Bealo's 320/6

[bealo]

So I was now ready for the underseal. After looking at various products I opted for Raptor, This was originaly designed as a bed liner for trucks but due to how tough and resistant to chipping it is its become a go to underseal for classic car enthuiasts.
The Raptor can also be tinted any colour so I had decide if I was staying with the original Opul Grun or something different. Many hours were spent looking at pictures of E21's in many different colours..... drum roll please...... The colour will be 151 Ascot Grey A great colour in my opinion and an original retro BMW colour.

I spent a long time de greasing and taping off any areas that needed to be protected from the raptor. Mixing was very easy, Raptor came with a handy mixing/measuring cup for the activator which gets poured into the raptor bottle with 100ml of Ascot grey base coat. Then its literally shake and shoot.

It went on really well, I was very pleased with the end result, Definatley another milestone achieved with this project

[bealo]

Into August and its time to start thinking about getting the car back on its wheels.

First job is to clean and fit the fuels tanks. I wanted to fit them now while it was on the jignso they had to be fully cleaned and painted.
After cleaning them they looked pretty good but further inspection revealed the worse I could hope for





This halted my progress so I started hunting foe new tanks on ebay, facebook and forums. Finally I found some, not the best condition but will do for now. I bought the POR 15 tank sealer kit and wow what a product! easy to use and the tanks look like brand new on the inside. I tested them and yippee no leaks.

So now to fit them along with a new pipe to join them, new vent pipe etc and a lick of paint

[bealo]

Now for subframes.... Front one fitted no problem. For the rear subframe I first fitted new polybushes then I needed to make up new plates that link the subframe mounts to the sill. I knew this would be a problem earlier on in the build when I fitted the sills. Becuase i had used over sills and made them fit like normal sills the dimensions were slighly different meaning that the 2 fixing points on the plate were lining up on the flat section of the sill.
I made some new ones up out of some 2mm steel then painted and fitted it all up....... Time to get it off the jig





You can see in the photo that the holes on the mounting plates that i made were too big so i took them off and re made them!!

Still not happy with the appearance of those fuels tanks, The hunt continues....

[uwbuurman]

Looking great! And lovely colour! Great job on the tanks and fabricating and fitting those plates.

[bealo]

Mid August it finaly came off the roll over jig
I got it onto axel stands then put the old rear arms and shocks on, then on the front I cleaned up the steering rack and mounted it. The steering colum is only loosely bolted it for now. Ive also put the old arms and shocks back on the front. Ive got some second hand gaz gold coilovers which will be painted and put on along with 323 rear arms once the shell has been painted.

Wheels on and back on the ground!

[bealo]

So Back on the ground it was time to panel it up and check everything was lining up as it should.
A friend came over and we got the doors, boot, bonnet, valence and wings on in an evening.
The passenger side wing was a really bad fit, tried everything but it wouldnt line up. This was apparent when test fitting when I was fitting sill.
I dug out the old oringinal wing and cut off the bottom which was rotten and the other usual places and used the aftermarket wing to repair it , problem solved



After looking at possibly using Raptor on the inside or epoxy primer I decided to go with base coat and clear coat. Id never painted anything other than primer with a gun before so was quite looking foward to it.

Again like the welding I watched some videos and took some advise from people. The sensible thing to do would be practise on something but as it wont be seen I dived striaght in

Maybe lucky but 3 coats of wet on wet base and a couple of hits of clear coat and it came out awsome!! didnt even get any runs!
Loving the Ascot Grey

[bealo]

Then finally 8th of September it got picked up to go off for paint! Never thought Id get this far and Im mega exicited!!



It was weird at first having the garage empty but I started sorting out some parts....

Fitted poly bushed to the trach control arms, Painted the rear arb then had a look at stripping the 323 arms. Unfortunatly the dust shiels are rotten and Im trying everywhere to source some but no luck so far.

And that is the story so far and where Im currently up to!

Then I got distracted and brought my 4 cylinder e21 into the garage to sort out a rust spot

[uwbuurman]

Hahaha, be carefull, before you know it, you'll be knee deep in two projects!!

[bealo]

Haha yeah if I’m honest I only really pulled it into the garage to fit a new centre exhaust mount! It escalated quickly and before I knew it the door was off and out came the welder

[Jeroen]

Uh oh! But good progress on number one, and Ascot is a lovely and pretty rare color indeed... the end result will be fabulous. And good to have something on your hands while the car is at the painters.

[bealo]

A little up date......
finished the repair on the 4 cylinder which came out great then back onto the 320/6






so I've been preparing for the car to come back by cleaning parts and buying things like wheel bearings, handbreak cables etc (this is getting expensive)

as I plan to have all the window trim in black i managed to find a company that supplies the front and rear screen inserts in black. I've done a test on the rear quarter window trim using satin black plasti dip and plasti dip primer which seems durable and a good finish. The theory behind plasti dip is that its supposed to give a tough rubberised coating so I guess only time will tell!



Meanwhile I got hold of a pair of Recaros. Ive now taken the back seat, door cards and A, B pillar trims to my interior guy who is going to re trim them to match the recaros colour and stitching

[bealo]

The final update at the moment is that the car has now been fully prepped and is in primer along with the doors, wings, bonnet and tail gate.
All the arches have been rolled and sealed in preparation for coilovers. Unfortunately the bonnet was full of filler and pretty rotten so was easier to get another which while I was there picked up a genuine BBS trunk spoiler! Also my guy paid some attention to the aftermarket wing and sills to get them lining up perfectly which now look amazing.

He still has the boot and engine bay to do, My car is being done around his regular trade customers so probably a while until I can get some more pictures

Seriously can't wait to get this back from paint and put it together

[Manitoba]

Nice! Hard work and big progress!

Greetz,
Walter

[uwbuurman]

Great!!

[Jeroen]

These are always huge steps forward in a project, congrats!