From "Breaking Up" to "Braking Up"

Greetings!

Had an especially productive weekend, which I'll share with you now. In a break from tradition I'm going to show you the end, first... Pretty impressive though, I'm sure you'll agree!

Tadaaaaa!!

Nice clean workshop - all o'rrible remains of E36 disappeared. So now how this magical goal was achieved...

Oops

Started off from where we were last time with the back end remaining. My good ole mate Trev turned up and we tried the same trick with the rear window, but our impatience got the better of us this time, and the rear window wasn't quite as forgiving as the toughened and laminated front glass (I'll have to record on the timesheet 1 hour's rework for sweeping up broken glass!!)

Nimble incisions removed the roof rather quickly:

I love that 9" grinder

Flipped over and begun the same procedure on the underside, but took an age because of the huge amount of strength and stiffening in the floor:

"Surgery" nearly complete

Many, Many hours and several cutting discs later...

Incredible amount of stiffness / rigidty in the  boot floor, but then it is an impact zone

 ... It was finally broken up into handleable pieces. Well, some pieces "handleable" by the engine hoist, but meh. Done.

A lot of clever packing and stacking and finally managed to get the whole lot on one load:

Needs to be secured, but at least it will go in one trip

Then lashed it all down and put a tarp over it. (Don't worry it was incredibly secure and perfectly stable, despite what it looks like!!) And that was that - the bitter end of the 1995 328i 4 door MontrealBlau Saloon picked up for £400 on eBay. Rust in pieces!!

With that superb milestone achieved, and the pieces nearly on their way to BMW heaven, it was time to celebrate. However, the champagne cabinet was empty, no party poppers available, and stood there on my own with a 9" grinder in my hand; I decided just to carry on rewardless. Ah well.

This did mean that I can start refurbishing some of the parts harvested from our erstwhile 90's repmobile. Starting with the rear axle / drive assembly

Lifted this huge lump onto the bench and started attacking the rusty bolts

Unfortunately the iphone started playing silly buggers, so missed a few pics of the axle dangling in mid air, which was a bit annoying.

As said earlier, this car spent a good deal of its time near the sea, the salty spray working its magic and converting what was good steel into pure rust - so a lot of the bolts for the hub carrier, brakes and spring seats; required WD40, scaffold tubes on sockets; and heat (or a combination) to undo them. Where I finished late sunday night (with a magnificent roast calling my name) was to have dismantled all the brake assmblies front and rear, ready for refurb:

Crusty, rusty and generally not very nice.

After being fed a hearty meal, I spent the rest of the evening having a look around on the 'net, and found that you can actually refurb each caliper quite reasonably (£11 per corner for the seals and dust covers) whereas a newly refurbished one would set you back between £75 and £250, EACH! I think I'll go with the refurb option. Used the compressed air to pop the pistons out and they had a very good seal, and bores were still polished as if like new. I'll replace the rubber as it looked perished and give 'em a wire brush and paint; but otherwise they should be good to go. Discs were OK ish, again wire brush and check the thicknesses with a micrometer and they should be fine. I will need rear shoe assemblies for the handbrake, in case you don't know the handbrake has shoes that go inside the disc. Quite a clever design from a space / weight reduction point of view; not so clever for "extreme marine corrosion" resistance. Whole new mechanisms needed!

All told, I'm quite happy with that. Worst case scenario was shelling out for an entirely new braking system.

Next time, should have the results of the weigh in (and final cash total from the old bimmer); and will begin refurbing and painting the diff.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Steve