BMW Rallying Forum

New thread for a new car, collected the new shell today with the cage and other bits, will get busy ordering suspension components tomorrow, give it a quick was and start stripping her down. its a povo spec 1989 316 in lachssilber with a mere 70k on the clock, been dry stored for a number of years so it also comes with extra thick dust paint protection and best of all the rare rot free option, bar the scuttle just starting to go on both sides and a tiny patch on the inner sill, there isnt a crusty bit on it. It wont be quite as fancy as the last shell but the moving bits should be just as good. Watch this space for updates!

Just put your grinder and welder in the bin and you'll be ok..........

Dont worry steve, its safe for the next couple of days at least as the welder and grinder are still at scotts shed after last weeks effort to save the dizzie rascal

Good work! I need to pay you a visit for a catch up soon mate, as this is a new car, does it come with new enthusiasum to get it done!?

fair play, i wish i had half the motivation you seem to have! if i'd just been told i couldn't use a car that had so much effort put into it i'd spend a week kicking the cat round the house!

Believe me the motivation is pretty dismal at the minute, its a hard push to make myself do it otherwise I may aswel give up.

Got the Car stripped down, wiring has been thinned out to its bare essentials, now awaiting some spiral conduit to finish it off but that can wait until some of the auxilary circuits have been wired in closer to the end. After alot of cursing the sunroof came out. All the other ones which iive done in the past have been so rotten that the fell out, this one on the other hand was factory fresh and needed much careful persuasion with the heat gun before it let go.

Tigged in a filler plate today, another annoyingly fiddly job but its done now. My mate helped me out and scrapped out all the tar sound deadening off the floors so now its up to me with the thinners The engine bay has also been relieved of all its unwanted brackets and threaded nipples, so next step will be the fabrication by the looks of it!

bit of progress to report, pushed the car to one side of the garage so that I had a bit of space to work and set about repairing the rot. I should have known better after the last shell what lurks inside a seemingly small hole in an e30 sill, needless to say after half an hour with a grinder I was left with bit of a gap to fill and a strong feeling of de-ja-vu! Note to anyone looking for an e30, this looked absolutely fine from the outside and underneath and even had the 'jacking pad' fully intact, only with e carpet removed and a screwdriver would you find horrors like these

Here's the hole with the first section of floor grafted in, sorry but in my frustartion i didnt get any photos of the 'before' part.



Same again, make up a plate, hit it with a hammer a few times and stick it in



Inside shot



Lip welded on the bottom



90 percent of the outer sill was saveable after a good cleanup



The other 10 percent had to be made up



Stitched in and plugged along the bottom seam



Trimmed and linished



Now on to the scuttle.... take a grinder, cut the brown death out, make a plate, tack it in and curse continually for 3 hours about how the metal appears to resemble cardboard in that area and how BMW have deposited half their stck of sealer in the corner....



Got there in the end



Now that the rot is out of the way on the left hand side, I can tackle the rot on the right hand side, luckily that is solid in the floor area apart from the scuttle. I will also remove the jacking pad for piece of mind on the other side. But before that I need to fit the sill stand holes.

top welding skills

Good work mate! I take it you returned to mig for that?

Right been busy the past week, got the sill stands finished



Got the rollcage feet welded in, cut off the saddle brackets for the single door bars and ordered tube and brackets for removeable X door bars, thats on tomorrows to do list!



Suspsension parts arrived from the USA, the lolipop bushes are something i did just for convenience, I couldnt be bothered making compression struts again so we'll se how they feel. The beam bushes are delrin and raise the subframe 12mm apparantly, but theres room to go a fair bit higher with a couple of tweeks so may go up another 10mm withought having to notch the chassis rails at the back. The top mounts are from poland and seem OK, the bearings supplied are of questionable quality but this is easily rectified and the cost is offset by how cheap they were.



Some brand new group N bilstein 300/300 inserts came up cheap so I snapped them up instantly, was going to go for the AVO 2 ways but we'll see how these work. They should have decent re-sale value and I can always change them later if it doesnt work as expected.



Dug out some spare struts and welded some conversion tubes on with the tig. These tubes were from demon tweeks and a bit pricier than the rally design jobbies, but they are a much tighter press fit and the top hats are better machined so im happy I went for these



Struts dummy built, the long 600lb springs are just for the dry build. I have ordered some 500lb shorter ones as I've got some 50lb 4" helpers to go with them. Going to wedge the castings to the tubes and weld on some ARB brackets tomorrow

Do you want to put my engine in the blue one coz their both fucked..........

I like the way you have 2 sets of 80's sunglasses to go next to your parts for your 80's car.

Did you buy a cage notching tool in the end?

Tris-m3 wrote::lol: I like the way you have 2 sets of 80's sunglasses to go next to your parts for your 80's car.

Did you buy a cage notching tool in the end?

Very spesh.........

Nah mate never bothered, a bit of measuring and a grinder does the job.

Steve, I need rid of the damn thing, not to clutter the shed with more crap

struts look well, raybans by any chance?