The end is near....SCOTTeVEST's Baby

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Sry guys,

even if you don't want to hear it, fixing JUST the rocker issue wouldn't be a big help, unless you also repair other most common rusted parts there, the base of the A- and B-pillar. Also the structure around the rear axle mounts and all the other layers of nasty placed sheet metal towards the inner rear wheel well.

You can burn money as much as you like in just cosmetics and do a shiny paint job, this is really yours. You're now aware, that your car has a lot more rust problems than you expected. These are really cost intensive to fix and it's most likely, that there'll be a lot more problems to come, once you gonna start a reasonable restoration. Go ahead patching what you can reach form the outside, flood the cavities with wax or whatever may conserve the actual status and don't burn money by the attempt to make structural repairs to the chassis. It's simply not possible to do that a reasonable way without stripping the car completely, removing the fenders and all the funny stuff underneath them. Once again just a kind advise from me and not a religion. I did a lot of these patches to my own car when I became the owner more than 30 years ago, just to keep it running, looking good etc. It was just in the days where you had to spend a 1000 dollars (was about 2000 Deutsch marks) for a complete paint job. To be serious even this invest really didn't make the situation around the car very much better. Just a placebo for my conscience and to be honest I even didn't have a certain idea about the real condition of the car.

Today I already did a complete restoration of the body for 2 cars and spend around 500 hours on each just in metal works. It sounds a bit weird to me when I read the estimations for the time spend for the repairs of Scotts car.

It's OK if you're personally fine with spending 10-15 k$ in having a nice looking drive for yourself with the knowledge about the real condition under all the cosmetics. Not my track, but there are many ....

Good luck with you decisions

Ingo
 
bfeng said:
Scott
I'll bet your car was mostly rust free when you bought it.
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I don't think so. I was told by a prior shop in SF YEARS ago that the rockers will filled with rust shortly after I bought the car, but I didn't see the rust and didn't want to know truly. Frankly, my car didn't look much different than the Green BAT selling now. I bet that car and many others look identical to mine with rockers removed. Just curious why buyers, including me, don't insist on removing rockers to inspect rust before buying??? They aren't that hard to remove. I am sooo bummed to learn how much rust there is, but hopeful at least that when painted it will look fine for 10 years hopefullly.
 
I am really enjoying following this thread, and learning a lot along the way. But I can't really say I understand the story line. It seems to be filled with unsolicited advice (that is falling on deaf ears), denial, discovery, and a lot of math that doesn't seem to add up. Oh, and some humor. It has everything! Keep up the good work. :D
 
if the rockers are rusty as they are you definitely have problems behind the Glove box and fuse box area, please access all the issues before you proceed because the cost can be high.
Scott if you can make your car safe and pretty that would be the way to go, good luck to you!
 
What gets me is that my car looked as good if not much better than this car, https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1974-bmw-3-0cs-6/, especially when you look at this image. Before you took off the rockers on my car, it did not look this bad at all. What is hiding under this car? Why wouldn't all buyers insist on taking a look underneath? Why lies underneath all our cars, other than those that have been bare metal restored? I had NO idea my car had this much rust. OMG.

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autowerks said:
if the rockers are rusty as they are you definitely have problems behind the Glove box and fuse box area, please access all the issues before you proceed because the cost can be high.
Scott if you can make your car safe and pretty that would be the way to go, good luck to you!
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I looked behind both, and very little showed there, esp behind the fuse box. The video shows both areas. Not great but not horrible.
 
After seeing your video Scott I'm thinking you keep your cost down and get it painted then either look for a clean shell or better yet a clean car and do a switch.
If you do the complete rust restoration on this shell with the pictures of the trunk hole and glove box rust you can see you need to completely remove front fenders and gut the car on a rotisserie to do it right. Now that I seen your process I'm going to go about it differently with mine. I'm going to do a patch job on the rockers just to see how bad it gets when there opened up.
 
scottevest said:
Why wouldn't all buyers insist on taking a look underneath? Why lies underneath all our cars, other than those that have been bare metal restored? I had NO idea my car had this much rust. OMG.
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BAT caters to individuals who are willing to pay top dollar for a car with no PPI or in-person examination. I suppose this is one of those things you need to see to believe.
 
Scott, I think your car is a lot better than the BAT green car, that car was bondoed up with Earl Scheib $199 special recently just for sale
 
scottevest said:
What gets me is that my car looked as good if not much better than this car, https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1974-bmw-3-0cs-6/, especially when you look at this image. Before you took off the rockers on my car, it did not look this bad at all. What is hiding under this car? Why wouldn't all buyers insist on taking a look underneath? Why lies underneath all our cars, other than those that have been bare metal restored? I had NO idea my car had this much rust. OMG.
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I’d say many buyers are aware of the rust problem with e9s, these individuals have read about it (lots to find on that subject if you want to find it) or have earlier experience with e9’s or other rust prone cars, or just cars overall.
With that knowledge and a $15 endoscope, you will find out if it’s a solid car or not in 15-30mins, even if the rocker panels are not removed. Some issues are almost always present, but you’ll know if it’s serious or not.

I can’t speak for the ones that buy them without doing a deep inspection first, either are they naive and is seduced by the looks of the car, or they might be fully aware that it’ll need a restoration? Who knows.

In all fairness, look at my project thread, your car (except interior) is close to what mine looked like before I started with it, some bubbles, some flaking paint and looots of bondo, and boy did it hide alot of ugliness.
I was prepared to do a bare metal project as I knew there would be lots of rust, and even if I was fully prepared, there were moments when I almost lost it when we saw the extent of the rust.. it’s everywhere.

And you have the same issue, it’s spread across the car, some are lucky and just have bad floors, or just bad rockers.

I feel for you, it’s a real cold shower, rust sucks!
 
Gransin said:
I’d say many buyers are aware of the rust problem with e9s, these individuals have read about it (lots to find on that subject if you want to find it) or have earlier experience with e9’s or other rust prone cars, or just cars overall.
With that knowledge and a $15 endoscope, you will find out if it’s a solid car or not in 15-30mins, even if the rocker panels are not removed. Some issues are almost always present, but you’ll know if it’s serious or not.

I can’t speak for the ones that buy them without doing a deep inspection first, either are they naive and is seduced by the looks of the car, or they might be fully aware that it’ll need a restoration? Who knows.

In all fairness, look at my project thread, your car (except interior) is close to what mine looked like before I started with it, some bubbles, some flaking paint and looots of bondo, and boy did it hide alot of ugliness.
I was prepared to do a bare metal project as I knew there would be lots of rust, and even if I was fully prepared, there were moments when I almost lost it when we saw the extent of the rust.. it’s everywhere.

And you have the same issue, it’s spread across the car, some are lucky and just have bad floors, or just bad rockers.

I feel for you, it’s a real cold shower, rust sucks!
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Yeah, I feel like someone just told me that I was really ugly underneath it all. I swear I had no idea. Not sure why I did not test the thickness of the paint or do anything initially. I think I didn’t want to know.


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Scott, you have a great car; try not to let it get you down. It's just money.

The rust in the trunk can be dealt with later. Same w/behind the glovebox.

Your floors are probably good, so really, it's only the rockers and whatever is going on w/that bondo'd quarter. You car will be worth more $$$ w/those rockers/lower pillars/etc. dealt with NOW and COMPLETELY! Now's not the time to skimp on an area that is being worked on.

Probably 80% of E9s out there needs at least your kind of work. Including those selling for $35-50k.

A lot of us here bought E9s when they were relatively cheap, so we all get surprised with big dollar E9s that appear to need work. Be glad you got a good one that probably didn't cost you an arm and a leg up front.
 
teahead said:
Scott, you have a great car; try not to let it get you down. It's just money.

The rust in the trunk can be dealt with later. Same w/behind the glovebox.

Your floors are probably good, so really, it's only the rockers and whatever is going on w/that bondo'd quarter. You car will be worth more $$$ w/those rockers/lower pillars/etc. dealt with NOW and COMPLETELY! Now's not the time to skimp on an area that is being worked on.

Probably 80% of E9s out there needs at least your kind of work. Including those selling for $35-50k.

A lot of us here bought E9s when they were relatively cheap, so we all get surprised with big dollar E9s that appear to need work. Be glad you got a good one that probably didn't cost you an arm and a leg up front.
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Thanks. You are making me feel better. But I can't understand why no one seems to insist on looking behind side panels etc. when it is so easy to do it. Why? Makes no sense unless no one wants to know.
 
The rust in the trunk can be dealt with later. Same w/behind the glovebox.
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I would agree for the trunk holes. These are minor problems, relatively easy to reach and not structural at all, just not nice.

But the holes in the fire wall behind the glove box is the most common KO criteria when you inspect a desired E9. If you find problems here, let it go, because this is really the evidence of bigger rust issues at the front end of the car.

There are a lot of restoration stories, where you can get an impression about what's going on in the most common rust problem areas of this beauty. Especially the front with the inner fenders, complete A-pillar, the domes, front mask and of course in addition to the front the floor pans, rockers etc- etc. If your E9 has a sun roof you have another epi center for the brown cancer.

It's really not easy to address all these spots one after the other, because parts of the body are not seperate, are connected, laying underneath etc. etc. This is why I wouldn't recommend to follow this way. and spending money for fixing just the rockers. It's just simply pretty hard to cut these expensive parts out in ten years when you have the budget to do a full restoration, because you can't get to the parts of the body, that you didn't fix while you fixed only the rockers ....
 
I feel so much better after visiting the shop today. See today's visit and let me know your thoughts. Basically, thanks solely to you guys, we are making the car safe by fixing rear axel, etc. and doing what is necessary with the rust. Someone stopped by the shop today that was VERY familiar with BMW coupes and he was VERY helpful.

Let me know if these videos are too long and if I should just summarize any action items.


Thanks everyone so much. I really appreciate it.

Scott
 
I like the videos. Very entertaining. Keep 'em coming!

Have Ben work on it.

Rock out the rust on the rockers! ALL OF IT!

They just need to start cutting so we can see what they're working with. They haven't showed the real cancer yet.

Aren't those '73 front bumper brackets? Why use those?
 
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teahead said:
I like the videos. Very entertaining. Keep 'em coming!

Have Ben work on it.

Rock out the rust on the rockers! ALL OF IT!

They just need to start cutting so we can see what they're working with. They haven't showed the real cancer yet.

Aren't those '73 front bumper brackets? Why use those?
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Thank you. Have no idea about the brackets. Can you please elaborate? I thoroughly am enjoying the instant feedback loop here. You guys rock! Thank you


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68-72 Front bumper brackets look like this:

s-l1600.jpg


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-E9-3...941668?hash=item239911e324:g:EdwAAOSwWD1ZrZXq

Not sure if '73-specific bumpers and must use the brackets you got. Did you buy the brackets together w/the bumpers?

Not sure if early brackets will fit on any bumper, but I would rather not use '73 front bumper brackets if you can help it. I.e. don't like how far they stick the bumper out.
 
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