Summer 2021: Undercarriage Restoration PART II (DEUX)
Tackling the undercarriage of this 1966 BMW 2000c was the perfect metaphor for the year 2020 in general. In one word "misery". Courtesy of living in a new somewhat dystopian quarantine culture I embraced the extra time I could dedicate to continuing this phase of the restoration. So that was good. One drawback was difficulty finding dust masks or respirator filters. I read news stories about body shops nationwide unable to do business because of a national shortage of respirators. Seeing some numbnut at the grocery store with a full-face respirator with side filters really annoyed me.
I am happy to announce that by December 2020 I had pretty much completed stripping away the rust, repairing damage sections with new metal, treating the metal with micro rust conversion and rolling on several coats of epoxy two stage PPG primer.
In March I mused that I would have the underbelly of this beast cleaned up, sealed and with a color tinted undercoating by late summer. I was sorely mistaken. After a typical day out in the garage, I would go in the house and look in the mirror seeing my reflection exhausted, dispirited, and covered in iron oxide dust and sweat. I could taste iron oxide in my mouth. There were points where I contemplated abandoning this project. It just never seemed to end. Months were ticking by and progress was painfully slow. It was grueling.
My next thought was the realization that I was more than halfway through with the body work and was basically at the bottom of the curve. It could only be up from here. I now understand why so many restorations are abandoned. Guys get in over their heads. One friend shared a bit of inspiration with me:
"If it was easy, real men wouldn't do it. If you don't finish this, the car will forever own you"
Restoring a car to include the undercarriage qualifies as a "ground up" restoration. I have never done this. I restored several other vintage BMWs over the years, but never at this level. This is where a lot of hidden issues lurk. With past efforts I thought if there is no serious rust, then "out of sight, out of mind".
50 Years of Entropy
50 years of wear and tear. If you step back and think about it, this is the part of the car we never really see but is the most exposed to the ravages of the road. For this 2000c, 10 - 12 years of its life was on the road. Lucky most of that time was in Arizona and Oklahoma, with maybe only a few years in Ohio and so the usual corrosion due to road salts was minor. The car sat for another 20 plus years. Part of that time was in a damp underground warehouse, but by examining the rust it also spent years sitting out in the open.
When a vintage BMW sits outside in the elements for years rain attacks it from above. Rubber window gaskets dry out and become ineffective allowing seepage into the floors, trunk, and inner crevices such as the rocker hollows. Dampness also rises up from the ground slowly eating away the bottom. These are the issues I’ve been tackling.
I tackled it with a media blaster using ground glass driven by a 14-cfm air compressor, a giant spinning stripping wheel (I call "Brutus") along with a 16 inch belt sander, 3M stripping wheel and Dremels. I utilized a high-end Hobart welder for metal fabrication after employing cut off wheels to remove rot.
Cleaned metal was treated with Picklex and then sealed with a two-stage epoxy primer.
The metal on this 1966 2000c is different than what I've worked with on BMW 2002s or e9s. It seems softer or more malleable. I read somewhere that metal used by German auto manufacturers in the early to mid-1960s was low quality imported from Japan. Compounding this, the way the metal was sealed for the NKs was comparitively primitive and lacking. No wonder these NKs rusted out.
Safety First
The month of July really was the worst. It was hot and humid with temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) nearly every day.
Safety always come first. In the beginning I wore the standard N92 dust mask and face shield but due to the heat often wore short sleeve shirts. Blasting and stripping away rust created a fine powdering cloud of iron oxide dust. It was everywhere. I had it my hair. It seemed to impregnate my skin whereby I would have to scrub it off with a brush and wash cloth (I have a white washcloth permanently stained rust brown despite repeated cycles through the washing machine.) My shower floor was stained with the stuff. There was a fine coating of powdery dust on everything in the garage.
This really concerned me. I did not want to take any chances with my health. Old cheaper rusted metals with remnants of undercoating and Lord knows what else most likely might include some carcinogenic compounds. I could be easily absorbing this through my skin and eye tear ducts. I decided to get serious and bought a full-face respirator along with wearing long sleeves, ear and head coverings. I also pushed the car outside and situated fans as much as I could to evacuate that dust as much as I could.
The Road Forward
During the winter months in the beginning of 2021 I will need to hand sand the applied epoxy primer. This is so it will have "teeth" so that the follow up application of the tinted rubberized undercoating will adhere to the surface.
I am hoping as the Spring rolls around, and the temperatures become more agreeable I can apply the undercoating. Also, I will configure and install new fuel and brake lines. The next step will be to clean and paint the subframes for installation.