1979 BMW E12

Some pics of what I had signed up for,









After a 2nd trip in May 2010 we managed to get the car running again - just, and it was time to take her back to George to get some proper attention.
She handled the drive quite well although she really wasn't in a state to be driven.

Quick stop to rescue a tortoise.



A few snaps in Meiringspoort:





Then Waboomskraal on the pass just before George:



And finally home.




I was in no financial position to give the car the attention it needed so it wasn't long until the car started overheating and before I knew it the engine had packed up. After a trip to cape town behind a tow truck and then back to George I realised that I was in way over my head and sent the car back to my dad in Prince Albert.

Thanks, nope there isn't too much rust, the body has just been banged up a bit...

A couple of years later and several disappointing attempts to revive her with crazy engine rebuild quotes in excess of R34000, it all finally started looking up. By the end of last year before once more falling flat, I scrapped the idea for good, gave up the engine and started making plans to get the body towed to a scrap yard.

John, a friend of mine(shocked by the fact that I just handed the engine over for spares)then suggested that I simply buy a 2nd hand engine rather than try and get mine(which was now gone)fixed. I looked into it and found plenty available at good prices (R4000 to R5000)and realised I had been an idiot. I phoned up Paul whom I had given the engine to a few months earlier to see if he still at least had the block so that I could keep the original engine number... He didn't. He had given it to a friend of his, Mike. Mike builds racing engines for 2002's and so could do with some extra M10 spares around his workshop. Fortunately a few phone calls later revealed that Mike still had the engine and he offered to rebuild it at a price I could actually make peace with.

Roll on February 2016...




So all of a sudden I had an engine clean enough to eat off, but the body has seen hardly any attention over the last 6 years... 

I had always intended to do most of the work myself but I wasn't sure if the engine could be saved. Now that it has been I don't want to keep it sitting for another 6 years before it is eventually fired up again. So I've started to get the rebuild going now. My neighbour Pierre has offered to help out with the bodywork and I'll do my best on the other fiddly bits.

And this...



Not quite sure how to go about this one. The upholsterer said it would be too hard to find material to match this so instead he will try to get something similar and redo all the seats. Not first prize but i suppose it'll have to do.

A few more bits and pieces I've been working on...

Ive cleaned out the old indicator lens housings, repainted the reflector and replaced the lenses, looks as good as new.




The wheels went off to be sandblasted...






Now just waiting for the paint and tires to go on. It was a bit of a mission to find tires that fit, apparently its not a very common size, 14/70/195. Everything in that size looks pretty agricultural in my opinion, but eventually I found these, they should look ok I reckon. I've bought some new badges and done some work on the little center caps, cant wait for it to all come together!

Fair progress. Hope the bodywork is under control.

Thanks, but due to some unforeseen circumstances there is a change of plan.

Body work, paint-prep and final paint will have to wait until some later date until the stars align again. So, the focus has now shifted. I'll just get the car back on its wheels, the engine running and the roadworthy test done. So i'll tackle the body work bit by bit and over a much longer time period than I had originally intended.

As for the front seat... The story is that the car was left in the Karoo sun for a few years, and some forgotten newspapers on the seat then randomly caught fire. Perhaps the light was concentrated in just the right way to set the newspaper alight. Sounds like a tall tale but this is what was told.

Here are a few other bits that have seen some attention.
A before and after version for comparison. Amazing what some 1300 wet&dry followed by a buffing wheel can do.

Great progress, nice to see something being kept in a family and brought back to its former glory.

Keep up the good work i love an old BMW.

Thanks Davey/dbdb, It sure is a fair process and the logistics takes some head scratching at times. Though it's a good learning curve.

Unfortunately my dad did not own this one since new, though it was his for a good 10 years. He did however own a 520 previously in the early 80s, as did his father and my one uncle, all at the same time as far as I can tell. So there were three in the family, all 4 cylinder e12's. So there's definitely a bit of history there...

The chrome front bumper also needed attention. The inside had been painted at same point, I can only assume that it was to stop the rust... Now its so bad that that I will have to repeat the same process.



This pic makes it seem a bit worse than it was, but the chrome was covered in overspray which needed removing first before I could get to polishing.



So after some scrubbing and sanding, inside painted.



And outside polished.



These cover plate sections will need replacing though. I saw that they are available from Wallothnesch, so I'll be ordering some of them at some point. For now though these will have to do.



Then everything reassembled: