e21Restoration
Body / Interior
Soon after repainting the car completely in it’s original Graphit Metallic in 1998, I realized I needed better skills and a professional facility to get a superior job, so in 2001, I began taking autobody classes at my local community college. After three years of practice on various projects and inadvertently earning an Associate’s Degree along the way, I was ready to tackle the BMW again. There’s nothing like a state of the art shop with a $60,000 spray booth and the experience of veteran professional body men guiding you through the process.
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I decided to use the same Glasurit paint system that BMW uses on their new cars. That meant sticking with their product line all the way through, using only Glasurit primers, undercoatings, hardeners, and reducers, as well as the topcoats. Because I started with the bare metal and removed absolutely every part down to the bare chassis, I felt no allegiance to the original color and chose Imolarot, a popular color on many newer M-series cars.
I began with the underside of the car, scrubbing it with degreasers and detergents using nylon bristled brushes and even toothbrushes. This job was made much easier by a rotisserie jig that attaches to the car’s hubs and allows the whole vehicle to be rotated 90 degrees so that the bottom of the car is perpendicular to the shop floor. There were a few minor scraped areas and several nicks in the undercoating from road debris. After repairing these with rubberized undercoating, I repainted the entire underside area with a medium gray color from Glasurit’s Limco urethane paint line. With nearly everything removed, the car was light enough for eight of us to lift it off the temporary wood framed carriage I built, rotate the whole body by hand in mid air, and carry it upside down, into the spray booth for the painting of the underside. Since the car had spent it’s entire life in southern Louisiana and Texas (with my brother-in-law), it had never been driven in snow or on salted roads, and no rust repairs were needed. However, there were a few minor parking lot dings to flatten and smooth.
The next step was a coat of Glasurit 1552 epoxy primer to seal the surface, followed by Glasurit 260 high-build sanding primer which provided a base for the final smoothing before the application of a tinted sealer followed by two color basecoats and four clear topcoats. I then color sanded the clear by hand and buffed the finish to eliminate orange peel and add depth to the finish. This whole process took place over 8 days, allowing cure time between each step with meticulous sanding of the primers. I opted not to force dry (“bake”), which can weaken the paint. The fenders, doors, hood and trunk lid were all painted while off the car. This allowed me to be sure that they were all fully protected with new finish and I could get full coverage with the paint materials into every recess. The parts were then refitted with careful attention to proper even gap lines at all the joints.
I located a brand new MoMo Alpina leather steering wheel from a fellow BMWCCA member in Utah. I prefer the one I had on my original 320i back in 1977 which was the Alpina wood model, but they have become impossible to find in good condition. The new MoMo leather shift knob is their “Superanatomic” model and I like it’s feel and understated appearance. The new AC Schnitzer pedal set was a nice find that I like the look of. I fabricated a steel bracket to go under the carpet for securely mounting the dead pedal and adds a good bracing spot for the left foot.
I was only able to get the new original equipment carpet set in Parchment. Maximillian Importing told me that was the best they could do as BMW’s Mobile Tradition branch had only that one color left when I bought it in 2005. So, I’ve built the rest of the interior around that limitation. I also ordered a new passenger side armrest for a right-hand-drive car to use on the driver’s side of my car. It is a mirror image of my passenger's armrest and is more graceful than the smaller, less durable original one for the driver’s side.
The Recaro seats are the heftier, aftermarket LS model - not the more common ones that BMW supplied in the e21 “S” package. The LS has larger thigh and side bolsters along with different adjustment knobs. The black and tan houndstooth upholstery links them to the two primary interior colors.
One of the more extravagant but satisfying choices I’ve made was replacing the sun cracked dashboard with a new one, sourced from Maximillian Importing. Cracked dashboards are the rule for BMWs this old. They eventually become brittle from normal temperature fluctuations, age, and the stress of UV exposure.
I elected to delete the factory-approved, dealer-installed air conditioning for two reasons: it was a poorly designed afterthought with the center console’s odd and troublesome vertical radio mount; and the factory non-A/C console is better looking with a lot of added storage space. That reasoning extends to my decision to stick with a simple period correct AM/FM/cassette head unit from BMW. I see no need for a high-dollar, mega-watt, sub-woofed, glass-breaking stereo in a car like this. I'd rather listen to the sound of the car itself.