When you buy a Tech 2 Sport painfully hungover....

[mattmk1]

Honestly, this has to be the worst car iv seen for hidden rot. I have a mk1 escort that rots everytime you sneeze, but at least with that everything is visible and you know what your dealing with. The E30 is a different story, looks nice and sound, you lift the sealer and your stomach sinks.

I know mine is pretty bad, my tourers were far better, but they still needed work. I think the next few years might see a fair few E30s either needing serious restoration, or meeting their maker.

[LeChiffre]

Why are 325i Sports such rotten old pooboxes?

Epic save tho - a lot of work in that. Don't forget the waxoil after its painted!

[mattmk1]

By the time iv finished with the wax, itll need the M52 lump to move

[Simon13]

alot were getting like this 10 years ago! Dolphin tech 2 is a great wagon to stroll around in, some serious effort gone into this, hats off.

Forget bodykits, all e30's rust like this!

Have you shone a torch into the sunroof tray area? I see you have the sunroof panel out. Have a look in where the panel sits whens the sunroof is retracted it can hid some sins.

[tonybtonyb]

That is one HARDCORE build!You must be the e30 doctor lol

[Cotty]

I wonder how many E30 owners think their car is rust free when it's secretly festering

[oomz1975]

You have some serious skills, keep coming with the updates.

[Royalratch]

That could never have been saved by a mere mortal - there's 2Gs worth of labour there alone.

MAXimum respect for attacking that.

[Alpina99]

Keep the updates coming,
(Is it something in the name Matt that makes a good welder ?)

[Sanchez]

Well done on the resto, keep it coming.

[toby]

This car is rotten.



Very Rotten.





After a few days spent wallowing in self pity, i explained to my older brothers (who i work with) that i would break the car. However this idea was met with them making various insults as to me being cowardly and somehow queer. I also heard a strange array of chicken impersonations coming from their direction, and so after a week or two i bowed to peer pressure and began to fix the sodding thing.

I'm glad I don't have brothers, but thankfully - you have, and they know how to motivate you, obviously.

This has been one of my favourite threads of this year. You've put so much work into this car where many E30s, which weren't as bad as this one, have been ruthlessly scrapped. No, there haven't been lots of photos or updates but what I have seen has been such an impressive commitment, a bounce back from a potentially regrettable drunken decision and conclusive proof that you aren't a chicken and this car will be saved.

[magpie]

i knew this had the makings of a proper thread.

[Gert_8]

All I can say is "wow!!"

[Royalratch]

I don't what's more impressive, the fab work skills or the amount of rust.

[Simon13]

A dolphin sport is the ball bags, the motivation itself!

[B7]

Personally I think you are mental but good on ya. Who'd have thought people would be restoring one as rusty as a 1936 Morris Eight!

Would it not have been easier to chop that rear panel out and have fresh number plate light mountings and a factory fresh towing eye surround?

[Gert_8]

It's an amazing amount of effort to keep this going. I'm sure it would have been easier to frag this and start again, but matt is made of tougher stuff than I am. . I can't believe the amount of rust it seems to be the only thing keeping it together!

Great work!

[mattmk1]

Cheers for all the kind comments chaps, i was expecting a lot of people to be more 'why are you bothering etc etc' so its nice your all positive!

B7 - Erm possibly yes. But then also No. It took me around 20 mins to butt weld the pieces into the number plate area, and the repair should be invisible once its painted. The rest of the panel was solid apart from the areas at the bottom edges - where it meets the rear pocket/battery tray areas. In these places i again cut the grot out and made some new sections - ill try get the pics of my old phone to show. These took another two hours or so to do.

Id guess that changing the whole rear panel would take far longer possibly 7 or 8 hours, it attaches in a lot of places and id only use a genuine BM one, and i think theyre over £150 plus the VAT. So it is a trade off. Guess theres no right or wrong way, but again once its painted hopefully you wont be able to tell its been repaired, it saved me the cost of the panel plus a few hours labour.



Thanks again.

[luxconvertible]

Thought my sport was bad wot is it with sports that rot more than ya average??? its so not fair lol, me m8 bought 1 cost him just under 2grand for a dolphin grey 1 but it was too far gone an had to be broke he was gonna take or he did take the roof off to change that as the outer skin was gone also, pedal box was held in by 1 bolt

[luxconvertible]

Theres also a little hole where the water flows down the bulk head out of can only be described as like a little elephants trunk, from where the water go's through the scuttle panel. An over the years had a glog up of sh1t3 the floor kept gettin wet even though i thought i got all the little holes Doh so if your gettin a wet floor check that bit out also!!

[toby]

Cheers for all the kind comments chaps, i was expecting a lot of people to be more 'why are you bothering etc etc' so its nice your all positive!

That is the normal response to rust but since you clearly seemed to be well into the repair by the first post encouragement is fitting, no?

[scott180gtb]

Mental Work. Top Effort. You need your head reading!

[fourmotion]

Strong work there fella. Glad to see another being saved.

[mattmk1]

At the risk of making this quite picture heavy, iv stumbled across some more snaps. Actually wish id been a bit more organised with this thread as its quite nice looking back at the first few pictures of the car.




These two were trading rust stories for some time:



O/S rear quarter had quite a good dent in it, covered by a copious amount of filler. Ground all the clag out, pulled the dent, was left with this:


And the reason for the new arches:


Take it offf!


Inner arch rot at base of quarter panel/Sill.

[mattmk1]

Onto the otherside:




Inner arch rot this side was much worse, so i ended up spending a sunday rebuilding the arch tub. Quite tricky as you have the get the shape spot on for the outer arch to meet up against it snugly, without the inner forcing the outer arch out of shape





Hopefully on those pictures, you can see i rebuilt the shape of the tub, in various sections, and then once the shape was right i tacked a band of steel at a 90 degree angle, around the arch tub, to give me a new return edge to which i could spot weld the new outer rear arch lip to.

[mattmk1]

This weeks work consisted of pulling the M20 out:



So i could prep the engine bay.



At this point, whilst giving it the once over, i could have sworn a saw the seam sealer move.......




Yup more rot.

This cars a turd. end of.




Oh look, one in the chassis leg too for good measure.




Partly my fault i suppose for not stripping the inner wings down and assuming what you could see on the surface was sound. Cranked the mig out of semi retirement.






I swear to god :X, this little hole was the most infuriating moment of the project so far. It was directly above the steering coloumn, which i couldnt be arsed to take out. And i wanted to weld it up from inside the car for neatness. This train of thought proved quickly incorrect, when i couldnt get to the area of grot to clean away the seam sealer and paint. Hence me lying on my back, in the car, welder popping and fizzing on the dirty sealer and painted metal, covering me in tiny lumps of molten mig wire.

Oh the joys of welding. :Cry:

Looked shit aswell but itll grind up.




Right, so thats about it. Shell is now 95% prepped for primer, stack of panels and bodykit all ready for primer aswell,


By this weekend i should have a matt grey tech 2.

[dub_fatha]

still aint started on the black tech 2 that i got off you a while ago.

was going to reshell it but after speaking with DVLGAY i was put off as i would have to reshell it with another sport for it to remain as one.
but there all rotten so out comes the welder

it doesnt look as bad as yours apart from the rot in the rear beam mounting point, but i havn't stripped it down yet so who knows

[djsingh]

looking good matt

We have to link up soon aswell!

Amit

[mattmk1]

Cheers Amit, yeah ill see you soon mate!

Shame about the black sport mate, if i hadnt already started working on this one id have done the black one over the dolphin grey. Black one had a lot of nice goodies on it, would have made a lovely car.

Anyway, progress on the Sport has been slow, its now in primer though, pretty happy with how its shaping up, seems to have made that jump from looking like a shed into something i can vision looking ok.

Pics, let the wet flatting begin












Cheers
Matt

[MurphyE30]

just had a read through this, Awsome amount of work you have put into it mate A credit to you

look forward to seing the finished article! keep up the good work

[mattmk1]

Quick question aswell before i paint it, should i roll the rear arches? Im hoping to run a few different sets of wheels, the standard 15 inch BBS, 17inch 225/40/17s and then a set of genuine 16inch alpinas. I also want it dropping 40 - 50 mm.

My last E30 was running 17inch alpina reps, with a 50mm drop on the back, and it didnt rub, but it was prefacelift and i think the arches are different??

Cheers

[MARKYMARKY]

Just read thread from start to finish--impressive doesnt do you justice.
IMHO keep it as standard as possible.Looking forward to seeing finished project,

[tomislav]

E..................P.................I.................C!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You sir are an awe inspiring man!

The amount of work going into this car!!! Truly awesome!!!

[tonybtonyb]

Now most people would have broken it up by now, i've seen better car's being broke.So hats off to you fella for a super job so far!

[mattmk1]

Time for a small update on this. Work suddenly became very busy in 2011, and the Sport has had to take a back seat. It was pushed into the corner of the workshop, covered over and forgotten about for a few months whilst customer's cars took priority.

However, in kit form, the Tech 2 takes up a LOT of bloody space and now with cars and campervans coming out my ears, i really needed to start getting parts back on the sport, and off the floor.


So anyway, iv hit the engine bay, inside, parcel shelf and boot with paint, which will hopefully allow me to re fit wiring looms, interior, engine, box etc in between working on other cars. It will also free up some much needed space as things go back onto the BMW, and subsequently come off the workshop floor!

Oh and i went for a colour change aswell, Dolphin Grey wasnt really my thing.........



......Well ok ok i only changed the shade.