The Roundie - 1973 BMW 2002

[gnmzl]

Boy, am I glad to see you do it right! It will be frustrating, from what can be seen in the pictures, but in the end you will be so happy you took the time to get rid of the mess. Hack jobs by mental self-proclaimed mechanics are the worst.

[bwwaaaa]

Nice score that E21 LSD, I still haven't found a decent one.

Thanks, it was a lucky Facebook find! If you're still looking, join some of the E21 Facebook groups, they pop up from time to time.

this is literally how I operate on pretty much everything

I wish I could say I learned my lesson, but this update proves otherwise.

Jumping the Shark

So in trying to remove the diff from the drive shaft, I was poking around the underside of the car and discovered something fairly alarming. At some point, the nuts holding the tranmisssion brace had rattled off, and the whole brace had fallen onto the exhaust. It wasn't that far off, not even the length of the studs extending under the car. Maybe half an inch total lower then it should be. However, I think we all know that an exhaust should not be holding your transmission in the car. Discovering this, I made a snap decision to just pull the engine.

Here's my logic... Since I purchased this car, I've been less than impressed with the plumbing and wiring. It always felt like a rush job. The previous owner told me that he brought it to a shop in his area to have them complete those two areas, and they clearly just phoned it in. While it is functional, the car did run afterall, it is ugly and completely unservicable. For example, if the shift linkage failed, the exhaust would have to come out completely to reach it. In order to remove the exhaust, the subframe has to come out. This is because the exhaust is one piece front to back, a removable mid section would prevent this. Same with the wiring, the radiator fan wiring ran a full loop of the engine bay for no apparent reason, and every single wire coming off the relay was the same color. These are details that make working on the car a nightmare.

So time to redo everything.

First the hood came off. Side note, Jesus Christ the 2002 has a heavy hood. Like surprisingly so. You can see I started moving things around in the engine bay. I cut the exhaust off the car underneath, but the bolts from the header to the midsection were seized, so it's stuck together. I can't drop the exhaust out the gap, so it'll have to come out after the engine. It is free from the car entirely though.

Below are some examples of the things that drive me nuts about this swap. The wiring is zip tied to coolant hoses, relay blocks are shoved where ever they'll sit, dead systems just remain in the car for no real reason. I found quite a few wires sitting in the engine bay that just generally lead no where on either end.

These zip ties were all removed from coolant hoses. Almost all of them were tightened to the point where they were digging into the hose. In many cases wiring harness portions were also ziptied to the hose, and then the whole lot was zip tied to the chassis. Look, zip ties are useful in moderation. But this engine bay basically fell apart when I started removing zip ties.

I finished the weekend removing the intake manifold. A hateful job that was 100% designed by someone who had a grudge against people with big hands. I spent far too much time removing that manifold from the engine. I wanted to do it in the bay to give myself more room to extract the engine, but I borderline regret doing that now. It ate up hours. The cooling system was removed as well, and the wiring harness was labeled and separated from the engine as best as I could. I'm sure we'll discover how good a job I did when the engine comes out.

Once the engine is out, it's time for some clean up. I'll be cutting off any brackets that are not needed, plugging any holes that serve no purpose, and sending the car off again for some fresh engine bay paint. I won't call it a shaved bay, but... trimmed? Yeah, sure trimmed bay. I also ordered something I'm extremely excited about, this part is the crowning jewel to this car. It'll realize the dream 2002 for me. I'm being intentionally vague until they get in, so in the mean time, here's a picture of my dog.

[duct-tape]

I guess we were too deep into it to change course at that point.

this is literally how I operate on pretty much everything

[DawsonLiri]

Nice score that E21 LSD, I still haven't found a decent one.

[bwwaaaa]

Probably overkill

Things are rapidly getting out of hand in terms of upgrading. I couldn't stand putting an open differential back in the car after going to all the effort to refresh the suspension. So I sourced an E21 Limited Slip. These seem to be absolutely impossible to find, so I had one shipped in from Chicago. In that crate you see it pictured in. It's a little ugly, but it engages smoothly and had low-ish miles on it. So I trust it to hold up.

As you can see, it wasn't drained before shipping.

I popped out the flanges real quick, and sent them off to Ireland Engineering. There they will get redrilled, and sent back. That'll accept the 2002 CV axle bolt pattern, and with a spacer will bolt right up.

My least favorite smell in the world is gear oil. So this is a miserable piece to store in my garage right now. Once the flanges come back, I'll pop the cover off, clean the case, and put the 2002 cover on.

[bwwaaaa]

*See's BMW 2002*
*See's Coilovers*
*See's some splitty boi BBS's*
*Smiles and nods*

Boring but necessary

This weekend marked very slow progress, but progress all the same. I spent some time removing bushings, which is a very smelly process. It started with finally removing the control arms from the car. I had to borrow a ball joint separator to get the tie rods off. Also, as it turns out the M20 is very much in the way of getting the driver's side control arm off. While I eventually did manage to jump on a breaker bar and get everything loose, it wasted a ton of time. Perks of owning a hot rod I suppose.

One thing I noticed, is the control arm bushings were toast on the passenger side. The car has had some wicked pull under braking, something I tried to iron out with new pads/rotors etc. But this was almost certainly the reason for it. In fact it was so bad on the bushing picture below, I could tear the bushing apart by hand. For the rest, I resorted to burning.

Passenger side control arm

I installed all of the bushings on the passenger side, which I later realized I have to undo. But here's photos of that process. The first (horrible, and underlit photo) is the new radius arm bushing. For any of you thinking of getting a 2002, and have to do this bushing, it is very much a pain to remove. I used the radius arm for leverage and eventually was able to pry out the stock bushing. The 2 piece poly unit went in much easier.

After I pressed in those bushings, I felt it was a little bit of a waste to have the arm looking that grimey. Eager to test out the paint I had picked up the other day, I decided to test it out on the other control arm, and rear subframe push rods. I'm using Rustoleum Rust Inhibitor, and will do a final coat in glossy enamel. However yesterday was one of the two cold, rainy days we get here in Arizona. So despite my best efforts, it was far too humid and cold to properly paint.

I hit everything with a wire wheel to knock off loose dirt and paint. I then scrubbed the whole piece down.

The photo is pretty poor, which is par for the course in my thread. They were soaking wet with paint there, but did eventually dry an even coat once I got them in the garage where it was warmer. I decided to wait to lay down the final enamel coat due to the weather, I didn't want to make things worse, even if it would all be hidden under the car. Sometime this week I'll pull the other bushings from the control arm back out, and give that a good coat too. But for a test, things went about as well as I could hope. It should prevent any future rust or harm.

I then finished the weekend out burning out the remaining trailing arm bushings. A miserable process, but necessary all the same.

This week I'm waiting for a pretty important part to arrive in the mail. Once that arrives, I can place yet another order with Ireland Engineering, and hopefully I'll be set to start putting the car back together. I miss driving it a lot, so the anxiety of having it sit in the garage all torn apart is starting to get to me.

[Deaky97]

*See's BMW 2002*
*See's Coilovers*
*See's some splitty boi BBS's*
*Smiles and nods*

[bwwaaaa]

next time you want to trailer, unhook the trailer and chock the wheels. then use the truck to pull it up on. way quicker.

I wanted to, but every time we thought about just doing that, we almost got it on the trailer. We both agreed we should have just done that from the start, but I guess we were too deep into it to change course at that point. Stupid, but whatever, we got it done eventually.

This is genius, I would have never thought about it
Also, I'd probably prefer dropping the whole exhaust instead of having to deal with it when removing subframes and diffs lol

I may still do that, if I decide to fuss with the shifter linkage. The exhaust hangers and bushings are the most aggressive ones I have ever seen, and I can't figure out how to slip the exhaust off of them at all. They're 1x1 chunks of rubber, in solid metal brackets, welded to the car. They have absolutely no give. For now, this was the easier option. But the deeper I get into this project, the more of a pain they become haha.

[Fruttolo]

next time you want to trailer, unhook the trailer and chock the wheels. then use the truck to pull it up on. way quicker.

This is genius, I would have never thought about it
Also, I'd probably prefer dropping the whole exhaust instead of having to deal with it when removing subframes and diffs lol

[duct-tape]

next time you want to trailer, unhook the trailer and chock the wheels. then use the truck to pull it up on. way quicker.

[bwwaaaa]

Puzzle Solving

Well I brought the 2002 home over the weekend. Opted to use a truck and trailer instead, which proved to be a very lengthy process when getting the 2002 up on the trailer. It took nearly an hour of winching and pushing to get it up there, but eventually it did go. In my effort to save a few dollars, I killed a ton of time. Probably not worth it in retrospect, but what's done is done.

As soon as I got home, the car went up on jack stands, and the tear down process began. I'm starting in the rear of the car, taking care of all the changes I wanted to make there. So I started dropping the subframe. This is normally a fairly easy process, that was made infinitely more complicated by the center exhaust. The biggest problem being, it is one piece from the headers to the muffler tips. Rather than trying to drop the exhaust, I decided to work around it. This meant a lot of creative shuffling of parts, I disconnected the axles from the diff to shuffle around, and then eventually the entire diff from the subframe. I may have left it just suspended on the exhaust, as it is a pain in the ass to remove. It will come out later, but that's a problem for future me to solve.

Safety third.

So here we are. Rear end is disassembled. Not pictured, I did break down the trailing arms and subframe so they're bare, and started scraping and scrubing all of the grime off. I'm not going for powder coated perfection, but there is no harm in giving everything a good scrub down. This isn't a show car by any means, and I try to keep that in mind to prevent myself from going over board in changing things. My instinct is to make everything brand new, but that's money poorly spent. Clean and safe is more important right now.

The goal over New Years is to break down the front end, and start prepping the rear subframe to go back together. I'm waiting on a new diff gasket to arrive in the mail, and will need to order sway bars for the car this week. So that, unfortunately, will be the source of some delay. Otherwise I'd be ready to put the car back together today.

[gnmzl]

Wow that was a quick fix, congrats! I hope for no snags and you get it running in a month, as planned. Good luck!

[bwwaaaa]

Paint

What can I say, Axis Paintworks works considerably faster than I can keep up with. Last night they sent me these photos. I've arranged for the tow truck to pick the 2002 up on Friday, so it'll be home and it'll be time for me to rip into the car. Excited to have the car back so fast, I honestly didn't think it would be back for a month or so.

You can see the difference in texture, I figured ultimately it didn't matter since the trunk is closed and I'm the only one who will see it


Some touch up to the other tower just to make them match (and cover the potion I ground down)


A recap on the damage and repair.

Alright so I guess it's full steam ahead on everything else. I've been slacking on prepping the gas tank and all that, but now I don't really have an excuse. I suppose the big objective now is to figure out about how long it will take me to finish everything I have planned. With the car back this Friday, I really want to have the whole car done in about a month. No idea if that's possible or not yet, there tend to be snags with these o

[Fruttolo]

Looks like they're doing a nice good quality job!
Hooray on the black carpet, finally LOL

[bwwaaaa]

Steady Progress

Axis sent me some photos this morning of the progress. Since I have little else to share, I thought I'd post them here. I haven't seen the car yet in person, but the photos being sent to me are promising. Given the speed they are working, I think I'll have the car back very soon.

A small but notable update, I now have black carpet in hand. So the red will finally be removed, and the interior will be one step closer to being complete. I've been complaining about the red carpet since day one, so it is kind of nice to finally know that is going away for good.