So… the last post ended with my accident, in which I slid into a sign pole and damaged the rear end. I thought long and hard about things, I was actually considering selling my Touring but in the end I came to my senses and kept the car. I slowly started a rebuild…

After the accident, I left it as it is for the next few months and only started working on it in March this year. To get into things, I test fitted my Rial wheels – still with the chunky tires, that were originally meant for a 5-Series E34.

I took off the rear bumper to inspect the damage done by the evil street sign, lol.

Here you can see the dent left by the sign pole.

Here you can see the damage done to the lower portion of the rear end. I ended up leaving this like it was, as it was only bent and nothing was ripped or torn. It’s not perfect, but as I will never ever sell this car, it’s okay. I can live with this as the bumper will cover it anyways.

I started the repairs by fixing the crack in the rear bumper. I took a soldering iron, some plastic bits and welded it back up.

Next, I cleaned it up, sanded it down and applied a layer of glassfibre from the rear to give it some stability.

I added some filler and smoothed it down until I was satisfied.

Next, I took the front apart, as the front bumper was broken beyond repair, the nose panel was bent and rusted and the fender was rusted through!

Quite crunchy, eh?

I sourced a used front fender and a used M-bumper to replace the parts I recently took off.

Removed some dents in the hood…

…and on the rear door.

Took the tires off the Rials and had some CNC milled aluminium center caps made as the stock plastic ones were ripe for the trash.

I sourced a used kidney panel for a good price… the Touring was slowly starting to look complete again.

Next, I tackled the dent in the rear quarter panel. Hammered out the dent and got the metal as smooth as I could… by no means am I a body worker, but I think it came out pretty decent!

Left is before, right is after, obviously… 😉

Some filler, some sanding and there was no sign of the dent anymore. I’m quite pleased with the outcome!

Started reworking my suspension… replaced the shocks, cleaned up the struts and springs and ordered excentric M3 3.2l strut bearings which I mounted reversed left to right, so I would get more negativ camber.

I did a test fit with the Rials to see how they fit with the new camber…

That was when I finally noticed that I would need spacers to run the Rials… they were slightly touching the brake caliper. I didn’t want to run a spacer, as that would mean fender work in the front, which I wanted to avoid… so it was good thing that I bought a different set of wheels at the same time, mainly just because I was offered these for a price where I just could not say ‘no’!

But more on that in the next part… 😉