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.
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.
My goal for today was to figure out how to repair the top edge of the door. In the process I ended up removing all of what remained inside the door. Probably a good idea anyway, because of the welding that needs to be done.
I notice that with my new camera (Nikon 1) I take more pictures. I consider that a good thing. Why so many more? I'd say it is because of the larger monitor. I react to what I see, instead of hoping the one shot got what I wanted. Plus, it's fast. So, here are a lot of pics.
My first challenge was to do something about the reinforcing doubler behind the door skin around the door handle. I used a cutoff wheel on a die grinder to cut away the door skin, trying to leave the doubler intact so that I can reuse it. You can see some wounds where I hit it while working blind. There is some rust in the area, including behind the doubler, but I think it can be treated.
Had to remove some rubbery coating BMW put along the bottom edge of the door frame. It worked very well, except for where moisture got under the paint and rust formed under the coating. Removed with scraper and wiping with rag soaked with acetone.
Removed the few remaining plastic plugs that are used to hold the interior panel. Not sure how many the factory implemented, most of mine were broken.
Found this channel on the bottom of the door. Probably held a rubber seal; no sign of that.
This interior trim piece was attached by a single tiny Philips head screw.
Decided the door release mechanism had to come out. Note the one almost hidden bolt accessed through a hole in the door frame.
Removed the rear window lift guide. Two extra thin nuts at the top, two bolts at the bottom bracket.
