Ted's 1975 BMW 1602 with an E30 M42 conversion
Discussion
So I thought I would start a project blog on here as things are finally moving along with my project car so I can update regularly!
My Father and I bought a lovely 1975 BMW 1602 with an M42 engine, full Turbo body kit, Alpina wheels and steering wheel from Warrington. We went to see the car and paid the deposit in late January, intending on picking up the motor at the end of February.
The spec list as I bought her:
[i]The car is originally a 1975 1602, the body has been stripped & bare metalled. New front wings, inner/outer sills, front floors, chassis legs, rear subframe mounts and footwell panels have been replaced. The nose and boot floor had been replaced at some point in its past. Bare metal treated with phosphoric, degreased, seam sealed and painted underneath/arches/boot in 2 part polyurethane & finished with poly stone chip. Engine bay primed the same and painted in black cellulose. This is now a rust free shell.
Front & rear subframes rebuilt using all new suspension rubbers, steering joints, wheel bearings. IE adjustable anti roll bars front & rear. Rear subframe has camber adjustment, E21 trailing arms/drive shafts/LSD/discs with new backing plates, Ground Control height adjustable springs & platforms, NOS Koni adjustable dampers. Up front it has Tii struts with Ground Control coilovers, adjustable Koni dampers, vented discs and reconditioned wide calipers as per turbo. Car rolls & steers.
M42 engine and 5 speed gearbox fitted, wiring complete, refurb'd heater box fitted, relays moved inside car, boot battery, turbo flares and spoiler pre-fitted, Prototipio steering wheel, Alpina replica 15" wheels and plenty of other stuff waiting to go back on.[/i]
We aimed for the end of February, but Storm Jorge scuppered our plans, so in the end we went up the week after. We hired a trailer and made the long journey from the southern tip of Essex to Warrington... what a nightmare! The Van kept playing up on the way up and dumping it's coolant, so we had to keep topping it up every 30 mins or so.
That was the least of our worries in the end...
We turned up and duly started loading the car into the trailer. Love those Brian James trailers!!
And so began the journey home from hell... Firstly we still had the coolant issue, which the guy we bought the car from kindly helped us with by topping up the bottles... about half an hour down the road, the lights went out on the trailer, which turned out to be a wiring issue to the battery we managed to fix by the roadside.
As we were going through the south side of Stoke-on-Trent, the gear selector on the van blew and we waited 6 hours in a garage we just managed to limp to before getting fed up and taking out chances with only reverse and 5th gear... we managed 50 miles before breaking down again (the clutch went) just off the A50 / M1 junction, and ended up getting towed to the Donnington Services.
We slept in the van and in the morning ended up going home like this...
After a very long and tiring journey home, the car was finally dropped off at the sprayers!
Note the look of grief on the sprayers face
The car has since been at the sprayers, with trips out to a fabricators I know to have a full custom stainless steel 2.5" exhaust system made up... and whilst there, the fabricator convinced me that the round rear light 2002's are much better looking, so a rear panel was sourced...
Which we spent yesterday and today welding in, plus filling in the odd rust patch here and there.
Here's where I'm up to with the car now, with the new rear panel in and the lights and boot mocked up
The car has now been transported back to the sprayers this morning and should be primed and painted in the next few weeks.
The plans for the car is to supercharge the M42 engine, have some Image wheels made up, and go for the fast road / hillclimb feel. I've got two Cobra bucket seats, a half rollcage and some other bits and pieces to go in...
The car will be painted in Glasurit Avus Schwarz black, which I think will look great with an all black interior and tartan bucket seats.
Hopefully more updates in the next couple of days!
Thanks for reading.
My Father and I bought a lovely 1975 BMW 1602 with an M42 engine, full Turbo body kit, Alpina wheels and steering wheel from Warrington. We went to see the car and paid the deposit in late January, intending on picking up the motor at the end of February.
The spec list as I bought her:
[i]The car is originally a 1975 1602, the body has been stripped & bare metalled. New front wings, inner/outer sills, front floors, chassis legs, rear subframe mounts and footwell panels have been replaced. The nose and boot floor had been replaced at some point in its past. Bare metal treated with phosphoric, degreased, seam sealed and painted underneath/arches/boot in 2 part polyurethane & finished with poly stone chip. Engine bay primed the same and painted in black cellulose. This is now a rust free shell.
Front & rear subframes rebuilt using all new suspension rubbers, steering joints, wheel bearings. IE adjustable anti roll bars front & rear. Rear subframe has camber adjustment, E21 trailing arms/drive shafts/LSD/discs with new backing plates, Ground Control height adjustable springs & platforms, NOS Koni adjustable dampers. Up front it has Tii struts with Ground Control coilovers, adjustable Koni dampers, vented discs and reconditioned wide calipers as per turbo. Car rolls & steers.
M42 engine and 5 speed gearbox fitted, wiring complete, refurb'd heater box fitted, relays moved inside car, boot battery, turbo flares and spoiler pre-fitted, Prototipio steering wheel, Alpina replica 15" wheels and plenty of other stuff waiting to go back on.[/i]
We aimed for the end of February, but Storm Jorge scuppered our plans, so in the end we went up the week after. We hired a trailer and made the long journey from the southern tip of Essex to Warrington... what a nightmare! The Van kept playing up on the way up and dumping it's coolant, so we had to keep topping it up every 30 mins or so.
That was the least of our worries in the end...
We turned up and duly started loading the car into the trailer. Love those Brian James trailers!!
And so began the journey home from hell... Firstly we still had the coolant issue, which the guy we bought the car from kindly helped us with by topping up the bottles... about half an hour down the road, the lights went out on the trailer, which turned out to be a wiring issue to the battery we managed to fix by the roadside.
As we were going through the south side of Stoke-on-Trent, the gear selector on the van blew and we waited 6 hours in a garage we just managed to limp to before getting fed up and taking out chances with only reverse and 5th gear... we managed 50 miles before breaking down again (the clutch went) just off the A50 / M1 junction, and ended up getting towed to the Donnington Services.
We slept in the van and in the morning ended up going home like this...
After a very long and tiring journey home, the car was finally dropped off at the sprayers!
Note the look of grief on the sprayers face
The car has since been at the sprayers, with trips out to a fabricators I know to have a full custom stainless steel 2.5" exhaust system made up... and whilst there, the fabricator convinced me that the round rear light 2002's are much better looking, so a rear panel was sourced...
Which we spent yesterday and today welding in, plus filling in the odd rust patch here and there.
Here's where I'm up to with the car now, with the new rear panel in and the lights and boot mocked up
The car has now been transported back to the sprayers this morning and should be primed and painted in the next few weeks.
The plans for the car is to supercharge the M42 engine, have some Image wheels made up, and go for the fast road / hillclimb feel. I've got two Cobra bucket seats, a half rollcage and some other bits and pieces to go in...
The car will be painted in Glasurit Avus Schwarz black, which I think will look great with an all black interior and tartan bucket seats.
Hopefully more updates in the next couple of days!
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for reading, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
The car has finally got some colour! The roof is now in primer.
Hopefully I'll get some better shots later in the week when I get a chance to get down there!
I know it's only primer but it's the first paint the car has had in over 10 years... can't wait to see the progress over the next couple of weeks as it really comes along!
The car has finally got some colour! The roof is now in primer.
Hopefully I'll get some better shots later in the week when I get a chance to get down there!
I know it's only primer but it's the first paint the car has had in over 10 years... can't wait to see the progress over the next couple of weeks as it really comes along!
Hashtaggggg said:
I know absolutely nothing about painting a car, or a wall for that matter.
The finish on the roof looks bit poor?
Great project by the way, bookmarked!
Ha yes that's just polyester primer at the minute, it will all be blocked, primed and blocked again before the final paint goes on!The finish on the roof looks bit poor?
Great project by the way, bookmarked!
So another small update tonight... the car is coming along nicely 
.
I decided to smooth the seems off the rear of the car and also the panel where the bumper would usually go... I think it looks great! :twisted:
I spend some time agonising over the round rear lights I'd bought from eBay... after trying to clean the lenses up and take off the black paint from the chrome trim I bit the bullet and ordered some brand new lenses instead.
We also did another mock up of the front chin spoiler and front arches - they're not fitting as well as we want them to, so the front wings have had to be taken off and manipulated to get all the panel gaps right and make sure it all looks wicked in the Avus Schwarz paint!
Will update more in due course!
.I decided to smooth the seems off the rear of the car and also the panel where the bumper would usually go... I think it looks great! :twisted:
I spend some time agonising over the round rear lights I'd bought from eBay... after trying to clean the lenses up and take off the black paint from the chrome trim I bit the bullet and ordered some brand new lenses instead.
We also did another mock up of the front chin spoiler and front arches - they're not fitting as well as we want them to, so the front wings have had to be taken off and manipulated to get all the panel gaps right and make sure it all looks wicked in the Avus Schwarz paint!
Will update more in due course!
Small update this week, the car is now ALL in polyester primer.
This stage is now the stage where the car is flatted about a million times to get it perfect before the final coat of primer and then the first coat of paint can go on...
I definitely think I made the right choice with the round rear light conversion
This stage is now the stage where the car is flatted about a million times to get it perfect before the final coat of primer and then the first coat of paint can go on...
I definitely think I made the right choice with the round rear light conversion
Happy New Year to all.
I hope you're all well. Thought I'd post a new years update as a bit more progress has been made. I got a drill press for Christmas which I'm chuffed about and this year the interior and boot of the car has now been painted in the final colour!
I think it look epic.
Over the Christmas break I got a bit carried away and ordered some WORK Equip 03 wheels - 15x8 Et-3 and some TOYO R888R's, 205/50r15. Absolutely chuffed with how it all looks and not I'm praying that the wheels and tyres fit under the arches
I got the wheels today and had the tyres put on, now I've dropped them off at my detailer friends place as he is going to give them a once over with the polisher and apply some ceramic coating to give them a bit of protection and make them easier to clean!
Loved setting this up over the Christmas break! Was a great excuse to get out the house.
The boot finished in the final colour - I think it all looks epic, it's really coming together now.
Here's the interior in the final colour too - some sound deadening has been applied before paint but I think I'm going to try and cover the whole lot in something before it gets trimmed - anyone got any good recommendations? In my minds eye I can see some sort of chrome looking stuff but I can't think what it's called!
I'm seriously in love with these wheels... could have stared at them for hours!
The budget is really getting stretched on the project now so I think things will slow a bit once the car is back from paint... I'm going to build up the rear calipers and plumb in the brake / fuel lines myself, hopefully I can also get the engine wired up and running as everyone tells me that should be an "easy" job.
I'm basically going to try and get as much done myself I can whilst saving to get some of the big stuff ticked off like the interior trimming and new glass / rubber!
I also stupidly bought a really nice brand new Eaton M45 supercharger off eBay just before Christmas, so I'm now on the lookout for an M44 engine I can build on the bench whilst enjoying the car as is, with the supercharger mated to a GKD kit.
As always with these projects things are starting to get out of control
I had a look at the centre caps that came with the wheels and they were a bit shot, I wasn't happy with the finish at all.
I've seen some limited edition centre caps online that some JDM cars are running in yellow rather than chrome, and I thought they looked awesome. I sent WORK Wheels UK /Driftworks an email last week on the off chance they had one or two left in stock (not likely as they were launched in 2017 and were really popular) and they came back and said they didn't.
But the ones I had were so shot I thought why not... I'll paint them!
Here's the inspiration.
I tried to get as good match as possible but yellow is a hard colour to match, especially with different primer colours etc.
In the end I went for the brightest yellow I could on a white plastic primer.
Here's the products I went for!
Lightly keyed the caps up with some grey scotch brite.
Wiped them down with some panel wipe.
A couple of light coats of white primer and then hit the yellow with three good coats (15/20 minute intervals between each) and then three really good coats of lacquer using the same process.
The reason I've lacquered the yellow is that I plan on keying these up tomorrow once they've dried overnight and then hitting them with the black. I'll then get some wet n dry fine sandpaper and really gently sand the black back to yellow on the parts I want exposed. It saves on masking and messing around with bleeding edged etc. plus you can be far more accurate.
The lacquer also doubles up as an extra layer of protection against running through to the primer or the black underneath on the really fine detail of the logo.
Just in case anyone else is planning on spraying something similar!
I'll update the thread tomorrow with the results, when I've rubbed through to the black underneath and had to start again
Anyway, whilst I was waiting for some paint to dry I couldn't resists and had to see what the Cobra RSR's would look like with the OMP harnesses as I've so far resisted the urge to unpack anything properly...
I think it's going to look fantastic!
You'll notice there's a yellow highlight theme running through the entire build, which I'm really liking. I think with the black paint and the wheels it lends a really 70's look which I like a lot, exactly what I had in mind when I started the build!
So today I finished off the centre caps for the car. I actually ended up going in a different direction than originally planned, but I think they've turned out okay!
So I started the day off by spraying over the yellow black, ready to gently be rubbed down / stripped back to yellow on the lettering.
However, I ran into a couple of issues. Rubbing back to yellow was going really well until I ran through to the primer on one letter and then had to try and touch in the paint... that didn't end well
my clever idea didn't seem too clever after all!
In the end I stripped back all the paint, undoing all my work from yesterday, and thought about a way round it.
I decided to mirror the colours and go for black lettering with a yellow background as that way I could sand down to the plastic with impunity and lacquer over everything!
They ended up looking pretty good I thought!
I then masked up the outer parts of the caps and sprayed them in black, for a smarter finish.
I think the final result looks pretty good! Once lacquered the plastic comes up really well and it all ties in nicely.
I've not done anything like this before so it was a learning curve but definitely good fun!
Thanks for reading.
I hope you're all well. Thought I'd post a new years update as a bit more progress has been made. I got a drill press for Christmas which I'm chuffed about
and this year the interior and boot of the car has now been painted in the final colour!I think it look epic.
Over the Christmas break I got a bit carried away and ordered some WORK Equip 03 wheels - 15x8 Et-3 and some TOYO R888R's, 205/50r15. Absolutely chuffed with how it all looks and not I'm praying that the wheels and tyres fit under the arches
I got the wheels today and had the tyres put on, now I've dropped them off at my detailer friends place as he is going to give them a once over with the polisher and apply some ceramic coating to give them a bit of protection and make them easier to clean!
Loved setting this up over the Christmas break! Was a great excuse to get out the house.
The boot finished in the final colour - I think it all looks epic, it's really coming together now.
Here's the interior in the final colour too - some sound deadening has been applied before paint but I think I'm going to try and cover the whole lot in something before it gets trimmed - anyone got any good recommendations? In my minds eye I can see some sort of chrome looking stuff but I can't think what it's called!
I'm seriously in love with these wheels... could have stared at them for hours!
The budget is really getting stretched on the project now so I think things will slow a bit once the car is back from paint... I'm going to build up the rear calipers and plumb in the brake / fuel lines myself, hopefully I can also get the engine wired up and running as everyone tells me that should be an "easy" job.
I'm basically going to try and get as much done myself I can whilst saving to get some of the big stuff ticked off like the interior trimming and new glass / rubber!
I also stupidly bought a really nice brand new Eaton M45 supercharger off eBay just before Christmas, so I'm now on the lookout for an M44 engine I can build on the bench whilst enjoying the car as is, with the supercharger mated to a GKD kit.
As always with these projects things are starting to get out of control
I had a look at the centre caps that came with the wheels and they were a bit shot, I wasn't happy with the finish at all.
I've seen some limited edition centre caps online that some JDM cars are running in yellow rather than chrome, and I thought they looked awesome. I sent WORK Wheels UK /Driftworks an email last week on the off chance they had one or two left in stock (not likely as they were launched in 2017 and were really popular) and they came back and said they didn't.
But the ones I had were so shot I thought why not... I'll paint them!
Here's the inspiration.
I tried to get as good match as possible but yellow is a hard colour to match, especially with different primer colours etc.
In the end I went for the brightest yellow I could on a white plastic primer.
Here's the products I went for!
Lightly keyed the caps up with some grey scotch brite.
Wiped them down with some panel wipe.
A couple of light coats of white primer and then hit the yellow with three good coats (15/20 minute intervals between each) and then three really good coats of lacquer using the same process.
The reason I've lacquered the yellow is that I plan on keying these up tomorrow once they've dried overnight and then hitting them with the black. I'll then get some wet n dry fine sandpaper and really gently sand the black back to yellow on the parts I want exposed. It saves on masking and messing around with bleeding edged etc. plus you can be far more accurate.
The lacquer also doubles up as an extra layer of protection against running through to the primer or the black underneath on the really fine detail of the logo.
Just in case anyone else is planning on spraying something similar!
I'll update the thread tomorrow with the results, when I've rubbed through to the black underneath and had to start again
Anyway, whilst I was waiting for some paint to dry I couldn't resists and had to see what the Cobra RSR's would look like with the OMP harnesses as I've so far resisted the urge to unpack anything properly...
I think it's going to look fantastic!
You'll notice there's a yellow highlight theme running through the entire build, which I'm really liking. I think with the black paint and the wheels it lends a really 70's look which I like a lot, exactly what I had in mind when I started the build!
So today I finished off the centre caps for the car. I actually ended up going in a different direction than originally planned, but I think they've turned out okay!
So I started the day off by spraying over the yellow black, ready to gently be rubbed down / stripped back to yellow on the lettering.
However, I ran into a couple of issues. Rubbing back to yellow was going really well until I ran through to the primer on one letter and then had to try and touch in the paint... that didn't end well
my clever idea didn't seem too clever after all!In the end I stripped back all the paint, undoing all my work from yesterday, and thought about a way round it.
I decided to mirror the colours and go for black lettering with a yellow background as that way I could sand down to the plastic with impunity and lacquer over everything!
They ended up looking pretty good I thought!
I then masked up the outer parts of the caps and sprayed them in black, for a smarter finish.
I think the final result looks pretty good! Once lacquered the plastic comes up really well and it all ties in nicely.
I've not done anything like this before so it was a learning curve but definitely good fun!
Thanks for reading.
Edited by TedK94 on Wednesday 13th January 23:03
Edited by TedK94 on Wednesday 13th January 23:03
Edited by TedK94 on Wednesday 13th January 23:05
Evening everyone,
Another post from me! Tonight the car had its final sand off and then primer, which I'm totally chuffed about! The colour is going on next week.
After what feels like a million times the car has finally been properly flatted off for the last time - it will have a light going over between the primer and the final colour but it's there.
The car is so straight, I'm absolutely chuffed with the finish already and can't wait to see her in black and back at my workshop!
The doors, bonnet and boot are also all ready to rock n roll!
Thanks for reading.
Hopefully next week I'll have a major update!
Another post from me! Tonight the car had its final sand off and then primer, which I'm totally chuffed about! The colour is going on next week.
After what feels like a million times the car has finally been properly flatted off for the last time - it will have a light going over between the primer and the final colour but it's there.
The car is so straight, I'm absolutely chuffed with the finish already and can't wait to see her in black and back at my workshop!
The doors, bonnet and boot are also all ready to rock n roll!
Thanks for reading.
Hopefully next week I'll have a major update!
74merc said:
That looks great, I love the tartan seats. The chrome stuff you refer to is probably Dynamat sound deadening. I’ve used Silent Coat which is supposed to be just as good but only half the price.
Haha yes thank you that's exactly what I was thinking of 
I'll give silent coat a look too!
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