I haven't posted any of these recently because there hasn't been any progress at all, until very recently. I found some free time and got down to it. A couple weekends ago I spent the night at a friends shop, where I changed the tranny fluid out for some Redline (highly recommended, it worked as well as they claim), finished polishing the lips on my new rear RSs and fully disassembled the last 2 wheels for powdercoating. All the wheels are now broken down and ready for a fresh coat of silver.

My E30, which lived most of its life in the northeast portion of the country serving as a daily driver, has a few rust spots. Anyone who owns or is familiar with these cars will know what I'm talking about. While most of it was not structural or even cosmetically obvious, getting it taken care of has been high on my priority list. The more I drive the car and enjoy it, the harder it is for me to spend time and money making it run well and look pretty while there is rust that needs addressed. My sense of urgency was sped up by my recent floor jack incident, which resulted in an area of the floor directly inboard of the front passenger pinch weld being pushed up about a half inch.

So fast forward to last week, where I stopped by a local shop several friends have used with great results. I made an appointment to drop the car off this past Monday, and yesterday stopped by to remove the front bumper and fenders so the body guys wouldn't have to deal with getting it out of the way prior to getting down to business. I decided documenting the before and after would be fun, so here we go:

As you can see the main rust spots that needed address weren't terrible, but the rear valence especially bugged me since that was the most obvious. I supplied the shop with a matching, rust-free section of that corner of the valence to weld in. 

Rear valence front corner, passenger side.

Rear valence, aft of the battery box, passenger side.

Bottom edge of driver's side front fender. I supplied the shop with a clean, used OEM fender to respray.

This shows the reason for the rust on the floor. Road debris, salt and moisture gathers in the bottoms of the front fenders and rots them from the inside out. The passenger side fender is currently a non-OEM replacement, so I imagine the same thing that happened to the driver's side I am currently replacing happened to the passenger side previously. The passenger side appears to be further along in the rusting process as well. The rust worked its way inboard of the pinch rail and has compromised a small spot of the floor. I also realized I shouldn't have been using that spot on the floor to jack the car up, noted. Whatever parts of this area that need replacing will be cut out, with new metal welded in, and the floor will be pounded back into shape and reinforced. 

The beginning of disassembly.

A bit further along. 

As I left the car. 

I should have the car back in a week to 10 days, I'm pretty excited! Once I have it back I will be able to install my new to me cardinal red carpet, and the rest of the interior. Hopefully I can get the wheels done in time for H20.  I'll update again when I get the car back.

-Ethan