About 2 months have passed since the purchase, and it was time for a full detail. Rather than spending 2.5 days on restoring the Z to its former glory, we decided to push ourselves "a little" and really go for the best result possible. You might think that's what you always do, but every extra percent above 90% perfection requires an increasingly large amount of extra work.
So it didn't take 2.5 days. Instead, we've spent at least 80 hours on the car. Though probably more, if we look at all the small jobs we've done in between. The results are quite spectacular though. A short and definitely non-exhaustive list of what we've done:
- Full decontamination, including the removal of all small exterior items such as indicators, plates, kidneys, etc.
- Fit the AFe stage 2 intake and clean the engine bay. Restore and seal all plastics.
- Sand down the entire passenger door due to a very dull finish and a lot of orange peel. Working from grit 2000 to 3000, followed by a 2-step correction to restore the original shine.
- Remove and polish the wheels, replace the 11 year-old runflats for Michelin Alpin's, coat the wheels in 3 layers of sealant.
- Remove perished window trim.
- Sand down over 40 small scratches and blemishes, restore with a 2-step polish.
- 3-step polish of the entire exterior, working with a rotary during the first step to really restore the original texture. Forced excenter second stage and a soft dual action polish finish.
- 2-stage ceramic coat to protect our shiny work!
- Coating of all the windows, basically all but negating the need for wipers above 30
As BMW paint is fairly "hard" compared to say Italians, it takes a fair while to really get the finish we were after. Mind, since it's one of our own cars we like the challenge and dare to push a little further than we would otherwise with a customer's car.
The result?
An absolute mirror finish, with a colour that only really pops when in direct sunlight. At night, it's almost black but during the day it's a deep-green with a heavy flake. Love it!
Winter Project
With the basics covered, time for the first real mods. As said before, the interior wasn't to my taste. After a while, I managed to track down a full black interior in Germany just 8 hours away, soooo...
I left home at 04:00 and picked up a friend shortly after, at which point we set off on a 500 mile drive to collect the goods. Stopped once to fill up our trusty 118D and arrived at our destination at 12:30. We soon learned that we were dealing with real enthusiasts: dad and both sons work at BMW, run an M3 V8-powered 1-series as a track monster and plan to rebuild the Zed as a track-car as well.
They were selling the interior due to fire damage; the LCM had caught fire due to a short-circuit which was fortunately put out very quickly, saving almost everything bar the LCM itself, the cover panel and the top-left corner of the doorcard. All the rest of it is in perfect (albeit a bit dirty) nick. The Zed has since been stripped and undergoing major changes to serve as a track tool for both sons to learn in.
Having loaded up the Einser (it actually fit- just), we set off again at 13:15, stopping once for fuel and getting back at 20:30. 1002 miles or 1622 kilometers of Autobahn and motorways, feeling fresh as a daisy and now in possession of what can only be described as a very big puzzle.
In the mean time, I'd also taken delivery of my steering wheel!
In an absolute sorry state, but I’ll send it off for reupholstering. The covers I can redo with soft touch material, so no issues with that either. Should look pretty sweet once finished! Really like the added thickness- identical to the M-wheel but with the Individual inlay as an added touch. A really rare find on the E86 platform!
Finally, I'd also bought myself a set of CSL reps. Hardly a new choice right? Well, I decided to go a bit off-standard regarding the colour...
Wow... That just transformed the car. Shoes maketh man? Wheels maketh car
Next update will be on the interior rebuild, steering wheel restoration. After that: exterior changes galore. Plenty more to share from over the last two years!