UNDERNEATH AS GOOD AS UP TOP
It seemed like a great idea, in principle. My Kiwi mate John Hudson had made an outstanding job of restoring the BMW – rebuilding it more like, mostly from the floors upwards. And when it was valued by Barney Halse at Classic Heroes, he said that the underside needed to be properly redone before winter.
Work began in late October and, once Halse jnr Zak got stuck into the miserable job of stripping the underseal (not the factory Tectyl), he uncovered an assortment of past repairs – of varying standards.
Barney called, with his usual breezy “Hello old chap”, although with a concerned tone: “I want you to come and see the car.” He was puzzled until I explained that some of the old new metal dated back to well before I met the Kiwi mastercraftsman. There’s a 50 quid patch on the nearside longeron, for example, that isn’t pretty but is still solid about 15 years after it was done.
As Barney put it: “We found a lot of corrosion around the petrol tank, covered in black underseal.” That was where I’d been bodging at the aged, flaking material with a wire brush and covering it as best I could with Waxoyl just to stem the worst of it. Back then it was my only car, and run on a budget.
A more serious-sounding e-mail arrived on 10 November (describing another old repair, to the offside rear): ‘It’s had a cover at some point and neither the inner nor the outer sills – or the wheel-housing structure – is attached.’ It had been a sound job, but it wasn’t protected and had been ‘sweating’. Plus, the ’02 was driven in all seasons (and in all weathers) for a decade after that.
Reconstructing the elements of that corner – as well as the rear subframe mounting and lower quarter – was obviously going to be a major (labour-intensive) undertaking. Workshop manager Steve Brown has done a fantastic job of the complex fabrication work, which also included a small, now invisible patch further down the sill.
Once the repairs were finished and lots of other corrosion had been taken back to bare metal, the surfaces were treated with Kurust, seam sealer, etch primer and Gravi Tex. On top of that, and into the cavities, went a good dose of black Waxoyl rather than clear. It looks lovely, set off by a new copper fuel line to replace the scabby original as well as fresh brake flexi pipes – the old ones weren’t letting much fluid through – and handbrake cables. Steve has also removed, de-rusted, prepped and sprayed the fuel tank.
Johnno had wanted to check over a few things on the car, but it was still in Buxted when he went back to NZ. So Barney and Steve set about investigating the drivetrain clonk. The propshaft centre bearing and UJS were fine – ditto the driveshafts and CV joints – and the gearbox output flange was tight.
There was, however, play in the diff pinion bearing and, according to Barney, it felt as if the preload had not been set when it was last rebuilt: “If the preload is wrong, it causes backlash to add to the bearing play.” I bought the unit secondhand – an unknown quantity – and it had been okay bar the clonk plus occasional shunt, although it had done a fair mileage since it was fitted, including to Bavaria and back in 2016.
The thing needed attention, anyway, because it had “a massive leak” that had covered the (by then immaculate) floors. Barney added: “The differential was supposed to be a quick rebuild with new bearings, but it has become rather more complicated. We need to reshim it correctly for both the pinion and the output shafts because it has been got at. If we do not get the shimming right, the preload will be affected – causing backlash or whining, as well as accelerated wear to the crownwheel and pinion.”
Once they had the replacement shims from Germany, Steve started from scratch and bought some engineer’s blue to confirm proper contact between the crownwheel and pinion gear. “The only trouble with doing that,” he joked, “is that you end up looking like a smurf!”
Then – and just as Barney was about to test-drive the car – the radiator split and dumped all of the coolant. Fortunately, he knew a good local bloke who did a neat job of fixing it. Unfortunately the noise persisted, so Steve dismantled the diff again, confirmed that everything was spot-on and has come to the conclusion that the planet and sun wheels must be worn. He’s now seeing if my spare diff is any better.
Still, looking on the bright side, at least LPB hasn’t been out in the salt, although part of the reason for having it protected was so that I could keep using it all year round. And predictably, of course, I haven’t found a lock-up for the Citroën while the BMW has been away…
THANKS TO
∆ Classic Heroes: 01825 732817; www.classicheroes.co.uk