E21 316: Flared wheel-arches painted.

I have a buyer organised for the car, coming to pick it up next weekend. Just throwing up some recent pics of the painted wheel arches.

E21 316: Taller springs for MOT.

Well my MOT, the UK roadworthiness test, has come round and the E21 is just too low to get into my local testing station, let alone up onto the ramps. This is where height-adjustble coilovers would be worth their £650, as even if I can get the car onto the ramps, an attempt to raise the wheels off the ground will cause the short springs to become loose in the pans. The solution to this problem is still cheaper than coilovers - shortened strut-inserts from this post at ~£400, but I'll still have to find somewhere with ramps low enough to take her.

Seems to me the easiest and cheapest overall solution is to just swap longer springs in for the test and put the chopped ones back on later. Seems like quite a lot of effort just for a 30-minute inspection, but that's motoring in the UK, we're at the mercy of the MOT and it sees more cool cars off our overcrowded roads than insurance write-offs ever would.

Slight length difference. The red SPAX was a -40mm too.

A nice set of yellow APEX -40mm springs set me back just £80 from eBay. They are a lot longer than I remember though, which heralded me finally buying some spring-compressors, £17.99 and bringing the grand total of this years test to a ton before I've even had it inspected... not good.

Fitting the rear springs was a doddle, but the fronts threw up a few problems. Getting the cut spring off was easy enough, but even under compression the longer one was never going to fit in the space available. After damaging my newly filled wheel-arch and bursting one of my strut-inserts - nightmare - I started looking for a better guide on replacing springs and find out if it can ever be done with the strut and brake-line still attached, but one doesn't seem to exist - a good validation for this and other blogs! I did, however, find a Youtube video of some guys fitting H&R springs without removing the shock, which did give some clues from about 3min30 onwards:

PROCESS:

Rear Springs - 

1. Follow the steps in THIS POST to remove and re-fit the rear shock-absorbers, swapping the cut-spring for the new ones, obviously.

Front Springs [without removing strut, steering or brake-line] -

1. Raise the car and remove the corresponding front wheel. [It makes life easier to drop the front on axle-stands and remove both wheels, doing both springs together.]

2. Undo the top-nut from the shock-absorber, located on the suspension turret under the bonnet, using a 19mm wrench and 8mm open-end spanner at the top of the strut-insert to stop it from rotating.

3. Disconnect the brake-pad sensor wire by simply pulling it apart at the join behind the disc and sliding the rubber-mount free of the bracket.

4. Remove the earth-lead from the strut by undoing the bolt with a 10mm wrench.

5. Remove the bracket holding the brake-line to the strut using a 10mm wrench and open-end spanner. [This is essential to free the brake-line enough for it to tilt forward without having to remove the hose and drain the brakes. Without freeing the bracket, the brake-line will be stretched to breaking.]

** If the spring is still under compression without the weight of the car on it, use spring-compressors to hold it short enough to loosen the top spring-pan away from the turret.

*** The strut can be tilted out far easier with the track-rods unbolted, using a 17mm wrench and moved out of the way, but mine wasn't budging easily and there is enough room if you can push the steering-arm down enough.

6. Remove the four nuts holding the anti-roll bar brackets to the sub-frame using a 17mm wrench and open-end spanner. The anti-roll bar should drop down and remove tension from the two struts.

7. Tilt the shock-absorber strut out of the wheel-arch, remove the top spring-pan and spring.

8. Drop the new spring onto the bottom pan and reverse the above steps, using spring compressors if necessary.

Wheel-arch gap a little more prominent. Was it really that much before?!

E21 316: Inner-Arch Fix + MOT Prep.

Hacking out the inner wheel-arches at the back to make the 16x9s fit left them in a right state, with a big gap up inside the wing. Being where it is, the gap is wide open to dirt and water flinging up off the wheel ready to rot the body from the inside out, so as a temporary measure I covered the area in ally-tape. It worked well, but was never going to last long. I figured the inner-arch would be considered a structural part of the body and would need a steel fillet welding in, but it doesn't appear to be the case so fibre-glass will do.

The area is a bit big for filling in though, so I shot up to Halfords and bought a square-metre of fibre-glass matting, £4.29. You need resin to apply it, which is a bit dearer. A kit is available for £9.99 that includes a small bottle of resin and a small mat, otherwise resin starts at a fiver and hardener is extra. The recommended resin is polyester-based, so it stretches, but I figure that marine epoxy-resin, which can be used for fibre-glass, will do the job as it may not be as flexible, but sure is waterproof and rock hard. I also happen to have a litre of the stuff left over from some carbon-fibre projects a few years ago.

I weighed the fibre-glass mat up to the whee-arch and cut it into rough shapes. The instructions say to coat the mat in resin and then stick it, but I found it just as easy and a little less messy to brush a little resin onto the surface, then stick the pieces of mat on dry and brush in heaps of resin over the top. The epoxy is quite thick and stiffens quickly, so this may the only workaround method using this stuff. It's certainly done the trick, the fibre-glass is as solid as the metal and has stuck well even to the rough under-seal surface, lets just hope it doesn't flex too much and crack away. It should see me through the MOT next week and that's the main thing, but at least there's no mud being flung up into the wing anymore. A quick coat of red-primer and the tester may not even notice the difference...

E21 316: Big job broke out - Time to do the N/S/R Wheel-Arch...

This is the first wheel-arch I pulled to fit the 16s and it's the only one now still needing a tidy-up, to say the least. I cut too much of the lip off trying to wedge some balloon-like 45% profile tyres and left it in a right mess. The newer 40% profile tyres fit perfectly and only needed minor cutting to the other arches, leaving this one miles from the rim and totally out of shape. The bit I cut off is the line used to form the arch on the rest, so this one was missing an edge to build the filler up to and totally sculpting the new arch-line by hand with hanging bits of mesh and filler was never going to happen. The easiest method would be a plastic arch cover, hiding the cut area completely and easily smoothed into the wing, but all four would have to match and the Group 2 ones are just too big to consider. It seems my only options are -

A. Buy a new pressed-steel wheel-arch from eBay for £25. Trim it, grind the wing away in the right shape, weld it in place, grind the welds down flat and smooth it all off. Only then could I pull the new arch-lip out and fill it to match the other three. [http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-E21-316-323i-1977-1983-REAR-PASSENGER-SIDE-WHEEL-ARCH-NEW-CLEARANCE-PRICE-/190865619545?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item2c707a3a59]

B. Spot-weld the piece I cut off back into place and secure it with fibre-glass filler. Fill the lip to match the others and build up and re-shape the arch up to where it meets the wing almost.

No doubt B involves a lot less time and effort, but it's still going to be a lot of rubbing down.

The chewed up scrap of metal, good job I saved it. It didn't just slot back into position, there was quite a bit of grinding and filing.

I had wanted to tack-weld the metal on and fill the gaps with fibre-glass, but I couldn't get hold of one so masking-tape did the job. I caked on plenty of P40 fibre-glass filler in between the tape, waited for it to go off, removed the tape and filled in the gaps.

Well sealed behind with more P40. You can see the sliver of metal in position as the light shines through, showing just how much arch got cut off originally.

It was then ground down with a rotary-file on the drill, mainly inside so nothing rubs on the tyre, but a bit to give the lip some shape. All that's left now is the arduous task of filling all that arch.

E21 316: (Wheel) Arch-Nemesis Beaten! - tidied up with a bit of flare.

Been enjoying the car and weather too much over summer to neaten up the pulled wheel-arches, but thought I'd take some time off to finish them before the rain and gloom sets back in.

I bent the lip with a pair of grips into the smoothest arch I could and filled it flush with P38 to where the original outer lip was. This took quite a bit of building up.

Normally I'd give it a coat of zinc-primer for now and rub it down again, but for aesthetic value I went straight to red-primer and it's already lifted the look of the car.

More of the rear arches had to be cut away than the front, so this meant a smaller and slightly easier area to fill. The only remaining arch is the dreaded N/S rear one, which I hacked to death trying to install tyres that were too big, but it's a mammoth job alone and will have to wait.

E21 316: Stretched Toyos first try + more spending.

Tried out the 8Js on the front with the new 195 Toyo T1Rs using 20mm spacers and there's a lot more room at the arch-lip now. The tyre doesn't catch at all turned hard-left, thought it would going over a bump. Hard-right the tyre is still catching the front valance slightly, but about 1cm cut away should be enough now and a little off the fender where it protrudes from the bumper - none of the bumper itself though. I had hoped to get away with smaller spacers on the front, but even with the 20mm spacers from the rear, the inside rim of the wheel is still 5mm inboard of the 15x7Js and there is not a lot of headroom.

I just haven't found time to try out the 9Js on the rear today as the valve is bust in one and on the other, about 6 inches of the bead has just been refusing to seat. My leg just couldn't take any more foot-pumping so I got hold of an air-compressor from a friend and took the tyre to nearly 90psi this morning, but it still wasn't having any of it. Eventually, after two goes deflating the tyre almost completely and trying to brush in soap between the tyre and rim, then taking it back up to about 65psi, the bead finally popped. The maximum pressure rating on the tyre is 50psi, though it says use no more than 40 to seat the bead, so it just goes to show that when the seal is tight enough it can take over twice that and still not seat. Bead-blaster machines can jet up to 200psi in one go and that doesn't even shred the tyre to bits so I'd be keen to know at what pressure a good new tyre would rupture at. Even so, always take the utmost care when inflating tyres past their rated pressures at home!

Apart from 4 new valve-cores (£2.99) and a valve removal-tool (£4.99) from Halfords, I've had to do yet more spending on parts as the project can't move on without them and I want to be getting somewhere near finished next weekend when we have the bank-holiday off. First up are adjustable camber-plates for the front, a must for style and it will likely give me a bit more room to play with before starting to cut. They're not approved for sale in the UK, so lets hope they make it here from Poland before the weekend - fingers crossed eh! Looking forward to these, though quite pricey @ £105 delivered, but whatever, they're the only ones of their kind. It's also time to stop digging my heels in and buy another set of spacers to go on the front, swapping the ones over from the rear is becoming a chore. I'd hoped to get some alloy ones to save hub weight, but again for easy access, the right centre-bore without more spigot-rings and to get the bolt-on kind I want, yep you guessed it, more steel ones. Another £59, oh well, roll on next weekend.

E21 316: 8Js won't fit the front...

After all the hacking and cutting on the rear arch to only discover I needed smaller tyres, today I threw an 8J onto the front with 20mm spacers, as without they just hit the track-rod end and wont even sit flush, and I find that space is even more limited at this end.

With the lip pulled out this time by hand, then neatened up a little with the baseball-bat / metal-bar rolling trick, the big 45-profile tyres still contact the back of the arch.

When steered hard-right, the tyre rubs past the edge of the bumper and fender, so it had to be jacked to turn the wheel straight again. The tyre also bent the edge of the front-valance, cracking the fibreglass repair I did last summer. A good inch would need to be cut off the valance here and I'm not sure lower profile tyres alone will remedy this, so some will need chopping off anyway, best keep it to a minimum. Oh, and I must save up for those camber-plates!

E21 316: Making the 9Js fit the rear...

Summary of the bank-holiday weekends activities:

Pulled the N/S/R wheel-arch back out and cut it off.
Peeled back the inner-skin of the arch and cut about 4 inches off it.
Cut a notch out of either side of where the arch meets the bumper shut-line.

The outer rim of the arch is now way off the tyre, but I could see a black rubber mark further up inside the inner wheel-arch.

The car was now rolling with a driver in, but one test drive revealed that any bump causes rubbing and the rim of the tyre caught the sharp edge of the cut inner arch, which chewed it pretty bad.

I've made a lot of space up there, so before I start hacking away any more arch, I'm going to buy smaller, lower profile tyres, I think that is now clear.

E21: Getting low on sixteens...

They say fitting 16x9J to the rear could not be done... but people have done it. They say it cannot be done without cutting the arches... and it seems like they were right, so before I make a total mess of the car by grinding away those beautiful rear arch lines [already started yesterday :s - pics coming soon], I thought I'd throw up some more inspirational pics to remind me that I'm chasing dreams here, not just fitting fat wheels...

E21 316: Slight arch foul!

As you can see, the arch was sat on the tyre something awful with the 9" wide wheels at the back and the 225/45/16 rubber on...

A bit more arch persuasion...

Credit card clearance!

Or is it? The arch is still sitting on the tyre a little. The car just about rolls, but there's nowhere for the tyre to go either on a bump or with the weight of the driver...

It looks very flush and tidy, but something drastic will have to be done.

E21 316: Fatter Wheels - 16x8/9J staggered BBS RS Split-Rim Reps!

I love the old Melbers, but couldn't resist buying some bigger, wider rims to fill out my arch clearance. I've ended up with 16x8 for the front, which should be ok with 20mm spacers, and 16x9 for the back. They say it can't be done without cutting the arches. Well, I'm going to have to find a way, because I need that 3.5" lip and I ain't cutting. 

9s stick out a bit even with just 20mm spacers...

The 8s below are for the front, but fit the rear with a bit more clearance than the 9s...

...but lets face it, they're not deep enough!

Fat rims.

With a bit of negative camber the rim is not far from the arch-lip and I think a stretched tyre will go under, but a bit more rolling will be necessary...

Roller skate style!

9s may need a little more spacing on the back to get off the strut and trailing arm...

And no, you may have guessed, they're not real split-rims, they're one-piece replicas and cost less than £400 delivered from royal_wax on eBay. A genuine set of BBS splitties has been floating around on there too, yours for £1600 without tyres, so I think I'll suffer with the replicas for now. The finish is a bit cheap and tacky, but hey, I'll be painting them up in Panama Beige anyway and I wouldn't be doing that to real ones. Even so it's been anther expensive week and I've got to find some rubber this week... I'm thinking 205_40_16 front, maybe Falken, and 225_40_16 rear Toyo T1-R, so let's hope I can get another cheap deal through work and that should save me a few hundred quid! I wish someone would hurry up and buy my Melbers - surely with the Toyo T4s stretched on they're worth £300 - come one people!