Well, as many of you know I've been searching for a BMW 2002 for a while now, with the intensity ratcheting up when I sold my E28 late last year.

I don't want to jinx it since it isn't sitting in my garage yet, but I made a deal for one in KC today and left with the title. Now I just need to get the car transported home (and pay the seller the rest of the money).

Key details: 1976 BMW 2002, mileage unknown. Originally silver, now white with a blue interior.

Engine built by Ireland Engineering in 2000 (actual receipts from IE for proof). Higher compression (said to be 9.5:1), a hotter cam, and a downdraft Weber 32/36. Backed by a Getrag 240 5-speed transmission that shifts smoothly. Crane ignition, electric fuel pump. This drivetrain rips already, and has room to increase power with side drafts if I want.

Upgraded vented discs in front, larger drums in the rear, with a tii brake master cylinder.

Front seats are Recaro's that were recovered sometime in the last decade. They look great.

Sport springs that lower it about 1", Bilstien shocks. Front and rear suspension has been done (bearings, bushings, sway bay), transmission mount and engine mounts.

The not so good.

Paint was probably done around 2000 as well and it is showing. Peeling on the roof, though the rust that shows is surface only (I poked at it hard).

I'll probably just mitigate the roof rust for now, maybe do something like a "comet wash" or use "shine juice" like VGG. Definitely not planning to paint it this year.

(The good thing about it not being the factory color is that now I don't have to care which color I go with in the future.)

5-6 holes through the driver's side floorboard right behind the pedal box. The floorboard is still quite sturdy, no issues driving at all, but it will need to be cut out and replaced. (Though I may clean it up and slap some POR 15 on it for a while just so I can drive it.)

The rest of the car is darn near rust free.

No carpet. That is easily fixed.

No heater or blower motor. Not great, but without AC not as big a deal for me. This car will get AC within the next year, and I'll have to mess with most of that anyway.

Dash is super cracked, speedo and tach don't work, no oil pressure gauge, windshield and rear window molding is in bad shape.

But - all of the things needed for safety inspection in Texas work - wipers, lights, signals, horn, brakes, etc.

So this will be exactly what I was looking for - a solid driver that needs some work.

I'm beyond excited.

Now @Tripper, we are both on the hunt for wheels. The difference is I'm not sure what I want yet.

My 2002 was delivered safe to my garage this morning!

Less great news. Work is so crazy that I just got home from a cruise and had to go straight to the office. Haven't even been able to sit in it yet.

More to come, parts cannon already fired (wheels and tires) and almost reloaded (carpet).

My wife's new GLC300 is inbound - the dealer called yesterday and said it had been unloaded at the port. So I did what any man married almost 20 years would do - ordered her WeatherTech Floor Liners for Valentine's day. Not only that, I went all out and got the Cargo Liner as well.

I know, I'm a hopeless romantic.

When @CobraJoe was making pool ball shifters for Oppo back in the day I had him make a blue one, since my E28 at the time was blue, and it was still available.

A few years later and I'm sitting in my 2002 looking at the crappy plastic shift knob when it hits me. I have what may be the perfect one already.

Who knew that 2 would be the perfect number for my 2002.

Thanks @CobraJoe !

TL;DR - I should be bringing home a square body Suburban later today.

I've been wanting a square body Suburban for a while now. I started off looking for a 6.2 Diesel, but those are really hard to find, so I widened my scope to include gas. (Many have been swapped to better diesels instead of the 6.2 / 6.5 as well.) I also wasn't looking for a show or even perfect truck, and cheap ones were, well, cheap.

Yesterday I was browsing FB marketplace (instead of working) and found a potential. 1988 Suburban Silverado in light blue, 350 with a turbo 400 (pretty sure). Far from perfect with the front fender a bit crunched, but the rest of the body and the interior was in really good shape.

My brother in law went with me to check it out, and in person it presents about like the pictures. Engine and transmission were working great, but on the first stop the brake pedal went nearly to the floor. We got out and checked, and the front pot of the reservoir was completely empty, while the larger pot to closer to the firewall was fine. Luckily we were near an auto parts store so we picked up some brake fluid and topped it all off. The brakes got a little better, but clearly will need to at least be bled.

(Short aside - does anyone know which part of the reservoir serves which brakes? The pot to the front of the car, which was a smaller reservoir, was the one that had no fluid. Does that serve the front or rear brakes?)

Anyway, even with limited braking the driving experience was pure nostalgia. My first car was a 1982 6.2 Diesel Suburban, and this pulled at all the right heartstrings. I negotiated (not well, he took my first counter offer) to $3300 and I'm pretty happy with it given what square body prices are doing right now. I didn't have the cash, so I left a $100 with him and will go by today to pick it up.

There are lots of little things to fix - brakes, front fender, front door, get the AC working, headliner, a couple of cracked windows, small rust spots around the doors, and on, but most parts are REALLY cheap and available. I can get a whole new fender locally for $113. Even if I spend a couple thousand fixing those things up and i lose interest I can probably turn it back around and come close to break even.

Just look at it though, in all it's (un)aerodynamic glory. Did I need another Suburban? No. Did I need another project car? Nope. But I'm excited.

How can you look at the old school Suburban font on the rear and not just smile?

Well, if you followed the story arc so far, my wife put a deposit down on a MB GLC300 in min-January that was already on the boat in transit to the US.

Well, we picked it up today. Most important part first - she is thrilled.

Here is the sticker. We paid MSRP plus the ADM (disguised as ceramic coating). Am I thrilled about that? No. Do I think I could have gotten a better deal elsewhere? Possibly. But the dealership service from the first time we walked in was great, so my wife decided we weren't looking anymore.

The Lunar Blue paint is really nice. It shows a deep blue in the light, and then very dark in the shade or at night.

Of course I had to mod it already....

First mod for every car in my family.

Now we just need to sell her Pathfinder. We got the process started at Carvana, waiting now for them to review the documents so we can schedule a drop off and get a check.

I haven't even been able to drive it yet, but I'll post a review in the next week when I get to put a few miles on it.

When we last left things, I had new wheels but the tires were not installed yet.

Enter my father - who took the wheels to my local Firestone (who does pretty solid work on tires / alignments usually) to get the tires I ordered from Tire Rack installed.

Without further delay, they are on!

Now to address a few things.

Yes, I'm getting all new lug nuts and ditching the eyesore locking lug.

Second, I'm going with the consensus for now and the black cap center. It has the Rota Wheels logo....I'll either put an Alpina or BMW decal over that in the near future. Yes, I know they are not Alpina wheels. But they are darn close.

Third. The cap.

I literally had to break one tab off of each one to get them installed. I was actually quite patient spending 10 minutes on the first one. But nothing I tried worked. I have a very hard time believing they will ever come off on their own.

Fourth. You know how i said earlier that my Firestone shop was pretty good with tires and alignments. Well, I found this on the ground after picking up one of the new wheels.

Yeah, that is a lot of weights. The other three wheels only have 1-3 of those weights, so I'm hopeful these were just extra that somehow made it along for the ride home.

The tires are Riken Raptor 195/55/15. Those of you with tiny wheels know the struggle to find good tires. So I went with the least expensive touring tires I could find (that had good reviews on Tire Rack) at less than $90 shipped, which turned out to be $440 installed. I don't want or need ultra high performance summer tires, I'm actually good with less ultimate grip. I'll see how these are, and don't feel too bad if they aren't great.

I'm thrilled with the wheels. They are exactly what I pictured in my head. Other than the Carolina lean going on with the stance, I'm actually pretty happy with the profile of the car now.

Not sure if I mentioned this, but this was kind of a "must do" purchase. The tires on the 14" bottlecap wheels had tread, but were definitely dry rotting already. So if I was going to get new tires, I might as well get the wheels I wanted anyway.

Parting shot of the rear 3/4 view.

It has been a while coming, but I finally got the squarebody painted last night (technically early this morning when we ended). And my “I”, I mean my brother in law did the painting. I was the shop assistant: mixing paint, managing air hoses, moving the stool around for rood coverage, and cleaning.

The relatively short version – I bought the squaebody back in March last year. If it wasn’t for the driver’s front fender, I would have left the patina, fixed rust, and cleared over what was there. But it was crunched so bad that when I replaced it I knew it would need to be painted.

After doing some small work (and LOTS of brake work) on it through the summer and early fall, I decided that it was time to tackle the paint. My brother in law has painted 3-4 cars, so I decided we would do it instead of sending it to a shop. Initially I was hoping we would get it done over the holidays, but COVID took that opportunity away.

As you can imagine, sanding took a LONG time. It didn’t help that the roof had clearly been painted at least three times; getting through that was tough. We definitely didn’t get it perfect, there places where we got to bare metal, and places where we only got through two coats….but thankfully it is up high an almost no one will see it.

In addition, there were 3 rust spots that needed metal work (again, my BIL) along with the body work to fix the doors on the driver's side. Two rust spots were on the drip rails, and one on the rear quarter. When he got those fixed and body work done earlier this week, the race was on to get it painted before a cold front blew in either late Friday or early Saturday.

Friday afternoon I was able to get work done early so we could get to the paint store and get painting about 4. We wrapped up clear around 1am, and while it was starting to cool off we beat the front, and the humidity it was pushing in as well.

The one surprise was the gray – it went on with a heavy copper tone that I wasn’t expecting. In the natural light today it looks more like I expected, closer to a gunmetal.

Other than a number of runs in the clear it looks really great. Definitely better than I would have expected from a base Maaco job, but not perfect. What I like about it is that for any imperfection I see I have one person to hold accountable – me.

After sleeping in until 10, I was back over today and we started to put the squarebody back together. Door handles, mirrors, grill, and all the other parts that we took off now have to go back on. In addition I have a bunch of new stuff – paint stripes, lower belt trim, taillight lenses, barn door weatherstripping, felt around all the windows, door handle gaskets, rear quarter windows, and the list goes on.

I’m hoping to get it buttoned up enough tomorrow that I can get it back home, since it has been taking up space in my BIL’s garage since early December.
Once I get the exterior done, then I can start in on the interior. The good news on that front is I can do it in pieces and drive it in between.

Drove the squarebody to work today. While there is still a lot to do, the progress so far is amazing.

Unfortunately I can't find any "before" pictures of the interior door panels, but here is the after. I agonized for a while about what to do with the panels. I could spend $300-$600 per pair of panels to replace them, but in the end I decided to stick with the ones I have for now.

Below is one panel after I think the first coat of paint, and the velour inserts before they were painted as well. And yes, I hot glued the fabric back on.

The top surfaces of the front door panels were so ravaged by the sun that the plastic was turning to powder. The velour inserts and the lower carpeting were dirty and faded. So I bought 3 cans of OEM color blue vinyl paint, grabbed a Scotch Brite Pad and some 320 grit sandpaper, and went to work.

I had to actually sand down the top portion of the front door panels to get a solid surface to clean and paint. That means the texture is no longer consistent across the panel, but it wasn't to begin with. Lots of elbow grease and about 6 coats of paint later, and the panels look great. I also cleaned and painted the velour inserts and lower carpet trim.

Putting it back together I bought two new door lock switches - and the power locks actually work! (Well, 3/4 work 95% of the time, the driver rear works about 25% of the time.) With all new window motors and felt / channels, I'm living in luxury with full power windows and locks. Silverado trim level FTW.

Certainly not new, but probably 70% as good for $70 total (so far).

I still need to figure out new Silverado trim for the upper parts. My BIL has some stainless laying around, so we may try that first. This weekend I'm hoping to get the wheels painted, then it will get some meaty AT tires.

Somewhat anticlimactic, since I don't have the tires mounted on them yet.

But! New Wheels!

Forgot to put the black center cap on for the second photo. The black cap just covers the hub, not the lug nuts, so you see a black center. I'll probably roll with the black cap (I think).

Edit: I was so excited I forgot the details. Rota R20 wheels, 15x6 with et29 offset. They are light as well, 14lbs each!

@Snakesm13 Reading your posts on the Cayenne is strengthening my desire for one.

@Just-Jeepin A chemical engineer (by education) that works in the refining industry has entered the chat... (back me up here @e90m3)

First, I love that I can come to Oppo and read a well reasoned, informed discussion. This is awesome.

Second, let me add a few additional points to what has been said so far.

How much diesel you can get from a barrel of oil depends on two main factors - the equipment in the refinery and the crude you start with. Any given refinery can vary the output %'s of gasoline and diesel within a few percentage points, maybe even low double digits, by changing process parameters and the specs on the crude they run. But every refinery is built to run optimally on a certain blend of crude grades (commonly called a slate of crude). So changing that output will have other consequences - maybe more heating needed, maybe faster usage of a catalyst.

A major factor in road going diesel, commonly called ULSD (ultra low sulfur diesel) is, you guessed it, getting the sulfur out. This is a costly process that leaves you with a byproduct (sulfur) that in good times you can sell, and in bad times you have to pay someone to take it away. ULSD has a max of 15ppm of sulfur, but rail and marine sulfur have higher (marine is 50ppm, I actually don't recall what the spec is for rail).

So, yes, refiners can change around the diesel versus gasoline percentages they produce, but there are tradeoffs.

@2Poor_sh2Furious I'm not planning to bolt mine down either.

@2Poor_sh2Furious Definitely agree. If there was a local installer for another line I'd probably lean that direction. The guy from my local place came to my house, measured everything out, and has a few other customers in my neighborhood. Even told me not to buy the casters, if I want to move it just call and he will bring them out and help me move it around. So I'm willing to spend a bit more to have someone local I can call, sounds like your decision process was similar - there is value in being able to get someone in person.

@2Poor_sh2Furious Very interesting timing. I'm close to pulling the trigger on a Bendpak HD-9XW myself.

Curious on your criteria to buy. One of my big ones is size - I want it big enough for my Suburbans, but it can't be too wide to overlap the second spot in the garage. After a LOT of research I generally feel more comfortable with a Bendpak, and I found a local dealer that will install and service.

@MUSASHI66 2015 Suburban 5.3 L ~350hp
1988 Suburban 5.7 L ~200hp
1976 BMW 2L ~100hp
2022 MB GLC300 2L 255 hp

So 24 cylinders, 15L, 60hp per L

@Darkbrador If we had a place I felt comfortable with my kids riding I would totally have those by now.

I need to get my family back into looking at land in central Texas....far enough inland to have minimal hurricane impact, but not too close to Austin / San Antonio.

@benjrblant Agree, how did Ford royally screw up the Windstar? I see examples of all the other vans listed above still on the road, but haven't seen a Windstar in years.

@davesaddiction Coming soon to a street takeover near you.

Admittedly that is the coolest way to do donuts / spin brodies / whatever else you call them.

@kleebrz I think we got less than half an inch of rain at my house, was really hoping for more. Yet somehow, after months of scorching heat and no rain, there are f***in frog in my yard making all kinds of noise. Where the hell did they come from?