It's been a while. Let's catch up.
Two major things happened to the blue car. 1 - I threw my back out really badly, which rendered me completely unable to walk, much less turn wrenches, for a month. I still wanted to make progress so the car went off to my friends at The Studio in San Mateo.
They installed the following new parts:
- front lower control arms
- front upper control arms
- Moosehead upper control arm spherical bearings
- tie rods, center drag link, and offside pivot
- front sway bar links
- rear subframe bushings
- rear trailing arm bushings
- rear sway bar links
- rear trailing arm links
They also tossed in a spare 3.25 diff I had acquired from a friend - a limited slip unit out of a Z3. I'm not sure if it's a motorsport no-preload unit or totally roasted.. or a Torsen. The car doesn't have the power to test it quite yet.
2 - once my back finally got better, I was able to start poking at the euro bumper conversion. I'm going to "backdate" the car to 1980 spec, with the fat trunk spoiler and all. It's not technically correct, but I like the look, and it'll make sense once there's an M90 and dogleg in there.
To start off, i pulled the US bumpers off the blue car. Really remarkably little rust under them. Overall this shell is very dry and straight.
The front valence is a BMP unit, I believe. It's in two pieces and has a chunk missing. I'm not sure if it's worth it to someone to try and save it. If that sounds like something you'd like to mess with, get in touch
I fit up the front bumper from the euro car to see what I'm working with. It'll need the federalization bar removed for me to be able to access the assembly hardware, which I'll need to do to be able to paint the relevant pieces. This will be nearly impossible without a plasma cutter, which I thankfully can borrow. I've also ordered two new bumper impact strips, although I suspect one of them is for an early valence-less car and may require modification.
The rear seems like it will be a minor dilemma. The early euro bumper mounts with big oval metal hoops, which are just bolted straight to the back panel of the car. It is single-walled on the EU shell, but dual walled on the U blue car, which will make replicating this a challenge. The other alternative is to reuse the US bumper shocks, but to open them, purge the oil, compress them to the correct length, and spot weld them into position. However, this requires the use of the US rear bumper, since it has broached square holes for the shock mounts. I have the US and euro bumpers side by side, and cannot find any difference between them dimensionally or in the shape of the under-bumper panel.
Are the early euro and US bumpers actually identical??
See you in a few months with more updates. While it's half-disassembled, there is a nonzero chance of a full repaint happening.. time will tell!