A diary occasionally dealing with the restoration of a 1973 BMW E9 coupe. This is the car generally considered to be the most beautiful BMW, with the possible exception of the 507.
This was a day I thought would never come. The door frame was ready, and the door skin was ready. The time had come to do the deed. I was more than a little apprehensive, because I knew that this was a job I had to get right the first time. Having never done it before, I had zero wiggle room.
As the pics show, I used a variety of Vise-Grips to hold the door skin in place, and several sizes of channel lock pliers to bend the flange around the edge of the frame.
The trick is to get it started, then to take a very small bite with each squeeze and gradually work the flange along. The only problem I ran into was muscle fatigue and blisters. Even though I wore gloves I had blisters for a week.
Well, there was another problem, but this one seems unavoidable. All along the edge the nice, pristine skin the pliers left a small line of disruption. Mostly looks like a narrow, shallow dent. No doubt a factory installer could avoid this, but for my first attempt I think this went very well.
Today was a big step forward. I finally painted the inside of both door skins with gray POR-15. Also painted some spots on the door where drips would have interfered with attaching hardware later on. Patrick Casey told me about another local source for POR-15 products, Hi-Line Distributors on Ualena St. They had two 4 oz. cans of gray paint and I grabbed them last Friday.
Sanded the paint applied at the factory, to rough up the surface of the good parts and remove the bad parts. Used my orbital sander as much as possible but had to resort to hand sanding for the tight spots.
Next time I will attach the RH skin. That should be exciting!
Last Sunday was Pattie's birthday party at Side Street Inn, and of course May 12th was Mother's Day. On the 19th I was still dealing with a leaky hot water heater but I did manage to bring in the Lotus battery for a charge. Didn't help, car still won't crank. Will take battery to Batter Bills for a test. The cassette water pump finally arrived, brought it to the shop.
Rain today so no painting. Besides, need to get more gray POR-15.
Too many drips along the edges where the skins will clamp to allow a good fit. Sanded down with block sander and 80# paper.
Worked on how window opening trim piece will fit. Factory spot welded top of skin and frame. Not sure this is necessary. At most I might epoxy them. Both are wedged inside the window trim, so any additional fastening seems like overkill. Posted this question on Bimmerforums.
Details of rubber and felt inserts, which I removed. Rubber destroyed.
Finger pointing to where skin edge and frame edge meet along top of window opening.
It has been way too long since I updated this blog. A lot has happened. Here are some highlights:
July 2012 - Took the family to California to visit my son Matt, first trip to the mainland for my younger son Mike. Rented an SUV and drive up through Monterey to San Francisco.
September 2012 - Honolulu Century Ride. Did the full hundred miles.
December 2012 - Ran the Honolulu Marathon for the first time.
February 2013 - My lovey E34 Touring was rear-ended, a total loss.
April 2013 - Finally found a replacement for my wagon, a 1989 E34 535i sedan. Rode the Haleiwa Metric Century Ride.
As May gets underway I will be training for my first triathlon, the Honolulu Tinman, on July 28th. That will definitely take a big chunk of my "free" time. However, I do intend to keep Sundays for cars. I will go into more detail on the E9 a little later. For now I must point out that the Lotus Europa has needed a water pump for a long time. In fact I ordered a replacement cassette kit from Dave Bean Engineering roughly a year ago thinking it would be my summer 2012 project. It just arrived! So look for a lot of work being done on the Lotus this summer.
That being said, I actually have spent a lot of time on the E9. I just have not taken time to write about it. Virtually all of the work has been on the doors. I am not going to chronicle the entire story here; I think the pics on Flickr tell the story well enough. I will say that I brushed on the second coat of POR-15 on the RH door, so now both are ready to have the skins installed. I am going to fiddle with it this weekend to see if I can install the skins without welding -- a bit of epoxy might do the trick. If so I can paint the inside before assembling, which will make a much more rust resistant product.
Here are a few selected pics of recent activity:
What really eats up the time is fabricating and welding patches. Here are a few more:
Having used my Nikon 1 for a few weeks now I came to the conclusion that I needed a flash. Found it at the same place I bought the camera, Ritz at Ala Moana. Nicely integrated with the camera, and powered by the camera battery.
Looking over today's pics I am not happy with how some turned out. They are not sharp. My experience tells me that even a hand-held shot should be sharp, because the exposure comes from the flash, which is faster than a shutter speed of 1/1000. What I think is happening is that the V-1 computer sees that ambient light can furnish most of what is required, and reduces the intensity of the flash. Meaning that camera motion is still an issue. I will need to hold the camera better in the future, especially when ambient light is rather bright.
On my way home after last week's session I realized I hadn't taken a picture of the door as it sat at the end of the day. So, my first order of business today was to take that picture. Four, actually. The first is with the top on the near side, the second is the other way around, followed by a couple views of the ends.
The patch I need to make will run along the top outside edge of the window opening. This is where the frame and the skin have a flange, or tab, facing upwards. A heavy chromed trim piece presses down onto this tab. The same piece holds the window glass cushion, made of felt glued to thin aluminum. I need to be sure my patch down not interfere with this trim piece, so I spent some time reviewing how it all fits together.
This short video is a hand-held scan along the trim piece in the photos above. Sometimes seeing something like this as a video reveals details that do not come across as easily in a still shot.
When I had my plan, all I had to do was lay out the patch, cut it, and flange it. The frame will be cut down by roughly 0.5 in. and the patch will overlap the remaining tab. The patch is flanged (used my pneumatic flanger) so that the new portion will be in-line with the old. The flange will go on the side away from the window.
Next step is to cut out sections of the patch to clear some bumps in the frame. I suspect a little more work will be required in the neighborhood of the outside door handle.
