I cannot believe how well your paint job came out. Makes me wish I'd tried to paint that old Tbird before selling it. (still made 900 bucks though...)
I cannot believe how well your paint job came out. Makes me wish I'd tried to paint that old Tbird before selling it. (still made 900 bucks though...)
Mad_Ratel wrote: I cannot believe how well your paint job came out. Makes me wish I'd tried to paint that old Tbird before selling it. (still made 900 bucks though...)
Well thank you very much. I was really worried after the first coat when the water spots showed up. Thankfully once I got the gun dialed in and the moisture got out of the line it all started going better.
In case anyone wants to know, I used a Harbor Freight $16 gun. Oh and despite what it says on the packageit is NOT an HVLP gun and needs about 50-60psi not 8-10psi that a real HVLP gun would need.
I would think about 2.5 quarts would do it for a whole car, so really you could lay down a very very nice looking paint job on a car for a little over $120 in paint (primer not included).
Nice work!
dang son, nice work!
Cool stuff
Just a little update. Got all the trim put back on it last night. Here's the pics to prove it.
New wing repeaters
And I had to try thee out since the factory lights were broke, some LED license plate lights.
Old broken lights hanging down.
New LED hotness
The last pile of parts to go on the car. Window trim, lights, grills, and emblem.
And last but not least, a new emblem for the front. Can't be a BMW without a nice roundule.
So after all that was put back on I drove it over to the new house and am going to start driving it to work to see how it does in day to day driving. I still need to fix the drivers seat controls, the front left speed sensor, and this morning the SES light came back on so now I get to see what code that is.
And welcome back to Wheeler Dealers!
I can't believe it's been a month since I updated this one, man how time flys when your moving into a new house and trying to get your garage setup again.
We left you at the end of the last episode by putting the finishing touches on the body of the car, but we still had some mechanical maladies tainting the driving experience, which in a proper BMW should be one of luxury and sportiness. The issues still needing to be tackled where a nice clunk coming from the front of the car over bumps, soggy front suspension, and I was still getting the trifecta of ABS/DSC/Brake lights on the dash.
So after reading the codes for the DSC system it was saying I had an open circuit on the front left wheel. The sensors are cheap enough on ebay, so one was ordered up. While I was waiting for that I also ordered a new set of endlinks for the front swaybar, a common culprit for the clunking noise I was getting out of the front end. While I was on ebay I also managed to find a nice low mileage set of sport shocks and springs from an M-Sport model, those were purchased as well.
Once the parts started to show up I swapped out the front wheel speed sensor I was getting an error on, and cleared the codes and crossed my fingers. Nothing is ever that easy though and I was still getting the error. So I swapped the known good unit over to the front left side and STILL got the same error. So this isn't good, the DSC unit I got used must not have been good after all. Back to ebay to find another unit, I managed to find an auction for 4 used units, I figure I can check and resell the ones I don't use. After that unit arrived I put it on the car and coded it to the car, reset the steering angle sensors and cleared the codes, again I crossed my fingers...SUCCESS! All the lights went off, and whats more is they stayed off, with the old unit the lights would come and go, but stay on if it was warm under the hood, so I took a lengthy drive to warm everything up and all the lights stayed off this time. Job done.
After getting the ABS sorted I tackled that soggy front end. The shocks were pretty easy to swap out. Remove 3 13mm bolts on the top, loosen the 16mm bolt holding the strut into the spindle hole, loosen the lower control arm 18mm socket a little so you don't tear the rubber bushings. Remove the caliper assembly and place it off to the side. Then push down on the whole assembly rotate 10 degrees and pull out. Just make sure to be careful of the paint on the wheel arch and not scratch it, best cover it with a towel to be safe.
Old strut about to be pulled.
"New" strut about to go in.
Old strut out.
Strut back in place and ready to have the end link changed. Just rinse and repeat for the other side.
Old end link removed and here we can see the culprit for our clunking noise, while this unit looked good on the car, once off the car you can see the ball has popped out of the link and was clunking around over bumps.
New unit in place and ready to be snugged down.
Wheel back on and the suspension sitting pretty
I was very pleased with this upgrade/repair, not only is the clunk from the front end gone, but these sport shocks and springs make for a very nice ride, no more 1970's Impala ride quality here folks.
While I had the front end up I replaced the missing ambient temp sensor, the original must have been torn clear in that fender bender it was in. The new parts were easy to replace. I stripped the old wires back and trimmed them to get all the tarnished wires cleaned up, then soldered the new connector on.
Here the old wires are just dangling under the front bumper.
The new sensor ready to go, and the tools I'll need for the job.
Wires soldered together and ready for shrink wrap.
After that I had to calibrate the sensor, to do this you take a wire and short the two pins on the connector out while the key is in the "ON" position, then while it's still in the on position take the jumper wire out and connect the sensor. Now it doesn't read a bone chilling -40 outside, but a balmy 75, hey it's south Florida.
The last little bit on the interior I needed to repair was the drivers seat controls. I was going to take the whole side plate off and just fiberglass the back side, but the clips weren't cooperating, so I looked at the broken front screw hole and figured if I took a length of steel I could sandwich the plastic backing to the seat. So a length of steel was cut and a hole was drilled for the screw, then I slid the metal into place and screwed it down. It worked a treat and the seat controls are back in place and not loose and dragging on the door sill plate.
I checked out that SES light that came on and it was giving me an error for the secondary air pump system. So I still need to troubleshoot that tomorrow, but after a bath tomorrow the car will get it's pictures taken and be ready to move on to it's new owner.
So thanks for joining me again on this session of repairs and I'll see you in the next post with the final price tally of what the car owes me and it's glamour shots.
Good call on the seat controls. I wish I had thought of that instead of replacing it once, then just living it with it after it broke again.
Great job--paint looks fantastic
Well gents all the wax has been polished off, the bonnet's been closed, and the interior has had the finishing touches put on it. This ones all done and ready to sell on. I reckon whoever gets this car will be getting a cracking motor.
So how much does this car owe us? Well..
The car was $1000, the parts total breaks down as follows.
So there you have it. A total of $1228.21 spent on parts. I did end up selling a couple parts I took off the car so I got $110 back for those and if i sell these extra DSC computers for $100 a pop, that should be $200 back form those, so the total will likely fall to $1918.21 which I think puts me way ahead on profit.
Now it's off to type up an ad for Craigslist and see what offers I get. I'm going to be a little cheeky and list it at $4500, wish me luck!
Nice job. Here's to finding a great buyer!
At that price, sell off more parts and challenge the car!
Looks fantastic! Seems like fair asking price.
Great job!
The bodywork came out fantastic. Really enjoyed reading this one.
This one turned out fantastic!!! 
Thanks for the compliments guys. I listed it last night and got one call already, he's gonna come out after work today and take her for a test drive, lets hope we can do the deal and get her sold. If it did, that would be less than 24 hours turn around on selling, a record for me.
Wow. The final pics really show well. It will sell quickly looking as good as it does.
What did you use to fix the interior plastic cosmetic issues or did you just swap for good parts?
Wow that's a pretty impressive transformation!
Harvey wrote: What did you use to fix the interior plastic cosmetic issues or did you just swap for good parts?
If you're talking about the door handle areas, I actually went to Home Depot with a piece of the trim, and had them color match it with house paint. I then thinned it out and sprayed it with my airbrush over the scratched up parts. Then I cleared over that with some flat clear to protect it.
So I had a young man named Ramsey come by and take a look at the car, he took it for a spin and decided he'd have it! A deposit was left for it and he'll be picking it up this weekend. We settled on $4000, I'll take a 100% profit any day 
.
As nice as it looks, $4k seems very fair.
So how many hours on it you figure?
Harvey wrote: So how many hours on it you figure?
If I had to guess probably about 70-80 hours in it. The paint has the longest time put into it with all the sanding and buffing I had to do. But I don't count the labor since I would be working on a car with those hours anyways, garage time is therapy.
Is the next objective to turn $4k into $8k?
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