Door Skins, day 1

I never got around to writing last week's blog. On Saturday night we attended the 50th anniversary concert of the Hawaii Gagaku Ensemble, and Sunday was taken up by a long bike ride. It's been busy.




Last week was unusual in that the shop was full to overflowing. My E9 was overshadowed by a row of trucks.





Smoothed out the Epoxy Filler applied to the RH corner last time.





Underside of LH grill opening after grinding down the excess POR-15 from the fiberglass patch. To be filled in with TECHNIFILL.





This is to remind me to work on the RH side.






RH corner after shooting with POR-15 Etching Primer.






The bump in the middle of the curved is a weld seam from when the car was made, or old repairs. Cannot get that any lower.






Last thing done was to apply TECHNIFILL on the underside of the LH grill opening.


It's been a couple weeks now since I started looking for door skins. So far the most promising source has been Classic Heros, an English shop specializing in BMWs. Hey, they use an E9 on their web site, so they must be okay. I got a nice reply from Barney Halse saying they probably have them in stock, but he was out of town on vacation. I worry that the shipping will exceed the purchase price.








Now the the nose is just about done I decided it was time to make a big step forward, so today I focused on getting ready to fix the doors. Step 1, remove the inner panel on the RH door. Remove the latch handle, then the arm rest. The book described clips around the edge, but mine had screws. Typical old BMW shop manual.








Found the connector for the window motor in a recess behind the kick panel. Also found a lot of light surface rust, which I will need to treat. The two hot wires were easy, just a couple of push-on terminals connected to a large plastic block. The ground wire was another story. First, it was loose. The connector is a ring terminal attached to the frame with a screw. The screw has not been tightened, possibly because it is next to inaccessible, but it is now rusted solidly in place. I ended up cutting the wire ... I would never put it where it was. This might explain why I had a ground problem with the door windows.






I lost a lot of time fiddling with that ground wire, but I was determined to get the door off. I call it "visual progress." I ran into a stone wall when I discovered the FWD upper hinge bolt does not have a standard hex head. It looks like a Torx head, but my Torx tool did not fit tight enough to turn it. That was my day.