1982 BMW e23 735i

Yeah, it's coming from the front area drivers side, I think. The spongy carpet padding certainly doesn't help as it retains the water. I've already removed it from the rear, makes it easier to mop up as I park on a slight incline and the water collects behind the front seats ! The exhaust was done be a local firm to me (Leven), they still used the middle and back box, which was new, just replaced the front box and all pipework changed to S/S for under £400.

Up the foot well outer edge behind the dash above accelerator. Seam junction with kick panel rots out splaying the seam as rust expands, water runs down into foot well. It is high enough and out of sight enough to escape detection from either side, usually has been gummed up in the past and blown. Factory drain plugs in foot well end up rotting out from trapped water and where the foot well curves up directly in the line of fire from front wheel. Big bodgery areas. Both sides for all that.
Wires and cables passing through bulkhead, the rubber grommets dry up and shrink. Drain tunnels from the top of bulkhead sides to inner wings are a goodun to go, get yer finger in there and have a good rummage.
In the rear, pin holes in top of wheel well evade detection but their presence can be seen by rusty coloured runs down the tub into the cabin behind the rear seat and all mounts for the rear running gear although it's grot that rots these out rather than direct surface water.

That's just the outer to inner leaky bits mind, not an exhaustive list either.
Bear in mind that when my floors get wet, it can take about a week of good weather to dry out the underlay foam. I ended up cutting a section to take out for future leaks because there will be some, guaranteed!

Check the door trim and rubbers too, especially the metal floor sill trim as it can get dinked by carelessness and compress the rubber creating a gap in the seal.

I had a mysterious leak spout up so I removed the carpets to one side and cut the underlay to take and dry, cleaned the area up and then dusted the whole area in talc and then lay in wait for it to rain... Once a few storms had passed I went to find the curse word and... NOTHING! Refit all the carpets and a month later, it's damp again! Because my car is offically unofficially haunted it's been marked up as ghost wee!

EDIT: It took so long to type this on and off at work that you've had an entire conversation in the meantime! Good call on the heaterbox too.

I have spent many soul destroying hours with me head stuck in some sort of orifice next to the business end of a MIG on this wonderful monocoque platform!

Once the show season is over I'm planning to strip the interior out for further investigation, and to purchase a decent outdoor cover as I have no garage.

Sounds stock, which is what I wanted.

Sorry for late reply, been a bit of a mission since my last post. Car has been off the road for about a year due to a failed ECU, and after a fruitless search for a replacement one, I sent the original one away to a specialist ecu repairer only to be told months later that it was beyond repair 😡. Then low and behold one came up on eBay, so snapped it up, and that one also was a dead one, so the process of sending it away for repair started but ended up the same result as the last one..damn. In the end I had to get a stand alone one made by Dave Walker of Emerald ECU which was fitted by my local auto electrician. With a bit of back and forth between Dave and spark they managed to get it running enough to pass the mot, and a further session on a rolling road sorted it even further.

Managed to get a set of wheels for it.

So this was how it looked for a few months until it's next unscheduled stint off the road.





Next instalment is not so pretty ☹️☹️

Oh jeez!!!

I 100% feel your pain. Back in 2002, I was driving my pristine 1 previous owner BMW 2002 and I was hit by a get away car from a jewellery robbery.

Gutted doesn’t really cover it does it. Please, please tell me this stunning 7 is/was put back together?

P.S. I think I would’ve shed a tear at seeing it looking like that.

Gutted!

I am not sure I have a curse word in my dictionary that would cover this..

Try to get them to cover the cost of the repair so it will not become a write-off.
Other than that it looks worse than it is (from the pics) so (please) keep it alive!

SHE LIVES !!

Well, the lorry drivers company were really good and actually said that they would cover the cost of repair without going down the insurance route. The company (Pipe Dynamics) where my car was parked when it was hit dealt with everything, and I cant thank them enough for chasing / making phone calls to get things moving along. So, the search was on for a decent body-shop that wouldn't just fill it with filler. After a few weeks internet trawling and phone calls, I found a repair shop 10 miles away. The problem was that, quite rightly, they all wanted to see it in the flesh before committing to a quote. Anyway, after speaking to the workshop manager, I was confident that they would do it justice. Everything needed for the repair was bought directly from BMW Germany, and all parts were available apart from the rear metal valance, which was expertly repaired.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and the phone call came to say it was ready for collection, unfortunately it was raining so no pics. It is now all tucked up in the garage until spring.

Here's some pics after repair, looks better than it did before accident...bonus. Also had under the bonnet sprayed....included in cost. Happy days.