Alpina Restoration

Zitat von reinhard;119122

What happened to the acoustic cover to make it look like the intake runners?

Front of engine is missing part 1723620 but I am sure this is well tucked away in a box

Looks like you´re on a straight to the finishing line here

Reinhard

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I have two acoustic covers, so I refinished one the same as the intake runners. I have the other one cleaned up to use too. I have the 1723620 new, and it is now on, just not in that photo.

Thanks again!

Update 5-5-2014
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I was able to get everything put back on and torqued back down. the only things I have not torqued back is the top of the sway bars and the ecentric bolts, which will have to be set when the alignment is done. Note the red marks on the bolts - when I torqued them back to their settings I marked each bolt with a red mark. Brakes have been rebuilt and the calipers done in Alpina Blue. MWrench Stainless Steel brake Lines (which I have had new sitting in a box for several years) went on. New rotors and pads are now on as well. I will be replacing the rear end fluid as well as flushing the fluid with ATEBlue fluid. New bleeders were placed on the calipers as well. I still have to crimp down the collar nuts....did you guys know that those are torqued to 300 Nm!!!!!!

Zitat von 8Harry8;119643

Roger

Amazing!
I wonder if your Alpina will be more than a trailer queen or a museums very best star in the future since it seems to be better than new in the meantime...

Harry - I had a true garage queen - a 1973 3.0 CS Coupe that I sold in 2004 ---with only 27,000 miles. I was afraid to drive it! I always swore that I would never have another car I was afraid to drive. My 850 Csi that I sold to purchase the Alpina was not driven all the time, but I enjoyed it, and will do the same with the Alpina.

7/14/2014 Update:
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Had a productive weekend, and after over 2 years the seats are back in the car!!! On Friday I picked up the seats, which had been touched up - they were in good shape originally, but after 22 years needed just the bolsters redyed. Of course, all the small Alpina Blue and Green squares had faded, so after picking up the seats and putting them in the family room (Thanks Marcia!), Friday evening and Saturday afternoon was spent redying each square by hand. As I had all the trim and headrests off the seats, they were all cleaned prior to re-assembly. The red buttons on the seat belt latches were faded, so they were refinished. After all the reassembly, the seats went back in Sunday afternoon... Man those seats are heavy. I have to finish off several small things in the interior (place the steering wheel, place the sunroof motor cover with the Alpina plate and light) to finish it off, but that should be fairly simple and quick. Here are some pictures of the seats:

Here are the refinished seats, with the blue and green squares before redying:

After Redying all those Blue and Green Squares:

The refinished seat belt buttons (I know...trivial, but they look better

The seat trim cleaned prior to reassembly:

And...FINALLY....back in the car after 2 years!!!!!

The light at the end of the tunnel is getting bigger!!!! More to come.

8/17/2014 UPDATE
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I was able to get back to the car this weekend. Marcia is still at her father's home settling the estate along with her sister, so it gave me the weekend to get alot done. Plus, the doctor finally said I could lift more than 10 pounds after the recent surgery!

Here is what I accomplished:
1. Got the ALPINA strip kit on. This took almost 8 hours measuring, re-measureing, setting everything up, and finally going for it.
2. Got the front bumper on complete with new center grills, grills, and New Euro FTP strips in (I have had these waiting for several years). I also replaced the trim at the front edge of the fenders and put on tape pieces along with the new 5.0 badge.
3. Completed the rear valence.
4. Tightened up some of the remaining bolts in the rear end that were not torqued yet
5. Finished up the interior. I put the steering wheel back in, uncovered the pedals I purchased 3 years ago ( I have had them on and covered with tape), and placed the sunroof cover with the refinished ALPINA plaque. Plus some other items. It is good to have the interior done!!

Here are some pictures:

Placing the tape stripes - notice all the blue tape where measurements were marked out.

Front Bumper, trim and new badge:

The two small black tape pieces at the corners of the hood. These make sure the black line is continuous when you close the hood (especially noticeable on lighter cars). In retrospect, I think I would have just cut them out of black electrical tape - it looks like the same stuff you get from BMW:

On the car:

ALPINA plaque.

Pedals. Also note the Original ALPINA floor mat. You can not get these anymore - I am just lucky the car came with the mats:

Steering Wheel. I took the airbag wheel out and put in an original wheel I found from Europe, as this is the way the car was delivered in Japan:

So I accomplished alot this weekend, and now I need the week to recover.....

More to come....got to get this done for Eurofest!

10/6/2014 UPDATE
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WOW!! What a journey! I started this process with my first post in the Bimmerforums thread (http://forums.bimmerforums.com…799935-Alpina-Restoration) on 12/18/2011. The term "mission creep" does not even come close as I had no intention of going this far, and it has been a long...long...long process.

First, let me go through what was accomplished over the past 72 hours to finish the car:
1. Front spoiler installed. This took almost 5 hours - never thought it would take this long but.... with all the connections underneath, lining up everything, having my neighbor come over and help me attach screws from below while I held fasteners in place with LOOOOOOONG extensions from above, everything went into place. This did not include the 3 hours of applying the lettering, stripes, and Zaino Bros wax. But - its on!!!
2. Fixed the passenger side headlight, which I somehow had working opposite of the driver's side - I would turn on the lights, and the driver's side pod would come up and the lights would come on, but the passenger side the lights would come on, but the pod stay down. Then, when I would turn off the lights, they would go out on both sides, the driver's pod go down, and the passenger side go up! I figured out that when I reassembled the motor arm assembly on the passenger side, I had the arm on the lift motor 180 degrees off. There is no indexing on the shaft. Out came the assembly, moved the arm 180 degrees, reassembled everything - it worked. Then just had to realign the assembly again.
3. My passenger door lock did not engage. Everything worked as I could hear it. The window would go down when the door was opened, then go up when it was closed, so all the electrical connections were working, so off came the interior panel, and after looking around, I spotted what I did wrong. Evidently when I reassembled the door handle back onto the door, I did not line up the lever on the handle with the arm up inside the door - the lever arm was below the groove, not in it, so out came the door handle, moved the arm into position (this was about 1/4 of an inch), then reassembled everything - walla - it worked. Then after putting everything back together everything was fine. I had purchased some extra clips that go on the back of the door panel, and they were great to have as some always snap.
4. Adjusted the sunroof for proper fit on the back end.
5. Shampooed the interior carpet where the antifreeze had spilt when the new radiator core had leaked. Re-detailed the interior.
6. Programmed the MID and radio. Those CD43 radios really do sound good, even with the stock speakers.
7. Installed the battery tender wiring onto the driver's side battery for the battery tender.
8. Removed all the wheels, cleaned everything, set tires to the proper pressure, detailed the wheel wells, replaced and torqued the wheels back to place.
9. Assembled the wheel center caps with new Alpina emblems, new wheel locks, and new O-rings for the seals on the caps and lock covers.
10. Finished the custom battery frame. It is not on in the pictures below, but I took an M battery frame, removed the M emblem, used filler to fill in the indentation where the M emblem was, primed, painted the frame, and applied an Alpina logo.
11. Applied the E31 Chapter and "8@20" stickers
12. Did a final wipe-down on the car.

One thing I will need to replace is the small rubber gromit where the windshield wiper pump fits into the bottle. When I went to fill up the bottle, it leaked at the seal. No big thing as the car is going into the Zentrum Museum in Spartansburg, South Carolina (a smaller US version of the Welt) , but I will order one to replace the original. It looked fine, but leaked.

There is no way I could have completed this almost 3 year project without the help of many people. What started with the purchase in the fall of 2009 really evolved into something with a life of its own.

First - thanks to Marcia - my ultimate BMW wife! To be honest, she has fully supported me, but was really ready for it to be done. She has said that recently she has become a BMW widow due to the time I was spending in the garage. We celebrated our 35th Anniversary this summer, I love her, and owe her big time...

Thanks to Bill Fox, aka Max Lumens. Bill runs 101 Innovations - the Registered Importer who imported the car, petitioned the government to have the B12 Coupes added to the importable list, and performed the conformance package. It was a long process to make sure all the steps were done correctly and legally, and Bill did a great job.

Thanks to Charlie at Gault BMW for all his help with all those numerous orders -everything from small clips to the rear windshield glass and everything inbetween. He liaisoned between me, BMW in Europe, and even with Alpina when needed to obtain hard to find parts. I used several other parts suppliers too for smaller orders, but I think Charlie had me on speed dial.

Thanks to Steffen, Greg, and Wuffer - whose numerous phone calls were a godsend when I was stumped or could not figure out something. My last call to Steffen was just yesterday afternoon - when he answered the Phone: "SPM 24 Hour Hotline"! Thanks guys for your long distance assistance.

Thanks go Gary Brown in Jacksonville for his beautiful paint work. He runs a small one man custom paint shop, and he took the car down to the bare shell and brought it back up to what you see now. I am now convienced that Silver is one of the hardest colors to work with. I have owned Red, Black, Gray and White cars - but I now think that Silver cars are the most difficult to achieve that finish with.

Thanks also go out to all of those too numerous to name who have offered advice, words of wisdom, encouragement and everything else here on the forum. As a "Band of Brothers, and Sisters" you all keep the drive alive.

So, here are some final pictures. The floor mats are not in, and the custom license plate frame is not on. I finished these up shortly before the car left for the BMW Zentrum last night.

Enjoy!