E30 Zone

Having been told by my 'MOT' man here in southern France, down near Toulouse that my car had too much rust and too many holes for the new regulations I would have to get it repaired for the next time , that would be in two year's time... The list of work covered the usual things for an E30, driver and passenger footwell corners, holes in the sill around the jacking points, tow hitch ,minor holes in the chassis around the rear suspension mounting points, tailgate and more than a few holes in the floor where the heat shield studs had rotted through. I guess I have been a bit lucky in that the roads down here are not gritted in the winter, most of the snow is up in the mountains, so people either carry snow chains or change to winter tyres. The first job was fix the rear tailgate, fortunately I managed to find a 325 Touring in a BMW specialist garage in Toulouse, that was by sheer luck as the Touring is very rare down here, I have only seen one other in 18 years, apart from the scrapper, and that was a tourist. Whilst the car was off the road I could then address the odometer that had stopped working, a very common fault across the entire BMW range. The problem is that the grease used in the odometer 'gear box' rots the plastic gear teeth, it is easy to fix, first you find out which make of speedo you have, mine is a Motometer, then you count the number of teeth on the gearset to see which one of nine different combinations you have. If you are lucky as I was, tooth numbers are inscribed on the gear wheel, you can then order a new set from a specialist in Germany https://partworks.de/en-gearworks-de-co ... ant-b.html This is what it looked like when taken apart, you can see where the gear teeth are missing. I now have a working odometer. I'll post up some more resto shots later.
Well, so much for the nice clean job and on to the real hard work. It wasn't really that bad, until I got going with a screwdriver and a hammer, both driver and passenger sides were about the same. I replicated a few parts, in this case the factory locating points and the inner wheel arch bracket, I know some don't bother replacing them as they are a rust trap but, I'd rather it looked about right., besides I needed somewhere to fix the inner wheel arches.

|The view from the inside, I had to cut out some perfectly decent metal in order to repair the vertical sill membrane.

Then back underneath to repair the big hole.


Next step was to make up a new lower wing quarter panel , weld it in, very carefully with heat sinks either side of the weld to reduce distortion. I was quite happy with the end result as it needed almost no body filler.




Before fitting the quarter panel I needed to replicate the inner wing part that fits to the lower door post, firstly the 'remains' of the old bit, then the new part made and fitted.



and finally. I will show some shots of the other side in the next update.

Good work - impressive bit of replicating the parts there.

Speedtouch wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 15, 2022 6:50 pm

Good work - impressive bit of replicating the parts there.

Thanks, I have added some more photos since your reply, with a few more to come later. Glad you liked them.

The wing quarter panel on the other, driver's side, was treated in the same way as shown in the previous post. A new piece was fabricated , welded in and painted. I f anything it was slightly easier having practiced on the passenger side.

This a reminder of how it was done on the other side.



and the old bit of wing to compare it with.

Then round to the back to sort out the tow hitch, though it only showed a bit of a rusty 'bleb' on the outside, inside as you might expect, was a very different matter, but after some careful surgery and a bit panel bashing I made up a new section around the tow 'eye', welded it in and gave it a lick of paint.




Whilst I was around the back of the car I dealt with the rot in the side storage bins and adjacent lower wing area.


That's it for the moment, I'll post up the rest of the thrilling images of chassis and underfloor rust hole repairs.

Having seen some of the restoration work undertaken by others on this site I think I have been very lucky not to have had more to do. Having said that my 'brief' was to repair my daily driver in order to get it through its next 'controle technique' (MOT) rather than a full-on rebuild, I know one often turns into another but in this case I was able to do all of the work without removing major components, in this respect I was helped by this little tool, a mini angle grinder. Indeed , I could not have done the job without it, I would have had a great deal more work to do, taking bits off to get to the repairs.

As you can see it is only 20cm long and smaller than my fist, it cuts with 5cm x1mm metal discs, grinds with 5cm discs and small grind stones and will take 5cm Proxxon mini sanding discs. Basically, if you can get your fist in the gap you can cut, grind and polish. Working with a MIG welder meant I could very carefully put overlapping 'spot' welds around the patch, which of course reduced distortion and the risk of setting the cavity rust prevention inside the box sections alight. The repairs shown here were around the rear suspension mounting points, holes and rot that only became apparent when I noticed the 'soft' underseal and joint sealer, otherwise they looked perfectly ok. Interestingly most of the rust I have encountered has gone through the metal rather than spreading sideways. Anyway, these repairs were possible without removing the rear suspension,much to my relief.






OK, I know the welding is not exactly 'pretty' but in many cases, such as here, strength is more important , the patches themselves were made in 2mm sheet steel so they will probably still be there when the rest of the car has gone , and once covered with paint and underseal no one is going to see it. I was quite impressed with the BMW factory rustproofing as the sills for example were in remarkably good condition for a 30 year old car that has been outside for the last 20 years at least.
Anyway, that's it for the moment, there is some rugby on the telly to watch.