1973 BMW 2002tii Roundie -- Killer Patina Runs Great Some Rust Great Bones

1973 BMW 2002 tii Description

1973 BMW 2002tii ("Old Blue")

Fabulous Patina

Original Goodies Like Unobtanium Tii-Specific 5" Steelies, Hubcaps, and Steering Wheel

No Rust on Frame Rails and Front and Rear Shock Towers

One Small Soft Spot on Floor Behind Pedal Bucket

One Rust Spot on One Rocker

Bad Rust-Through on Front Fenders and Hood

Some Rust Bubbling on Back Corner of Rear Quarter Panels

Titled, Registered, Inspected, Insured, and Driven

Partially Sorted Out

Goes Like Stink

Flofit Seats Plus Original Seats

No "Snorkel”

Likely Rebuilt Non-Numbers-Matching Engine with Reground Cam

Intact Complete WorkingKugelfischer Injection

Cleaned and Tested Injectors

Cleaned Fuel Tank and New Fuel Lines

Honestly, I'd Drive It As-Is and Smile Like an Idiot (in fact, I already am :^)

Over 150 High-Resolution Pics and Links to Three Videos Below

Hi. I'm Rob Siegel. Some of you may know me from the column The Hack Mechanic I've written for BMW CCA Roundel magazine for 30 years, and from my books Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic and Ran When Parked. That doesn't mean I know more than you do (well, okay, in this case, I probably do know more than you do :^), but it does mean you can trust me to tell you everything I know about this car.

As you'll see in the description, this is Old Blue, a way cool '73 survivor 2002tii with oodles of patina that is fully legal, partially sorted out, absolutely screws when you nail it, has a combination of nice original stuff and fabulous Flofit seats in it, and could continue to be driven as-is or be the basis for continued sort-out or restoration. If I kept it, I'd throw shocks and struts in it and de-rattle the doors, and do brake rotors and a full-on cooling system rejuventation if I wanted to road-trip the car, and in the meantime, keep smiling like an idiot when I drive it.

The car sat outside under a cover in Watertown MA for nearly a decade before I bought it in September 2015. I did the back-to-front fuel system sort-out that has become something of a specialty for me. I cleaned the tank in-place with brake cleaner and rags, replaced every rubber fuel line, installed an extra fuel filter before the fuel pump to keep any residual crud out of it, blew out the metal lines with brake cleaner and compressed air, cleaned the conical fuel screen at the fuel pump and the cylindrical screen at the Kugelfischer pump, replaced the canister filter, and had the injectors cleaned and tested for spray pattern and leakage. With that (and lubricated cylinder walls, fresh plugs, adjusted valves, and, obviously, fresh oil and filter), the engine sprang easily back to life. I replaced the dry-rotted tires and the deteriorated center support bearing, did a bit of work on the brakes, and swapped the cracked and nearly frozen front shock tower bushings with a good used set I had, and that got the car to the point where I could run it around the block.

I recently registered and insured the car, and it's pretty astounding how well it runs. I've put about a hundred miles on it with no drama. I can't say "fully sorted drive anywhere" because that's not true, but its condition is so much more than just "runs and drives." It's a runner you can drive around and enjoy. Right now.

So why sell it? Twelve cars, including two other tiis (no, they're not for sale). I got great pleasure out of resurrecting Old Blue and returning him to the road. It's time for someone else should enjoy him.

Paint

The paint color is Baikal blue, but the paint, particularly on the roof, has this incredible patina from where it sat under a cover and the cover bit into the paint. Either you like that or you don't. Most people who see the car really dig its survivor look. If you don't, move on. Old Blue is not for you.

Body

The frame rails and front and rear shock towers appear to have zero real rust, just the small bit of surface rust you'd find here and there on the frame rails of any 2002.

There appears to be only one soft rust spot on the floor, just behind the pedal bucket. It is not yet a rust hole, but if you poked it with a screwdriver, it would probably go through.

The rockers are very good. I don't see any rust-thorough at all on the left rocker. On the right rocker, the front jack point is pulled away an angle, but it's not rusty-soft, and rest of the rocker appears to be very solid.

There doesn't appear to be any rust in the insides of the rear wheel wells; I don't see any in the all-important area near the rear subframe bushings (rust-through there is often a harbinger of the bushing attachment point itself breaking through). There is no rust under the rear seat on the bushing attachment points themselves.

When you walk around the car, the only plainly visible rust is on the front fenders. That's the worst of it, by far.

There is also a bad rust-through spot on the right front corner of the hood where water pooled on the cover.

From the outside of the hood, it just looks like minor rust, but when you open up the hood, you see the full extent.

There is rust-through at the corner where the right front fender and the unibody of the car meet. And the spare tire well is, of course, ventilated.

There is visible rust bubbling on the rear quarters (behind the rear bumper), though most of it isn't that visible when you walk around the car.. The right rear is the worst; the left rear is more subtle.

The bottoms of the doors have a little minor surface rust, but there doesn't appear to be any rust-through.

There is the most minor surface rust on a few spots on the roof and just below the passenger windows, in a few spots on the rockers, and on the frame rails.

All of this is well-documented in the photos below.

You could easily replace the front fenders and the hood, but then they wouldn't match the patina'd paint on the body (actually, the front fenders were already replaced once; their paint is already slightly different than on the rest of the car).

In my opinion, the overall rust condition is that the car is actually very solid and has great bones. If this were an air-cooled 911, you'd replace the fenders and the hood, and jump up and down with joy that you'd found yourself such a solid car.

If you ask the question "wouldn't the bodywork put me underwater in the car," the answer is: Yes. Yes it would. Don't buy it. Move on. Old Blue is not for you.

But people get wrapped around the axle of the whole "underwater" thing. You're only "underwater" if you crash the car over the bridge into the river -- that is, if you drop the thirty grand it'd cost you to get any old car with rust looking pretty and shiny. You don't have to do that. If you want to be the person with the Cheshire Cat grin on your facedriving a very cool massively patina'd survivor roundie tii for an affordable price, and if you go into it with your eyes open, I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Me, seriously, I wouldn't touch the body. I'd just drive it. Hell, Iamjust driving it.

Note that the photos of the undercarriage are at the end.

Oh. The nose. You'll see that I say that the car has no snorkel (the 3" diameter tube to the left of the right headlight where the air cleaner hose on a carbureted car goes), and that's true. So at first glance, you'd say it has the "correct tii non-snorkel nose." But that's not what I said. On close examination, the nose, like the fenders, are a slightly different color than the rest of the body, indicating that the nose has been replaced. Further evidence is that the welds holding the nose to the tops of the inner fenders don't look completely original. And, when you look closely at the place where the snorkel would be, you can see evidence of bodywork, indicating that it's likely the hose was replaced with a snorkel nose and the snorkel was removed. Not that on a car in this condition it really has much effect on the value. Now who else but me would reveal that in his own auction?

Far more important than the snorkel, the nose doesn't appear to have any rust-through on it; the ugly rust-through appears to stop at the fenders.

Mileage

The mileage is unknown. When I bought the car, it came with a cross-hairs speedometer which read about 20mph too high at highway speeds. The cross-hairs speedo is the style from a '74 to '76 2002, meaning it was not the original one to the car, so who knows what the actual mileage is?Since the car is a '73, I replaced the crosshairs speedo with a correct blackface speedo I bought used (obviously) that matches the blackface temperature/gas and tachometer. The mileage on the crosshairs speedo read 67505 when I pulled it out. The mileage on the blackface speedo read 94890 when I put it in. That's what's shown in the videos. However, after installing the blackface speedo, I realized that its odometer did not work, I pulled it back out, pulled out the odometer shaft, and tried to do the trick of squeezing the end of the shaft so that the gear on the end doesn't slip. While doing that, it is trivial to change the odometer reading, so I changed it to the same 67505 that the cross-hairs speedo read. All of this is documented in photos below. So, the mileage was unknown (although the odometer was advancing)before I changed the speedo, and after I changed it, the mileage stopped advancing at 67505, but now the speedo has the correct face, and appears to be very accurate. Plus, at least it all jives in terms of the mileage recorded on the registration and title. Replacing the gear to get the odometer working isn't that big of a deal (I've done several, using gears from Odometer Gears), but it involves disassembly of the speedometer, which is more involved than simply pulling the shaft out as I did.

Running Condition

I have three tiis, including a sorted-out '72 with a rebuilt engine, rebuilt Kugelfischer pump, and rebuilt distributor. Old Blue is faster. This thing absolutely screws when you nail it. You'll want to do it again and again and again. It starts right up with a flick of the switch to turn on the cold start injector, and, with its reground cam, settles down into an idle that's only slightly lumpier than a stock tii. But when you goose it and it comes on the cam, holy hell this thing is quick. Doing that while sitting in the Flowfit seats, I swear you need a cold shower afterward.

Stepping back from the testosterone...

I've done a light sort-out of the car. As I said, I began with the fuel system, which is the part most folks worry about the most on a tii.

Tiis were misunderstood. They still are. The Kugelfischer injection pump itself is astonishingly reliable and long-lived. The KFish pump should be the last thing you suspect, not the first. This one appears to be absolutely fine. A KFish pump's warm-up regulator can stick from sitting and stewing in old antifreeze, but this one appears to be fine, retracting and extending without any problems. As I said, I cleaned the gas tank and all of the fuel screens, replaced every rubber fuel hose, and had the injectors cleaned and tested. I did my trick of installing an extra fuel filter in the trunk, between the gas tank and the fuel pump, to keep any residual rust and sediment out of the fuel pump.

The car is still running on the fuel pump that was in it when I bought it, likely the original. When I sorted out the fuel system, and tried to start the car, the pump was sticking; I'd rap it with a ratchet handle to get it started. But since I've been using the car regularly the last month, the fuel pump hasn't stuck at all. If I was going to road-trip the car, I'd replace it with an E28 fuel pump just for the peace of mind.

As you'll see from the photos below, the valve train is clean as a whistle, and the head has some sort of a reground cam in it. As I said, the car goes like absolute stink when you mash the gas. I see no visible oil smoke while the car is running, not even when you lift off the gas during deceleration (no "valve seal smoke" that commonly affects 2002s). Compression is in the 145 to 155 range on all cylinders (started the car to move it in the driveway, shut it off, removed all plugs, did compression test; photos below). From these indications, it's likely that the car got a rebuilt engine not long before it was parked.

The engine is remarkably well-sealed, apparently free of the usual 2002 timing cover leak, and with a dry oil pan. Likewise with the back of the transmission; there is a small amount of dampness but no gush of fluid.

The car does not munch second gear or any other gear. The transmission and rear end do not whine. There are no obvious or bad driveline vibrations. The exhaust is quiet. There is a small vibration from the left rear wheel, which isn't as true as the other three wheels (which is why it's on the rear).

The brakes are pulling slightly to the left (see needs and wants below).

I've done nothing to the cooling system; it still has the same radiator, water pump, thermostat, and hoses that it had when it was parked a decade ago. But there's nothing obviously wrong with the cooling system. None of the hoses are pillow-y soft or bulging dangerously around their clamps. No antifreeze is leaking. In the hundred or so miles I've put on the car since registering and insuring it, the temperature has run half to 2/3 up the gauge depending on ambient temperature. Nonetheless, if you were going to drive it hundreds of miles, I'd advise prophylactically replacing the cooling system.

The car passed inspection. the lights, wipers, and horn are all working. The brakes have a funky set of redundant high brake lights mounted on the back deck. They work, so I've left them alone.

Cool Original Stuff

As I said, the car's nose has no snorkel, so you don't have to worry about your BMW-knowledgeable friends pointing and screaming at it like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. However, see in the body description the caveat assigned to that.

It has the original 5”-wide tii-specific steel wheels and hubcaps. These tii-specific steelies, used only on the '72 and '73 roundie tiis, have become rare as hen's teeth. I thought about keeping them for my other tii, but have decided to let them go with the car. The wheels wear an almost unworn set of Cooper Sportmaster 185/70 13 tires that came off another 2002 I had.

The car has an original 2002 "bus" steering wheel. So many of these were tossed in the 1980s in favor of smaller steering wheels. Now, like the steelies and hubcaps, they're desirable.

It has original uncut door panels without speaker holes. The bottoms of the panels are a bit soft, as is common, from age and moisture.

Somewhere in the past, someone installed front left and right grilles without the black slats. These were originally on early 1600s. Along with the car's patina, they give it a neat look. Replacing the center kidney with one with matching weathered metal slats would complete it, but I don't have one. This is how it looked when I bought it. The driving lights were on the bumper as well when I bought it. I stole them for a while and used them on my other tii, but I've returned them to sell the car intact.

I have the original black 12-pleat front seats, correct for a '73, which are in pretty good condition, with two seam splits and and a few repairable tears in the driver's seat, The passenger seat nearly perfect). But I found an inexpensive pair of vintage black leather Flofits and put them in. The driver's Flofit seat is split on two seams (and there is some tape residue where the splits had been taped) and the back tilt mechanism is frozen, so I swapped driver's and passenger's seats, and they work perfectly swapped. The black Flofits match the black interior perfectly, and their appearance against the car's heavily patina'd paint is a great look. What is now the driver's seat is unbelievably comfortable and supportive. The original seats are included with the sale.

The dashboard has the requisite cracks, and a black platform for a radar detector where the seat belt warning pod used to be, but the interior is pretty nice. The center console is nice and holds what is likely a nearly period-correct and working Panasonic AM/FM stereo connected to two speakers up under the dashboard corners. Although it doesn't show it in the pics, the under-dash trim panels are complete and installed.

The headliner is in excellent shape, save a stain above the passenger-side sunroof visor.

The rugs are in surprisingly nice shape.

The combination of all this gives the interior a great survivor feel, combined with matching seats that are actually supportive and comfortable. It's not, by any stretch of the imagination, mint, but it's very cool.

The chrome bumpers are actually in a bit better condition than the paint. I haven't tried to clean them to make them pop (I mean, why would you?) but they're generally not generally rusty and pitted. The rest of the britework (trim) is a bit hazed but also generally not pitted.

The door and windshield seals are in surprisingly good shape, likely saved by sitting under a cover instead of in the sun.

Needs and Wants

As I said, the car runs and drives surprisingly well, but it is not a fully sorted-out car.

The brakes work (I replaced the rear wheel cylinders and shoes, and two rusty brake lines in front), but I haven't done the calipers and rotors. The car currently pulls slightly to the left on braking. In theory, this could be a sticky caliper, clogged flexible brake lines, or glazed rotors. I bled the calipers and fluid came out all the bleed valves, indicating that no flexible lines are plugged. I pulled the right caliper off and found that none of its pistons were seized. So I'm thinking glazed rotors. I'm driving it around this way. It's fine for light driving, but I wouldn't take it on the track or on a spirited drive through the twisties. Plus, there is a small amount of pedal pulsation on braking, almost certainly from deposits on the rotors from having sat for 10 years.You'd be advised to do both front rotors, replace the rubber flexible lines with braided stainless, and then see what it does (e.g., see if, after tha, it needs calipers). Cardone sells remanufactured calipers for tiis very cheaply, about $140 a pair shipped, including the core charge.

As I said, if I was going to road-trip the car, I'd prophylactically change the cooling system and replace the fuel pump, even though nothing is obviously wrong with either. So I wouldn't jump in the car and drive it a thousand miles, though I've done stupider things (read Ran When Parked :^), but it wouldn't take much sorting out to bring it to the point where you could.

The suspension and doors have the thunks and clunks you'd expect of an unsorted car. I almost bought the set of $79.22 "Maxorber" shocks and struts off Amazon and threw them in, but I decided to leave the choice of suspension to the next owner. (But if I kept the car, that's totally what I'd do. Just to piss people off :^)

The alternator looks slightly cocked, an indication that the rubber bushings need to be replaced. This causes the belt to loosen up. Tiis are a bit of a pain, as the alternator is obstructed by the battery tray, so the front sway bar has to be removed to get the alternator out, but it's not that big of a deal.

The temperature and gas gauges are jumpy, a bit more so than the standard 2002 gauge jumpiness. This will sometimes cause the temperature to abruptly peg into the red. I believe I've traced the problem to the round 12-pin connector on the back of the gauge. If you press it at certain angles, it makes reliable contact, and at others, it pegs the temperature gauge. I've tried to re-install the cluster with the connector at a hospitable angle, but it doesn't stay there. Replacing the gas/temperature gauge pod will likely solve the problem.

The heater box is not currently working.

I currently have the thermo time relay bypassed, and use a switch installed below the steering wheel instead, like 3/4 of the tiis currently on the road.

The shifter has the requisite moderate amount of play of any other 2002 shifter.

Videos

Below are links to three videos. If the links don't work, searching youtube for the titles should take you right to them.

1973 BMW 2002tii (Old Blue) Cold Start and Short Drive

1973 BMW 2002tii (Old Blue) Walk Around

1973 BMW 2002tii (Old Blue) Punching it on the Highway

The car is at my house in West Newton MA, near the intersections of I90 and I95. I'm happy to show the car to anyone, and since it is registered, insured, and inspected, you can come anddrive it. If you want to arrange a PPI that can happen, but I've been pretty thorough.

As I said, I've owned this car since September 2015, and have worked on it on and off since, but I only registered and titled it a week ago. As with any new car registration in the state of Massachusetts, they are sending me a new title. It should arrive shortly, likely within about a week of the close of the auction.

Payment terms are $250 deposit through PayPal within 24 hours, the balance via bank check or cashier's check (which I will wait to clear) within 7 days of close of auction. If you want to wait to send me the check until I've received the title and sent it to you, that's understandable and perfectly fine. Cash at the time of pickup is also fine, subject to the caveat below.

If you'd like to contract me to do additional repair work after the sale to help you drive the car home, that's a conversation we can have.

I will, of course, be available to meet a transport if you wish to have the car shipped. For shipping estimate purposes, use the address 153 River Street, West Newton, MA 02465.

One final thing. Anyone who knows these cars can usually walk around them, stick their head under them, and sus them out in 30 seconds. I take great pride in writing up these auctions, presenting the information in a way that lets people sus them out remotely, providing the same information you'd have if you were actually at the car and stuck your head under it. But fair's fair. After this detailed description and the 150 photos below, do not, under any circumstances, think that, after you've won the auction, you can show up with cash and say "I didn't know this" or "I didn't see that" and try to bargain me down after the sale. I have absolutely zero tolerance for this, and I promise that you will leave empty-handed if you try.

Contact

If, after completely reading this description and looking at all the photos, you need to talk to me, you can reach me at 617-365-8303. I like to talk tiis as much as the next guy (okay, more than the next guy), but if you call, please make it pertinent to the auction.

The Pics

Over 150 high-resolution pics follow. There is no descriptive text between them. The order is generally exterior, then interior, then undercarriage. At the end are close-up photos of both frame rails (left outside, left inside, right inside, right outside), the area under the right rocker where the jack point is pulled away photographed from underneath, and the one soft spot on the driver's side floor, behind the pedal bucket, pointed to by my finger. At the very end are the odometer pics. At the very very end are the compression tester pics.

On Jun-04-17 at 07:04:23 PDT, seller added the following information:

The door handles that are missing or incomplete in some of the photos have been reinstalled.