Car of the Month

March 2009

Tim Palmers 1973 2002

Want to see your 02 featured here? Email me any 02, any condition richstern@hotmail.com.

My ’02-ing started fairly early in life when my Dad bought a new 2002 in around 1972. It was Golf Yellow, which drew some attention even in those psychedelic days. As a schoolboy wearing shorts I can still remember the burns from the black perforated vinyl seats. We had the car for a few years until my Dad decided, as a respectable local GP, that it was too fast for driving on his rounds. In 1976 he replaced it with a Renault 5 (Aero Yellow this time) – R5s being also an interest of mine, as I went on to be given that one when I passed my test.

I have owned my 2002 since September 1993, when I bought it from a good friend, who had in turn previously bought it from his brother. I paid £2002 for it! The V5 says there were only 3 former keepers, which I’m not sure is right. It seems to have been supplied to a Mr Brewer in Padstow in August 1973. It was sold by a Mr Pilgrim to my friend’s brother in August 1983 and at some point he passed it on to my friend, Jon.

Jon sold the car because he was disappointed with some restoration work he had had done on it – a new boot floor had been poorly welded in, there was overspray on the seats, and these with various other aspects had ruined the car for him. I seem to remember he was keen to get a 911 too, so the 02 had to go.

One of my reasons for having a classic car is so I can tinker, and in 15 years of ownership I have a long list of modifications and repairs – far too long to set out here, so I’ll just run through the main ones.

The first change was a stainless exhaust, supplied and fitted by London Stainless in 1994 and still working, although it did develop a leak towards the end of the centre section which I’ve had to patch. Sadly, on the way back from the fitting I had a head gasket failure (in retrospect I think due to overheating from a sticking thermostat), which meant a trip home with the AA and a period off the road while I repaired it. At least the exhaust nuts came off easily! At the time we had a garage in a block with no power or lighting so it wasn’t ideal for DIY-ing, but I could just about get it done. I took the opportunity to send the head off to Jaymic for skimming, valve re-seating and valve guide replacement (I had been suffering from the blue exhaust smoke on the overrun that is characteristic of worn exhaust valve guides) and in the meantime risked the end of my very new marriage by cleaning up other parts in petrol and paraffin in our 2nd floor flat. After a few months of this the head was back on and working fine.

It was then time to sort out the poor restoration so I saved up and booked the car in at TJ Coachworks in Aldershot for some new panels and a respray. I sourced the panels from the BMW dealership Cronk (now Vines I think) in Redhill, who gave me a good discount on them. I wanted to replace the nose, but front panels for Model 71 ‘02s were not available then. Jaymic supplied a modified full front section for a Model 73; the bodyshop man was not happy when he saw what a large lump of metal he had to replace and paint, but he did it nonetheless, and the car came out looking beautiful. This was in 1997 and it still looks good today.

After weeks of refitting chrome trim and soaking the car in Waxoyl, I was ready for some more projects. By now we had a house with a double length garage directly underneath, so working on the car was much easier and I decided to fit a 5-speed gearbox conversion. The research took a while in those pre-Internet (for me, anyway) days, but with guidance from Mike Macartney I got the bits together and worked out what needed to go where. It’s been a useful modification for today’s traffic – 5th is worth about 1000 rpm at 60-70 mph. With my low mileage it will never pay for itself in fuel savings but I enjoyed the project.

Next up was removing, cleaning up and repainting the rear subframe. As a member of the BMW Car Club of America (difficult to get to their events, but good club magazine) I had a copy of a great article by their technical guru Mike Miller on this, so I just followed that. A bit of a mucky job, but well worth it to get it all cleaned up and painted with Hammerite. I took the opportunity to replace all the bushes, using polyurethane bushes for the trailing arms and anti-roll bar (so much easier to fit than the rubber ones), then decided that I ought to do the same for the front, so ended up replacing bushes, track rods and ball joints. Whilst doing all this, I thought I ought to replace the brake lines too, so on went a set of copper lines from Automec and some Goodridge stainless flexible lines. All of this meant seemingly spending most of the year on my back underneath the car, incurring further disapproval from the now slightly less new but still very tolerant spouse. However, the result of all this work was a very much improved ride and much more predictable suspension – I highly recommend the polyurethane bush route to anyone looking for a simple and economic way to improve a 2002.

The friend from whom I bought the car had thrown in a pair of Weber 40DCOE carbs fitted to a manifold that would bolt straight on to the M10 engine – and strongly advised me against fitting them, suggesting that I use them as currency in the 02 world instead, as they would ruin the car. He should know, having had them on one of his earlier 02s and nearly bankrupted himself in fuel costs. Mike Macartney gave me very similar advice, but needless to say, despite this undoubted wisdom I couldn’t help myself. With some expert help from GRL Motors in Woking, who refurbished the Webers for me and fabricated a first class throttle linkage system, I soon had a great rorty noise from under the bonnet, 118 BHP at the flywheel and a surprisingly good 27 mpg. This is still work in progress, as a subsequent re-jetting a couple of years later gave me better acceleration but dropped the mpg to 22. Shortly after this the car appeared in a feature on modifying ‘02s in Practical Classics (September 2002), which was very pleasing.

One of the most useful gadgets I’ve installed has been a Kenlowe Hotstart. This is a heating element and a separate 12V pump that are plumbed in to the cooling system. Stick it on for half an hour before starting the engine and you have a nicely warmed up engine, with any luck reducing engine wear. As a bonus you also get instant heat inside the car, which was useful when I had to bring it into service for a few months one cold winter after I wrote off my daily driver. You can even wire up the Hotstart to start the interior fan automatically when it has reached a set temperature. I haven’t done that on the 2002, but did when I had it fitted to a 325i Touring that used to live outside. It was great to get into a ready-defrosted car and avoid all that dark morning window-scraping.

Since then I’ve calmed down a bit and, apart from a set of Minilite wheels and replacing some worn out speakers, have left the old girl pretty much alone. Perhaps coincidentally, the period since has seen the arrival of 2 children, leaving much less time for fettling, modifying, and indeed ’02-ing generally, much to the disgust of our great ’02-ing colleague Richard Stern – Richard, I do hope to make it up to you one day! I’ve been mostly limited to the occasional clandestine trip to the garage for some secret waxing and stone chip repair, although I have managed to install a modification with which I’m extremely pleased, being a Megajolt 3D mapped ignition system (http://www.autosportlabs.net/Main_Page ). This is a unit you make yourself and it has transformed the car’s starting and acceleration performance. I hope to write a separate article about it later.