deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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Jun 28, 2014 11:33:19 GMT
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Right so for ages Ive really wanted a E24 big 6 but due to crazy increasing prices i thought my luck was out. Ive had many many e30s, e34s, e36s, e39s and and E38 7 but ive never had an e24.......until now! A friend of mine who is into his vauxhalls mentioned he knew of a 635csi that was rotting away, I had to have a look! On the face of it the car was complete and looked in reasonable condition......saveable for sure. What really sold it for me was it had some rare options that were alone worth decent money. A deal was agreed with the owner and 3 weeks on the car was sat in my barn in deepest darkest cornwall. So heres the spec: 1983 Bmw E24 635CSI Auto M30B35 3.5 Straight 6 12 valve 218bhp 1 owner fron new electric windows x4 electric sunroof PAS On board computer (range, mpg, av speed, outside air temp Rare factroy fitted options: Recaro highback leather interior rear headrests and speaker pods Cruise control 15" Style 2 TRX Alloy wheels It was tekn off the road a few years ago due to a minor ECU fault, fairly common on these and usually due to a cracked solder joints. Repair is fairly easy or an ecu swap out is cheap and simple too. no coding off ecu back in 1983! car is basically complete but does have the usual E24 rusty places, front end of driver side wing, tops of both rear arches, rear panel and the back end of the driver side sill. All fixable though. Front wings are mega expensive but the ones on mine maybe redeemable. Plans are to get it solid mechanically and bodywork wise, a subtule drop and perhaps some 17" E39 staggered style 32 wheels purely becuase the metric tyres for the TRX wheels are super expensive. so heres a few pics: check out the tow vehicle, H plate VW LT45! beast!           the last image is my daily e39 530d manual touring. this thing is a beast, 200+bhp, 350+ lb/ft and still returns 50+mpg |
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Last Edit: Jul 2, 2015 16:56:52 GMT by deacs
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Jun 28, 2014 12:12:18 GMT
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Jun 28, 2014 21:29:06 GMT
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Brave looking project. Good luck with it. It'll need no more work than a lot of cars advertised at £5000 "needing some tlc". We had its exact twin in terms of year, colour and interior with an AVA turbo conversion a wee while ago.
Cracking seats though and cruise and rear headrests are definitely rare. Wheels not so. Front bumper looks reasonable too.
The front wing rust will probably have done in the inner wing too. The wing mounting bracket traps mud and rusts both inner and outer wing at the same time. Brilliant design!
I've a couple of brand new 061 ECUs, but going by the seats that might be an '83 build and the a ECU might be an 011 or 059.
Keep us updated.
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deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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011 ecu so will probably buy the one you have advertised on your site.
And yes driver side inner wing is pretty nasty, can be repaired though for sure. Small hole at rear end of each sill too but rest of sill is solid:
Both front wings have been repaired before at front end but I think they are now past it.
Front bumper looks solid enough apart from a the chrome corner trim on passeneger side so need one of those too:
I know what you mean about the front wing design, removed about 2kg of mud from front end of driver side wing/inner wing gap.
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deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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After reading a few horror stories I think the only way to go is a full exterior and interior strip out of the car to see how bad the rust is.
I'm hoping it's not as bad as the one in the vid below
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Jun 29, 2014 13:57:33 GMT
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Yep. Get the interior and carpet out and the wings off. What you see in that video is not untypical.
Check the floor pans, the floor pan to inner sill join and the sill/ inner sill area below the rear windows the scraper seals fail and water falls down with nowhere to go. Number plate panel and screen apertures too. Bit below the rear lights at the corner and arches too. Roof skin around the sunroof can be ropey as well. Were doing one now that will need a new roof skin!
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Jun 29, 2014 15:47:47 GMT
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and where do you find them good luck .......... repairs tozhe dream but a chance to buy a very small)) what difficulties may arise during repair? feasible to find repair panels?
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deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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Jun 29, 2014 17:50:50 GMT
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Today I had a coupel hours spare so started the strip down....... Until ive got this thing fully stripped i really dunno if its a go-er or a scrapper. surface rust on everything at least... but the only way to do it properly is a full strip so lets begin: First off was front bumper removal, not too hard but it did reveal how rusty the chrome front bumper was inside. its fit for scrap i reckon. wondering what other front bumper alternatives there are. thing is from the outside this bumper looked pretty good, well the driver side and front sections at least. removal revealed otherwise:      nex thing was to remove the rear bumper. This looked trickier due to access to the 4x 13mm nuts holding it on. I didnt have a decent 13mm spanner with me and it was too tighter space for a rathet so looks like that will be a task for later this week. after that its front wing removal. ive already had some bad luck with this as i cant remove the passenger side front indicator. one of the 8mm nuts/studs just seems to spin and not actually undo! GRRRRR rusty car!!! |
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Jun 29, 2014 18:37:31 GMT
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Rare indeed - never seen a 6 with those recaros.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:25:22 GMT
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Standard sports seat option before BMW asked, " How much?!" and paid Recaro a licence fee to build their own sports seats. 1983/84 seems to be the changeover point. You could even order a sports seat for the driver only, so the driver had a lovely Recaro Highback and the passenger a standard old comfort.
To get the indicator out, take the lens off and you'll see the plugs where the studs are moulded in. Drill them out and pull the studs out with the nut still attached.
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deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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Jun 30, 2014 21:29:54 GMT
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Excellent, top tip!
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Cut to the chase & fast forward away from the bumpers and lift the carpets. Thoroughly examine and prod the front floors at the bottom of the A posts . The sunroof drainpipes will probably have been terminated 3 inches above the drain hole allowing lovely salted water to run into the sill to floor flanges. Check the perimeters of the factory removable plates in all four floors. There WILL be rust here .
Get down and under the rear sills ,inner wheel tub and subframe mounting points . Prod ,poke all sections with a sharp implement especially up behind the outer sill where the subframe mounts are .Attach a pair of broad plate welding pliers onto the lower sill flange and pull back and forth to see if the flanged section that joins the inner ,outer and central membrane is weak.
Go all the way along the that lower sill flange and again poke and prod where the floorpan adjoins the sills inside and under the car to determine if and how much corrosion is present .If you get the wings off you'll find the sunroof drain pipe holes on the A pillar you can remove the plastic plugs on the inner sills inside the car and shine a light ( 12V sidelight bulb and holder is perfect ) into the sills allowing you to see the extent of any serious corrosion.
If there is , and I'll bet there will be , corrosion in these areas you can forget the comparatively easy areas of the inner wings,trumpets,gussets and rear bumper mounts ( although even they are VERY time consuming to repair ) and will have to invest in a good welder plus hundreds of pounds worth of tools to repair the car , or call a friend !
What are the rear inner and outer arches like ? That's another curse word of a job. New Panels are really only available from BMW so your in " whatever you can find " territory .Repair Arches will cost you £100 delivered from DE ( Private seller Ebay ) but no sills are available , I made my own . Trim parts are expensive from suppliers.
How do I know ? I've spent over a year restoring an E24 that looked superficialy almost perfect .
I've did ALL the work myself and have a library of photos of what you may ,or my not, find .
It can be done but you will need deep pockets , a lot of time and a desire to finish it .If you don't have all three , break it .
As has been said , all of these cars will have rust due to the inherent design flaws , just a question of how much.
I wish you good luck and offer any help I can , just drop me a PM.
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deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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yep ive been all the way along the sills outer and from under the car and they are solid, rear inner arch tubs are good too but yes my main plan is to totally strip the car down to a shell........ then i can assess if its worth fixing. failing that i will have a pile of parts already to sell on! fairly basic cars to strip down in terms of pulling out all interior and exterior trim so shouldnt take too long to get it down to bare bones. I'm not going for a concourse style resto anyways. I actually fancy doing a touring car replica with some flared arches, something along the lines of this www.bonhams.com/auctions/19746/lot/378/anyways i have friday afternoon off work so more stripping of parts will commence. Il be sure to get plenty of photos of the progress. I have been looking at a few cars for sale on ebay and the like for £4000+ and even those you can see dodgy looking rusty areas...... which as you said are just the start of it!!! curse word poor design in terms of rust traps for sure! I guess more of the issue here with the E24 is availability of spare parts and panels, i mean you get plenty of rusty fords and vws but there is a healthy 2nd hand and aftermarket parts market for them where as no one caters for the E24 it seems. I knew i should of bought another E30 instead!!! Anyone wanna buy an E24?? |
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Yep. Let me know if you've had enough.
I've said before and often, there are a lot of cars advertised out there at strong money that are no more than restoration projects in reality. Buy the cheapest one you can find and do it properly is the best advice for these.
I broke a car a few months ago with receipts for £14000 spent in the last 6 years, but not on bodywork. The owner baulked at another £7500 (I reckon it would have been more) to restore the bodywork.
Our paintshop charges £2500 to paint a glass out trim off repaired shell.
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deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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Quite a few rareish early (for E28 base) features on there., like OBC and early coarse spline sports steering wheel. Nether valuable - just unusual.
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deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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yeah seems to have a weird spec in that sense. factory listed options on the vin decode were:
the 390mm metric wheels
cruise control
intensive wash wipe system
recaros
rear head rests
green tint glass
model designation delete
headlight beam control
leccy sunroof
heated door lock/mirror
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Last Edit: Jul 1, 2014 21:00:56 GMT by deacs
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I guess more of the issue here with the E24 is availability of spare parts and panels, i mean you get plenty of rusty fords and vws but there is a healthy 2nd hand and aftermarket parts market for them where as no one caters for the E24 it seems. course there is! You're just not looking in the right places! Here's one I'm breaking as a bit of inspiration...  |
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To echo Baveria's comments above about rare, early E28-based bits, you'll almost certainly find you're rocking a medium case diff with the central mount. You've also got the wings without the side repeaters, although you'll probably find that there are a number of holes of the rusty type in any case!
Awesome seats. So much better than the BMW sports ones.
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deacs
Part of things
Posts: 260
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Question...... Is it possible to fit the highline rear bumper side trims to an early model like this?
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