I Finally Found You Again!

Hello everyone!

It's been a while. I lost the link to this forum but thanks to Ove, I found you guys again!

So how is everyone? I hope everyone is doing well and I hope your e30's are still going strong. It's really nice to see some old friends are still active here. Hello Peter, Rick, Cab and Bob! I see Jaffar and many more old-timers are also still here.

It's been a while since I've had my e30. My car is currently apart for restoration. We found some rusted areas on the firewall so we decided to take everything apart and repair the damaged portions.

It's a long term project. I do not expect to have my car for majority of the year. Once the repairs are done I'm going for a fresh coat of paint.

Hi Ernest,

Good to hear from you again. We wondered if you might have been swept away in one of the bad weather storms you've had so many of in the Philippines lately.

Now sounds like a good time to do that restoration, before the rust gets too bad. Are you going to strip the car right down and paint the complete shell inside and out?

Hi Peter,

Thankfully my house is on high ground. It was flooded a kilometer or so away from my house and I did not even know about it until I went out. I have a nasty habit of not checking the news. The heavy rains happened in the morning and I slept right through it so I was surprised at how bad the floods got.

I did have relatives and friends that got struck by the flood. My grandmother passed away the day after the storm. The flood wasn't the direct cause of her death. The house itself wasn't flooded since it was raised above street level but her street was flooded. A week before that she was also diagnosed with bone cancer. I think all the events on that week stressed her out enough that she couldn't take it. It was sad since none of her children were in the house when she died. All that was there was one of my cousins and a helper. My dad and his sisters couldn't get to her in time due to the flood. It caught all of us off-guard since she was still a very strong woman up to that point.

As for the car, It's not a total strip down. Right now I have all the seats and carpet removed. The interior of the shell is in excellent condition. I do not think we need to paint over that. The seats will undergo repairs too since the front seats are pretty worn out with tears on the bolsters. I'm hoping we can retain the checkered center portion as those are in decent condition and replace the bolsters only. I do not know where I could source the checkered cloth if I ever need to replace that.

The rusted portion was on the firewall where the engine joins the transmission. We're still in the process of pulling down the entire engine to repair that section. We have a couple of junk e30s now and we plan on using some parts of their shell for my car.

While the engine is off we plan to strip the entire front portion of the car and fix/rewire the electrical system there. We'll also be pulling most of the suspension and sandblast the under body and see if there is some damage there we missed. Then we'll repaint the engine bay and under body and reapply a fresh coat of rust proofing.

I'm still contemplating whether or not I'll try out the new structural braces our shop developed for the e30. They are based on the structural braces I found off pics of DTM M3s and Miatas. It all depends on how much those braces weigh. If it's not much then I wouldn't mind trying them out as they'll be given to me for free.

Once the repairs are done I'll then transfer the car to a dedicated paint shop to do the body. I'm not going for a show-car finish. Just a nice smooth finish will do. This is still afterall my daily drive.

Hi Ernest,

I'm very sorry to read about your grandmother.

Good luck with your restoration project, and I'm glad you found us again!

Cab
1990 325i(s)
2004 325XiT

Quote
Ernest
Hello everyone!

It's been a while. I lost the link to this forum but thanks to Ove, I found you guys again!

So how is everyone? I hope everyone is doing well and I hope your e30's are still going strong. It's really nice to see some old friends are still active here. Hello Peter, Rick, Cab and Bob! I see Jaffar and many more old-timers are also still here.

It's been a while since I've had my e30. My car is currently apart for restoration. We found some rusted areas on the firewall so we decided to take everything apart and repair the damaged portions.

It's a long term project. I do not expect to have my car for majority of the year. Once the repairs are done I'm going for a fresh coat of paint.

Hey Ernest

I thought you had moved on, sold the Thirty and made some new friends

It's rough having the car apart but how else are things going to get done you might check the rear rails while you have it there in front of you; shock mounts, spring perches and so on. Areas that get structural stuff mounted to. I give it the pick hammer test (I've got two snap-on body hammers, one with a chisel like end that works great for this), the hammer has to have some weight to it to really be able to tell anything.

Pictures of the work?, I always love seeing work done and the shop and surrounding site. Sometimes when I have a project going I'll send my friends pictures, often they come around to see it in person- it's winter, can you tell?

Nice to have you back, Rick

Thanks Rick!

Thanks for the tip about the load bearing stuff. I'll be sure to check on those. What exactly is a pick hammer test?

I'm taking my time with the build but I'll try to get pictures when I can.

Quote
Ernest
Thanks Rick!

Thanks for the tip about the load bearing stuff. I'll be sure to check on those. What exactly is a pick hammer test?

I'm taking my time with the build but I'll try to get pictures when I can.

The pick hammer is a normal body hammer head on one end (round flat head about 2 inches across) and on the other is a 4 inch rectangular like shank with a flat wedge chisel shaped head. It works so well because it can isolate the area you're testing and pin-point the bad/soft areas with a quiet thump, opposed to a healthy solid bonk of good metal. You can even feel it in the handle once you get used to doing it and it often is a better test than say a magnet because of undercoating or rust will still pull a magnet!

Once you get the hang of it the soft metal or weak areas still intact will show themselves as easy as pie; its all in the sound and feel of it

Rick

Thanks Rick!

I'll have the shop look into that. With any luck, I hope we won't find any more rust or corrosion damage. A big bonus here is that we do not have winter hence no road salts.

However, the car did get flooded up to the center console when the storm hit. I'm not sure if I'll find any water damage on the lower parts of the car. The good news is so far most of the essential electronics (engine ECU and transmission ECU) were up above the water level so we don't think those got damaged. The car runs but is undrivable since all the seats were pulled out after the storm to get reupholstered.

I'll keep you all updated as the work progresses.