INDEX
Restoration History
1980 M535i
Paint
Rust repair and body panel replacements are finished, time to lay down Alpine White I.
March 25th, 2015
They’re well along with paint. That’s Karl toward the back who is doing the paintwork, Mike is the closer guy and is the bodyshop manager and overall point of contact for my project.
I’m both excited and intimidated to put it all back together. But I am very pleased and I’ll also enjoy saying the car is 100% rust-free.
I think one of the things I have the most excitement and anticipation over is the first drive to feel how solid the car feels, even going over bumps or backing out of my driveway over the curb. I drove it on and off for 12 years with a swiss cheese body structure, what will it feel like when it’s 100% solid and stiff?
April 10, 2015
I went and checked it out today. They don’t have much left to do, some door reassembly and mounting the hood. The vin tags are riveted back on as well.
I’m holding onto the original core support for nostalgia to remember just how badly neglected the car was and how far it has come.
June 5th, 2015
A few minor updates, glass is in (euro E28 M5 green stripe windshield) and some of the roof gutter trim and some of the door trim is on. The parts for the brand new, rear euro bumper are shown on the rack. We used mostly new trim for the glass front and rear and the original gasket on the advice of the bodyshop and glass guy since it was in good shape. One of the corner right angle trim pieces (back window) is NLA so we reused the old one. It’s not perfection, but it looks good.
Like Chris Kohler said in his E12 M535i restoration thread on mye28.com, it has been fairly aggravating dealing with BMW for euro specific parts and even some standard parts come in haphazardly.
I’m anxious to get the car home at this point and I’m encouraging them to finalize the door reassembly and other minor to-do’s so we can wrap this up.
June 23rd, 2015
And we’re done with phase 3. Car is home now and the owner in 2040 is inspecting the paint and bodywork!