Resurrection of a dead car...
OK, so it's not REALLY dead, it still runs fine but as most of us know even a fender bender will get your e21 totaled by the insurance company. That's why I just keep liability on my e21's-the expense of collision coverage is not worth the benefit.
I very nearly parted this car because it's worth more as parts than as a complete car, even if it wasn't crashed! I decided to resurrect it because it's just so much fun to drive.
It's May 29th 2006 and I just got the garage cleaned and opened up enough to get the car inside and begin work. I did not want to cut it up in my driveway and anger all the neighbors on my little culdesac. I couldn't open the hood due to the impact so I used a sawsall to slice it across the middle. Once that cut was made I could remove the rear section and begin to unbolt the springs/hinges/latch to remove the front section of the hood.
This allowed me to get a better look at the engine compartment damage.
If you ever have to unbolt the twisted spring rods that hold the hood in the open position, be CAREFULL-they have significant preload and will snap around with pretty good force so don't get your hand in the way! I figured it was coming so I kept my hands out of the way but when it goes, it's a little startling with a quick/loud snap! Once the hood was off the grill pieces just fell out. The headlight buckets were completely destroyed too so off they come.
I removed the bumper, that's easy, it has my MaxTuck mounts so I just loosened two bolts and slid it out. I then removed the bumper mounts. The pickup bumper went right over my bumper without touching it so the subframes are completely intact and straight.
I removed the passenger side fender. I had never removed an e21 fender before so it took a minute to figure it out... There are 3 bolts inside the fender, they are accessed by removing the plastic splash guard behind the tire. Ever wonder why e21 fenders rot from the inside right in front of the doors?? This car spent some significant time on a dirt road in a previous life, this muck has been residing between the plastic splash guard, the fender and cowl for quite a while! Mud holds moisture and causes it to rust from the inside out... Damn, now I have to pull the drivers fender to clean that out too!
Once the fender was off I removed the radiator, it's destroyed. Once the radiator, remote reservoir, electric fan and wiring harness were out of the way I grabbed the saws all again and started cutting away the smushed radiator support sheet metal.
Not much left. The good news is the alternator mount is untouched-I was a little worried about that. You can see the cone filter is smashed too! There's a good view of the header though... Hmmm, tough way to get a good look at it.
Here's the pile of stuff I have removed form the car so far...
Sooo, what to do next? More sawsall and air chisel work to remove more bent metal then begin putting it back together. I won't be using a conventional radiator support. I will fabricate something similar David Mcintyre's club racer , lots of great stuff on that site.
Here's the plan for the front end: fabricated grill/radiator support, new aluminum radiator, single 7" headlights, custom grill made from perforated aluminum sheet, fiberglass hood-hinged and held down by Dzus 1/4 turn fasteners. I don't want a lift off hood, I'm too old to bother wrestling with THAT!! All this will allow me room to install the oil cooler I have had waiting in the wings for a while. There are a few other surprises up my sleeve...
June 2nd 2006: I have the rest of the bent metal cut off the front. On the 31st I picked up a replacement fender for the passenger side-it's even red! The same day I grabbed some turn signal assemblies and a center grill piece. Pick-a-part is not cheap in this neighborhood-$80 for these 4 pieces!!! I contacted Korman about a fiberglass hood, they want $230 for it-not too bad but the shipping estimate was $250!! What the heck have they been smoking??? A 12 lb hood in a heavy duty box-say 30lb tops!! I've had 60lbs of stuff shipped from FL to CA for less than $100!! I ordered a new radiator from Summit Racing, it's 25x19x2.75 overall-that's a BIG radiator. I love getting stuff from Summit, I call the order in and the next day it's here! As you can see in the pics I removed the drivers fender to clean out the crud in the back corner. When I pulled the fender in the junkyard it had nearly the same amount of crud as this car-I suspect nearly every e21 has a bunch of crud hidden back in there! I strongly suggest pulling the inner plastic panel (4 little screws) and mucking it out, you will be surprised what you find!
After removing the metal between the subframes I can see why Alpina installed the front lower brace. It's not all that sturdy down there. I will fabricate a stronger steel subframe to tie the sides together and support the radiator and grill. The final method of mounting the radiator will require some thought. The radiator has an 1.5" top fitting and 1.75" lower fitting-these are obviously much larger than the m10 water fittings so I will have to fabricate some adapters to get to the correct hose size.
The radiator is back in it's box to protect it, I'd hate to ding it before installation-it sure is pretty!! Next up is to roll the car out onto the driveway so I can scrub the muck off the inner fender sheet metal and get it ready to re-install the outer fenders. Who's the bonehead at BMW that thought up gluing the fenders on??? What a pain in the butt! I will spray the hidden sheet metal with cold galvanizing spray (95% zink) to be sure it doesn't rust as I have no intention of ever removing these fenders again-unless it's to install those cool Korman wide body fenders...
04 June 2006: After the NASCAR race I rolled the car out onto the driveway and scrubbed the inner fenders, wow-were they mucky. As you can see in the above pic they appear gray. That was just dirt, now they are mostly red except where road tar has accumulated. With the inner fenders cleaned and the outer fenders installed I rolled it back in the garage and I installed the inner splash shields and a valance I had lying around.
I installed some bumper mounts and the bumper, including the fender trim pieces. With those in place I installed replacement grills to get an idea of how things will fit up after the crash. The turn signal mountings need re done as they got pretty smashed. As you can see the valance has been trimmed eliminating everything but the grill to bumper filler piece.
You can also see the Setrab oil cooler and one of the 7" headlights: here's a better look at them... The grill in place in the above pic will NOT be used in the final version-they won't fit the 7" headlights-obviously...
The oil cooler is pretty small but should be more than enough for a N/A engine. The cooler will be mounted below the aft edge of the bumper on the drivers side. If I ever decide to turbo this puppy I have a larger cooler on the shelf. The headlight is VERY cool, the small top section was designed as a Euro"city light", the center section is a regular H4 headlight, the bottom clear section is a H1 driving light. These will take some thought to get them mounted correctly but should be pretty cool when done.
July 5 2006: Not much has happened since the last update, I spent a week towing a boat from FL back to CA and another week training some Corps of Engineers Park Rangers to operate some new boats. I HAVE made a little progress though... I found a nice piece of 3/4"x1.5" steel tube at work-perfect for tying my subframes together above the sway bar mounts.
I ordered a fiberglass hood from Korman. They build them when they are ordered so it will be a couple weeks before it arrives. When it finally arrives I can finally get to work on the new grill construction. I found some nice perforated aluminum sheet in the McMaster-Carr catalog, it is punched with attractive hex holes and is 76% open air space, much better than the best round hole sheet I could find. That will be on the truck this week too.
16 July 2006: I received the aluminum sheet for the grill from McMaster-Carr, cool stuff-should work very well for a new grill. The good news is the shipping for the hood was much less than they quoted originally so the total was $380-exactly $100 less than the original quote... Maybe my karma is getting better after a VERY bad streak this spring!
September 25th 2006: It's been a while since I have updated the progress so here's some things to check out...
I have a fan/shroud from a mid '90s Ford Taurus. I trimmed all the little tabs and extra junk off with a cut off disk and made some modifications to fit my monster aluminum radiator. With a 17" fan it should be able to cool any engine I slip into this car and have absolutely no trouble cooling my m10 even if I sit in rush hour traffic ALL day.
When I mounted the radiator I built some tabs to hold the new modified front bumper/air dam I am constructing. Here's a sneak peak at what I have in mind...
You can see the top of the original front bumper. I sliced it off with a band saw, you can see the center of the "V" has been filled in with another piece of aluminum to fill the gap between the "V" and the radiator. The black rectangles indicate where holes will be cut when I do it in aluminum. The hole to the right is for the oil cooler. I am thinking of insetting the front license plate in the opposite side. The holes will be hammer formed with a 1/2" radius from the front surface into the hole and the holes will be covered with an aluminum mesh to keep debris out. I have left enough room between the airdam and the radiator for an intercooler in case I decide to pop a turbo on it...
This is "Plan B"- This version is a little less boxy and has a more "bumper like" appearance and the air dam is slightly angled back for a more "refined" appearance... Yeah, that's it "refined"... The air holes have also been reduced in size for a cleaner appearance.
You can see the piece added to what was left of the original bumper. I made a wood form with a 3/8" radius edge and formed the flat aluminum sheet over it to match the original bumper edge radius.
The real trick is forming the bend around the bumper with the flange folded in the bottom edge. This required shrinking the metal in the bend area to eliminate the buckles formed by bending. To shrink the metal I used a plastic dead blow hammer-it would have probably worked better with a leather or wood mallet but you work with what you have... I learned this trick from the book "Metal Fabricators Handbook" by Ron & Sue Fournier. It's a really great book - I highly recommend it.
Once the part was formed and fitted I used a MIG spool gun to tack it on the inside then I ran several 3-4" MIG beads on the inside for extra strength. I turned the piece over and use a TIG torch to do the final exterior welds skipping around to minimize warping. Once it was completely welded I ground the exterior welds flush and this is how it ended up-It may require a very thin skim coat of body filler before paint but it's really near perfect for a first attempt at this type of project. I'm quite pleased with the results so far. I will spend most of this weekend in the welding shop at work-that's where the REALLY cool welding toys are along with a large band saw and 14" disk sander, sheet metal shear, sheet metal roller and a full wood shop to build the hammer forms.
04 Oct 2006:
I cut out the hammerform for the center hole yesterday and formed the aluminum for the drivers side today. Here's a pic of the end product, not perfect but pretty good I think.
The form has smaller radius corners but the .063" aluminum did not want to stretch as tight as I wanted so the corners are larger than expected. One edge of a corner began to tear so I will touch it with the TIG welder and file it down to ensure the crack goes no further. The left side will be a mirror image with the seam centered under the bumper/grill. Next up is the form for the oil cooler hole-this form will have larger radius corners so the aluminum will mould to it better.
13 Oct 2006:
I haven't had a chance to finish the hammer form for the oil hole and pound aluminum lately because I have about 5 different projects going on at the same time...
Click here to see what non-crash upgrades I've been doing while the car is down: Engine Upgrades NOTE: the old page is gone, the S50 conversion is in it's place July 2009.
31 Mar 2007:
I haven't made much progress on the car in the past few months due to lots of work/overtime/priority projects and a new addition to my family. I have been looking for a good Shepherd mix dog for a while and the end of last Oct my daughter showed me this from the local county pound web site...
He was about 4 months in that pic. I just couldn't resist that face. His feet look normal but that's just the camera angle-they are HUGE!! He was about 30lb when I got him and was just ribs and backbone. He's quite bright and learns very quickly. Here's a page on Shadow and the adventures of growing up.
OK, back to the car stuff... I have made some progress on the headlight mounts-pics soon.
Suspension/brake upgrades are in the works, check this out for DIY coil overs, Alpina lower bar, big brakes, and BIG tires/wheels.
Interior Upgrades are also in the works, check this out for what's happening inside the car.
Exterior modifications unrelated to the collision are begining too. These will include new sheet metal on the rear eliminating the bumper and fabricated box flares to cover the larger tire/wheel combination.
July 2009: This project has taken a serious change in direction recently with the purchase of a S50/ZF 5 speed from a 1995 M3. The original concept of the resurrection was to make the car MY ultimate e21. That included a 2.2L M10 shooting for about 200 hp and a more stripped down, raw, nearly track type car. The hang up was I would NEVER be able to drive it on the street in CA due to the STUPID smog laws.
I have decided to rethink the direction I want to take the car and have decided I would head in a more main stream direction, I will have to sell it in the future and not many people are willing to live with the car I originally intended to build.
The goal:
Build a car that a true BMW enthusiast would choose for a long road trip, even if he owned a newer more "luxurious" BMW, just because it was fun to drive and feel connected to the road.
I remember my e28 M5, it was very quick, handled great, braked great, had great seats, A/C, a decent stereo, and was a total ball to drive but it still had a little roughness around the edges-not refined and cushy like a 7 series (which I DON'T like). You felt connected to the road like no other car I've driven. This car came close as it was just before the crash but still fell short. I will try to close that gap as best I can.
The plan:
1. Install the S50/ZF 5 speed and keep it stock so it will pass smog in CA.
2. Keep the interior in place, well not entirely- new headliner, carpet, custom console (or no console-undecided). e21 rear seats are a total waste of time unless you have small kids and it's already gone anyway so I'll install a roll bar braced to the rear shock towers for the safety and the cool factor.
3. Modest box flares in steel to cover the 225/50/16 tires.
4. Fresh paint. I hate red and I think a nice darker silver like Ford Tungsten on the new GT like this:
or a gray like this M3 would help the car stay out of the highway patrols primary focus.
A good blue would be nice too, I'll decide the color when the body work is done.
5. A little quieter exhaust than I was originally thinking. I still like the side exit idea but will likely go with dual rear pipes which will be pretty easy with the stock fuel tanks out of the way..
6. The front end reconstruction will be a little more conservative than originally planned but it will have a nice trim little aluminum bumper for sure-I really like that piece. I'm planning to keep the fiberglass hood.
7. Aftermarket A/C from Hot Rod Air. It will be easier than adapting all the e36 A/C components to the e21 and likely cheaper in the long run.
8. The suspension will get tuned for a decent street ride while still handling head and shoulders above 90% of the cars on the road.
I think this project can equal e46 M3 performance, the power to weight ratio will be very equal at just over 10lb per HP and lighter cars are generally more fun to drive.
Keep an eye on the upgrade links above to watch the progress.