After years of my wife riding around with me and saying “You make everything else, why can’t you make us some cupholders for these little cars!” I got to rummaging around at Advanced Auto today and saw these little soft pockets. It reminded me of the soft pocket that my wife has in the MINI console where she throws everything so I grabbed a couple and thought I would give it some thought. Pics show the little mount I fabbed up with some steel rod which mounts to the end of the console using the existing console screws.

Check ‘em out:

Here are the little sleeves. Not necessarily just for holding cups:

The custom bracket made from wire rod and some little sheet metal:

And the whole thing installed in front of the 02 center console:

Nice work, Mike!

You can see the extent of the filler in the images below. The bond-o had cracked and I was hoping that all it would take was a bit of grinding and some refilling/sanding to do it up. But it turns out that this side was just as bad, if not worse, than the passenger side. So I’ll just weld in the whole rear quarter skin. I would have done the same thing for the other side, but my donor patch wasn’t as nice for the passenger side as the driver.

An hour worth of cutting and sawing and I ended up with one big, gaping hole. I’ve left enough metal to lap weld the fresh patch to. Now would be a good time to fab up some CSL Batmobile style brake duct intakes…or a 007 hidden missile launching panel.

Despite the fact that they look as Darth Vader as possible, they are comfortable, soft and provide a great sense of touch and control with a welder in hand. They must be made from the skin of young children, they are that soft.

But if the supple hides of orphan children weren’t enough to convince you, these beauties were only $15. This particular model of glove is thinner than some of the other options my welding shop had for sale. I only do MIG work and have gotten used to welding in my mechanics gloves. As such I figured the thinner ones would do just fine. I’m such an amateur welder that the big, clunky gloves with the annoying, continental shelf-like ridges on the inside seams cause me to weld like a one-armed blind man.

The major benefit of the proper welding gloves versus the mechanics gloves is the larger cuff and full leather construction. No more red hot slag rolling down my coverall sleeve or melting the polyester knitting on the back of my cheapo gloves. I tend to run through the fingers of my mechanics gloves rather quickly so I often get a singe or two on the old fingertips as well.

Kidskin? See, they are made from children.

Cyberweld sells all sorts of great Tillman gear. Amazon also sells several styles of Tillman gloves. And based on the quality of the ONYX welding gloves, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend some of their other products as well. The force is strong with you, young Skywalker.

Before I set to doing the fender flare modification, I had to fix a bit bunch of rocker panel rust and Bond-O. I don’t have any before pictures at this time, but don’t worry. The driver side remains to be fixed and I’ll take more detailed pictures for a post at a later date. This is the tale of the passenger side.

The previous owner (PO) had attempted to cover the rust with the B-word and that fix predictably cracked like a dry lake bed. After grinding out the filler and finding where the rust more or less stopped, I set to cutting. Here is a general pictorial description of what I everything looks like under there, with helpful arrows. As always click the thumbnail for a larger pic:

Luckily it cleaned up fairly well leaving me with enough metal to weld a new skin. I picked up a set of 3 NOS OEM rocker skins from an 02 feller. I only needed a section about 1.5″ long to fix the area in question. The patch piece was cut to the correct length with a bit of overlap on the front-facing edge and a nice tight, flush fit at the posterior. Before I got to the weldin’, I primered the ever-loving schnitzel out of the inside of the remaining, unrusted rocker still on the car and the back of the new patch. (I can’t divulge the details of my highly effective inner rocker primering technique but I can tell you that it involved a can of primer, a meter stick, zip ties and a used sponge.) Then I tack welded in the patch, re-welded and ground down the excess.

The bottom edge of the patch piece was a bit too long and hung past the bottom of the inner rocker. I ended up cutting down the patch so that I could lap weld the lower edge of the skin to the inner rocker. BMW’s factory solution was to spot weld the original outer rocker skin to the inner, which is why I have rust. My new patch has a solid bead. I had to use a bit of filler to smooth the transition from original metal to new patch but after some sanding and a coat of primer and spray-on bed liner, it’s more or less impossible to see the patch.

Looks quite good, I think. The driver side is just as badly Bond-O’d, if not worse. The next time around will go much faster. Let’s look at that passenger side one more time for inspiration.

I’ll have more detailed pictures of the driver side patch, but here are the few shots of the work I’ve done thus far on the passenger side.

I cut a donor patch from a less rusty quarter panel. A little clever cutting and measuring and I think I’ve got it lined up with the knee-level crease. I lap welded with a series of small tack welds and < 1" beads. I then ground the welds flat and beveled the rest of the patch edges with the grinder in hopes that the Bond-O skimming will be less painful as well as less obvious.

I’m working on the driver side now. I’ll post some pictures of the Bond-O depth as well as the cutting and suturing process as I go.

What you will need for this project:

-a 4×2 feet sheet of plywood
-a couple cans of spray adhesive
-a jig saw
-about 6 feet of carpet (6 feet wide)
-sandpaper or a hand sander
-carpet tape
-velcro

The first step was to pull the rear seat. The DIY modifications to the E24 seat that the previous owner had made were a bit sloppy, but the seat looked just fine. It came out without much fuss, not unlike the stock rear seat that only require a lift of the bottom portion and the removal of a few screws. I then used a large sheet of cardboard to create a template for the flat area under the seat.

Next I used a sheet of 1/2″ plywood from Lowe’s to replace the seat. Luckily a 4′ x 2′ piece is just about the right size and readily available at most big box hardware stores. The rear seat well has a small lip at the back where the bottom portion of the seat rested on. Using that lip and the kick plate you can easily rest a plywood cover to create a flat, level surface. I traced my template shape onto the plywood and began cutting with a jigsaw (also purchased from Lowe’s for about $20).

With the oldest hand sander in the world I smoothed out the rough edges and began laying out my carpet. I used gray marine carpet which is the cheapest stuff Lowe’s sells, I think. The wood and carpet backing was coated with spray adhesive. I laid the carpet on the plywood, smoothed out the wrinkles and trimmed the excess from around the edges. If you are smart, you’ll leave a bit of overhanging carpet on the front edge that faces the front of the car. Fold it over the edge and glue it down, it’ll look nicer that way once it is installed. I wasn’t so smart. I also trimmed a piece of carpet for the rear parcel shelf. Eventually I’ll make a new parcel shelf insert with some masonite and black vinyl covering, but the carpet piece worked just fine.

Next I cut two pieces of carpet to fit over the exposed shock tower bumps. A larger piece was cut to cover the rear firewall as well. Using double sided carpet tape to attached the pieces worked like a charm.

Finally I cut a few pieces of self-adhesive velcro strips and attached the hook sides to the top of the kickplate and the little lip where the back of the plywood insert rests. I attached the loop side of the velcro strips to the bottom of the plywood. This keeps the plywood panel from sliding around on the autoX course. I also added a couple sets of standard eye hooks to use with tie down straps.

The whole project only took me a few hours to complete and the total cost of materials including a new jigsaw was about $70.

The Harbor Freight Threaded Insert Riveter I purchased was a measly $13.99. However, it came with 40 threaded inserts and a couple interchangeable nose pieces allowing you to install multiple sized inserts. I also picked up an extra couple bags of inserts just in case I fudged it up a bit.

Once I had finished prepping, welding and sealing my fenders I marked where the holes needed to be drilled for the inserts. I chose the 10-24 inserts as they were larger and appeared to fit nicely with my flares. The bolts I used were purchased from a local fastener store. I went for the black allen head bolts in 10-24 x 1.5″…1″ length worked just fine too.

The How-To

The holes to be drilled need to be large enough to accommodate the inserts, but no so large that there is much play when the rivet is installed. Matching the back end of your drill bit to the outer diameter of the rivet should give you a good idea of where to start. Thread the insert onto the end of the rivet gun so that the flange is closest to the gun and the barrel of the rivet will enter the body work. Once you have the flange flat against the bodywork, give the handles a firm squeeze until you feel the rivet bend.

Warning - Subdue those manly hands

DO NOT gorilla grip the tool!!! (good advice in any situation) These cheap HF tools will bend, break or generally crap out if you over do it. This HF tool is no different. It doesn’t take much pressure to get the rivet to seat securely in the body. Of course I over did it a couple times and ended up bending part of the rivet gun. You can see in the pic below where the piston body of the riveter got a bit gouged up. It doesn’t effect the overall use of the gun that much, but it makes it more annoying when trying to unscrew the gun from a mounted rivet. If you do happen to screw up and over-squeeze a rivet or strip the thread the inserts can be drilled out fairly easily. These inserts are soft aluminum so be careful inserting and when drilling them out.

Conclusion

Considering the price of this tool and the inserts, I was very happy with the results. Higher end rivet guns of this type sell for well over $100. But if you are only going to use it once or twice every year, a $14 Chinese-made version is a much more attractive option. I used this tool to insert about 30+ inserts but by the last fender flare my lumbering meat hooks had managed to ding up the face of the piston just a bit. The tool is still completely usable, just slightly more annoying than it was when new. Also keep in mind that this tool could be used to install front air dams, small spoilers and maybe some types of trim. And the bolts can be easily removed, unlike pop-rivets that have to be drilled out. Good luck!

First came the measuring. I followed the instructions set forth by those much smart than I. Placing the flares against the body I traced the edge with a Sharpie. Next I measured down about 2-3″ and traced out a pattern. This was the cut line which insured that I had enough panel to mount the flare too while also leaving enough metal to weld the flanged inner fender.

Then came the careful cutting. It’s tough to describe the feeling in your gut that arises when you take a cutting tool to a seemingly decent paint job. In this case the feeling was more of an aroma, the aroma of powdered Bondo. I soon found why the rear arch had been a bit rusty. Bondo clouds came spewing forth, belying the seemingly decent body work. No matter, I pressed on.

Once the outer quarter panel was cut, the inner wheel well was revealed. After trimming away the arch lip a two layered quarter panel was laid out before me. The conventional, and most successful, flare installations typically bend the inner well up to the outer quarter and weld the two together. This creates a sealed arch. However, to get the inner well to bend requires slicing it several times into a tooth-like configuration and then bending up the tabs. More welding practice. Cut, bend, weld, repeat.

In order to weld, a handful of requirements must be fulfilled. One of these requirements is metal must weld to metal, not Bondo. I ground, what I thought was paint, off the outer quarter to allow for the inner tabs to meet up metal y metal. More Bondo dust. Once all the tabs were welded, I trimmed the overhang and sealed the exposed metal with rust protector and 3M seam sealer. It doesn’t look all that nice, but it got the job done. Besides, bolt on flares hide a plethora of ugly.

Realigning the fiberglass flares to the original Sharpie outline I marked the spots where mounting holes were to be drilled. This is when I noted that the Bondo managed to reach a thickness of about 1/2″. Since I was planning to use a Riv-nut, or threaded insert, style of rivet I had to counter sink the Bondo layer with a drill bit. Luckily my allen head bolts were long enough to counteract the Bondo depth. You can see in the larger image the outer layer of white, countersunk filler surrounding the threaded insert.

Bolting the flares up took a bit of patience and trimming as some of the holes were just slightly off center from where they needed to be. A small amount of reaming with a drill bit opened up the mounting holes on the flares and they went on beautifully. The fronts are much easier as all they require is one cut and the mounting holes to be drilled. With the new flares I can easily fit lower offset wheels such as my Western Racing turbines. They are probably about an ET10 or 12 offset if I had to guess, not offset info is listed on the wheels. Here is the final flare placement and the end result.

Last flare waiting to go on:

New flares, wheels and bumper conversion:

When I started working on the floorboards, in the winter of 2006, my welding skills were still umm, blossoming. The sum total of my welding apprenticeship consisted of a couple hours in my garage with a professional aircraft welder who showed me a few tricks on a spare door and a few pieces of angle iron. So, falling back on my almost 120 minutes of welding scholarship I surmised that 16ga. was a bit better for this project as it would heat sink a touch and I could bounce the welding puddle off the thicker metal into the thinner original floor.

My first section was the rear driver side just behind the kick panel. The original factory paint drain plugs are notorious rust traps and one was the culprit in this case. Here’s the first go:

A few months later I made my way up to both the passenger and driver side fronts. Each required a fair amount of cutting, fitting and re-cutting to get right. My welding skills improved somewhat:

Finally, after all the amateurish welds had been laid down, melted holes filled and the worst of the spatter ground down I primed and sealed. I went with a high zinc self-etching primer first on the fresh bare metal. Then I prepped all the exposed factory floor with rust sealer followed by Herculiner. I figured the Herculiner would act as a sound deadener as well as lending a bit of tooth for the carpet glue to grab a hold of. It looks pretty slick too.

Then you belong here.

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