Bullet Ride's E21 Restoration Project

[TSI]

Damn. Much as that sucks, I'm not at all surprised to see you dealing with it so well. Good job!

[Bullet Ride]

Originally Posted by TSI

Damn. Much as that sucks, I'm not at all surprised to see you dealing with it so well. Good job!

Thanks

Feels weird to think that in 3 weeks it's finally going into paint... 3 years of occasional evenings and weekends to get it to here. Hopefully it comes out the other end looking good

[Didrik24]

Originally Posted by Bullet Ride

Thanks

Feels weird to think that in 3 weeks it's finally going into paint... 3 years of occasional evenings and weekends to get it to here. Hopefully it comes out the other end looking good

Thank, its been interesting and inspiring to follow this project, keep up the work!

[Bullet Ride]

So it's crunch time this week... car is shipping out on Saturday for paint.
Last Saturday I finished up blasting what I could in the engine bay with my cheap princess auto gravity tub. It cleaned up pretty good, it's not perfect but it's way cleaner than it was and should hopefully help out the paint shop so they don't have to spend as much time cleaning it up...





You may have also noticed that I attempted to smooth out the seam on the shock tower... top tip... don't try to weld the whole thing lol ...



Sidebar...I also bought a bunch of gaskets and other random sh!t I'll probably need for the car from rockauto wholesaler closeout some legit deals... spark plugs for like $0.50 lmao...

[Bullet Ride]

Then I bolted the front subframe back up to the car... thankfully it still lined up... I was lowkey worried after the car had been on dollies/hoist for 3 years with all the hammering/cutting/welding going on
Then the steering rack and u-joint...



Then the old, crusty front suspension went back on... for now...



I cleaned and coated up the insides of the front fenders...



Then bolted them back up and slapped the wheels on...




Shit.. almost a car again lol.

I was cleaning up and coating the rear wheel wells last night. Will work on putting the rear subframe back in tonight... might even be sitting on 4 wheels!!

[Bullet Ride]

Update:

Stopped by the body shop today...bodywork is underway!



That is all

[T.Dot_E30]

Originally Posted by Bullet Ride

Update:

Stopped by the body shop today...bodywork is underway!



That is all

Taking shape!
What color is it getting? Same stock color?

[Bullet Ride]

Yeah, Opalgrun

[Bullet Ride]

Stopped by the body shop again last night and it's almost ready to go into the booth, little bit of work left to do...



The main reason I stopped by though was because he mixed up some paint and test sprayed the underside of the hood so I could make sure that the colour was ok...



Opalgrun is a hard colour to photograph. In certain light it's almost grey, hard to catch that slight hint of green, but it looked pretty bang on to me. Looking forward to seeing the whole car sprayed in it next week!

[Bullet Ride]

So I've been too busy the past month to get much work done on the project.
I realized I forgot to post pictures of the car after paint. I'm pretty happy with how the paint turned out. There are a few spots in mostly hidden areas that could have been done better, but overall it looks great!

[Bullet Ride]

In terms of work that's been done lately, I started cleaning up the gas tanks so I can refinish them and get them bolted up with some new fuel lines, pretty boring so no pictures of that.

I want to install a late model E30 high pressure, in-tank fuel pump so that I can run a single pump and an E30 in-line fuel filter where the old external fuel pump use to be. I might have one kicking around in my parts bin.

In the past week or so I started working on the dashboard... it was so cracked that I figured I may as well try and repair it... I couldn't possibly make it any worse than it already is lol. Worst case scenario there's a dash cover available for the E21's that apparently fits and looks pretty good for a reasonable price.

Anyway... so I stripped all the vents and ducting off the underside of the dash...



Then gouged out and sanded a few cracks to try a couple patches...



I filled them with bondo glass, basically bondo with some fiberglass in it to give it some strength...



After it dried I sanded it and it seemed like it should work out so I gouged out the rest of the cracks... yeah... pretty bad right...



Then filled in...



And that's how it's sitting in the shop as I type this.
Going to head out to change a wheel bearing on the DD, then start sanding the dash and adding another coat where needed. Once it's nice and smooth I'll sand the entire dash and hit it with a couple coats of primer. I bought a can of duplicolor black vinyl spray paint... we'll see how that lays out and cures. If it's crappy I can always re-sand spray it with some other product.

Stay tuned.

[Bullet Ride]

Summer has been pretty busy with vacation and family events, but with only a month until renovations start on my new house, I need to get done as much as I can on the car because my time for the car is going to be pretty limited for the next 6 months probably.

Dash bondo sanded using various grits until smooth...



After a couple light coats of primer it was looking pretty good...



I sanded again after primer with some 400 grit (I think?). I wasn't able to find the vinyl texture spray paint at the local store, I know that they use to make it, but maybe it's not as commonly used anymore. So my next option was to spray some bed liner for some texture and then top coat with black paint if needed.

I didn't get a picture of it, but I was having an issue with laying down a medium to heavy coat of the bed liner, I was getting bleed through where the bondo was. So then I sanded again and gave a good coat of sealer hoping that would help...



As you can see from this pic... it didn't help... a light coat would go down fine, but there was something about a heavy coat that caused bleed through and the bondo would stand out (shiny).



So after some more sanding I went with only light coats and eventually got the dash looking pretty good...



Then cleaned all the ducting and re-assembled...



I don't recall exactly how I got the dash out in the first place, but putting it back in was a bit of a hassle, maybe it was the 10 coats of paint that made it thicker lol... but it just seemed that there was no way to get it back in easily. Eventually I was able to wedge it back into place but it was a struggle...

[Bullet Ride]

With the dash back in I worked on gluing the a-pillar vinyl back on, as well as the edge of the headliner so that I could re-install the door seals. Good thing I bought that mastercraft clamp set on sale at Crappy Tire...



I also welded in a brace between the rear shock towers in anticipation of mounting the battery in the trunk and making a bracket I can bolt to the brace...



After that I coat the trunk in POR15 and bed liner...



I started cleaning up some of the trim work and re-installing. Here you can see the rear windows, bump strips and rear lights installed...



In preparation for re-installing the brake lines, fuel lines, fuel tank... I removed the rear end, cleaned up the underside and worked on getting a fresh layer of undercoat on...



I also removed the rear end because I got some tasty treats in the mail.
BC Racing coilover kit and garagtastic subframe and trans mounts...





Some more tasty treats showed up recently as well...



I got this 2nd hand from a guy that was going to boost his E30, but it's brand new, never used. It's a MS3 megasquirt with the expansion card, universal wiring harnesses, and some other goodies I can use (crank sensor, TPS with adapter for 325i throttle body). After a bit of research I found out that some of the MK4 golfs have a 4 tower coil pack with internal igniters which is perfect because the MS3X can run that directly without any additional hardware. So I'll have to find some time to go to the wreckers and see if I can pull one, if not then buy one online. I still need to get a wideband O2 kit and a trigger wheel, but other than that I have pretty much all I need for the EFI now.

[Bimmer Heaven]

Sooo...We'll see it at TedFest!???

[Bullet Ride]

Originally Posted by Bimmer Heaven

Sooo...We'll see it at TedFest 2019!???

Yup