Alright lets give this another shot.

[CarSnob]

Alright lets give this another shot ('66 2000CS)

Back in high school I sent my 2000CS to a body shop for some minor rust repair and a paint job. There was some minor rust around the front fender and rocker, but other than that it was a good solid car. Through a series of misadventures and general d-baggery that I won't go into in full detail (unless you boys and girls would like that?), I just got it back two days ago. I also just graduated college. When the project was started it was a pretty nice car, but 4 years of neglect and 2 - 4 different body shops with varying degrees of professionalism changed that. Either way, when it came back it needed a serious bath. I'm going to try and document the process of putting it back together here, but for now the only pictures I have are a few steps from cleaning the interior. More to come soon enough.

 

[CarSnob]

Spent the day trying to dig out all the parts I had packed away and cleaning off the dust and grime from storage. I wish I had been better about bagging stuff with its respective hardware, but a lot of that stuff was rusty anyway so that's probably for the best. I came across the wiper motor and decided to test it but it didn't work, and when I opened it up it was filled with old grease and bits of metal. If you guys know of anyone who rebuilds these things or if there's an equivalent replacement floating around that'd be helpful because mine is totally toast.

 

[Peter Coomaraswamy]

Great project! I think these can be enhanced to a great degree and show the real beauty of the e9 in all its forms. Please keep posting. Where in NY are you?

 

[CarSnob]

Great project! I think these can be enhanced to a great degree and show the real beauty of the e9 in all its forms. Please keep posting. Where in NY are you?

I'm on Long Island. Thanks by the way, I think the earlier cars have some cool little features that the later cars did away with. The big grilles in the nose come to mind. It's a love/hate thing but I think it's pretty neat.

 

[CSteve]

Yes, the 2000CS is an acquired taste. But I have been coming around. Perhaps if my CSi gets whacked I will look for a 2000.

 

[CarSnob]

So I was attempting to put in the headliner today, but ran into a few problems. The first issue was that I put the interior back in, and that made crawling around trying to get to stuff a major pain. Took that out again, no big deal. The second issue was that the rear window wouldn't roll down, which meant I couldn't pull off the trim around the inside of the car that the headliner was tucked into. Fought with the window motor for a bit but eventually that came unstuck too. Probably just old grease in the gears or whatever, but they seemed to run fine (quiet/fast) when they came unstuck so I guess that's okay too. The third problem was that when it came time to pull the old headliner down, it was held up with a large flat cardboard sheet, and not bows like I expected. This made it real easy to take the headliner down, but I'm not too sure where to go from here. It seems like the center of the fabric was glued to the board, the board was secured in place, then the edges of the fabric were glued and tucked under the moulding around the outside. So that's what I'm gonna try to do. Here are some pictures of the car and a few small parts I cleaned today, and the word "weiss" written on the roof when I pulled the pad down. Pretty cool IMO.

Pictures in a bit because I can't compress the files enough...

Edit: Seriously, how are you guys uploading pictures? I can't figure this out. I know I already did it once but it keeps bouncing them back at me saying the file size is too big, but when I compress them they're still too big.

 

[CarSnob]

In what should have been a totally predictable turn of events for me, I found out that the body shop somehow changed the contours of the rocker panel so now the moulding won't fit. Fantastic. Adding insult to injury, I also attempted to put the grilles in and found that there's quite the gap between the sheet metal and the grille itself. So now I have to fight to bend and massage a grille that has already been plated and finished. At least in this case I know that it isn't the sheet metal at fault because I was able to test the fit with an older grille. Despite these issues, I'm still going to keep assembling the car. I know it's going to have to go to another body shop, but this time I'll be driving it there.

 

[CarSnob]

Progress and Pictures

So there hasn't been much going on in the past week or two, just lots of trying to find parts and make things work that haven't moved in 20 or 30 years. One of the bigger issues I had was trying to figure out how the locks went together, because somehow the majority of the hardware managed to get separated. Then once all the hardware was in one place, trying to get it all in the right place to make the lock work required another series of minor miracles. But they're in now, and working, so I was able to put the door panels on. They've been off since I got the car, and it's pretty cool seeing everything in place for the first time. I never realized what a nice interior the car had. The exterior is going together as well, albeit a little slower than I'd like. It's tough knowing the correct procedure to assemble a car that I didn't take apart, but it's a nice challenge. I'm including an album with some pictures of the car so far from my google drive because I can't manage to upload the pictures here for some reason.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7OElUc1YyN0dXWDN1Wkg1Zy11akNJV3g4WHIw/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7STNsXzh5WDFaX21LQ1kzSm9XbjZ4WGtRdElJ/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7TkZIZXZnc2FFQ25pQUZ6d29HMkRmSk1xWnlZ/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7aXNiV1lIdHl5QmNUTmVGNTIwdlktTW82TU4w/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7M1F4T20zdjV3VzMyVm9BY2lhYVctZDZISzJV/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7V0VmYnhpLUJvYlBYSU5kd2RXLXZVei1rWDJZ/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7bUxCOVpmUHdTckxvb3E3dDIyTjNBa3hYU1RZ/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7dFJEdk96NFRQSTI2ampoblUzNXFfN0lNSWw0/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7N3FzUUtnTFIwaUdwS1NoZzE4M3VucjRkbndJ/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7bFR0YnNQblVfM3JiNlZBWVBPNktVRmVrb3Rv/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7djhQNWNLenViVVdFMG5rZkFKN1Nkd1FaSDZj/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7TlZkVlNVbmNteU1EOFBDNE5DcldxN3lVWWNZ/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz1PH-jhk4T7WVJuQWhfMDl5M3dELVg3d2RPVnlyTXBYMjRZ/view?usp=sharing

 

[Peter Coomaraswamy]

I think it looks fantastic, has to be more difficult than the later e9 and allot harder to find parts I presume?

 

[CarSnob]

Thanks, and yes it's actually kind of ridiculous. I know it's not easy to restore E9's (well, I hear it is) but man this thing is obscene. There are so many times where I'll be going through the diagrams on realOEM trying to see which parts are cross-compatible and I'll find that somehow BMW managed to only use them on one car. Not small stuff like trim or lettering either. Things like the wiper motor, the master cylinder, the clutch slave cylinder (still not too sure about this one), the fuse block, and probably lots of others I haven't found yet. I don't know who at BMW decided it was a good idea to engineer a brand new part every time they make a new car but 50 years on it sure makes putting it back together a lot harder.

Don't get me wrong, I love the car, but sometimes I wish I had just found a Mustang. Or maybe a Ferrari.