ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Since last time I started working on the front fenders.

Stripped



Epoxy primed





bulk filler work - short strand fiberglass filler over the welds to make them waterproof, then a lightweight filler on top of that so it feathers out nice.



I reshot epoxy primer over this to cover the bare metal back up, then laid down a couple coats of polyester high build primer surfacer over top of this.





I blocked this down until I started hitting epoxy primer, then reshot some poly high build and blocked it again. Here's how it sits after two sessions of blocking. Some detail work left to do but it's pretty close



Hosed down with wax and grease remover to "wet check" the panel for defects



With the front pretty close, I cleaned up the back side, seam sealed the weld seam and sprayed it the whole thing with 3M body schutz to help protect it from rain / rocks / etc. Didn't lay it down too aggressively, just enough to get a single closed coat on it.







From here, the outside will then go to a 2k urethane high build (seals the polyester material since it's porous) and be blocked again. That will probably wait until I have more panels ready to shoot, however.

Gonna chip away at the other front fender and eventually move on to the doors and other removable body panels next. Thanks for looking.

DW SD

Looks really great!

MoarPower

Just read thru this entire thread and like everyone else said - EXCELLENT work and attention to detail. for real man - you should be proud of all of this. Its a killer build. From one euro guy to another awesome job man.

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Thanks gents, really appreciate it.

I had an update post typed up twice and the server timed out both times, which is awesome. So I'll make a post tonight to bring you all up to speed.

TipsyMcStagger

iTrader: (1)

LOL...if you've got a big update to post, prepare it first in Word (or any word processor) and then cut and paste

Looking forward to the update!

Tipsy

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Realized that shortly after losing it. Haha thanks

Work has been ongoing despite the lack of updates. Been trying to focus on making headway, which requires more work and less talking but here's an update to bring the thread up to speed.

Since last time the passenger side fender got the same treatment. Stripped of the factory finish, epoxy primed, and filler applied over the flare seam.



Epoxy prior to high build poly primer



Featherfill poly high build. This stuff is thick - I'm spraying it out of a gun with a 2.2 tip.



I've sprayed almost a gallon of this stuff by this point (between the doors and fenders) and its pretty awesome (especially in black). The contrast shows high and low spots, easily revealing areas that need more blocking to get them flat. I'd suggest also using a contrasting color to the epoxy - it makes sand thrus very obvious and let you know when you need to stop and apply more poly.



Once I was happy with the blocking, I sprayed one more round of poly on both front fenders with the intention to block them with the adjacent panels as assembled on the car so that the body lines (and hopefully panel heights) match up nicely. That makes these done for now.



I then moved on to the doors. I fully disassembled them (removed the glass, window regulator, locks, etc) and started prepping them for epoxy. I've decided to do a color change on the car since so much of it needs to be painted anyway, and that means that the backside of the doors need to match.

Scuffed and stripped





Epoxy





Poly high build on the exterior only and blocked. Blocking the door skins was kind of tricky because they don't have a whole lot of support, they deflect, and because they're crowned in two directions. Using a soft block on it never seemed to cut down the high spots, it just dug out the lows more. So I ended up using a hard (flat) durablock and let the paper do the cutting (no downward pressure).



The power of the poly stuff reveals itself pretty quickly. This is on a factory door that was otherwise unmolested and visibly straight by eye. Turns out it wasn't very straight, folks. Some of these spots are sandthrus (highs), some are glazing putty (lows).



This is the other door but shows what it looks like after a couple rounds of blocking. Getting there. (Note that the upper half of the door hadn't been blocked yet, but this is the only picture I grabbed at the time).



With the exterior of the doors more or less straightened out, I re-applied seam sealer where the skin wraps around the edge. I did a little research and decided to try Lord Fusor 129. It's a 2 part epoxy based sealer that sets up quickly and is sandable to a feather edge after 30 minutes which I thought would come in handy in the engine bay where I want the seams to not look like garbage. I really like the stuff so far - the only thing that sucks is that in the 85-90 degree weather we've had here in PA you only have about 3 minutes to apply the sealer and tool it out before the mixing nozzle goes solid, so you can't do large areas at a time.





With the doors in a pretty good place, I decided to move onto the front clip. I've been putting this off for a while because I knew it was going to be a huge pain and I was right. Countless hours of sanding, wire wheeling, sand blasting, grinding, more sanding, and lots of cleaning. But like Andy Dufresne, I seem to have come out clean on the other side.

I started with the wheelwells, stripping them of paint, undercoating, and surface rust that had accumulated from the seam welding I started a while ago.



Epoxied



The other side got the same treatment



From here, I started work getting the rest of the engine bay and frame rails ready. I cut a hole in the back of my "booth" and wheeled the car in.



Sanding



More sanding



More sanding





Also, a bit of a belated mod but I decided to notch the frame rail on the drivers side to repair some hammer strikes from trying to get better header clearance. Might have made building the headers easier lol. Oh well. I don't have any in progress shots because it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. But here it is welded up and ground.





With the bay finally in a good place I shot it in epoxy





And here's my life currently:







It's been more than 2 years since I've last seen the engine bay in a single color. Progress of a kind, I suppose.



I'm not going super crazy into a shaved bay thing, but do want the shock towers and aprons to at least look halfway decent under paint. A little attention seems to go a long way in the final presentation.

More to come soon lads. From here I'll probably transition into getting the rear end back together....gluing the rear quarter back on with a new tail panel and trunk floor, and doing the last fender flare. Then it will be going up on a rotisserie to finish the undercarriage!

As always thanks for reading

Nali6.2

lots and lots of work man.. I did almost the same amount of work to a car but I put it on a rotisserie and had it all blasted I couldn't stand all the sanding lol

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

yea it makes you question how bad you really want to continue with the project lol. for areas that don't have seams, I'm using aircraft stripper to get rid of paint. I'm using this for pretty much everything else though. a lot better than sanding but still takes a while. pretty much the only way to get rid of undercoating.

http://www.monti.de/en/products/mbx/drive-units

spdnman

Any updates? Great build.....

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Haven't been over here on the forum in a while, sorry for the lack of updates for anyone following along. This monster post should catch us up.

Since last time I continued work on the engine bay and related details. This included finding a home for everything that will reside there and cleaning up the rest. More time spent thinking / puzzling than actually working here, but that's the way it is sometimes.

Mounted the clutch reservoir and speed bleeder line



Shaved the opening in the firewall for the old clutch master cylinder and redrilled it for a grommet to fit a -3AN line that will pass through to the tilton 77 that will be on the other side.

IMG_4560_zp.jpg?1477972583540&14779725868%20%2053&1477972602102&1477972621187&1477972654369

Mounted the modular relay / fuse block and heater control valve

IMG_4435_zp.jpg?1477972583553&14779725868%20%2066&1477972602116&1477972621202&1477972654382





I also decided to do an MK60 E46 M3 ABS standalone conversion on the car. There are numerous reasons for this - the two simpler ones is that its programming better resists the problems that e36 units tend to experience on track, and it is more compact than the E36 system. Certain modules are also apparently programmable for wheel / tiresize and other parameters, but I have no direct experience with this yet. The conversion itself is still in its infancy but I at least have the mechanical portion of it started. I ended up with an 813.3 module - apparently one of the programmable modules.



This shows the relative difference in pump size - E46 is much more compact.



My initial hopes were that I'd be able to tuck it in the engine bay neatly but quickly discovered that wasn't going to happen. This is pretty much the only place I could have put it and it's on top of the headers....no go. I hate the general clutter this thing seems to generate and didn't want to mount it in front of the shock tower, so opted instead to position it behind the firewall.



So I drilled some holes for bulkhead fittings - two -4's for the master to ABS connections, and one -3 for the outlet to the front brake.



Relative positioning on the interior side - in the dead space between the clutch and brake pedals



Next, I bent some hardlines to connect the master cylinder to the firewall bulkheads









Then added in some padded p-clamps for the clutch bleeder and pressure lines



With the driver's side pretty much done I did some final sanding and covered all the bare metal / filler in more epoxy. Should look halfway decent after some high build and more sanding I think, but it's not a show car so I'm having trouble justifying much more time on it.





Next I worked on applying and profiling the seam sealer. One apron is done, still have to finish the other.







Somewhere around this point I got tired of working on the engine bay so got to work on putting the rear end of the car together.

After digging into the old repairs I found that both frame rails had been spliced (poorly). So I cut out the repairs and tigged in some patches.



Attempting to keep everything level









Next I welded in a new floor support piece from some angle iron and spot welded it to the frame rail.





It is kind of shown above, but I worked on forming a new sheet metal piece that spans the frame rails and ties into the tail panel. I had to weld on the flange since I don't have a sheet metal brake big enough to make the bend, nor do I have a shrinker to impart the curvature into the piece.



Mated up and trimmed to fit the flange on the new tail panel (~$150 bucks from ECS tuning)



Fitup on the car. I'll be gluing it to the tail panel, and welding the seams on where it meets the wheelhouse extensions to prevent any water infiltration / rust. The previous repair was just tacked in a few places, allowing the panels to flex and the seam sealer cracked letting the water in that caused it all to rust. Feels good to see things looking like a car again haha





Continuing on, I started working on a trunk floor.



The cutout is for the charcoal canister, roughed in with cardboard for templates. I want to have usable cargo space in the trunk without this contraption in the way, so wanted to recess it below the false floor that I'm going to make that will sit on top of the frame rails. There's also extra room there that I'll probably use for spare oil / small tools / first aid kit as well.







Next I moved on to a new battery tray area. There was a bunch of rusty spots I had to fix / cut out in this corner with new metal but I didn't take any pics. Anything in the gray weld thru primer is new.



New metal ready to spot weld in. This is on the same plane as the trunk floor. An angle iron battery mount with be bolted into this.





Still need to fix the drivers side but we're getting there. It's not pictured but the floor is also supported by angle iron that I welded onto the sub-tail panel piece I made.

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

Then I started repairing the quarter panel areas. This is where the quarter is brazed on at the factory. It was super thin after cleaning it out from the previous repair so I decided to cut it out and weld in new metal.





Then repaired the adjoining metal on the quarter panel. I will be gluing the panel on at this point so wanted to increase the surface area in contact.



Welded and sanded





Probably the last hurdle to clear before this quarter is ready to glue / weld back on is the junction at the c-pillar. The previous repair had a crap ton of bondo on it, and after digging it out this is what I was left with....more crappy welding.



Cut out



Repair patch in progress. This will be welded in with the tig.



Here's a side view, hopefully I'll be able to cover this up with a minimal amount of filler. There was a solid 3/16" in this area from the previous repair.



Lots of hours in this rear end repair so far. Spent a lot of time sitting there, staring, and headscratching but the end is in sight.

In other news, I bought a mockup kit and am thinking of offering long tube headers for swappers. Shoot me a pm if any of you guys are interested.



As always thanks for looking

Ls1e36

swap headers....you bought the wrong mock up kit
uyou need the yellow kit

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

2" can be built from this using spacers.

Ls1e36

Oh really, how do you do that? If that's the case, I'll probably have you build my 2" that way I don't have to buy that kit as well
send me a pm

spdnman

I am so jealous, great build. Wish I had the skills to cut up my M3. Looking fantastic.

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

This 1.75" OD mockup kit has the same ID as 16 gauge 1.875" tubing. The 1.875" tubing is the same ID as the 2" tubing. Simple way to make a spacer is to buy a u-bend of each in the same CLR as the mockup kit (it's concentric so the center of the bend isn't going to move with respect to OD) slice them in half so that they sandwich the mockup piece, stack them until you get your 2" OD and then tape them in place or tack em with glue. You'd only need to do this in critical areas where fitment is tight.

I'll shoot ya a PM

Thank you sir

BLKMGK

Can the charcoal canister be laid on its side like that? I thought they had to remain vertical and it looks like it's on its side. Will it work okay? I think/thought that gravity is part of its operation. Are you worried about trapping any fumes in the box around it?

Some incredible work, you've saved that car!

ckpitt55

iTrader: (4)

It's mounted basically the same way in the spare tire well from the factory. As far as venting, I still have to drill some holes to run the plumbing through. Fumes will be vented to the outside.

Thanks man, doing my best.

Nali6.2

looking real good bud cant wait to see paint!

Jimbo1367

WOW. Amazing work as always. Glad to see you still plugging away !!!