1980 BMW E26 M1
Discussion
Small update.
Wheels for the M1 are very hard to come by, Campagnolo stopped making them in the early 80's, probably 1982. They are made of Magnesium and are very difficult to refurbish, if you do it wrong you'll quite probably wreck the wheel. When you do find the wheels they are usually very expensive, there is a set on e-bay in the USA right now for $25,000!
Last year I stumbled across a set for sale that looked to be in pretty poor condition, but as they were relatively cheap I though they were worth a punt, if one came up good then they would be worth the price paid.
The wheels arrived after a week or so, they looked slightly better that I thought they might, one looked quite bad and all had some form of curbing, but the base Magnesium didn't look too bad. The tyres were well past their use by, one of them being made some time in the 1990's.
I'd not seen the insides of the wheels before they arrived, they were dirty but not too bad otherwise.
I got the old tyres off and they looked like this
I did a bit of searching and found a PistonHeads member silvers, Steve from Grind'n'Shine http://www.grindnshine.co.uk/ who seemed to know what he was talking about. So I took the wheels round to him, had a good chat and left him to work on them.
About 4 weeks later I picked them up, wow, what a difference! Not perfect, because there was quite a lot of curb damage and you can't easily build up Magnesium as you can with Aluminium, but they exceeded my expectations given the state they were in before.
The one obvious thing missing was the Campagnolo logo. Some more research and I found a small company called Classic Screen who made up some vinyl stickers, they even had direct access to the correct font so they did not have to scan anything. The stickers turned up very quickly and look perfect.
Here's a side by side of the refurbished wheel and an original finish wheel, pretty darn close!
So I now have a very respectable spare set of genuine wheels.
Wheels for the M1 are very hard to come by, Campagnolo stopped making them in the early 80's, probably 1982. They are made of Magnesium and are very difficult to refurbish, if you do it wrong you'll quite probably wreck the wheel. When you do find the wheels they are usually very expensive, there is a set on e-bay in the USA right now for $25,000!
Last year I stumbled across a set for sale that looked to be in pretty poor condition, but as they were relatively cheap I though they were worth a punt, if one came up good then they would be worth the price paid.
The wheels arrived after a week or so, they looked slightly better that I thought they might, one looked quite bad and all had some form of curbing, but the base Magnesium didn't look too bad. The tyres were well past their use by, one of them being made some time in the 1990's.
I'd not seen the insides of the wheels before they arrived, they were dirty but not too bad otherwise.
I got the old tyres off and they looked like this
I did a bit of searching and found a PistonHeads member silvers, Steve from Grind'n'Shine http://www.grindnshine.co.uk/ who seemed to know what he was talking about. So I took the wheels round to him, had a good chat and left him to work on them.
About 4 weeks later I picked them up, wow, what a difference! Not perfect, because there was quite a lot of curb damage and you can't easily build up Magnesium as you can with Aluminium, but they exceeded my expectations given the state they were in before.
The one obvious thing missing was the Campagnolo logo. Some more research and I found a small company called Classic Screen who made up some vinyl stickers, they even had direct access to the correct font so they did not have to scan anything. The stickers turned up very quickly and look perfect.
Here's a side by side of the refurbished wheel and an original finish wheel, pretty darn close!
So I now have a very respectable spare set of genuine wheels.
Not sure exactly which set I'll keep on the car. The set on the car at the moment are very good with no curbing at all, however when I had the tyres changed there are signs that the lacquer is cracking where the tyre bead meets the rim. So my current plan is to swap the tyres to the refurbished rims, the see if the other set can be partially refurbished just on the insides and rear. Unless it's unavoidable I don't want to remove the OEM finish from the front of the wheels.
Here's the e-bay listing for a used set for $25,000 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/182398816354
Here's the e-bay listing for a used set for $25,000 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/182398816354
I wouldn't think any particular routine checks would be required other than a good visual inspection every now and again, happy to learn if this is not the case. In the aircraft industry magnesium alloy is used extensively and is subject to various routine inspections from a visual with the naked eye to more extensive NDT techniques to look for flaws/cracks etc. This various with the type of component, it's make up, and of course it's intended purpose and environment. One thing I will say is that in the right conditions, if not protected, it will corrode for fun, and fast.
fatboy69 said:
The M1 is a sublime car.
Beautiful to look at & an utter joy to drive - back in the day when I worked for The Patrick Collection we had a white M1 which was registered XOX 1T.
I don't suppose you know which number that car was? XOX 1T is now on a red 1997 Ferrari (might be a 550 given the age and engine capacity).Beautiful to look at & an utter joy to drive - back in the day when I worked for The Patrick Collection we had a white M1 which was registered XOX 1T.
fatboy69 said:
Always hated getting out of the drivers seat.
I know it's pretty low down, but it's not that bad getting out! 
e21Mark said:
Do magnesium rims degrade with age? I just wondered if they needed regular checking from a safety perspective?
mark.c said:
I wouldn't think any particular routine checks would be required other than a good visual inspection every now and again, happy to learn if this is not the case. In the aircraft industry magnesium alloy is used extensively and is subject to various routine inspections from a visual with the naked eye to more extensive NDT techniques to look for flaws/cracks etc. This various with the type of component, it's make up, and of course it's intended purpose and environment. One thing I will say is that in the right conditions, if not protected, it will corrode for fun, and fast.
Magnesium is indeed rater strange with regard to ageing and corrosion resistance. It will virtually desegregate in days in some environments and be fine in others that you'd expect to cause problems for years.I've been told that the wheels had a shelf life from date of manufacture of just 5 years. If that's true then all my wheels are just 30 years past that!!
I believe that the degradation is rapid to start with and the rate tails off, the current rate of degradation should now be pretty slow, so if they are OK now they should be OK for a bit. The design is also and important aspect, as the M1 wheels don't have isolated spokes, just spokes behind the flat surface, they are pretty strong. The wheels I had refurbished looked to be in very good structural condition with minimal corrosion and pitting. I don't know what the ones on the car are like but I did restrict autobahn speeds in September to 140mph just in case.
The long term plan is to keep the original wheels for show and to get some near replicas made up for road trips so I'm not worrying about damage or disintegration! On the replica front I've found customisable stock design from the USA that's not too expensive. It's a two piece forged Aluminium wheel, you can specify dish, offset, hidden or exposed hardware etc. They are currently nearing completion, and looked like this earlier in the week, the centre still need painting black
Unfortunately the size and number of slots can not easily be changed, so not identical but I think give the same overall effect. The centre has been machined to take the original wheel centre. The cost of a full set being a less than the price of a single poor condition genuine wheel. If the quality of these is good I'm going to see if they can customise the design even more to get a very close replica - 3 thinner slots and a dummy inner painted grove, more solid central section, a small lip around the central piece and a small cutout where the valve is should pretty much do it I think.
RichardM5 said:
fatboy69 said:
The M1 is a sublime car.
Beautiful to look at & an utter joy to drive - back in the day when I worked for The Patrick Collection we had a white M1 which was registered XOX 1T.
I don't suppose you know which number that car was? XOX 1T is now on a red 1997 Ferrari (might be a 550 given the age and engine capacity).Beautiful to look at & an utter joy to drive - back in the day when I worked for The Patrick Collection we had a white M1 which was registered XOX 1T.
fatboy69 said:
Always hated getting out of the drivers seat.
I know it's pretty low down, but it's not that bad getting out! It was sold a number of years ago & I no longer have access to any of The Patrick Collection archives.
I wish I did because I know that there are some amazing photos of the cars, along with all of the chassis numbers of the numerous cars we used to own.
RichardM5 said:
e21Mark said:
Do magnesium rims degrade with age? I just wondered if they needed regular checking from a safety perspective?
mark.c said:
I wouldn't think any particular routine checks would be required other than a good visual inspection every now and again, happy to learn if this is not the case. In the aircraft industry magnesium alloy is used extensively and is subject to various routine inspections from a visual with the naked eye to more extensive NDT techniques to look for flaws/cracks etc. This various with the type of component, it's make up, and of course it's intended purpose and environment. One thing I will say is that in the right conditions, if not protected, it will corrode for fun, and fast.
Magnesium is indeed rater strange with regard to ageing and corrosion resistance. It will virtually desegregate in days in some environments and be fine in others that you'd expect to cause problems for years.I've been told that the wheels had a shelf life from date of manufacture of just 5 years. If that's true then all my wheels are just 30 years past that!!
I believe that the degradation is rapid to start with and the rate tails off, the current rate of degradation should now be pretty slow, so if they are OK now they should be OK for a bit. The design is also and important aspect, as the M1 wheels don't have isolated spokes, just spokes behind the flat surface, they are pretty strong. The wheels I had refurbished looked to be in very good structural condition with minimal corrosion and pitting. I don't know what the ones on the car are like but I did restrict autobahn speeds in September to 140mph just in case.
The long term plan is to keep the original wheels for show and to get some near replicas made up for road trips so I'm not worrying about damage or disintegration! On the replica front I've found customisable stock design from the USA that's not too expensive. It's a two piece forged Aluminium wheel, you can specify dish, offset, hidden or exposed hardware etc. They are currently nearing completion, and looked like this earlier in the week, the centre still need painting black
Unfortunately the size and number of slots can not easily be changed, so not identical but I think give the same overall effect. The centre has been machined to take the original wheel centre. The cost of a full set being a less than the price of a single poor condition genuine wheel. If the quality of these is good I'm going to see if they can customise the design even more to get a very close replica - 3 thinner slots and a dummy inner painted grove, more solid central section, a small lip around the central piece and a small cutout where the valve is should pretty much do it I think.
https://wheelwarehouse.com/products/rotiform-bm1-c...
e21Mark said:
Rotiform BM1 are a current wheel inspired by these, but unsure how they compare side by side? (These may be the rims you're talking about?)
https://wheelwarehouse.com/products/rotiform-bm1-c...
Yes Mark, those are them. https://wheelwarehouse.com/products/rotiform-bm1-c...
http://www.rotiform.com/bm1-w-24361.htm
They are making them as close as they can, within their standard templates, to the original wheels. You can see from the picture I posted earlier that it's not quite the same as any of the stock pictures.
I have photos of most M1s that have been registered in the UK in one form or another, but that one was actually from e-bay!
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291669659142
Yours for 99p plus £1 p&p!
Just noticed, that car looks like it has the optional rear mud flaps, I've only seen one other car with those on.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291669659142
Yours for 99p plus £1 p&p!
Just noticed, that car looks like it has the optional rear mud flaps, I've only seen one other car with those on.
Edited by RichardM5 on Thursday 5th January 16:26
The M1 is a very cool car. I bought one very much like Richards, white, at about the same time for similar money from the same dealer. The only difference is I had mine looked after by Classic Heroes. It only had 4000 miles, all original and unrestored but I drove the car quite a bit, took it see my brother in holland, picked up pig feed in it one day from local Farm shop (M1 has a big boot!) drove it in pouring rain up the M1 to watch Football game with my godson. I don't really go in for the display thing at shows but fair play to those that like doing that. I did sell my M1 a few months ago sadly, and I miss it. The main downside to the M1, and the main reason I sold it, is that it's just a bit...dull. It's not fast, it handles ok but tyres are very narrow and I just didn't get that excited driving it. So I decided to replace it with an F40, which just makes me laugh out loud every time I drive it. But I miss my M1! I've still got my E28 M5 and actually I kind of like that car better than the M1 in a way. It is essentially just as fast in the real world but it's a four door comfortable saloon. Best of luck Richard and enjoy your M1, I'm jealous.
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff