derBayerische September October 2022 - 22

L I K E
F A T H E R ,
L I K E
D A U G H T E R
■ (Left to Right) Bodywork time! Sanding, sanding, sanding. Some of the body panels had lots of bondo and the doors had to be replaced.
more about bikes. So as I started
taking auto classes, I continued to
work at the KTM dealer and they
were kind enough to take time and
show me how things worked, how to
build shocks, disassemble engines,
and prep bikes for enduro trips. I
realized that I really enjoyed this type
of stuff. Seeing the 2002 got me
more interested in BMWs, so at this
point I got my first BMW which was
a boring automatic E36 325i-but I
still loved it. I started working on
that in class and then decided I wanted
to continue my education doing
something automotive related, so I
signed up for tech school, moved to
Arizona, and continued on to the
BMW factory training program. I am
now a BMW Master Tech at a dealer
in Virginia that I have worked at for
12 years.
So back to the 2002 tii and
my Dad's " legacy " as it were.
Unfortunately, in January of 2013 he
passed away from cancer leaving the
car unfinished. Of course the
obvious thing to do was go get it and
finish it! While home for the memorial
I inventoried everything he had
and collected and organized all the
pictures, plans, and parts for it.
The following year my boyfriend at
the time and I devised a plan to drive
out to Colorado with a truck and
trailer, assemble it to the best of our
ability, take it to the BMW CCA
22
event in Beaver Creek, CO, and
along with my Mom, bring it back to
Virginia where we would finish the
restoration.
Of course, as they say " hope for
the best and prepare for the worst. "
The major issue was that the doors,
the trunk and the hood were unpainted.
We thought we could just have
the paint matched, paint it, and be on
our way-not so. We took it to our
friend's body shop and discovered it
was too difficult to match the paint
and decided it would be best to paint
the whole car. Great, no problem.
Wait-the doors had so much bondo
they were not worth it. This led to
buying new doors from BMW. Ok,
now we could paint it. Wait. More
discoveries. There were wavy body
panels, roof issues, primer was lifting,
and more. (I found pictures
from 1982 where the car had
previously undergone a total
restoration so lots of hands had
already been all over this). I didn't
expect this to be a piece of cake by
any means, but I definitely was not
into sanding the whole body down
for a total redo of EVERYTHING my
Dad or the other bodyshop had
done. Sigh.
Thanks so much to Richie at
Apple Valley Collision who helped
me restore this way past what we all
thought it would be and all the help
throughout that time. Now, this is of
course way more than I anticipated.
Unfortunately, other events happened,
and to make a long story
■ The tii now primed and ready for the top coat.
short, it had to sit at the first body
shop for a while, then got moved to
a friend's garage to sit some more,
then to another garage for even more
sitting.
It was not a happy car.
I whispered many apologies for this
neglect. Disclaimer-During this
time I also started racing an E30 I
had built. Racing is a fun way of
spending money whereas paying
for bodywork is a not so fun way
of spending money. So this contributed
to the neglect, sadly.
Patience is not something I have a
lot of stock of, but as everything in
life is a test of it, I am (hopefully)
finally getting the hang of it.
After being blown off by another
body shop in early 2017 who said
their price was $50,000 for what I
had in mind, and having my Mom
tell me to sell it, and having an internal
dilemma about what to do with
the perceived ball and chain,
I became quite sad about the state of
things. Though, I didn't give up and
I was able to find a place, Moe's
Collision, that would repaint the
body for a reasonable price. This
would allow me to put the tii back
together.
I give a huge amount of credit
to Moe's Collision, since I basically
showed up with a box of random
parts and said " here you go, I have
no idea what all this is or how it goes
on the car. " They did a great job with
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derBayerische September October 2022

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