Blog | ALPINA C1

Slowly, the bottom end progresses

by alpinac1_pn9him | Apr 4, 2018 | Uncategorized

With the crank in the block and the pistons and rods assembled, next was putting them into the cylinders.

First, rods needed to be separated. The bolts were torqued down pretty good and I needed a little help loosening them. An impact wrench does the trick.

Then, on goes the ring compressor.

And placed in the block (with rod bearing installed and assembly lube applied. Also, make sure the crank journal for that cylinder is at the bottom of its stroke, so the con rod doesn’t ding it (don’t ask me how I learned that lesson!).

One at a time.

Eventually, all six are in.

Torque the rod bolts.

And if you’re lucky, it still turns.

Meanwhile, the reassembly of the body has stalled, waiting for a new headliner. The head, too, is MIA, still at the machine shop waiting for “the end of the week.”

Up next: oil pump, flywheel and the head getting back for the machine shop and then mating it to the block.

Tomorrow is today – or, more correctly, tomorrow was about a week ago

by alpinac1_pn9him | Mar 3, 2018 | Uncategorized

Avid readers will remember that the body work was chugging along, accomplishments each week to keep the momentum going, but the machinist seemingly was making no progress. For months he kept promising to be done “by the end of the week.” And then, about a month ago, “by the end of the week” turned into promises to finish “tomorrow.” The “tomorrow” promise went on for weeks.

Well, tomorrow finally came. About a week ago. For the lower end. Which was picked up and carted off to my garage, leaving the head behind to be completed, yes you guessed it, “by the end of the week.”

Since I knew assembling the lower end would take me a couple of weeks, I have not called the machinist about the head. Instead, I started chugging along.

Before assembly could begin, I needed to (wanted to?) paint the block. While I asked the machinist to do that about a month ago, I saw it was unpainted when I went to pick it up. My friend helping me advised, correctly, not to say anything. Rather, we took it home, I taped up the openings and primed and painted it, black.

Then I tried to figure out which way the end caps went (internet research helped as it wasn’t obvious from trying to fit them).

With the order and orientation of the end caps clarified, it was time to install the rod bearings in the block.

And the end caps.

Then it was time for the turbo diesel crank.

Gently place the crank in the block.

And install the end caps with bearings.

And, miracles, it turns freely (as if I know what I’m doing)!

Next, gap the rings.

And install them on the pistons.

Then attach the rods to the pistons. The hardest part being, without the right tool, installing the wrist-pin retaining clips.

A New Year

by alpinac1_pn9him | Feb 8, 2018 | Uncategorized

According to Stu, it’s best for the project to keep momentum. So, while there was certainly time to finish the body and paint work since my last update in early December, he chose to do a little each week (holidays excluded), slow but steady. This approach was perfect, as the motor parts were languishing in the machine shop, that turning into it’s own little comedy.

While it might have been a little overly dramatic to call the comedy with the motor a tragedy, I tried to appreciate the humor in the situation. For background, when I dropped off the block and attendant parts in November at the shop, the machinist said he’d be finished in about two or three weeks, as he reeled off a list of projects that sound like they wouldn’t be finished in twice that time. I was in no real hurry, as the justdashes.com was not going to finish my dash until mid-January at the earliest. That meant the body would not be ready for many months. So why rush on the motor?

Who knew that meant that more than three months later I still wouldn’t have the motor back from the machinist?

Now, to his credit, after 10 weeks of saying his work would be finished by the end of the week, the most recent time I called he said it would be done “tomorrow.” That was three days ago. But, progress!

Real progress: the slow but steady body work.

As previously reported, the hood and trunk were painted in November and in early December Stu finished rust repairs and priming the body. That continued a few days a week.

And then finally the shell, including the engine compartment, got painted.

Next? The “new” dash and the glass will be installed and the body re-assembled. And with any luck, “tomorrow” may eventually come and the motor parts will be ready for me to begin assembling the motor.

Frustration and Progress

by alpinac1_pn9him | Dec 4, 2017 | Uncategorized

Almost a month ago, progress was slow but hopeful.

The car had been taken to Sacramento and the shell stripped down. Motor parts were ordered, acquired, and taken to the machine shop. I wrote about both tracks progressing, but slowly.

Since then one track is completely stalled, the other chugging along.

Stalled is any progress by the machine shop. He’s busy building another motor – this a 4 cylinder air-cooled Porsche variety. What’s taking so long isn’t clear, other than, well, it’s taking a long time. Frustrating.

Body restoration, however, is humming a long. Disassembly and repair continued. The torn spare tire well was touched-up. The rusty, torn piece was cut out.

And some sheet metal welded in and made to look pretty.

And blended in.

Rust was found hiding under the rubber trunk gasket.

And welded up.

The engine compartment continued to be cleaned up.

And the battery tray – the original culprit starting me down this slippery slope – was welded back into place.

The front fender gets cleaned up, including plugging the holes for the USA sidemarker lights.

Waves a long the rear fenders and roof are smoothed out.

And the air dam gets cleaned up as well.

Next up: finish prepping for paint, prime it, and then paint it. The body work has good momentum, I sure hope the motor will start moving along.

Two lanes, both slow….

by alpinac1_pn9him | Nov 13, 2017 | Uncategorized

Around a month ago the engine-less shell was loaded on a trailer and taken to the body shop. About the same time I started delivering parts to the machine shop after deciding what to do with the engine (conclusion: squirrel away the genuine Alpina engine and build a bigger displacement, higher horsepower mill that retained the stock-looking K-Jet injection). The project was running on dual tracks, and neither has been rocketing along.

The post about loading up the engine-less shell on Stu’s trailer ended with some immediate progress: the front windshield was removed; because I couldn’t find a good used dash, the cracked one was sent off to be repaired; and a little rust was found under the rubber windshield gasket. Since the, Stu has been tearing the car apart and repairing it.

First, Stu had a bunch of holes to plug. The body had been drilled for USA sidemarker lights which had then been removed by a previous owner.

The shock towers had been drilled for a rear strut brace/battery holder that I removed (putting the battery back in the engine compartment).

And there were weird holes drilled in various places, including in the engine compartment near the VIN plate; what those holes were for is another mystery (I thought it might be for an Alpina VIN plate, but it didn’t fit the spacing of the holes).

Bits of rust – typical for a 1980s BMW, even one that spent it’s whole life in California – and other imperfections are taken care of.

The trunk lid and hood are taken off, prepped.

And painted.

And then the whole body is stripped and prepped. And someday, painted.

While all this was going on, I began delivering parts to the machine shop. The guy I’m using specializes in 4 and 6-cylinder air-cooled Porsche motors, but he is the shop used by one of the local vintage BMW specialty shops. I loaded much of the parts in my Porsche and brought both the forged M20 turbo-diesel crank and a bin of many other parts (custom pistons, clutch, forged rods, etc.), and the Schrick camshaft.

The block and head are already there, as is the intake manifold, which needs to be bored to match the bigger ports in the 325i “885” head.

Both of these track are going forward, but the progress is slow.

Sleuthing the dash plaque (the mystery and allure of Alpinas)

by alpinac1_pn9him | Oct 29, 2017 | Uncategorized

The first post on this blog, Sleuthing the Car, discussed how I found a genuine Alpina on Bring-a-Trailer and the harsh comments when the seller didn’t do the leg-work to authenticate the car. What it didn’t discuss was my stepping in the debate, where I offered that “part of the mystery/allure of early ALPINA cars” was that you kinda never really knew what you had. Verification was difficult and making a genuine-looking fake was easy; without some great paperwork, you were operating on faith at some level. I concluded my comment with: “If you want more than that for this vintage, ask for your unicorn to go with it!”

That comment made me feel more than a bit foolish when a simple email to Alpina may not have netted a unicorn but yielded everything else I said was unlikely: indisputable verification that the car was a real Alpina. After hiding my embarrassment, I thought this is great, everything is explained, mystery solved!

But there are still mysteries – the Alpina allure I alluded to in my foolish BaT post: the dash plaque was weird. It had a number, 320-1321, that didn’t seem to be from a C1 2.3. If this was so, was the original dash plaque one of the pilfered parts and this a replacement? What else was taken off? What else was a replacement part?

Smart enough not to make the same mistake twice, I emailed Elizabeth Steck at Alpina, seeking the car’s provenance. Elizabeth Steck was the kind Alpina employee who originally verified my car, telling me that “the car [was] in February of the year 1982 and we have had it in our company for modification.” In my second email I asked about any records they had on my car or what modifications made a car a C1 2.3. Ms. Steck demurred, emailing me the following message:

sorry, but after 35 years we don’t have detailed information anymore. I found out, that this car was here, only by means of a list. I wish you much fun with this car and always [a] good ride.

So, it looked like I was on my own for this sleuthing. I asked one of other C1 owners I “met” on a BMW forum and his plaque had a 3-xxxx number. His insight: “As far as I know the plaque with 320-xxxx were only for the early 4 cylinder E21 Alpinas (A1 to A4). The C1’s started with 3-xxxx. So maybe the plaque was replaced at some point?“ While this echoed my fear, I craved some solid leads; some hope that the vintage-looking plaque, beautifully and perfectly engraved, was genuine and actually for my car; something that could answer the mystery.

I checked with another C1 owner. This one was the original owner of his car, a conversion by an authorized Alpina dealer in Europe. His car did not come with a dash plaque because “all” he got form Alpina was the engine, wheels and suspension – he wasn’t eligible for a plaque without buying their seats! He told me that the correct plaques for C1s was 3-xxxx (confirming the other owner) and that the last digits of the VIN were what comprised the xxxx of the 3-xxxx.

While his thesis about the plaque for a C1 seemed correct, his theory about the VIN did not. Looking at pictures of plaques and VINs of C1s on the web – and that of the other C1 owner – showed plaque and VIN numbers that did not correspond. The mystery continued!

As part of my web-sleuthing, I turned to the Alpina Register (http://www.thealpinaregister.com/register). Of the three e21 C1 2.3s listed there, two had 3-xxxx numbers on the plaque but one had 320-xxxx. The latter car, however, started life as a 4 cylinder BMW and was converted to Alpina C1 2.3 spec by an authorized dealer; in the post there, the owner offered that, because it started life as a 4 cylinder car, it got the “320” prefix on the plaque. But if he was correct, that did not explain the plaque in my car, as it was built as a M20 6 cylinder car and was built at the Alpina factory. The feeling of getting nowhere intensified.

Why not go to the source, I thought and (again) try to find the prior owner. Having already unsuccessfully googled his “handle” from BaT, I wondered how to find him. Of course, the best place to start was, well, the only place he had revealed himself: BaT. So, I went and (again, seemingly for the thousandth time!) re-read the BaT comments.

In his first of two posts, the previous owner said the car was a “Dietel [c]onversion with a slew of authentic Alpina parts, most of which” he put on after the originals were removed by the unethical mechanic. He explained he bought it from the widow of a servicemen who had the car imported and he had to replace the wheels, steering wheel, and repaint the car. In his second post he reported he got the car “in terrible shape” and that he “built this car around that Alpina dash tag and the few parts the mechanic hadn’t stolen.”

I knew part of what he said wasn’t true – that Dietel converted the car. Alpina verified that the car had been “in our company for modification,” which I think can only mean the Alpina factory in Buchloe, Germany. Also, it went to Alpina in February 1982, the same month and year it was built by BMW. It was highly unlikely there was time for the car, as the previous owner claimed, to be purchased in Europe by a serviceman, then imported to the USA and then converted by Dietel in one month; hell, the boat-ride across the ocean takes several weeks. Plus, one of the stickers affixed when brought state-side listed the importer as “Auto Sport,” not Dietel.

These inconsistencies could be easily explained: the previous owner was told the wrong history. But his post seemed to raise more questions than it answered. Yeah, the dash plaque pre-dated his ownership, but what does that mean, especially given his version of the history of the car?

Then something really weird happened.

One random night, I was looking at pictures of dash plaques on-line after a google search and I saw a plaque with the number on my plaque: 320-1321. I clicked on it and it was a sample plaque in an eBay listing for reproduction dash plaques. At first I wondered if it was my plaque (which would mean the one affixed to the car was a reproduction, possibly explaining the “wrong” number). But after comparing it to the one from my car, it had obvious similarities (the numbers and the same type face) but was not identical (different spacing between the numbers and dash). But, lets face it – that “coincidence” is inexplicable (if a coincidence can be inexplicable).

It felt like I was never going to answer this question, so I ordered a plaque from the eBay seller with the closest number I could think would be correct (although I knew it wasn’t really): 3-xxxx, with xxxx being the last four of the VIN, like the C1 original owner opined. I figured I could use either plaque, the correct looking plaque (3-xxxx) or the one that came with the car but looked incorrect. It mirrored my theory about wheels: that they’re like shoes and you should have several sets.

Having gotten nowhere after too much energy spent on this important yet trivial detail (if that’s not an oxymoron), I decided to try the improbable: another email to our good friend Ms. Steck at Alpina. Recall, she told me before (when I emailed her with the VIN) that the only information she had was that the car had been modified by Alpina in February of 1982. This time I gave her the dash plaque number, the number on the motor, and the number on the head and asked if she had any information on any of those numbers. I also explained why the dash plaque number seemed wrong. That was a week ago. Ms. Steck has not written back. Yet. And maybe never will. Who knows.

And this, my friends, is the mystery and allure of Alpinas I spoke of in those BaT comments before even buying the car. Dispite subsequent verification from the factory, proof that the car really is an Alpina, it is seemingly impossible to know if the dash plaque that was on the car is the original, why the numbers seem weird, why someone else made a reproduction plaque with those exact numbers, what the actual numbers should be (if different than the one on the car). Maybe I’ll hear from Ms. Steck and the mystery will be solved. Most likely Alpina has no more information and I’ll be left to wonder. And to enjoy that mysterious allure…..

Post-Script: Ms. Steck from Alpina emailed back and verified the engine and head numbers, but had no insight on the dash plaque.

Then the guy who runs an e21 board based in Holland (http://www.bmwe21.net/) offered his observation “that the 3-xxxx numbers were only used if one ordered a full spec C1. But in most cases people bought a part of the package and then they did not get the C1 plaque, but a 320-xxxx plaque.” He came to this conclusion “after trying to figure these things out for over 20 years.” I don’t know if I should doubt his conclusions, but I’m not sure I should accept them as gospel either. If it is true, it’s not clear what equipment did not get installed in Buchloe that made the car short of the “complete package.” The mystery continues.

AUGUST 2023 EDITS:

The mystery has been solved.

A friend who has a nice Alpina collection put me in contact with the Alpina communications guy at Buchloe. I asked Mr. Communications about my dash plaque and the seemingly random numbering. His response:

“[T]here were various plaques for the C1 2,3, since this is no[t a] numbered ALPINA model. There are plaques starting with 320 – XXXX, there are also ones starting with 3 – XXXX. Usually it was up on custromers request and wish. There are pla[q]ues that match the engine or cylinderhead number and there are also plaques with fantasy numbers. Sorry that there are no better information about it.”

So, my dash plaque (320-1321) is likely the original numbering and corresponding with one of the examples offered by Mr. Communications. Nice to have that squared away!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program

by alpinac1_pn9him | Oct 20, 2017 | Uncategorized

The motor is out. The rebuild decisions have been made, the path mapped out (mostly, more on that later). It’s time to focus on the body and interior.

While the car languished, waiting for my motivation to remove the motor, I tinkered with the body, interior, engine compartment and truck. For a while, I went back-and-forth on whether to paint the car. The clear coat was peeling off on much of the horizontal surfaces, way beyond patina. It was kinda cool. My wife encouraged me to leave it alone and I was tempted. My prior projects have only been mechanical restorations and I really like a driver-quality car with new mechanics. But the condition is way-worse than driver-quality and I do have a friend with a body shop.

And there were a lot of things I wanted to do to the car; one was take the battery out of the trunk and put it back in the engine compartment where it belongs. Sometime ago, by some owner a while back, the battery was moved to the trunk and the battery tray removed from the engine compartment. If the car wasn’t an Alpina, and just a nicely modded vintage BMW, I’d probably want the battery back in the truck. But, given my philosophy with this project, I wanted to keep it’s appearance stock. And the engine compartment needed some other work: wiring was messed up, the compartment was dirty and had a bunch of things added (like a now inoperable cruise-control), and there were several little holes drilled for various little things. And the car had air conditioning, which I don’t want (ironically, I removed much of it while reading Rob Siegel’s articles about installing a/c in his 635csi). These little things were too much for me and I needed a professional to weld up the little holes, replace the battery tray, etc. So, while it’s at the body shop getting that done…..

Once the paint decision was made (some might say preordained), the slippery-slope kicked in. The windshield needs to come out for the paint job, and the dash is cracked…. The car was drilled for USA side markers…. I could go on….

So, my friend Stu, his dog Pickles, his pick-up truck, and a friends trailer made the two-plus hour trek and we pushed the motorless Alpina on the trailer in-between our arguments about politics.

Suddenly I had an empty parking spot in my garage and Stu and his crew had a rough 1982 shell in the shop. Windshield out revealed a bunch of rust in the bottom corner, under the gasket.

Dashboard removal revealed a banged-up heater control panel and JB Weld holding parts of the dash together. Stu already sent the dash off to Justdashes.com, where it will be returned to prior glory (I tried to find a good used, crack-free dash – but no such luck).