BMW 635 wrote:
I went and looked at this car. The owner has a Bentley book, but that is where the good stops. The car is leaking fluid from every possible location. The engine bay is a complete mess
with vac hoses all routed in the wrong direction. The car needs both new flywheel sensors to run, one of them has completely come apart. The oil pan looks to be repaired and the odometer is dead. The car is not running at this time.
Typical Texas car with heat damage on every item, dash cracked, parts falling off and paint peeling.
The guy wants to get the car going but has a LONG way to go. It is a car that would need several thousand dollars to
get into shape, and then it would still be worth about 1200 dollars.
The front end has a lot of play and the doors do not shut well.
Interior is rough and needs a lot of attention. AC is still there
but i would guess it is dead also.
All in all its a donor car for a 5 speed swap.
Ha!... sounds kind of like my car!... but mine actually ran pretty well, solid 265/6 trans ('85 535) when I got it and had a freshly re-done head and clutch, new clutch-pedal bracket, master+slave. Those were the only good points on it though, but I guess those are some biggies.
I did have to fix up some underhood hoses, most of the powersteering hoses leaked and so did the p.s. pump. New hoses and a p.s. rebuild kit fixed all of that though. Had an awful 'cold-air-tube' intake on it... ran like ass. A quick swap to an OEM setup (thanks Sherm!) and it ran much better. Diff mount was in 2 pieces. Brake hoses were original, and scary!... but got some braided steel (techni-fit) hoses to fix that. Had to rebuild the front end, but the car came with a box of new parts to do all of that (it was surprising easy to work on too) and the rear crossmember bushings + dogbones.
Now that all of that is done, the car is pretty solid as a daily-driver and I drive it 70 miles a day to work+back. My car's paint is way worse than this one in the ad though, if pics are representative, and my car has more rust issues (the trunk is seemingly perpetually wet inside...).
I rattle-canned the hood and trunk to at least cover up the 're-entry burns' appearance of my car. Rustoleum 'hammer-tone', FTW! lols
Did I mention it has the much-hated 'pac-blue' interior!?.. actually, I kind of like it.. doesn't bother me at all. I think if I ever repaint the car, I'll do it in white b/c I think that would work ok with the blue interior. A buddy in h.s. had a 2002 that was white on blue, I always liked it.
I knew all the issues about the car when I got it though.. it's a beater and always will be. I'm pretty sure it jumped a railroad crossing, Duke-boys style, at some point.. I saw the 'scars' on the chassis. I fought it into an alignment that works though, it doesn't 'dog-trail' when viewed from directly behind and it tracks straight. I can live with it. I suspect it will one day donate it's running-gear to something similar to the car in that ad... something a little more solid than what I currently have, chassis-wise. I can re-do all the bolt-on stuff, but the numerous paint/body issues on my car make me want a cleaner-straighter chassis to work with.
I would only think about the car in that ad as a 'chassis-donor' for someone (like me) who maybe had a wreck in their otherwise 'mechanically sound' car to swap the driveline over into, or just wants a more solid platform.
So, I guess at 1K, it's probably 500 too high for that purpose? I have no good feel yet for what these cars -should- go for.
