How Stella Gets Back On The Road, Part II

I originally got the Scheel seats for my car and installed them using the old Recaro seat mounting type brackets. Unfortunately they were too high and my head would have probably thumped the headliner quite often.

So, in order to mount my Scheel seats I built some custom mounts from 1/8" plate steel.  There really aren't any brackets that work you can buy.

With this setup, it allowed me to lower the seat as close as possible to the floor because they are about 7" taller than the stock seat when you count the head rest.

This view shows you how they sit in the car and the relationship of the seat to the pedals.

Speaking of pedals, there are some differences in the type of actuator arm that the clutch master cylinders have. The one in the foreground is the early stronger type and the new type is at the rear. I salvaged this early style one to use for it's strength.

There are two new bushings you need for the clutch pedal that mean a world of difference in the slop your clutch pedal may have. If you can move it freely 1/2 to 1" before it connects with the actuator, you need new bushings like these two black ones.

The bushings fit on either side of this unique nut for the clutch pedal.  Note that the threads and the nut may need to be adjusted in or out to align your clutch and break pedals exactly.

Each car's adjustment will be different, but you can may not know that you can adjust the distance from the floor of your brake and clutch pedals using the two adjustments shown below here with arrows.

Here is how mine are adjusted now. Very comfortable so far I might add.

Up front, the turn signal harness can be a problem I chose to build new harness components with waterproof bullet connectors and lots of heat shrink to hide the wires, along with new dedicated grounds for the lights themselves.

On each side I pulled the new harness threw the fenders and installed rubber grommets in the holes. I also sealed up the places where water comes into these with silicon sealer. The screw indicates the new ground wire rather than depend on the screws the hold the light to the fender as the factory originally designed.

In this photo you can see my dedicated halogen running lights I used at the side, and the original single euro type bulb for turning. The red wire is + for the turn signal, blue is + for running and black is the ground.

With a 12V power supply I pre tested my assemblies. They work without having to ground the light to the car to work as you can see. I call this an industrial strength answer to an aging '02 design problem.

Trim - wow I've been waiting years for this step it seems since my old car didn't have it installed. These are the plastic waist line trim connectors you need to install to make it stay on the car.

They fit with the long end out and a plastic washer behind the clip to keep from scratching off the paint.

After you put them in, you can use a rubber tipped end of a screw driver and a small hammer to seat them completely flush. If they won't seat, try removing some paint from the hole itself.

I've been supplied with David "RIMSPOKE" Brewer's clever inventions - stainless steel clips for all the trim. He sells them on Ebay routinely. They are a great piece - but you may have trouble finding a socket small enough to tighten them. They have Nyloc inserts so they won't be coming off anytime soon.

I bead blasted my original wiper arms and repainted them. They look as good as new.

So I now have all the waist line trim on and The car looks great finally - better than I imagined it would.

Now to the rocker trim!  There doesn't seem to be any documentation from BMW on this, so this was a learning experience for me. The you have to glue these on before you add the metal part of the rocker trim to the car. After looking at an original installation, I found you have to take the edge that is flat and point it towards the bottom of the car door to make it work right.

This isn't easy to see, but the flat part is facing up in these pics of the passenger side molding. I held the strips in place with masking tape while it dried, and used Wurth Yellow Weather Strip adhesive.

Once installed it should looks like this at the door sill, resting against the car like a wiper blade.

A view towards the rear of the car.

A view to the front

For looks and to some degree originality, I used black POR15 paint and a brush to paint these mounts black.

The factory originally painted them black with a brush to a greater extent as shown on this original Inka '75.

New Trunk Panels Project!  Ok this was a father and son effort - my Dad and I planned to do this over a year but waited till 2 days before the first run to the lake in the car to make these. I'll show you what I did. These are wood covered in grey vinyl. I wanted something more long lasting and rugged so I wanted new panels and laminated with grey - mouse grey Wilson Art laminate to be exact - so they would stay nice for many years.

So we bought new birch plywood and used and using 2 sided tape, we stuck them to the new sheet of wood. Using a router, we traced the original pieces exactly with the router blade so they were exactly the same.

We took our time and made sure each was an exact match.

We ended up with exact pieces like BMW made originally and installed.

Next we cut the Mouse Gray Wilson Art laminate out from a roll we ordered from the lumber yard. We added Formica 145 contact adhesive to the laminate back and the wood surface it would mate up with.

In about 45 minutes the adhesive was dry and the two parts were ready to be mated.

Strips of wood were laid on top as the laminate was brought near the glued surface. One at a time, starting in the middle, the wood strips were pulled out as the laminate made contact and was smoothed with the new surfaces created.

Overlap was left so that it could be routed flush the same way we cut the panels.

The routing began. This photo was taken to show where the router bit was working.

Wood working tools aren't my forte so I leave it to the expert, my Dad.

One down, one to go...

So we couldn't wait to see... but they fit just like a glove. They are about 2x as thick as the original boards so they are more rigid.  But we had some fittment issues left to solve. I wanted to raise the floorboards about 1/2" so I could ensure a new tubeless spare 13" tire fit inside.

Right side view.

On both passenger and driver sides we installed 1/2" wood strips to raise the level of the floor. I later added rubber pads to the strips on the side where the spare tire is installed.

Shown below are the passenger side with notations. The spare is an original steel spare from a 2002tii.

And here it is so far. I have added some foam sound deadener beside the battery until I think of how I want to make that part Grey also... or not...

View from the other side. The BMW bag next to the fuel tank is available at the dealer, it holds 1 qt of oil.

A 1974 parts car I snagged had a perfect, original tool kit. I've hoarded it just for this car for several years.

Ok, so from this point I headed to Arkansas. In the rain no less. I don't have good wiper arm transmission setup so I had to use them lightly and plenty of Rain-X.

I stopped along the way at one point for the occasional cool photo at Alpena Arkansas.

She arrived, 375 miles from home with out a miss, much to the cringing of the folks at our get together. A new car in the rain made them a bit nervous, but I wasn't. I built this thing to last - oh, another 50 years?

They made me get up front in the group photo.  In the rain the paint looks even different than I had seen.

In May and June I also attended a few car shows to get the car out and see some friends along the way. Ron's car always is a jaw dropper wherever it goes. Show me a better 70 '02 anywhere :)

At Whiteman AFB there were over 100 cars in attendance of all varieties.

On this day I had the car about as clean as it has ever been, so I felt like a proud papa. It was nicer in the engine compartment than any Porsche that showed up that day and there was a dozen or so.

So what you ask... is left?

The interior is incomplete, I've not installed the carpet yet. The back seat bottom is a bit overstuffed and will need to be modified before its complete. The door panels are not on, the moisture barriers behind those panels and the arm rests are not in. The glove box is not done and is still a dilemma. The stereo is done but not the front speakers. The alarm system is only 70% working. I have some other tweaks yet to perform... So there is more to come here on the site. I will be walking you through what I did the first 60 days of ownership as far as engine adjustments and other problems that occurred along the way... like a shrewd whistle I get about 70mph :(

SO SAY TUNED!