Just thought I’d post this awesome E36...

 …because the owner is about to have it repainted and I'd like to preserve its current awesomeness. 

My F10 530d: Removing the Police roof antenna...

After 3 years driving around with the Police aerial base on the roof of my F10, I decided to finally get rid of it.

I was able to access it by removing the third brake-light and bending the roof-lining down at the back.  This revealed the underside of the aerial base, which was held in place by a 15mm nut. I had thought the entire roof-lining would need to come down, but got away without doinh that so it is worth noting that this is an easy way to access the underneath of the 'shark-fin' roof antenna.

I had expected the base to be a 'stick-on' type, with a layer of adhesive underneath like a badge, but found this baby had been stuck down with a liberal amount of strong silicone-based sealant. A bit overkill considering the size and weight of the aerial-base, but I guess unmarked Police cars must still get a bit of vandalism... Sadly, the plastic top broke off so I was left with a snapped base and a hole in the roof of my car, meaning my chances of turning back were out of the question and I would have to see the removal through come what may.

So, like I say, I wish I had left the aerial-base on for the time being! As if the high-spot round the hole created by tightening the nut wasn't bad enough, even the gentlest of prising has left marks in the paint / lacquer... nightmare. But, alas, here we are so the question is what to do about it now?

A full paint repair would involve removing the raised rim from the hole, bridging from underneath with fibreglass-mat and P40 fibreglass-filler, keying a small circular area around the damage, smoothing off from above with body-filler and then somehow priming, painting and lacquering the affected area in sympathy with the rest of the roof... Whoa, this has created quite a lot of work here. For the time being a square of PVC-tape will have to do! Watch this space as the weather improves!

5 Series wing repaired!

With all the mechanical work on the E60 of late I would normally have relished a bit of body work to change the pace but, as the damage occurred at work and my company has several body shops at their disposal, I figured it was best to accept a free professional repair.

Not a bad job I must say. J Howarth's in Pensby, Wirral did the work. They are now officially part of Wallasey Fleet Hire and have recently renamed as such, but here they are on Yell - http://www.yell.com/biz/j-howarth-and-son-ltd-wirral-1163983/. I would have to second the comments in the Yell review. This is where our more specialist jobs are sent to at work and I trust the guys will do a clean, thorough repair and look after my car, so I waited a couple of weeks to get it done there and it was worth it. The E60 turned out to be quite an involved fix, as ever. The wings are alloy, not steel, so the car had to be taken somewhere after prep to have a blob of TIG weld put in the split [below] before being ground, filled, primed, painted and lacquered. Never the less, the car was ready for me by the following afternoon. Due to the extra work required they couldn't stretch to sorting the scuff on the back bumper after all, so I will have to break out the T-cut, but I am no position to complain - the wing is indeed like new.

Argh... Simo hit my wing!

Oh dear, some more bodywork already. Simo at work is not the world's most careful drive and yesterday he decided to park his Transit van next to the 5er and in doing so scraped down the M-sport bumper and dented the wing! Nightmare, but at least work are paying for the damage. It will be going into Howarth'a body shop in Pensby (Wirral) next week and they will be sorting the scuff that my mate did to the back bumper with his Volvo, so I guess that's the silver lining...

Repair in this post.

E60: Bumper damage + fix!

Calamity! As I was reversing out of where I was parked at work on Thursday, the edge of the front bumper caught the corner of a kerb I didn't even know was there. Parking at work has become mental lately, with a big influx of new drivers who start at 7am, so those of us in at 8 are being forced to park further and further up the lane and now into a gravel clearing that belongs to the Woodland Trust. During a short phase of image-adjustment my company lined the lane with brand new kerb-stones, but as it doesn't own the clearing the kerb ends suddenly at the exact boundary point. This has now been well overgrown with long grass and, although the kerb is barely 6-inches on our side, a dip makes it about 10-inches on the far side. That's the side my front-bumper hit as I reversed round to drive out.

I was only doing 5mph and it only sounded like a bad scrape, but I didn't realise the full extent of the damage I'd done until I got home. The front-bumper was hanging off, the plastic under-tray has broken, the headlamp-washer cover and tow-hook flap were missing and a reverse-sensor had broken off. I returned to find the absent parts, but couldn't find the reverse-sensor. It had dropped down into the bumper, luckily not falling out somewhere while driving and best of all it still works, because buying another sensor so soon would be a tough pill to swallow. The rest of the damage is bad enough, but today I have re-fitted the bumper flush and glued the sensor back in. The only lasting scars from the accident is some cracked gel-coat on the bumper, pictured. It can't be rubbed-in with T-cut and would need re-painting, so I think when I can afford to do so I will buy an M-sport front-bumper, as long as I can find one already in silver.

This will teach me to be more cautious when driving over grass!

First, I took the 10mm screw out from the corner of the bumper, just inside the wheel-arch and pulled the bumper right out to get to the reverse-sensor. The plastic mount had snapped off with the sensor and superglue just wasn't doing the trick, so I headed to Halfords and bought an Areldite 'syringe', £5.49. It's pricey, but does the job every time. Next was to remove any snapped off bits of bumper from the wing. The bottom edge of the wing, where it meets the bumper shut-line, had bent round the threaded-clip and created a high-spot underneath that needed beating in with a hammer and chisel before the bumper could be re-seated flush and the screw replaced to hold things tight. Finally, another blob of Areldite sorted the headlamp-washer cover-flap, as the clips had sheared clean off the back of it. I would have gotten away with it being unnoticeable if it wasn't for that pesky gel-coat cracking! 

E21 316: Flared wheel-arches painted.

I have a buyer organised for the car, coming to pick it up next weekend. Just throwing up some recent pics of the painted wheel arches.

E21 316: Big job broke out - Time to do the N/S/R Wheel-Arch...

This is the first wheel-arch I pulled to fit the 16s and it's the only one now still needing a tidy-up, to say the least. I cut too much of the lip off trying to wedge some balloon-like 45% profile tyres and left it in a right mess. The newer 40% profile tyres fit perfectly and only needed minor cutting to the other arches, leaving this one miles from the rim and totally out of shape. The bit I cut off is the line used to form the arch on the rest, so this one was missing an edge to build the filler up to and totally sculpting the new arch-line by hand with hanging bits of mesh and filler was never going to happen. The easiest method would be a plastic arch cover, hiding the cut area completely and easily smoothed into the wing, but all four would have to match and the Group 2 ones are just too big to consider. It seems my only options are -

A. Buy a new pressed-steel wheel-arch from eBay for £25. Trim it, grind the wing away in the right shape, weld it in place, grind the welds down flat and smooth it all off. Only then could I pull the new arch-lip out and fill it to match the other three. [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-E21-316-323i-1977-1983-REAR-PASSENGER-SIDE-WHEEL-ARCH-NEW-CLEARANCE-PRICE-/190865619545?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item2c707a3a59]

B. Spot-weld the piece I cut off back into place and secure it with fibre-glass filler. Fill the lip to match the others and build up and re-shape the arch up to where it meets the wing almost.

No doubt B involves a lot less time and effort, but it's still going to be a lot of rubbing down.

The chewed up scrap of metal, good job I saved it. It didn't just slot back into position, there was quite a bit of grinding and filing.

I had wanted to tack-weld the metal on and fill the gaps with fibre-glass, but I couldn't get hold of one so masking-tape did the job. I caked on plenty of P40 fibre-glass filler in between the tape, waited for it to go off, removed the tape and filled in the gaps.

Well sealed behind with more P40. You can see the sliver of metal in position as the light shines through, showing just how much arch got cut off originally.

It was then ground down with a rotary-file on the drill, mainly inside so nothing rubs on the tyre, but a bit to give the lip some shape. All that's left now is the arduous task of filling all that arch.

E21 316: (Wheel) Arch-Nemesis Beaten! - tidied up with a bit of flare.

Been enjoying the car and weather too much over summer to neaten up the pulled wheel-arches, but thought I'd take some time off to finish them before the rain and gloom sets back in.

I bent the lip with a pair of grips into the smoothest arch I could and filled it flush with P38 to where the original outer lip was. This took quite a bit of building up.

Normally I'd give it a coat of zinc-primer for now and rub it down again, but for aesthetic value I went straight to red-primer and it's already lifted the look of the car.

More of the rear arches had to be cut away than the front, so this meant a smaller and slightly easier area to fill. The only remaining arch is the dreaded N/S rear one, which I hacked to death trying to install tyres that were too big, but it's a mammoth job alone and will have to wait.

E21 316: Arch Rolling - First Test.

ET Plus complete arch-rolling kit was about £100 on eBay and comes with a full set of spigot rings to fir anything.

Hard to see in the pic, but quite a bit of scrubbing on the tyre and a faint red line all the way around the sidewall from the sharp-edged lip, below.

Rolling-tool bolts on to the hub, winds out against the arch and you're away, rolling it back and forth, winding it out a little more each time. This was insanely easy compared to what I was expecting. 

I managed to roll the sharp lip up almost flush and gave the rim of the arch a slight flare in about 15 minutes flat. No more scrubbage for now, even if the look hasn't changed much.

It's best to use a heat-gun to warm the paint so it doesn't crack, but without one to hand I figured hot water would do the trick. A bit of loose paint still flaked off from under the arch, but it looks like I'm already beginning to get rusty bubbles under the rim of all four arches and they will probably have erupted by summer. The n/s arch also consists of a fair bit of primer, so it'll be interesting to see how neatly that rolls out and I'll ask my paint guy how much smoothing and spraying all the arches will be with my left over paint. 

E21 316: Melber Wheel Painting!

Thought I'd spruce up the ratty Melber alloys this week to try and get away from the touring-car look and back to the general stance car vibe by painting the rims in cream. Or beige really, Peugeot Panama Beige to be precise - I spotted a Mk2 Golf with the full wheels painted in it and it looked like a nice antiquey dark cream. It looks decidedly lighter on mine though, perhaps I should have gone for Antelope Beige after all.

The dish I have left in the dark metallic-grey for now, but as one has the paint polished off something will have to be done, maybe a matt dark-grey or just grey-primer, we'll see.

E21 316: Engine-Bay Painting 1.

Brake servo and 'Puralator' air-filter were in need a revamp, thought I'd do the scuttle-panel cover as well.

Quick rub-down, blast of zinc-primer and then a good coat of BMW Black spray.

The engine looks a bit more cared for now!

E21 316: Some Paint-Job Pics...

Gonna take some proper pics when i've finished cleaning and refitting all the trim, but for now here's a few I took in the dark.