REBUILDING A CHEAP BMW M5 COMPETITION | PT 2

A lot of people have said that this BMW M5 has to be repaired by a professional with professional equipment. And I guess today we're going to be finding out whether those people were right. I bought this BMW M5 competition for £32,500 off a previous mechanic who decided he wouldn't be able to fix it. And that's all thanks to this damage here, a hole in the strut tower. And to repair this, the engine needs to come out. So after we found that the engine was working and all well, in the last video we removed it to find that this huge twin turbo V8 had a little bit more damage than we first thought. But that's not our main worry at the moment. First of all, we know none of this strut tower has moved. This has just been an impact mark here from something that has gone straight through the bonnet and into that strut tower. And also this strut tower is made out of aluminium and it's super soft. So it's literally absorbed all the impact and all of these bolts on the strut brace and everything still line up. Nothing has moved down here and everything is all in place. This part on the other hand is not so straight. And this front part is all steel and it can be removed in sections. This is a section, that's a section, this is a section back here and then this whole strut tower is all one piece. And BMW will sell us all of these sections and you'll be so surprised at the price. But before we get on to the price, we need to start removing the damaged panels. Starting off with this section here, we've got to remove all the seam sealer that covers over all the joins between the panels, which should give us access to whatever's holding this thing on. And that are these weird one time use bolts that BMW use. And I only found one logical way of removing them, angle grinding a slot in the middle and then using a screwdriver to loosen them up. And eventually it did actually work. And check these out, they're almost self-tapping screws. I think these screws are used alongside panel bond as well to hold that front panel to the chassis leg. Once I got the seam sealer off the top of the panel, it revealed a couple of spot welds. So out came the angle grinder and of course the spot weld drill. But wait, there's more holding it on. This steel panel is joined to the aluminium strut tower using rivets at the bottom here. You can see four of them and there's going to be plenty of them in this video. And the best way I found to remove the rivets was to drill off the head, get a punch and knock them through the other side. And finally we should be able to get it off. So this section is now off, which is supposed to look like this section right here. And the next step would be to take this strut tower off. But before we do that and we start cracking on with it, there's a few things we need to clear up. Number one, a few of you said, why don't I just patch in a separate piece of metal here because nothing has moved and well, that just seems the most logical thing to do. We can't do that because this strut tower is cast aluminium. It's all one piece and it's part of the structure. So cutting a part out of another strut tower to weld into this one would kind of compromise the structural integrity of the car. And I'd probably make a mess out of it as well. And number two, how can I be 100% sure that everything is straight without using a jig? Welcome to Matt Armstrong's school of physics. We have here a tram gauge and this is actually what they use at body shops and it's even what BMW used to measure frames. This thing was £600 but it could save the day. We can use this now instead of a tape measure to get a super precise measurement. Now although BMW can't help us with any workshop manuals or how to do anything, a lot of you guys have been doing my detective work and have actually sent me some of the measurements of what the M5 should be. I've just got to measure my M5 to make sure it matches the correct measurements. Bang on in the middle. 800, you can see here, 854. Oh! There we go. A to A, which is the point A to A, 854. That is straight. It's literally bang on. There's not even a mil, there's not even a mil out. But that's not all. There's a bunch of other measurements that we need to do and it's just good peace of mind to know that this thing is nice and straight before we start dismantling the rest of the panels. Let's see if the strut tower's moved. That tram gauge is turning out to be a brilliant tool, just like a VPN tool and when we think of a VPN tool, we think of Surfshark, who has sponsored today's video. 898, 899, maybe in between. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and that means it encrypts all the data sent via the internet so no one can steal your passwords, view your online messages or see what you're doing online. C to C, 898. It's straight. If you thought public Wi-Fi was safe, then you're wrong. Public Wi-Fi is a goldmine for hackers, but not when using Surfshark. And that is not the only thing it can do. Let's say you're watching Netflix in the UK and you want to watch the original Fast and Furious, but it's not available to watch, but with Surfshark, I can just go over to the top right hand corner and change my browsing location to Japan, go back onto Netflix, refresh it, search for it again and there it is, ready to watch. So to get Surfshark today, you can do by clicking the link in the description box below and use code Matt Armstrong and that's going to get you 83% off plus an extra three months for free. There's a 30 day money back guarantee so there is literally no risk. Now surprisingly, this is not a genuine BMW tool. This might shock you all, but this is actually made out of, and you guys could do this at home, all you've got to do is go to my dad's house and take part of his garage roof off. And this is going to be our jig as sort. The other day, me and my dad engineered this amazing masterpiece. We designed this thing to bolt to the subframe and then fix on certain points in the car to make sure when we pull the strut tower off, we put it back in in the exact same place. We want to be 100% confident that this shock goes in the same way it came out. Now, although we have the actual measurements of where the shock should be, we just wanted to make this idiot proof. As you guys know, I'm no mechanic and I'm far from a body shop guy. So we've just taken these extra steps, but this tool will make it almost impossible to put it in the wrong place. I guess we're about to find out whether we do need a professional to do this job or can I do it in my unit. With our special jig tool installed, me and my dad cracked away at starting to remove this strut tower. As I mentioned, this is aluminium and it's not welded in place. It uses panel bond and a whole lot of rivets. To break the panel bond, we're using a lot of heat and we're using the same technique to remove the rivets as I did on the front panel. Hours of drilling out rivets and we're just about ready now to start trying to separate the shock tower, the strut tower, from the rest of the car. So this little piece here we were going to replace and I've actually bought a piece here which we'll get onto the prices of everything here. This was so, so cheap so I thought I might as well buy it just in case. But I think you might actually get away with using that and it's going to give us another point of reference when we put the strut tower on. But now all these rivet holes are drilled out. If you can have a look here. All these rivet holes are drilled out. The next thing holding this on is all panel bond. So we've just got to heat everything up with a blowtorch and hopefully that will unstick the panel bond and then we can knock it off the car. Good news. Let's see how this goes. We cannot damage anything and we cannot move this in the wrong place. Yay! There it is. Really easy. Bolt on, bolt off job. So remember these weird sort of like bolts were in these holes before and when you order the replacement of them, they don't replace them with them. And these are like self-tapping ones. But these are the ones they replace with and they're like weird allen key head ones. If this keeps going well, I'm not even going to say it. I think let's just carry on. Surprisingly everything was going smoothly which is strange for such a big job. I'm just going to pop in them few screws and measure it to make sure it's bang on. The device is on. It's all in line and you can see here. You see that? The fitment on the top there. Can you see that? This is absolutely bang on. I can't believe it is working. We've just got to do it for real now the second time. We've put in those bolts. Next thing, take it all off, add the bond, drill the holes for the rivets and we're home run. Although this job so far was time consuming, it surprisingly wasn't that bad. But I really didn't want to speak too soon. All I'm doing now is using the holes that are left on the car as guides to drill the holes in the strut tower for all the new rivets to go into. And believe me, there is a lot of them. This thing takes a lot of force. With the rivet holes drilled, I now need to remove the strut tower. And because I needed to cut this panel in order to fit the new strut tower, I'm going to have to replace it. I've just got to be careful I don't set fire to myself. And not only is it spot welded, I found that is panel bonded as well. BMW really didn't want this thing to move. But eventually it came out. This is the cleaner that BMW sent me to do the job. It's just labeled R1. And I've just got to use this to clean up the surfaces of where the strut tower will meet the rest of the car. And of course, use it on the strut tower as well. Because after that, I'm going to be using this, the panel bond. I had to order this from BMW. And it's a two-piece mixture in one tube. You put this special nozzle at the end. And when you use the gun to push it out, it mixes both the mixtures together. Now all I've got to do is apply it in as even fashion as I can. And then it's on with the strut tower. And I wasn't quite sure how long I had before that panel bond set. So I was really rushing to get all the nuts and bolts in and start getting those rivets in at this point. Okay, we are on with panel bond. There is no going back now. But that's pretty solid. We've got the sort of self-tapping screws in. We've got the bolts lined up. We think everything is all in place and ready to go. All the holes are all lined up, ready for the rivets. These are the rivets that BMW sent me. They're the ones that they use. I'm not sure they're exactly the same ones that they use when they actually put the car together. I think these are ones used for a repair. The other ones are done by a machine, I'd assume. So I've got to get these on next. And these are not going to be easy to push in. And to do it, I've got option number one. Which is a rivet gun there. I think that might have enough power to do it. And if that doesn't have enough power to do it, then we've got option number two. Which is the manual big beefy rivet gun. But we're running out of time. I've got to start doing it before all that panel bonding set. So let's do this. Come on. Oh my god. That is insanely hard. Six in. About 20 more to go. With some questionable noises, I cracked on with putting all the rivets in. I decided to use the manual gun as it was much better at snapping off the end of the rivets than the electric gun. With the strut tower in place, the next thing to go on is this front panel. And to make sure this was absolutely spot on, I decided to put the slam panel on that I bought as well. That way I can be a little bit more confident that I'm getting it in the exact same spot. Now this front panel is made out of steel. But it's not connected to the chassis leg by welding it. It's simply a few screws and panel bond. And there we go, the bolt holes are pretty much bang on in the centre of the slam panel. And just to be sure, of course, we can use the tram gauge to measure it. Now where this steel part meets the aluminium part, of course it uses rivets. And panel bond on top. So I've got to drill out the holes for the rivets. And then remove the panel again. Clean up all the surfaces where it's going to meet. Pop on the panel bond. And then reinstall the front panel, this time for real. The screws at the bottom of the panel, I think just help the panel bond to each panel. And then it's in with the rivets on top. Well, that went surprisingly better than I thought. And there's one final piece to go in, which goes in a little bit different than the rest. Everything is all connected up. We've got the front end of the slam panel on, just to make sure everything all lines up. Everything is all riveted and there's a lot of bond there, which is still a little bit sticky. But there's one final bit here to go in, which is steel. So it's a little bit different to how these aluminium parts go in. I'm still so surprised that that is all that holds on this part, which just seems so sketchy. But, I mean, I guess that's how BMW do it. So this is steel on steel now. So this is going to be spot welded. Spot welded on here as well. And then riveted along the bottom here, because it's joining to an aluminium part at the bottom. So we can't weld steel to aluminium. And then again, on the steel to aluminium join, we've got to put a load of rivets down there. So, God help me with that. You guys seem to be getting the picture here. And I seem to be getting the gist of things now. Most of these panels are just panel bonded and then riveted together. Unless it's steel on steel and then it's spot welded. So after I've lined it all up, drilled all the holes, I can clean it up again using the special BMW cleaner. And now I can use the special BMW panel bond. And I have to use a different panel bond on this section here, because it's steel on steel. So BMW sent a different one for this panel. And then it's back on with the panel with a bit of weld through primer on it. Ready for it to be spot welded to the rest of the car. What a job this thing is. So my dad comes through with the spot welds. And with the belt sander, we can sand them all down to make them nice and flush. And get them looking as neat as possible. And would you know it, there's a front end almost complete. I literally cannot believe we've managed to pull this off. I just really hope I've done this thing right. Well, I dare to say we're not finished yet. But it was kind of easier than I thought, providing everything lines up. These bits on top as well, the wing mounts too. So we'll find out whether they all line up. They should, because we've done... This would have took a lot less of a time if we've done it before. But because we haven't done it before, I was just a bit making sure that I was doing it right. So hopefully it's all good. All we've got to do now is seal up all the gaps. Like over here, where BMW have sealed up all the gaps here with a sealer. I'm going to try and get it as close to what they do it. Which is probably going to be difficult. So all over this, this has all got to be sealed up. And then once it's sealed, it can then be painted. And that's what Chris is here to do. Professional painter. Yeah, hopefully you don't get paint all around the unit. How do they actually get it like that? I think it's going to be a machine that does it. But I've watched videos... You just go for a nice wide nozzle, squash it and splurge. Yeah, they use like a flat nozzle and then they go like... Before I get the sealer out, I've got to remove the front panel. And get everything nice and cleaned up, ready for it to be primed and painted. But the primer and the paint go over the sealer. And this is the sealer here. Again, another special BMW one. But all of this was actually quite cheap. And here I go at an attempt to try and make this look as OEM as possible. And if I'm completely honest, I'm absolutely crap at doing this. I'm well and truly ashamed of it. But hey, it's doing its job and at least I gave it a go. That really hasn't gone as well as I first planned out it to go. And I'm not going to show you guys because you're probably going to laugh at me. So instead I'm going to mask it all up, get it painted. And then I will show you guys because it might look a little bit better with some paint on it. Right, before I show you it, and it's not that bad, let's go through prices. So the paint and everything costs £70. And believe it or not, all the parts that we've used so far on the car. So all the structural parts and the panels and the silicone and the sealant and everything else from BMW. Only costs £300 so far. Which I think is an absolute bargain. So, so far we're onto a winner. I also need to say that this was cheap because we need to do a shout out to Sitna. We need to do a shout out to Sitna. Because I actually have a discount code there. MAT15. I've put a link in the description box below. You can get discounted genuine BMW parts with the link in the description at Sitna Leicester. Cheers boys. Now bear in mind, most of this, well all of this is covered over by engine plastics. Here's a picture of an engine bay right now. So you're not really going to be able to see it. But, let me just show you it. Here we are. Now first off, the paint is perfect. It matches so well. Although this side is really clean and sparkly and that side is really dusty and dull. The paint, 10 out of 10. I think the repair as well, 10 out of 10. But, my ceiling is, well, there's no other way to put it. It's crap. But on the other side, it's doing it's job. It's sealing the panels where they join up. So it won't get any water in between them and start to rust or corrode even though it is aluminium. But this part is steel. Other than that, I think we've done a pretty good job. And what's even better than that, when we measure all the points up like we did before, everything is bang on. We can measure from that strut tower to that strut tower and we can get the measurement from here to here and it is all absolutely spot on. So the next step is start reassembling that engine and getting to the damage on that. And then we can start putting it all back together. And it looks as if I've got a hell of a job with this. Thanks so much for watching this video. If you've enjoyed it, hit that subscribe button. Hit that thumbs up button. And I will see you in the next video. Peace out. The first bit of filming. Oh my giddy aunt.