2002 Steel Grey 6spd coupe Daily/Restoration project

[Tbonem3]

MOAR

Bumper on, getting the trims back in, foglights from the silvergrey (bought new ones for silvergrey), the new(ish) headlights, new grilles





New side emblems and clear lights. Gilles (chrome) were in good shape.





Oil change. PO did an oil change a bit before I bought the car, but it was at a Mobile 1 place and they put in 5w30. So I got cheap LM for now. I'll prob use Castrol next year forward. Only annual changes as I don't drive the daily much either lol



Da boyz:

[Tbonem3]

Unfortunately (or fortunately), I've made a lot of progress on the car, but didn't update the thread here as I went, so I've got tons of photos to sift through, and my posts here will probably be out of order. So here I'm replacing windshield gasket and cowl and cleaning engine bay, but you'll see the bumper hanging off as I did this stuff before fixing the bumper. It'll get back on track as I catch up here.

Gross:




Gasket removed, but still need to clean out the "gutter"



Was actually really easy to pull old one out and put new one in. Started at one corner and worked my way around:





Cowl next. Have to pop off wipers. Be careful, it's easy to crack the glass. I used a small puller to get the wiper arm off the spline



Oh My




Removed all the plastics, and first blew out the leaves/dry dirt, then washed the engine bay



I also wash, then soak plastics in a rejuvenator/cleaner. I really like 303, but for heavier duty cleaning and restoration (as opposed to just protecting), I'm actually loving this Meguiar's stuff more. It's a marine product, but wow it works.



New cowl. Comes with new pop rivets and wiper gaskets, so don't bother buying those separately.




Wiper arms from silvergrey and newish Bosch wipers:



Soooo much better lol. The gaskets and the headlights made a massive difference. A paint correction will have this thing looking B+ maybe A-

[Tbonem3]

Staying in the engine bay...

New charcoal filter



As you all know, the 01 and 02s didn't get front strut braces. I upgraded the one in my silvergrey, so I put it in steelgrey. I also maxed out neg camber in the stock mounts by removing the nipples




Remove the nuts, and lift the car enough to take weight off so that you can slide the mounts inward. A pry bar helps, be gentle.




All done!

[antknee]

never knew you could replace the windshield gasket on the E46s without pulling out the glass. great job!

[jet_dogg]

I laughed when I saw all that junk under the cowl lol.

You should adjust the passenger arm so it doesn't rest on the cowl.

[jet_dogg]

Had to come back and look through the pics again to see dem fresh new plastics and trim, nothing more satisfying.

Also get rid of that stupid black retro plate I don't know why people do that fuggin ugly shit.

[Tbonem3]

Please bear with us. I got months' worth of diy work to post, but it will take some time.

[Tbonem3]

I actually had helped OP change the plugs and coils at his house in 2019 after it started running a bit rough. I just suggested he replace them all (Glad I did ahaha!). Well anyway, while helping him, at his house with no real tools, I found the old coil for Cyl 5 had deteriorated and left rubber bits down by the plug. It was bad enough, I couldn't get the spark plug deep socket down onto the plug to change it so we had to leave it, though it did get the new coil. So here I am, with 6 new coils and 5 new OE ngks. Car is still running rough.

Here's the plug with the rubber pieces:



I picked most of it out with a coat hanger, then blew out the rest with compressed air. Clean:



Old v New:



New air filter



Also my new MAF from silvergrey car, since I run Alpha N. New MAF didn't make the car run any better. Neither did the new plug.



The car has a few dents, nothing big, but some in areas that can't be fixed unf. I had one of the best in my area, Billy, come by and work his magic.

Here's the front of the hood. It got pushed in a bit.



After:



Driver door, right under mirror: Hard to see, and hard to see the after as well, but he made it a lot better. He was able to tell that some noodlehead already tried to fix it, but not well. And PDR doesn't work well a second time or more.




After (area circled):



There are two little ones on the big arch over the windows/pillars where the sheet metal is doubled over and he can't fix them, oh well. Overall, I'm happy.

[Tbonem3]

Next, I noticed that both door seals were damaged. It looks to me like the stereo install shop might have cut them and removed certain portions? Not sure.

Here, the alcantara/suede portion is just missing. You can see the orange glue.



Here's the same one, but by the dash, with the inner portion missing - see the gap between seal and dash.



Here's the driver side, it had a huge rip in the rubber



Perfect timing, Str8f4c3 had a set for sale. Even though it was mostly my pass side that was really bad, I figured this was a sign I should just replace both.

Received



You have to undo A pillars to plug in what I assume is the heating element? 3 small torx (15?) and they pop out.



Driver side A pillar trim cover just fell out (it was cracked too) :eyeroll Pass side was fine.



Here's the plug:



Also need to remove bottom sill cover. I like to lift it up and get under the rivets so as not to crack the sill's housings for the rivets (common)



Started the new ones in the upper corner, made it easy to know how to orientate it. Push it in really hard.



Some new rivets for the sills



Ahhhh, no seam between the dash and seal

[timmo]

Nice work! That plug is actually the window pinch switch - push up on the seal while the window is rolling up, and it will stop and roll back down. It's a neat trick to show your friends!

Sent from my SM-G781W using Tapatalk

[Str8f4c3]

Glad the seals went to a good home! This build is coming along very nicely.

[Tbonem3]

Cleaning

As you've seen, the car is very dirty. It's not so much that it was neglected its whole life, but certainly in the last few years, as it mostly sat. The pass window was stuck open as well, so there's a lot of dust that got in. P.O. also had little kids, so I found all sorts of stuff in the back seat including melted chocolate 😥

I'm not going to caption every photo, but I'll state what products I used. I started out just using diluted simple green and a damp MF towel. It always works pretty well, but I wanted to expand my arsenal, so I bought a few new products.

My favorite so far - P&S R. Doyle collection Xpress Cleaner - OMG this stuff is incredible. I actually dilute it 50:50 - it's very strong. I've never seen a product transform an old, greasy steering wheel into almost mint condition WOW. Smells amazing too, pineapple I think?

Nextzett (fmrly Einzett) Deep plastic cleaner - also very strong, smells good as well (lemon).

Horsehair brush - great for more sensitive areas. I originally thought of it for the steering wheel and stitching, as I didn't want anything to fray. A MF towel is still better for larger areas and deeper cleaning.

I just use regular Dawn dish soap for cleaning carpets/mats.

A pet hair roller! Whether you have hair or not, there is still probably stuff stuck to the headliner and pillars and other areas. The vacuum doesn't always grab everything. I've found a simple pet hair roller to be an extremely good last step to remove every little bit of lint, fuzz, hair, whatever.

I'll start with the best first, look at the steering wheel transformation!



Dash. Not too exciting- dust will come off just using water. But I still want to document it.








An example of how I clean the mats



Can't find the pics, but I actually sanded off the texture coating on the cup holders and rejuvenated them. For $0, it looks pretty darned good. The coin tray is new. Everything else is original, just cleaned (P&S)



Seats

Greasy:




Diluted P&S with horsehair brush






I feel like I lost or can't find some pics, so not everything is documented. I've been doing so much work, it's hard to capture everything and post here. Anyway, the interior isn't done, but it also doesn't feel like a homeless person lives in it anymore. I'll continue to make progress as I work on certain areas or maybe when I start to run out of things to do, I'll clean again. I still need to do the carpets. I'm also working on removing tint.

One more interior bit:

The center shifter trim and shifter knob were in bad shape. Luckily, as you can see, the other trims are pretty good. The boot was in good shape, so I've cut it off and will be refurbishing it in order to pair it with the performance knob which is the same as stock, but weighted, not lit, and doesn't come with a boot.



Cleaned/conditioned:



I'll post more when it's all done plus the center shifter trim (repainting it)

[robgill]

Looks awesome! I'm going to have to give P&S R. Doyle collection Xpress Cleaner a try on the top of my door cards. They have this tacky feel to them I have never been able to fully remove (both M3s!).

[Tbonem3]

Thanks Rob. You'll love it. It is def a cleaner though; you may want to protect with something like cockpit premium afterwards.

[Tbonem3]

Some more little things. I'm up to early April '21 now, so about a month of ownership.

Vertical B pillar trim. Not sure how it got so chewed up, never seen these need much replacement, but glad I did it now before they go NLA. The driver side was already NLA, but it looks like I snagged one of the last passenger sides. Not expensive, at least. Came off really easily with a razor, then some adhesive remover on the glass to clean. New piece is like other trims, with double sided tape already applied.





Wheels. These stock 18s aren't in too bad of shape as far as nicks and rash go, but the finish is wearing thin, exposing the black base coat so they look darker than they should. My first step is to really clean them and see if that makes them "pop" enough. I may want to repaint. For me, colors like silvergrey and steel grey either need black wheels or bright silver. Anything in between is too similar to the paint and doesn't contrast or pop enough. I had gunmetal on my silvergrey, and it just blended together.

I have a Iron-x product that contains the chemicals that change color which is good for wheel cleaning, but I wanted to save it for paint decon. So I bought Meg's "Hot rimz." Stupid name, great product! Doesn't change color, but works as well for removing brake deposits/caked dust.


Not bad. Will hold me over till I get new wheels. I *might* paint them for fun one day though.

Diff flush. I don't have much maint history, so I'm replacing all fluids. I'm not replacing with OE right off the bat, however. I'm using up old stuff I have or using cheap stuff, and then will flush again after some time goes by. Even though it's a daily, I don't drive much anyway. Just trying to clean it out better.



Got 2 new drain plugs. They updated them at some point. They got shorter and the hex drive is 14mm vs.12mm. I have both.



Well, the fluid that I drained out looks brand new. Oh well.

Even though I'm not putting in the magical unicorn blood saf xj + booster, I'm still using a quality lube- Amsoil, proper spec, with 4oz of lubegard LSD booster.