for reading. Pete Oh yeah...

I forgot about the * remark above. I was writing an e-mail the other day and tried to type "Bimmer" and it accidentally came out "Bummer". I figured that was Freudian, so until the car runs, its new name is "The Bummer". ;) I guess I shouldn't heap such bad karma (or carma) on the the little thing. I know it'll run when it is time for it to do so. Please don't mistake my derogitory names for my car for me not loving this thing to death.

Later!

Pete