BMW E30 318i / 320i
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This is a mix of 2 cars, the first was a 318i but after driving it a few years I bought a 320i and used a lot of the bits off the 318 as it was the same Alpine white |
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I always wanted a 6 cylinder and I found one on a garage forecourt, it was obvious it would need a fair bit of work doing on the bodywork as the arches were all full of rotted filler and the bodykit didn't sit to the body of the car properley, but the car drove nice with no gearbox or diff whine, was smooth with no obvious major mechanical problems and the interior was tidy and I eventually got it for a price I was willing to pay for it. I fitted 2 new tyres and it cost me anoither £50 to get it through the MOT which i was happy about |
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I drove the car for a few months, but summer was approaching and the air was dry so it was time to get the car round the back to start work on it. It was only when removing the rear light clusters, number plate and rear plastic facia that it became obvious that it was going to need more work than I originally thought > >
So I began to remove all the rust and cut out any rot and it didn't take long for big holes to appear, but with it getting back to bare metal at least you can see what you have got to work with V V V |
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After treating all of the bare metal it was time to get out the filler ! This can be quite time consuming but if you take your time to do a good job you soon find betther ways of applying it etc, with the old rusty aerials removed, metalwork treated and armed with plenty of filler and primer then it doesn't take long to get there, I did the back of the car in a weekend from start to finish and I was very pleased with the finished result, especially with being a beginner :-) > > the pics doesn't show the bootlid which was also rotten all the way along the bottom |
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Next it was time to move onto the sides, and if i thought I had found big holes in the back then that was nothing compared to the horror story I found after removing the bodykit ! Unfortunately the pics I took after cutting out all of the rot have illuded me but I will update when I find them as the holes I ended up with were big enough for my cat to fit through ! :-O The sills had massive holes, the bodykit hangers had all rotted through, and the rear quarter panel arch to inner arch was non existent ! |
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But a lot more time and effort put into it and the bodykit hangers all re-mounted and bodykit fitted back to the body, sealed properly and blended in and the wheel arches rebuilt then the finished result really was quite amazing in comparisen > > |
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The last part left to do on the bodywork was the front, I was quite looking forward to this bit as there isn't much metalwork to deal with as the bulk of the work was on the front spoiler, Whe I got the car the spoiler was in quite a bad way with major broken cracks, and even the decent bits had hairline cracking or spider web effect cracking which it a nightmare to get rid of. The best way I found of doing this was to drill along all of the hairline cracks and then refill and use plenty of filler/primer. Again the pics of the preperation work on the front are missing so I will update these pics, but although I wanted to keep the m-tech 1 kit standard I also wanted to give it the 'Dee' touch. The way I did did this was to cut out the other 2 slots between the bottom of the number plate and the bottom of the spoiler for the radiator intake which nobody ever bothers with and then fit aluminium mesh behind the holes and also the holes for the brake air intakes (bottom outside slots) the pics below show the difference between having the 2 slots there and also utilizing the 4 which I think have made the car original as well as keeping it still m-tech 1 standatd 'ish hehe |
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