BMW 630CS Resto-Build

[Mazdazilla6]

So a few months back my old man purchased a 1977 630CS Alpina from it's original owner. The car is number 5 of 48 made which the previous owner brought to the US from Germany in 1986. The car sat in a garage in Florida for the past 13 years, never run, subjected to being played in by the previous owner's grandchildren.

Back in January I flew down to FL to check out the car and trailer it up to my house in MI. My flight landed around 10am and we got around to checking the car out at noon. We pushed the car on the trailer, ran to Walmart to get road snacks, hit up Subway for lunch, grabbed a new battery for the car at Advance Auto, and hit the road around 2pm.

We drove straight through the night up through FL, GA, TN, KY, IN and finally into MI. We got up to my house in Big Rapids around 4pm on Sunday, greeted by a blizzard, making it a bitch to get the car off the trailer, but we got it done after a while with some struggling.


So here we are now, the car has been sitting in my garage while I slowly work on it. I was surprised and very happy with how clean the car is as well as what was done to it.

So a quick run over of the car and some things that stand out, it's Fjord blue on the outside with a dark blue interior. It has 16" Alpina wheels, but it originally came with 14" or 15" since that's what was offered in 77 and the spare tire is a full size 14" Alpina wheel. The steering wheel and shift knob are Alpina branded, as are the seats but the emblem is rubbed off on the backrests. Interestingly it has triple sidedraft Weber DCOE 40's, something I couldn't find info about as an OE option. It's got a 5 speed dog leg trans with a LSD. Everything inside the car is in German and all units are metric. It's got 4 piston calipers up front and 2 piston calipers in the rear.

The plan is starting with a bunch of TLC work and then R&R anything that's fucked up followed by changing up/modding anything we want.

Being tied between school and work I don't have tons of time to work on the car so it has progressed pretty slowly but I've gotten a little bit of work done. When we got the car in had no coolant or brake/clutch fluid and the oil was ancient, so I gave it an oil change and threw some coolant in it; I'll get around to the brake fluid when I get the wheels off to look over the brakes.

I pulled the valve cover and was happy to find zero sludge in the engine, in fact the valvetrain was extremely clean. Plus all of the valve clearances are perfectly in spec. Supposedly the engine head is port and polished by Alpina and they put a 300 degree cam in it. I got some BMW specific tools to help me check and adjust the valves in the future since the FSM says they need to be inspected every 12k.

I've put new spark plugs in it but they're not compatible with the older style wires so I'm going to see if I can make them work or I'll just order new wires. I'll also be changing out the fluid in the trans and rear end once I get the fluid.

Once I get the spark plug wire situation figured out I'm going to see if the engine runs. Once it's running I'm going to pull off the manifold with the carbs so I can rebuild them since they are all leaking gas.

After that is all back together I'm going to clean the coolant system and go over the brakes.
I'll be putting on new pads and rotors as well as braided steel lines. I'm hoping the caliper piston seals are in good shape and won't have to rebuild them; at least the rebuild kits are cheap.

I'll be getting rid of the stock airbox and running velocity stacks off the carbs and hopefully sending off the headers to get ceramic coated as they're pretty rusty right now. I'm planning on converting the brakes from a vacuum assisted system to a hydro boost system used by later models in order to clean up the engine bay and give more room in order to run longer velocity stacks.

As always, this thread wouldn't be nearly as good without pictures!

[matty_peppers]

you need to yank the wing and foglamps off that and you're golden. beautiful find.

[Mazdazilla6]

Originally Posted by matty_peppers you need to yank the wing and foglamps off that and you're golden. beautiful find.

Thought about it. Fogs will probably go in the trash. The wing has kind of grown on me, but in the end my old man gives the go/no go on what gets done.


I've got more news that I'll update with later once I get the pics off my phone.

[SofaKingAwesome]

Love it

[Mazdazilla6]

Okay, so where to begin?

I got the car running but it was pissing black coolant. So I decided to check out the coolant system a little further. Originally I was thinking the head gasket was blown because of the black coolant (and when I cleaned it up it had an oil consistency) so I figured I'd pull the head.

Here's what came out of the block when I drained the coolant out of it.



Once again I was still under the impression that the head gasket was bad but it occurred to me that it might not be once I started getting into the coolant system. I started pulling hoses off the radiator and the water outlet on the head and here's the horror I found.





All of the coolant gelled up and mixed with rust from the block,radiator and pipes and was clogging almost every hose. It was even back up all the way into the coolant jackets on the head.



So the head is off, the head gasket was fine. And I've found some pleasant things. I pulled the mani with carbs off the head prior and found that the mani was ported beautifully and the carbs were in very good condition except for the small amounts of varnish which cleaned right up.





The intake ports on the head are ported just as nice and I still need to measure the valves to see if they are larger or not.



I also found that the engine was the high compression option with the piano top pistons (9.5:1 CR) which was nice as I was under the impression they were 8.3:1 flat tops.




So where I am now:

The head is going off to get hot tanked to clean all the shit out.
The headers are coming off to get ceramic coated.
The bottom of the radiator was rusted out so I ordered an all aluminum unit.
I need to order a water pump and new water outlet (busted the old one taking it off).
I need to check the fan bearing as it's got TONS of play so I'm 99% sure that's toasted.
I'm still trying to track down a hydroboost brake system to get rid of the massive vacuum booster.
And the exciting news, my old man gave me the go ahead to switch all the rubber fuel lines to braided steel with AN fittings, so I'll need to get those once the car starts to go back together.

I just got a new slave cylinder in a few days ago so I'll put that on and bleed the clutch.
I should be getting gasket kits for the carbs as well as trans and diff fluid in the next couple of days.

Also I'm planning on washing out the coolant jackets on the block. Does anyone have any recommendations on any good solvents to use? I was planning on just using some purple power.

Hopefully I'll have more good news at the end of this coming week!

[Mazdazilla6]

Update from the grave!

I'm sure as hell happy we got this car for stupid cheap because the further I dig into it the more I find wrong with it. Jank ass wiring, way too much rust for an FL car, whole bunch of other small shit etc.

So long story short I'm tearing into the car way more than originally planned. Engine will be out this or next week and taken into the machine shop where I'll tear it all down, strip the block, powdercoat it. Pop in new freeze plugs and bearings and reassemble it.

While the engine is out I'll wash out the bay, sand and undercoat the core support and maybe the frame rails.

Then I'll need to remake the engine harness. The old wiring is ancient, hard and has be chopped up by some fuck who loved electrical tape. Not looking forward to that.

After that hopefully I can start putting stuff back into the engine bay and move onto the brakes. I'm crossing my fingers I won't have to rebuild the calipers but I'm not hopefully since the system is dry. The wheels are in rough shape but I'd got some strong ass wheel acid that should get rid of the15 year old brake dust no problem.

Already have an entire new cooling system waiting to go in. Anything that coolant touches besides the head and block is getting replaced.

And then, maybe just possibly then, I'll possibly have the ever so slightly possible chance to have this thing running.

After it's running I'll have the pleasure of doing more wiring and finding out what the hell all this extra wiring is for as well as the in line fuel pump.

But anyway, the goal is to have it drivable by Spring. It's really getting more and more tempting to sell this thing to my roommate.


TL;DR Fuck this pile of awesome shit that may be cool once it's running. Long tear down and making shit new again.

[Karmat]

Thats definetly a lot of of costly and tedious work but the car is a rare beauty and it'll be really rewarding at the end.

[Mazdazilla6]

Originally Posted by Karmat Thats definetly a lot of of costly and tedious work but the car is a rare beauty and it'll be really rewarding at the end.

Not too costly since I do all the work. Not any of my money regardless, I'm just a monkey with a wrench. With the way my old man is I can only hope to see something rewarding from it.

[Mazdazilla6]

Engine is in the shop. Getting torn down. Hopefully I'll be cleaning it this coming week.

[Mazdazilla6]

Got the engine stripped down to the bare block today, popped the freeze caps, coolant jackets are nice and rusty. Should be all cleaned up on Wednesday and powdercoated next Monday. Reassembly should start next Wednesday assuming everything cleans up without a fuss. I'm happy this engine is so simple.

Pressure washed the engine bay with some purple power. It helped, a little. Need to go back and clean with some simple green and degreaser. Then I'll be sanding the core support and spraying the whole bottom half of the engine bay in rust encapsulator. Then on to all the shit wiring. Then brakes. Then drop the trans and clean it. Maybe trans before brakes. After that then rebuild all the carbs and figure out why there's an inline fuel pump installed. Then maybe I'll see the end in sight for this pile.




THIS is why you should change your coolant at least every 3-4 years with an iron block.