Just your ordinary e34 DD build.

[jcbe34]

Thanks!

Yeah I am re-painting the car Cirrus blue, the original color. It's one of my favorite bmw colors and it's rare to see one that's really clean to that's the plan.

I'm still not sure what to do about the wheel bolts. half of them are chromed and half are not coated at all, so I need to do something. I was thinking about spraying (base/clear) them silver or black or going with some other type of coating but I'm not really sure what.

[Madhatter]

Nice work so far. I cant wait to see it done

[Madhatter]

Nice work so far. I cant wait to see it done

[howsyouraspen]

Awe shit! I got to the bottom of this paging hoping to see like 2 more pages of work to be looked at. Damn. Great looking E34, so jealous of the resources you've got. You have some great looking autos at your house btw.

[1badg35]

looking great so far!

[525iT_Feen]

So happy to see you back at this. Shits sick.

[jamesgh]

very nice progress!

[jeremy242]

sweet e34!

[SeanDub]

Good shit

[jrc]

god I wish I had the tools, references and a garage like yours!

[softg]

nice work man, very thorough

the speedline's are looking great, doing anything fancy with the bolts?

speaking of fancy, you going back to factory paint?

keep it up

[bachura]

I like it.

[jcbe34]

The bodywork has been quite the undertaking to say the least. The car had been painted quite a few times and it really made things difficult, especially for a n00b like myself. Decided to strip all of the old paint of it and start from basically nothing. Not stripping to metal completely but pretty close. These are just a few project pictures along the way. It's been quite the learning experience



Stripping the hood-




Almost done with the easier bodywork, filling normal dings, dents and such.


Now moving onto the serious stuff. The LF fender had a soft ball sized dent that someone just "caved and paved" as my co-worker put it. Had to stud weld it and pull it out, then smooth it and glaze it. I let him handle this as it was in a tough spot and needed to look right





Should be ready from primer soon. Unfortunately once we prime it we'll be blocking and re-priming at least twice, so I'm far from finished. I'll update this thread with progress though

Picked up some new wheels to replace the Schnitzers also, they just weren't wide enough. These are 17x12 and 18x11 Speedline Mistrals. Sending the 17's to weldcraft next week to be cut down to 17x10 or 9.5


Split, stripped and polished the 18's. More to come! BTW, the centers are usually rear mount, so they won't be sticking out so far when assembled.

[jcbe34]

started fixing my door today, this is the only panel on the car that needs replacing. It had a few decent sized dents and a few door dings, but it was good practice as I've got a lot of door dings on the car that'll need taking care of.






The last is before the guide coat and hour of blocking. After I got done with that I thought I was looking pretty good until one of the bodymen that is helping me came by and showed me a couple low spots that I'll have to go back over. Re-prime and more blocking tomorrow... awesome

This was the next day, my first time spraying my base and clear.


Finally pulling it out of the garage to take it up to the shop where I work for the beginning of the bodywork

[jcbe34]

The wheels were in great shape for the price, but I wasn't crazy about the blackness and they had some curb rash. I decided to try my hand at wheel repair, and they ended up coming out really good. This was the worst curbage after a lot of work-


And now with some color.. This was my first time spraying base/clear in a booth, and a wheel is a hell of a way to start. This was after the base, I was too tired and ready to leave work to take pictures of the final product in the booth, but they came out really nice for a first time job-


Cleared and on the car, yes I have center caps-


I also bought this, along with some skirts from a local member. Brand new M-sport bumper, never been painted. Came with side skirts as well-


Got a replacement door for my nasty bondo'd POS. It is really straight but had a couple tiny spot of typical e34 lower door rust trying to start. Spent some time today breaking down the door, griding down and re-sealing the seam, the prepping it to be jammed out. Planning on spraying it tomorrow-


Next step is to start the bodywork. I am not an experienced body or paint guy by any means but I've been doing detail/paint correction with the body shop basically forever, so I feel like I'll be able to get it looking how I want to. I do have some professionals at work helping me out as needed though. I'm planning on taking my time and doing it right, especially since I'm on a budget and I'm buying some pretty good stuff to spray, so re-doing anything is going to hurt. So by all means, if any body/paint guys are out there and have any suggestions send them my way! I'll be using Spies hecker base and spies hecker 8035 hs clear, so as long as I don't fail horribly it should be super slick