Annoyed by the extremely slow rate of progress in painting, I have decided to take matters in my own hands. No, I have not decided to paint the car myself although to be honest, the idea does occur to me in moments of frustration. Spraying has not begun on my car because its my opinion that as a result of decisions on how to manage the paint booth, smaller jobs have been given a higher priority regardless of who came first. Once started on, Sergio will need to stay in the paint booth for a relatively long time therefore creating a backlog for the seemingly minor retouchings or accident repairs that come in and are a more consistent revenue stream. Most customers will not understand why a small job requires a relatively long stay at the shop and in order not to turn away business, the scheduling of the paint booth is reshuffled to speed up the turnaround time.
In any case, I have decided to time shift so that results do not come to a complete halt. Contrary to popular belief that it can only be done by comic book superheroes, time shifting is a term used in the TV industry when shows are not watched at the intended hour because the viewer has made a recording for later consumption. This greatly irritates the networks as ratings are affected and the full potential ad revenue is not realized.
For my purposes, I have time shifted by rearranging the work flow. The original plan was to finish the painting and then go on to the interior, the most logical approach to avoid dirtying and contaminating the finished areas. The interior parts are stored in the ceiling of the paint shop but exposed to dust, dirt, and spiders! To get things moving again, I gathered all of the relevant bits and took them to Seatmate, a well-known auto interior shop in the Mandaluyong area to be worked on.
After a lot of thinking, I have decided to change to a mostly black motif from the existing grey. The front and back seats will be covered with Recaro black fabric on the sides accented by a striped dark grey velour running down the middle. All four door sidings will be stripped of their glossy black vinyl/grey fabric cover and replaced with plain matte black leatherette. I have decided not to bring back the fabric accent since I was not too keen on it anyway. Initially, I wasn't planning to have the rear deck cover replaced as it was still in passable condition. The black fabric is a bit faded but after finding out that it will not cost much, I am going for it. Also in for refurbishment is the velvet piping on the rubber door seals. For me, this is one of the unnecessary items which BMW designed to create a more luxurious appearance as opposed to leaving the plain black rubber exposed. The problem is over time, the fabric disintegrates from rubbing against the car frame while doing its job of insulation and costs an arm and a leg to replace. Stripping out the old grey and then putting in the new black velvet wrap is a tedious task but the price is a fraction of a new set. The center console will get a few surface repairs then thoroughly cleaned and given a fresh coat of matte black vinyl paint. The handbrake boot cover will be changed to the same material matching the new door sidings. I have also ordered a new set of custom fit floor mats to replace the worn BMW originals (Winny gets them too!). A few more things will be done for the interior but they will have to wait until I can bring Sergio there.
I also was intending to buy some more parts at European Motors in Libis but they were not in stock and will need to be ordered first. They are mostly for clips, bolts, rubber covers, and other nitty-gritty which don't cost much but are needed for reassembly. The clips in particular have turned brittle and a number of them were broken during disassembly. I could have ordered them way earlier had the mechanics told me about it. But mechanics being mechanics, they waited until the last minute to do so and a few more days of delay will likely result.
The scheduled errands were finished by lunch time and with the rest of the day free, I decided to do something which I have not done since Project E34 began. Its been close to 10 weeks since I last played golf and it would be a waste of a beautiful day like today to be indoors, so I headed off to the club in the late afternoon for a quick 9 holes. The staff and a few friends commented that I have not been seen in a while, which I really just excuse off as "due to time constraints". But I also have to say I'm mildly pleased they notice my absence. After hitting a few balls at the practice range to get some semblance of my swing back, it was off to the first tee. To my surprise, I shot 5 pars and 1 birdie for the round. Perhaps I should restore cars more often as it seems to be good for my game.
Before going home, I decided to drop by the paint shop for a sneak peek at the day's work...and saw that Sergio is now blue again!!! The first of the planned 5 coats of DuPont paint and 8 clearcoats has been applied.
Its been a very good day...
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