2002 Steel Grey 6spd coupe Daily/Restoration project

[Tbonem3]

Hot off my wetsanding adventure, I thought I might improve the driver door a little more. If you'll recall, the PDR guy worked on it, but couldn't make it perfect because someone else had already attempted to fix it, poorly though. Damage is in the middle of the pic, you can just see it. Easier to see IRL.



First, I went very lightly over the area so that it would expose the high and low spots of the dent and I could better see what I'm dealing with:



You can see that the shape of the damage is very vertical and narrow. So, I rolled up the sandpaper to match the shape



Took it easy - I didn't want to remove so much orange peel and flatten it so much that it becomes an eyesore in a different way. I figured I wouldn't be able to completely hide the dent, but thought I could smooth it out.



Dry. Time to buff it and see if I made enough, but not too much of a difference



Again, hard to see in a picture vs. real life, but if is definitely smoother and less egregious. Orange peel doesn't look as "disturbed," but also not too flattened either, which can happen if you remove too much clear with sanding.



Further back, more realistic view - can't even see anything at this distance.



_______

Decided to go from 12mm spacers up front to 15mm. Not a huge difference, but these stock wheels need all the help they can get. I don't like using spacer, but I also don't like the stock wheel look, so 15mm is my compromise - won't go to 18mm or 20. Pictured is the old 12mm (KSP - really nice), 15mm is behind it. I tried to put the 12mm in back, but with the fat 255/40 tire on 9" rim, it rubs, so went back to 10mm which is fine - only really wanted more "poke" up front.



Pretty decent poke



Car is looking good now!

[Tbonem3]

More wet sanding. Front bumper is also a poorly finished respray.

Examples of orange peel:





IIRC, I used 2k grit, but not much pressure.




3" Meg's MF pad on forced rotation using Griot's fast correcting cream



All done






Outside:




Only the passenger pillar left to wet sand and then the exterior is done!

[Maxima SE]

Man you have a lot of patience to do all that by hand but it came out looking like a new car. I would have probably went at it with hook and loop 2000 grit followed by 3000 and then compound and probably ruined my paint with circular sand marks all over lol

[Tbonem3]

lol thanks Mike. As much patience as I could muster; not easy.

Want to post some more progress of the interior. I haven't changed too much yet, just more and more cleaning.

While installing audio cables, I cleaned the driver footwell/pedal area and trims





Bought a new cubby for my other car, so now I have a good condition hand-me-down to replace the badly scratched original cubby lid



Original steering wheel looks so good now, I have no plans to replace it



Armrest looks good, but is actually cracked at the back, so it doesn't lift up properly, and comes apart when opened. I have a spare to replace it with soon.



Seats are in fair condition. I cleaned them well enough, but am not going to take it any further as I'm actually going to be installing a whole interior from a lower mileage car in the not too distant future (still black).




After cleaning the mats, I actually received a better condition front pair from a friend, oh well! I'll replace those and then the interior will be done until I swap out the seats and door cards.



Then I just have to remove the rear tints, and the interior will be done. I may decide to refinish the door handles once I'm swapping door cards.

[Tbonem3]

Repainted Roof Rails

Luckily, none of the original paint on the body panels has any clear coat failure, but the roof rails certainly do, and not so little that I could just polish it finely to make it passable. At least they can be removed easily and repainted without much fuss.




They just pry up. I used a small flat head to get started



Another newly exposed area shows the level of dirt I've had to deal with on this car.



And dead bugs to boot



Cleaned up:




Nothing broken luckily, and not too dirty here.



Hosed them off, then applied protectant to rejuvenate while I prepare the surface to be painted



Well worn



Sanded them down. Rather than try to remove and possibly hurt the rubber, I tried blocking it off with paper. It sort of worked, but some of the pieces ended up falling out. No biggie, the paint is easily chipped off the rubber at the end.



I bought a rattlecan of steelgrey 400 from automotivetouchup.com. *I should have used primer. It ended up fine, but I did a couple extra coats of base and actually used up the whole can on the 2 trim pieces.




Then I used 1k clear which is decent enough for this small job vs. 2k. Plus I don't have professional equip/vent



So metallic in the sun!



After drying, before finishing, I wanted to see the color/metallic match



Pretty darned good! A hair darker, but not much. I *think* using primer might have resulted in a slightly better match. Another:



Ok time to color sand and buff. Used 2.5k. In hindsight, I should have done one more coat of clear to give myself a little more wiggle room. I took it easy on the sanding, and it worked out.




Now to buff and restore clarity. A little compound first



Now polished




Ok, time to reinstall (step 1: push down. step 2, there is no step 2 )








I'm really pleased with this. The faded roof rails were really killing the car's vibe. Even more than the shit tint, I was dying to get these redone. Spent about $40 in base and clear cans. A big win!

[Sergmann]

Repainted Roof Rails

Pretty darned good! A hair darker, but not much. I *think* using primer might have resulted in a slightly better match. Another:

I used their primer on my project and it still came out a bit darker. I wasn't sure if it was just some fade from a 20 year old paint job or something else. I have read that metallics especially turn darker if laid down to heavy but I'm not a painter.

this looks great IMO

[Tbonem3]

Thanks! I was thinking maybe the white behind the base coat would lighten it a touch, but maybe not.

Overall, I'm pleased though

[0-60motorsports]

Awesome update!

[Tbonem3]

I had flushed the tranny with some Liqui-Moly conventional 75w gl4 to clean it out. As I documented, there was a lot of synchros (brass) dust in the, I'm sure, original factory fill. So now I wanted to flush that and put in the "permanent" lube, but it's about impossible to find Pentosin MTF2 anymore. You can buy the OE MTF-LT2 still, but it's pricey. I decided, with FCPeuro warranty returning in mind, to try Pentosin's MTF2 replacement, FFL4.

I actually put some in a friend's 6spd a couple of years ago, and it's been working well. FCPeuro had it on sale as well, so here we go...



The conventional 75w gl4 looked great (only had 2k miles). Happy to not see any synchros bits at all. Now I'm confident the tranny will be fine for years, with fresh fluid and relatively smooth (for the 420g) operation with no lockout or any issues.



While doing this, I had ordered a new belly pan for my other M, so my old one got spruced up and installed on this car now



All back together. Now there are no more missing/broken pieces!



The armrest's leather is actually in great condition, but unf, the hinge is broken and not repairable
Luckily, my friend had a spare black armrest for me. You must disassemble quite a bit to get it out:



Good to remove the center console anyway as it needed a good cleaning



Here, you can see how it's broken compared to new one (bottom). Console cleaned/treated.



Going back in

[Rudbari]

Amazing build mate
enjoyed your journey

[Tbonem3]

Thank you! Glad to hear

[alexM3Chicago]

Dude, you are on a completely different level in terms of restore. Quality work, steel grey is one of my favorite colors. Love this thread!

[Tbonem3]

Thank you Alex!

Still have some more updates to post before catching up to present day. Finally fixed the rear bumper and put on the scorza muffler recently.

[lastMleft]

Nice work Tbone!! You are indeed an E46 M3 fanatic keep up the great work!

[MTiz]

Repainted Roof Rails

Luckily, none of the original paint on the body panels has any clear coat failure, but the roof rails certainly do, and not so little that I could just polish it finely to make it passable. At least they can be removed easily and repainted without much fuss.

Hey, thanks for this quick DIY. My roof rails are the only thing on my car with clear coat peeling and I was wondering if I could just repaint them. Definitely filing this away for the future.