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[CubbyChowder]

What's up everyone, I am proud to say that I officially own my first (and favorite) BMW

I fell in love with the BMW 2002's a little over a year ago, and have been wanting to create my own ever since. I've always been a huge fan and follower of stance, and I have a vision of what this BMW will become. I am dedicating the next few months of my life to this build, so updates will be frequent and fruitful.

I have to make one shout out to Heist, a fellow Stance|Works member who is building an awesome '02. I have been living vicariously through his build thread since day one, and I would always look forward to his updates, and he always delivered. Reading his thread really fueled the fire, and although his thread is an inspiration to me, I have my own plans to create a unique daily driver with a lot of character.

I have been looking forward to this build for the last few months. I have an awesome spot up at my dad's house to work on the car, which is located on a somewhat abandoned vineyard/winery (he doesn't own the place, but is the only one living on the property). I will be spending a lot of my time up there working on the car.

Now a bit about the car: it's a 1973 BMW 2002 that needs work pretty much everywhere possible (exactly what I wanted!). It holds a clean title, however it seems to have been in an accident as the rear driver side quarter panel and door have been replaced and there seems to be a lot of bondo on the car. The bumpers are crooked and dented, the interior is poo but she runs great and has minimal rust! Drove it 300 miles yesterday without a problem.

Now onto the main plans:
- First and foremost, get the body straight and rust free
- Air suspension. AccuAir e-Level with a custom bag setup
- Wide, pretty wheels. Don't have my heart set on anything yet (no BBS RS' here)
- Custom made metal fenders built around the wheels for perfect fitment
- Full respray, color not decided yet as it's still a long way away
- 5-speed conversion
- MKIV GTI high bolstered seats front and back (hopefully, not for sure yet)
- And a ton of other little plans, but taking this build one step at a time

This will be a big learning project for me, and I am super excited. I'm sure you're all tired of reading, lets get onto some pictures. She's pretty rough, but a perfect candidate for me:














Then I did a little bit of work, took some interior stuff out and removed some trim. Didn't really accomplish too much today, just spent most of the day coming up with a gameplan:










And here's one my girlfriend took of me about an hour after buying it



Stay tuned, there is a lot more to come

[LuckyHenriksen]

Very nice, I am excited to see how this goes! I love old BMWs

[Francois Dillinger]

Congrats dude! Glad you finally found one!

[D&W]

nice ill watch this thread, do you have experience with body work etc?

[NorCalFocus]

Fucking awesome. All these 2002 build threads are insane.

Subscribed.

[CubbyChowder]

Originally Posted by D&W

nice ill watch this thread, do you have experience with body work etc?

Somewhat, I had a Civic a few months ago which I did some body work on and painted. It was all pretty minor, nothing compared to what I will have to do with the 2002. I have some experience with welding, so I'm just gonna learn as I go.

Here's the thread for my Civic which shows what I did with it: http://www.stanceworks.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=20429

[CubbyChowder]

3/1/2012:

Got to work on the car a bit more today. Continued to dismantle the interior to see how much rust I am really working with. After getting the interior bare, I was glad to see that the rust really isn't that bad. Mainly surface rust, however I will have to repair a few small spots. I came across some very half-assed fixes, but overall nothing overwhelming. I also found a couple cool little artifacts from the 80's! Let's get onto some pictures:

First off, there are a few spots on the car that have a ridiculous amount of bondo, mainly the rear driver's side fender. Luckily I'm making my own fenders so most of that bondo will be gone. Look how thick it is!



The driver's side door (which has been replaced) had a pretty half-assed door panel solution which included welding it to the door. Got my grinder out and got it off:





Don't really know what happened here, I just need to re-weld it up again:



Passenger side is clean:



Then there's this thing. I'm assuming it's some sort of aftermarket air conditioning unit. I'll most likely end up selling it and make my own center console:



The wiring for the stereo was absolutely terrible. My cat could've done a better wiring job than this:




Some before's, during's and after's of the interior dismantling. I removed all of the sound deadening. Hopefully this stuff isn't sought after because I pretty much ruined all of it. I wanted to make sure the floorpans were solid:






As you can see, the rust really isn't that bad. Majority of it is surface rust, but I do need to do little repairs here and there. And here are some of the cool little artifacts I found from the 80's:

JFK matches:



Shell Gas Card expired 1988. Maybe I should try to use it


That's all for today. I can't take too much more apart yet because I still need to drive it one more time before really getting into the build. I am meeting up with Derek from AccuAir suspension, he wants to take a look and see what route I should go to make a custom bag setup. I will be doing the whole install myself, I just need his input on what bags to get. Enjoy!

[D&W]

accuair. oh boy this is gonna be good

[doug_e30]

this is going to be so sick

[mike-81-240d]

Fap material...

[mtmorto]

Congrats! This is going to be a great build. One helpful hint if you don't mind my saying: get an account on BMW2002FAQ if you don't have one already. There are some guys over there that know anything and everything you need to about the technical stuff on these cars.

[AndreasW]

Will be following this. 2002's are so awesome!

[Rubens]

Subd!! Pics in the first post are beautiful man. If you keep this up to date with text & those pics, it will be a great topic. And well.. I've seen you stalking Heist for months in his thread so I assume that you've some motivation Good luck

[Bade]

Chic BMW

[Riskant]

Congrats....

Plans sound good....
Pics are awesome too...

Please keep us posted!

Love 2 see that colour leather kept!

[ccbyrd007]

Looking good!! Wish I had a classic to work on...

[mikeorzechowski]

Oh man. This car can be gorgeous.

[CubbyChowder]

Thanks everyone!

Originally Posted by mtmorto

Congrats! This is going to be a great build. One helpful hint if you don't mind my saying: get an account on BMW2002FAQ if you don't have one already. There are some guys over there that know anything and everything you need to about the technical stuff on these cars.

Thanks for the hint, I have an account on there and have spent lots of long nights researching on the forum. Lots of cool dudes on there, glad to be part of the community

Originally Posted by Rubens

Subd!! Pics in the first post are beautiful man. If you keep this up to date with text & those pics, it will be a great topic. And well.. I've seen you stalking Heist for months in his thread so I assume that you've some motivation Good luck

Like I said earlier, updates will be frequent and fruitful and yes, I've been following his thread since he first started it. The more I followed it, the more I realized I really need to go through with my plan to build one how I want.

Originally Posted by Riskant

Congrats....

Plans sound good....
Pics are awesome too...

Please keep us posted!

Love 2 see that colour leather kept!

Thanks, although the saddle brown interior is amazing, I think I'm taking a different route. Everything is just too beat up.

[CubbyChowder]

Got a little bit more done today. Met up with my friend Derek who is the main sales guy at AccuAir Suspension, and we talked air suspension on the 2002 for a bit. I have a pretty good idea now of what setup I will be running, but it's going to be a little bit before everything gets ordered. I basically need to find the wheel setup that I will be running and base everything off them.

Brought it back up to my Dad's house and continued on the dismantling process. I got the whole front end taken apart today. Both the front fenders were welded onto the body in one spot which was kind of stupid. As usual, bondo everywhere, it almost seems as if the entire body has a layer of bondo. Kind of a bummer, but oh well, fuck it! Sorry if some photo's seem unnecessary, I'm just trying to document the build as good as possible



rear driver's side


rear passenger's side


front driver's side


front passenger's side




dirty


OEM hubcaps in good shape, wonder if they're worth anything?




front fender welded in above the headlight. You can see on the bottom of the headlight where it separates. Stupid idea in my opinion, just had to get the ol' grinder out. You can see how much bondo there is:



Inner fender, barely any rust!


Passenger fender, ready to be cut


cut






that's it for today. Going back tomorrow morning to start pressure washing everything and taking more stuff apart. Havin' fun!

[softg]

so jazzed about all the 2002 builds going on, this is going to be fantastic I imagine

subbed

[Jroc]

I want a 2002 so bad!

[Shade]

Glad to see a thread like this!

[deutschman]

Subd

[ImAwesome]

id rather have a lot of bondo then a lot of rust. looks good, I really want one

[CubbyChowder]

Originally Posted by ImAwesome

id rather have a lot of bondo then a lot of rust. looks good, I really want one

very true, thanks. I think I'm making a bigger deal about the bondo than I really should be.