Creating a blank canvas

Reggie here, taking some time to write the blog this week:) It’s been a short week here in the shop, but we’ve made the best of it! It’s easy to feel good when the weather is PERFECT!!
Last weekend Stephanie and I made our annual pilgrimage to Auburn Indiana for the annual Auburn-Cord-Duesenburg festival and Auburn auto auction. If you’ve never been before, you should definitely go! We went to a cruise-in on Friday night that had to have at least 300 cars. It is truly a car-guy/gal’s paradise! Here are some photos from the auction on Sunday:

The ’86 325(es) has gotten most of the attention the last few days, and it is starting to show! For those of you who are not up to date on our current project, let’s get you up to speed:

We have a local customer that spent 4 years meticulously installing an S50 from a ’95 M3 (along with TONS of other goodies) into his beloved 1986 325es. Unfortunately, that car was just too rusty to move forward, so now we are taking all of his beautiful work, and swapping it into a fresh low-mile…….rust-free chassis.

You know that feeling you get when you finish a project, and think “I wish I woulda’…..”. Well, the owner of this car gets to re-think a few things while we’re moving everything over. One of the main items that will be different in this car will be a super-clean/detailed engine bay. Don’t get me wrong, he did a GREAT job the first time around, we’re just going to take it to the next level.

This treatment is known as a “shave” and/or “tuck”. The goal is to make the bay look as simple and clean as possible. This is not something you can do to just any car, and it can be done on many levels. You have to make some compromises. For instance, this car will not have cruise control, Air-conditioning, or ABS. Some/all of these items “could” be relocated, but since this is basically going to be a hot-rod, the owner has decided to delete them completely. This will yield weight savings along with the aesthetic upgrade.  On a show car this treatment can be taken even further, but at a certain point you sacrifice the functionality and durability of the finished product. For instance, some show cars have TONS of body filler to produce an extra smooth appearance. This car is going to be driven, and too much body filler would crack . I’ll just be doing enough filling to skim coat the welds and fill small imperfections from grinding and such.

As of today, I’m about 80-90% done with the metal work. Next I’ll go on to that light body filling I spoke of, followed by primer and paint. What you will see in the photos below (Thanks Stephanie!!) is that all of the brackets have been removed, and sections of metal that were full of mounting holes have been removed and replaced with clean flat metal.

This is where the AC receiver/dryer used to mount:

Here is the patch panel, clamped in place and ready to weld:

Here is the panel after welding:

More photos of various stages of this process:

Well, I better get back to work! Our Cruise-In is less than 2 hours away, VintageFest in Chicago is a week away, and I have a month’s worth of work to do!! We hope to see you at an event in the near future! If you have questions about events, cars, work, give us a call!! Have a great weekend!

Reggie and Stephanie