'75 2002 DD Project - Non e46 Content

For the past couple of years I've been working towards/dreaming about picking up a 2002 to call my own, and a couple of weeks ago I finally pulled the trigger. I went up to Detroit and amidst a strong fuel/exhaust smell she managed to tackle the 4 hour drive back to Springfield (Ohio) without a fuss so I can't complain. Anyway, without further ado here she is:



The engine runs pretty strong, not that I have much to compare it to.





Once I got it home and really started looking it over, I found out that she has a few nice surprises and a few not so nice surprises. But that's all to be expected I suppose.


First, a 32/36 w/ manual choke:




Next, a Tii Mechanical Advance Dizzy:



Then I forgot to take a picture, but a full Ansa Sport Midsection and Muffler, which is pretty freaking loud @4000 rpm cruising down the highway lol. I think there's also a leak somewhere though, so that's definitely not helping anything.

The interior also came with a 3 gauge pod with oil pressure, voltage and an old school vdo clock (that still keeps time!) as well as a very old tape deck lol.



Now some of the not as nice things:

Driver side rocker panel




Driver Side Floor with carpet and sound deadening removed:



Oil leak from somewhere around the oil filter housing / intake manifold / head gasket.





So the plan is to fix the rusty area's and get the interior back to being sealed from the exterior. I've got some plans to help stiffen her up where it counts that shouldn't add to much weight either. In the end it won't be a show car by any means, more just a car meant to be driven. I've already started some of the rocker work so I'll post up more pictures soon.

sweet! are you just gonna remove the entire floor board section and weld a new piece in there? good luck w it

nice find! my indy here has a few of them, including 3 tii's but wont let any of them go

Nice find! I've got such a soft spot for 2002s.

yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
my dad used to own a tii, i LOVED that thing so much. Cried when it was gone

Nice buy, despite the rust. Fun car

Sweet Pick up Op Good Luck with your Build!

Originally Posted by NorthJersey 3er

sweet! are you just gonna remove the entire floor board section and weld a new piece in there? good luck w it

I'm planning to cut out all the rust and put in all new metal. I'll probably end up making my own floor boards though. Turns out the passenger side was worse than I was expecting and so a reproduction piece to cover everything would be next to impossible to find.

Originally Posted by wdeerfield

nice find! my indy here has a few of them, including 3 tii's but wont let any of them go

Thanks! A tii would have been great, but I would hate to 'molest' a classic tii. This one is nothing special so I don't have to feel guilty about changing out some stuff.

Originally Posted by southpaw

Nice find! I've got such a soft spot for 2002s.

Thanks man, the M3 looks great!

Originally Posted by kk325xi

yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
my dad used to own a tii, i LOVED that thing so much. Cried when it was gone

That just means you should pick one up too as a memorial lol.

Originally Posted by Gucki83

Nice buy, despite the rust. Fun car

Thanks, the rust is a 'little' worse than I thought (damn MI winters) but it's nothing I can't fix with some welding and metal.

Originally Posted by SalM

Sweet Pick up Op Good Luck with your Build!

Thanks, I'll try and keep this updated as I progress with her. It'll be a huge learning experience for me and I can't wait to dive in.

Soo I dove into the driver side rocker panel. As you could see from the picture I posted earlier it was completely filled with expanded foam. It did a decent job of protecting the inside rockers from rust, but it was a ***** to get out. Luckily a wire brush on a drill seemed to do the trick.



This is NOT what I consider a fun foam party...





You can see in this picture that the inner panels are still fairly solid around the top, so that's good news.




The worst rot in the rocker was towards the front just infront of the drivers seat mounts. This was covered with some silicon seam sealer type stuff, but I poked it out with a screwdriver. I'll have to mock up some replacement pieces and weld them in to fix it.




That's when I decided to call it a night. But not before I checked out some of the different options I had for reinforcing the rockers. I tried out some 2x3 rectangular tubing as well as 2.5 x 2.5 square but neither would clear the up front, so I settled on using 2x2 square. It'll give it way more strength than it had before, and a place to tie in a roll cage when the time comes.

The next step was to cut the tubing to the correct length to run inside the rocker panel and then notch it so it would clear the seatbelt mounting points that reached into the rocker. In order to notch the tube, I used the ever trusty Plasma torch. For those that don't know, this can cut through 3/4" steel like butter, so it made very short work of my ~0.125" wall tubing.

The Beast:




But of course I forgot the take a picture of the tube after notching. However you can see how nice and flush it sits up in the rocker panel now.



I can also use the tubing to create some e46-like jack points in the rockers. Which will be very nice considering the stock jack points weren't strong enough to support the car anymore .

Once the tubing was in there I tacked it in place and started tying it into the inner and upper rocker panels. I'll also weld along the inner bottom and outer top edges so that it spreads out the load and doesn't focus it on a small section of sheet metal (think e46 rear subframe lol).

One tie-in point before cleaning up the welds:



I still need to finish welding along it's whole length, but the tubing is in there now. I'm also thinking about tying it in directly to the front frame rail and the rear subframe mounts just for piece of mind. I'm not sure how much I trust the old mounting points.

R u missing a pedal? did they have slushboxes back in the 70's?

They did have them, but this is a manual. The gas pedal was removed for that photo because there's a small pin hole of rust behind it.

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omg more <3 from me!!

So I haven't been able to get much done with her in the past two weeks, work has been pretty crazy and I had to help my friend move etc etc. The good news is that I've been able to keep my whole labor day weekend free and the g/f will be out of town so I'll have all the time in world to really get some of the body repair done. I'm hoping to get both rockers fully repaired and then get some por-15 in there before I weld on the new outer skins. I'm also hoping to get at least the driver side floor patched up. Then all that would be left would be left to repair would be the passenger front floorboard and I can start putting the interior back together.



But just because I haven't had time to work on her doesn't mean I haven't been thinking of her. Considering the condition that the stock (read original) seats were in I was keeping my eye out for some replacement. The this past weekend I found two Recaro's from the e21 320is down in cinci for a good price.



I'll probably end up recovering them in black vinyl and alcantara or something along those lines down the road, but for now they're still light years ahead of what was in there to begin with. I'm just glad I won't have to pick off pieces of foam from my back every time I get out of the car.


Then since the front seats were getting replaced I figured I should do something with the rear as well. The stock rear bench had a couple of gashes as well as zero foam left. So a quick search on bimmerforums turned up a 6 series being parted out just north of me. That scored me these beauties:




These also included my personal favorite feature:





The fold down middle arm rest!


Just for comparison this is what the normal 2002 seats look like (not the ones from my car though):

Front:




Rear:





Both the front and rears feel great. They really hold you in place. They're also incredibly light, but I'm used to the e46 M3 seats so that's not really saying much.


I was also able to get a really good deal on a complete set of beltline trim (the po shaved it off the car before I got it). The best part is non of the pieces are dented or dinged up. After some polishing they should look really good.




All in all she should be starting to come back together very soon, and then I get get out and driver her again, I can't wait!

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i love u.
sooooo h0mo hehe

In !

good luck. helluva lot of work.