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12/29/06 – Examining the chassis.

 
Alright. Another update. The chassis will be fine. Jeez, I don't want to spend 1500 bucks on a car that I'm going to be cutting the transmission tunnel out of anyway (more on that later).1

 Next up, the body rot.

 There appear to be four locations. They all seem like relatively easy fixes. Just need to cut out the bad parts and weld in new metal. I have access to both metal and welders, should not be a big problem. The only portion of the rot the is structural is on the strut tower, shown here:

 

 Here is the rust in the battery tray:

 

 Here is the rust under the carpet:

 

 I am not a body guy, but the rest of the car is pretty clean. Quite frankly, since no mater what shell I get I am painting, I don't see the point in spending another 500+ dollars when I can simply fix up the minor problems with this one... One week2 of DIY chassis work > spending $500 that can be put toward management.

 
We pulled the dash out and the rest of the stuff from the engine bay. I will say this, the way this car is put together is so convoluted. The wiring is absurd. Any Japanese car I've worked on of the same era has always been much more organized and well-thought-out. Now I can have a better reason to hate on euros...

 

Looks pretty clean to me... aside from all the grease.

 

 

 The pictures of the rust seriously gross me out.  I hate rust.  I never want to own anything with rust on it ever again.  As mentioned before, though, dealing with this particular shell taught me so much valuable information.  Live and learn, right?


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        (1)       I should have spent $5000 on an M3                 chassis…

(2)       I must have meant to type 3 months…