Bringing a '74 back up to her intended glory.

[Bmachine]

I too am waiting to hear how it goes.
I have an old GTV dash that I would like to recover in a similar way. Like the E9, the original cover is a heat mounded/formed plastic that can be removed from the foam core.
Are you going to recoat the old foam core to give the new vinyl a stable surface to bond to?

John, the glue I am using (DAP Weldwood Landau top) is made for this foam so no recoat should be needed.
I am behind schedule on this dash because I ran some tests with the marine vinyl and, although I really liked it, I thought it scuffed too easily. So I am now looking for an alternate more robust vinyl.

 

[Bmachine]

I also started on the dashboard veneer re-cover. I found some really nice figured etimoe online and designed it so the grain will flow all the way around the car almost seamlessly

 

[tygaboy]

When you're so excited to drive your car, you say "Wind shields? Real E9 enthusiasts don't need no stinkin' wind shields!"

I would have sent this pic to Bo for him to post but I just couldn't be sure he'd actually do it, so...
Bo brought his coupe over to the Red Barn to have some fab work done. I'll leave it to him to tell you about that. I just wanted to be sure you got a look at our resident mad man and his driving "attire"!

 

[Wobdog]

Love it! Thanks for the pics

 

[Bmachine]

I have a lot of catching up to do. A few months ago I had the rear bilsteins revalved by Performance Shock in Sonoma California to match the springs from Hardy & Beck. Since I now had new heavy duty shock tower tops, it was time to reinstall the shocks and springs. This ended up being a king size pain as the new H&B springs didn’t want to go in easily and had to be compressed first. I hate working with spring compressors. And then, of course, once you have finally forced them in, either the top of the bottom end does not match the indentation of the rubber ring and you have to twist the damn thing which ridiculously difficult to do....

Then I installed the shocks. I am using the E12 rubber bushing with the matching E12 metal sleeve at the top. I compressed the shocks with electric wire and discovered that you really don’t need to jack up the rear trailing arms very much in order to be able to slide the bottom of the shock onto that big M 10 bolt.

After much swearing and bruised knuckles the whole thing finally went in.

 

[Bmachine]

And then, at long last, after a year and a half on the disabled list...

 

[HB Chris]

Show us the ride height.

 

[Bmachine]

As Chris briefly alluded to above, driving a car without any windows is quite the experience. And special attire is definitely needed.

 

[HB Chris]

Mad Max?

 

[Bmachine]

Show us the ride height.

I don't have any measurements yet, but it seems like the height is actually a little higher than with the very tired old original springs. I imagine that it will settle a bit with time and after the glass and everything else is back in. I was happy with the ride height I had on the old springs. But not with the ride quality. So as long as we get back to that, I'm a happy camper.

 

[Bmachine]

I had a date with Chris @tygaboy so I wanted to get the car as road worthy as possible, even without windows.

My rocker panel covers looked pretty good so I thought I would give the a good cleaning and put them back on. HA!!! AS usual, once you start looking at a part from a little closer, the inevitable "I really should bring this back to full strength while we're here" syndrome set in. One side had the chrome/rubber trim installed with hardware store screws instead of the proper plastic clips, several screw holes had rust starting to gather around them, bottom line, I took the whole thing apart and cleaned and rust proofed what need to be. Fortunately, I had bought the proper clips from W&N a while ago.



BTW, am I assuming correctly that those get pressed into the sheet metal part first and the "chrome rail" then gets pressed onto them, which theoretically locks them in place, is that right? It seems pretty chancy since if 4 out of the 5 do lock in properly but the fifth one does not settle in place, you have to rip the whole thing apart and start again. These appear to be single use clips

 

[Bmachine]

I also needed to reinstall the rear bumper. For some reason the right rear corner of my bumper always rubbed against the body. At first, I thought that, at some point in its previous life, it must have had a little love tap in the area. But there was no body filler anywhere nearby, the light frame fits the contour perfectly and there is no trace of any deformation inside. Maybe some weird hand assembly quirk?

Before the new paint job, I did not care too much but suddenly, with all the shiny stuff, I really needed to address this. So I decided to rework the contour of the bumper and that area. After that, it fit much more comfortably. Not perfect but at least it is safely away from the new paint.

 

[Bmachine]

Today was a big day. As I mentioned here and there, I had always wanted a better seat and I really liked the e92 sport seat for their comfort, and adjustable side supports. I especially liked the fact that the 2 door version of the seats were in a style that looked it could have evolved from the original cs seats. Only problem is, they don't work with the original seat brackets at all. I was also very concerned about losing any kind of structural strength by removing the original "bridge" that goes from the tranny tunnel to the side rocker. I did a lot of research and a few people who had installed these seats had to add plates on the underside of the car. I wanted this mod to be as invisible as possible, so with the help of @eriknetherlands and later @tygaboy we designed a frame that would sit as low as possible without requiring any visible change under the car.

First I removed the original seat brackets. Originally I had tried removing only the center part of the bridge. Later we realized the whole thing would need to come off.


Then I tested the base frame with a wood mock-up.



But it needed better structural support



Finally, today, I drove the car to Chris Baker's and he did his usual welding magic to build the whole frame and the side wings. With that done, we have an incredibly strong base which ties as high as possible to the tranny tunnel and to the side sill (he used the original weld location there) but extends quite a bit further back than the original. I had noticed that, when adjusted for taller drivers, the original seat would hang unsupported in the back because the length of the original seat bracket is so short. This system fixes that problem nicely.



Chris also welded a bracket which ties to the front subframe.



After we reinstalled the seat, we were looking at it and Chris says "Damn, after all that work, we can't even see anything." I didn't tell him at the time because he worked so hard on it but, that was exactly what I had hoped...



The driving experience is significantly improved and the structural rigidity I was so concerned about does not feel like it had been compromised at all.

A million thanks to Chris @tygaboy for his invaluable help and to Erik @eriknetherlands for his early engineering help on the design.

 

[HB Chris]

I had a date with Chris @tygaboy so I wanted to get the car as road worthy as possible, even without windows.

My rocker panel covers looked pretty good so I thought I would give the a good cleaning and put them back on. HA!!! AS usual, once you start looking at a part from a little closer, the inevitable "I really should bring this back to full strength while we're here" syndrome set in. One side had the chrome/rubber trim installed with hardware store screws instead of the proper plastic clips, several screw holes had rust starting to gather around them, bottom line, I took the whole thing apart and cleaned and rust proofed what need to be. Fortunately, I had bought the proper clips from W&N a while ago.

View attachment 144733 View attachment 144735 View attachment 144734 View attachment 144736

BTW, am I assuming correctly that those get pressed into the sheet metal part first and the "chrome rail" then gets pressed onto them, which theoretically locks them in place, is that right? It seems pretty chancy since if 4 out of the 5 do lock in properly but the fifth one does not settle in place, you have to rip the whole thing apart and start again. These appear to be single use clips

Correct, I could not get them to catch so I used bolts with the heads ground down and discussed on the Forum.

 

[rsporsche]

I also started on the dashboard veneer re-cover. I found some really nice figured etimoe online and designed it so the grain will flow all the way around the car almost seamlessly

View attachment 144663 View attachment 144664 View attachment 144665 View attachment 144666

great choice on the etimoe ... my favorite wood. looks like you found some pretty flitches. gotta love the long / wide veneer flitches to allow you to make full linear pattern.

 

[Bmachine]

Correct, I could not get them to catch so I used bolts with the heads ground down and discussed on the Forum.

I did vaguely remember seeing a discussion from you on that. I’ll have to search for it

 

[HB Chris]

Erik N did something similar

DIY - Installing Rocker Covers and Trim Strips

If you buy new rocker covers from Walloth & Nesch plan on spending several hours test fitting and trimming to fit on the car. I had to open up the area that contacts the A and B pillars, bend the ends that wrap into the wheels wells a bit and I also had to open up the openings for the jack...

e9coupe.com

 

[Bmachine]

Erik N did something similar

DIY - Installing Rocker Covers and Trim Strips

If you buy new rocker covers from Walloth & Nesch plan on spending several hours test fitting and trimming to fit on the car. I had to open up the area that contacts the A and B pillars, bend the ends that wrap into the wheels wells a bit and I also had to open up the openings for the jack...

e9coupe.com

Yes, that’s it! Thank you for the link.

 

[Bmachine]

Finally. After a good amount of research and testing, I was able to re-install the first of the rear window with regulator.

 

[Bmachine]

The suspense is killing’ me! So, then….how did you recover the pieces??!

Dashboard re-cover part II

As is often the case, this turned out to be more work than I thought.
At first I thought about stretching that "4 way stretchable" vinyl to cover the whole thing. But, if nothing else, the two outer ends of the upper piece are super fragile and any pressure on them would have either broken them or, at the very least, bent them way out of shape. So I realized that this vinyl had to be done in 2 sections. One for the top and one for the bottom with a nice french seam in between. After doing a few tests at home, it very quickly became obvious that this is not something you can learn quickly. ON top of that, while much of what we do on the car may be hidden or hard to see, the dashboard is staring at you in the face every time you get in the car. So it better be absolutely right. To a pro it went. Which is easier than it sounds because for some reason, out here at least, any auto upholstery person is booked at least 6 months in advance.

So I continued to fill in all holes and imperfections in the foam to make it as smooth and clean as possible.



Then I inserted several aluminum bars on the outer ends to add a little bit of strength



And finally found one guy who came in during the weekend to sew and glue the two curved pieces.



I then glued the flat part and we have a dash ready to go...



— EDIT A YEAR LATER. After having lived with the dash installed for about a year I realize that I made a mistake in the 2 pictures above. Naïvely I trimmed the vinyl just to the edge of the wood on the flat part. That is a mistake. Because The black soaks up the heat of the sun, the edge started pulling off. It would have been much wiser to wrap the vinyl over and onto the bottom of the wood —

... without Fasten Your Seatbelt sign.