2001 M3 Journey: Laguna Seca Blue Edition

[nuc1]

How much of the gallon of adhesive did you use? They also sell 14 oz aerosol bottles.

Mike

[0-60motorsports]

Awesome work!!!! Came out beautiful.

[bavarian3]

Awesome work!!!! Came out beautiful.

Thank you !

How much of the gallon of adhesive did you use? They also sell 14 oz aerosol bottles.

Mike

Very little. Probably 20oz or so including test spraying, but it's not really sold in smaller units.

While I haven't used the canned version the reviews make it pretty clear it is not nearly the same quality of product.

[nuc1]

Thank you !



Very little. Probably 20oz or so including test spraying, but it's not really sold in smaller units.

While I haven't used the canned version the reviews make it pretty clear it is not nearly the same quality of product.

Much appreciated!

Mike

[samthejam]

Great job on that headliner! Definitely will be referencing this when I reupholster mine

[bavarian3]

Carbon Fiber roof install - Part II

I'll cover the removal process in this post.


To prepare for glass removal, remove the A, C pillars, 3d brake light, windshield cowl, rear view mirror and any associated wiring yourself before the glass service provider arrives.

Nice to see the 3m 90 still holding up on the pillar fabric.







Carefully source a mobile glass service. This can be challenging as many don't R&R, or do quality work. Find someone that uses the string method for removal, shown in pic.





Front and rear glass came out clean without issue. The rear was the main concern as the front was a beatup safelite that would be replaced anyways.





Next step was to remove the headliner and sunroof assembly. For the headliner, there's an assortment of push pins and screws in various areas to get this out. Fish around and they'll be obvious.

You'll also need to remove the B pillars if you haven't already. I left these as is and regretted it, very much got in the way throughout the process.





Don't forget about this one next to the sunroof motor.





Easy to remove with the windshield out.





This is what you're left with.

The sunroof assembly is slightly heavy so get a second hand ideally. I just let it rest on my head as it came down and hit the bolts with an impact, lol. Not recommended.





Easy work. Much weight removed. These break on e46's apparently so be sure to sell it to recoup some funds.





Not counting the motor or bolts. 31lbs for the sunroof assembly.

Not pictured - the roof skin was about 23lbs.






Now just left with a roof skin.






Now the fun stuff. Drilling into a perfectly good car. Mask the car very well. This process makes an effin' huge mess.





Now use one of the these paint stripping discs to get a clear view of the spot welds. This battery powered die grinder was amazing to have. Angle grinders are too cumbersome and risky for this work IMO.





Let the mess begin.





I used the Blair spot weld bit. It worked well for me. No walking around like others have complained about. For the front and back, I worked on releasing each spot weld one by one to minimize the amount of removal.





You can see the weld material is well intact on the bottom layer. This is what you want. You only need to weaken the spot weld enough to fail/release.






The sides are more of a pain as you have less access with a chisel. Just be mindful and work slow. The sides will pretty much have to all be drilled at once.






Eventually you'll be able to start prying things up. Pry bar works best here.

The windshield adhesive across the roof bows will make this harder. Pry up hard enough against the roof rail as leverage, not the front or back edge. The adhesive will fail and audibly let you know.






And just like that, congrats you've ruined your car!






A look at the results of all that drilling. All spot welds remain left perfectly intact where they should be. This is how it should look if you didn't go too far.

Forgot to document this but pulled a couple screenshots from some video clips.






And after test grinding a few down smooth.






At this point I stopped the prep process on the roof perimeter as I wouldn't be using a primer. Meaning I held off on grinding the entire perimeter to raw steel to as late as possible. This is to avoid having to scuff it again due to surface rust.


Next I'll cover the roof bows.

[0-60motorsports]

Amazing progress and some great pics.

[bavarian3]

Great job on that headliner! Definitely will be referencing this when I reupholster mine

Amazing progress and some great pics.

Appreciate ya both! Feel free to holler with any questions. I'm about to lay 2 more slicktop headliners now that I have the fabric.

[0-60motorsports]

Appreciate ya both! Feel free to holler with any questions. I'm about to lay 2 more slicktop headliners now that I have the fabric.

Thats great. I think im going to buy the fabric next time im in the states and change back to that getting rid of the alcantara. I'll use the headliner alcantara to redo a part of my OE CSL driver seat.

[blknsilver4life]

Amazing build

[bavarian3]

Carbon Fiber roof install - Part III - Roof Bows

This post covers the front, center, and rear roof bow install and prep.

First let's work on the center bow. Starting by removing these brackets. The coat hook hanger on the left will get swapped with slicktop specifc ones. These are NLA so source them in advance!





I got a second hand to help so I could drive a self tapper in the appropriate spot. Aligning this beam will be obvious once you're in there. The self tapping screws here make some sense as they're used for the other brackets in the area.

Nothing fancy is needed here as the panel bond will do the work in the end.




Outline the space and drill some holes for rivets. Don't use crappy rivets. Stainless with stainless mandrels so you don't rust down the road.




Prep the bow. Doesn't need to be perfect as panel bond will cover any exposed steel.




Clean everything up, get your rivet and adhesive gun ready and send it.

I used 3M 07333. I planned to use this for the whole project, but realized it's a bit too viscous. It got the job done for this part.







Sometimes when you're deep in a project you make some boneheaded mistakes like forgetting to tape off outline of the bow for a clean install. Buying myself more work but I knew I couldn't leave it like this.





Went down a rabbit hole of a mess. It ain't always wax on wax off.






After a mess of sanding, spraying, masking, fighting with blending colors....(this was definitely the most annoying part of the whole project) quite the improvement.


It actually matched way better in person. This was freshly sprayed, after curing it's hard to tell it was ever touched now.




Back to perfectly factory looking.

Note: The airbag does have to come down for the roof bonding step.





Now the front and rear bows.

The goal is to prep the surface for windshield adhesive. You can either scrape off the existing stuff leaving a thin layer(windshield adhesive bonds great to old windshield adhesive), or completely remove it then reseal.

Here you can see the remaining black strips of adhesive I started working off.





I opted for full removal.






Then to reseal. I used the same SEM EZ (olive color) coat which matches perfectly with the factory finish. It's also direct to metal coating.






All the bows ready to go, for the next step at least...





Now we wait...

[0-60motorsports]

Nice update and great work.

[M3_legend]

Your attentions to detail! Love this build this is a good reference to any carbon roof swap. I need to add this to my E90 M3 in the future

[bavarian3]

Your attentions to detail! Love this build this is a good reference to any carbon roof swap. I need to add this to my E90 M3 in the future

Appreciate that ! Update coming...

[bavarian3]

Carbon Fiber roof install - Part IV - Roof Install

This post covers the roof unveiling, install, and more.

Let's kick it off with some bling. Finally I unwrapped it fully. Thing of beauty. Not one imperfection.





Test fitting. Don't be surprised if it doesn't rest perfect.





I used the original rails for fitment as it helped with contrast. Alignment takes patience. On the front and back side corners, you have to align the curvature of the chassis, roof rail, and roof into a smooth transition.

Then along the sides, you try to achieve an equal gap between the roof rail to chassis. To measure this, I used plastic feeler gauge.






It takes tons of nudging mm by mm, but you'll get it eventually. Warning - it will drive perfectionists crazy.

Once aligned to my liking, I used tape across the 3 parts, then cut while in place. This was also done in the rear(as shown) and front perimeter which folds under the chassis panel.







So alignment is done. Now I can finally prep the roof and chassis perimeter. You can do this earlier on, but I didn't want the raw steel exposed over the several weeks I took to do this project. No primer is used on the perimeter in my process, keep in mind.

This is done with the die grinder and an 80 grit disc, per the 3M TDS. I used slow speed on the grinder to create a rough surface, almost pulsing it to minimize material removal.






For the roof, I scuffed the perimeter by hand with the 80grit disc, and as you can see the inner portions where the windshield adhesive will bond to.






Another part that took a load of time was figuring out how to handle the roof rack bolts.

I won't get into all the details here, there's more than one way to solve this, but I ended up trimming the roof enough(yellow spots) to allow the bolts to thread into the chassis like stock.






I carefully trimmed the yellow marked spots little by little till I got to this point.

I trimmed only enough to have the bolt flange sit on top of the roof layer(as shown), so yes there's an overhang in this picture, but remember there's loads of panel bond and sealer that fills that space on install.

You can trim even more so the flange is completely flat against the chassis, but the roof starts to get quite thin on material there. Besides, this is only done to fill the open hole where the bolt goes, and hold the receiving nut in place which is loose without something threaded into it.







Everything is prepped, cleaned a million times over. I could finally commit to the install and start applying time sensitive products.

This is all the windshield adhesive related products. 3m 08693 windshield adhesive, 3m 08682 primer.






The primer got applied to the roof and roof bows. This facilitates bonding to the windshield adhesive.







A little glare, but you can see the strips of primer applied to where the adhesive will bond to.






For the windshield adhesive itself, this actually gets done last, as the working time is much shorter than the panel bond (15mins vs 90mins). Prep the tip to create a triangular bead.






Here's the panel bond arsenal. I ended up using 08115 as the 07333 was too viscous.

I won't get into too much about the right or wrong product to use here. What I'll say is for the roof bow I wanted structural panel bond, while the roof I was less concerned as this a skin. 3M actually recommends this product in the TDS for this use.

Bryson pointed out a structural adhesive product that has the right viscosity, but a longer working time than BMW adhesive(very short working time which is why I didn't consider it).





My process for panel bond application is a bit different than others I've seen. I wanted a fool proof method against leaks. This process ensures I don't have to be fancy with the bead as all the low spots will have been covered.

It's like this for the panel bond on the chassis perimeter:
-step 1: Use the scraper to apply a thin layer over any exposed steel on the chassis perimeter.
-step 2: Fill the low spots. This includes the several dips along the rail, and the transitions at the corners.
-step 3: Apply a thick bead around the chassis perimeter.

then

-step 4: Scrape or brush a thin layer on the carbon roof perimeter.
-step 5: Apply the triangular windshield adhesive beads on all roof bows.

Obviously we were focused on the process at the time, but managed to have a couple pics taken.












Boom!

Before clamping the sides down. I stuck the roof rails on and triple checked the gaps with feeler gauge. This is where alignment prep really pays off.









What a good feeling to have that done. Checking the work on the inside. No cleanup was needed here.

Just the right amount of bead coming through. Not too much not too little. And the contact with the roof bows and windshield adhesive was perfect (hard to grab a pic).





While the hard work is done, still much to do at this point.

Next will cover the sealing, windshield reinstall, headliner, and some final shots showing the finished product.