9 months...
Time flies when you are overwhelmed at work. It is with equal parts excitement and disappointment that i begin to bring the first chapter of this thread to a close. Excitement because after owning the car for 8 years, the finish line (relatively speaking) is in sight. Disappointment because the pressures of work and life forced me to give up the dream of doing all of the work myself.
Last summer i was working feverishly to get the car done for the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix. I ultimately ran out of time, missing the show. Paint was finished, but again, 'finished' is a relative term. The bodywork came out phenomenally well; I got the body straight, sealed it all up in epoxy primer and sprayed a darn near perfect 3 coats of base color. The clear coat was much more challenging and resulted in my having to spend countless hours wetsanding the finish smooth. I was about halfway through when i came to the realization that the time and effort required to get it right, meant more than likely not finishing the car until the summer, and as a result, tying up the garage for 3 more months; a real concern given the damage the e28 recently took from a fallen tree branch while overwintering in the driveway. So, i reluctantly had it towed up to a shop here in Baltimore and asked the owner to re-base and re-clear it for me. That was 13 days ago. Today, i stopped in to snap some pics prior to paint and found this:
IMAG00406 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00405 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00407 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00408 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00409 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00410 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00412 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00413 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00414 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00417 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00418 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
IMAG00419 by
J_Otte, on Flickr
ok. so maybe its not quite 50/50 disappointment / excitement
. Its still a bit of a bummer though. There is some solace in knowing that i have a good bit of work yet still ahead of me to get ready for the vintage and several years still before the car is exactly what i want it to be.
In addition to just piecing the thing back together, the to-do list for the Spring / Summer will include:
1. Fitting the front seats and figuring out exactly what i want to do about the interior. I've about made up my mind that the interior will be brown. Question is whether i completely re-wrap the scheels in all brown skin or keep the center back and bottom insert as fabric and modify the rear seats to match.
2. Install of a refurbished Becker Bavaria Stereo w/ bluetooth streaming and phone integration - Very happy about this. I've been driving around with a relatively new Alpine head unit and although the sound was great, the look and idea of it just never sat well with me.
3. Custom trim treatments
4. Driving light install
5. Install and wiring (hopefully) of euro headlights with wipers / washers. I've been snatching up pieces over the years , hoping that one day i'd manage to cobble together a complete set. Ended up finding a complete set on ebay a few weeks ago, minus the harness, relays and various other bits. Will at the very least get them installed for the vintage and likely work on the rest over the coming months.
On another positive note - the shop owner and the guys he has working on it remarked again at how rust free the car is - they'd seen it several years ago when i brought it in to have the side-markers deleted. They pulled the rockers off during the respray to find an almost as new finish to the paint beneath. No rust anywhere - floors, towers, wells, rockers... At the end of the day, that's what means the most to me. the knowledge that i've done my job to preserve its quality for the next 40 years...
Will post more photos as it comes back together
