A friend is picking up (an indicated) 294K mile one tonight.
The car is in great shape cosmetically and seems to run great. Of course, no records are available and it was a trade at a dealer so there is really no way to get info.
That said, he paid a bit less than $5,000 for it so I'm confident it's a good deal even if it blows up tomorrow.
I haven't done the timing parts either, because my crank hub, woodruff key, keyway, etc, are held together with jb weld, loctite red, and loctite sleeve retainer
i had the crank hub failure happen, twice, 6 weeks apart. then i bought the fahey part and put it back together myself, properly.
my timing case cover is definitely not coming off easy.
My motor is already on life support - since march of 01 i think the crank has held together that way.. with a good amount of track time and not an easy life on the street either.
car is at 118k miles or so.
the motor needs a proper refreshing anyhow, and if I open it,i wont be re-using the pistons or cams anyhow, probably not the crank, and probably not the valves. so i'm not sweating the timing stuff.. either it blows apart or it doesn't... not much i can do about it except drive it like i stole it.
I hope the "bit less than $5000" that he paid for it was about $2500 less!? That's a lot of miles on both car and engine, and it cost big $ to redo that engine, not to mention all the other things that may need to be replaced, etc. I have one with 172,000 that I paid $1800 for, but it was in very bad shape. Now its a dedicated track car after much investment of time & $.
Well, these cars seem to be worth about $5,000 in parts so I'm sure in the worst case he could break even by parting it. That would be a shame though, and isn't really an option as I understand it.
The body and paint is damn near perfect, as is the interior. No tears in the seats and hardly any creases in the leather at all. No dash cracks either. There are plenty of $3500 S38 engines on car-part.com, so even in the very worst case (engine = BOOM!) he's got a really nice $8500 M5.
Matt... I was basing my comments simply on the facts presented, which was a 300,000 mile car, with no documentation. $5k seemed like way to much, given the cost to make one right (speaking from experience). From the follow-on info provided, it sounds like the exterior and interior belie the stated mileage, but I still think $5k is to much, especially not knowing all the mechanical condition.
I have 2 e28 M5s so I have a pretty good handle on thier value. I paid $1800 for one and $17K for the other (38K miles). And, I want to see that value go up, but any car with near 300K on the odometer and no doc is a potential money pit and has little initial value.. other than for parts.
Ok, but you could sell the 280, the steering box, and the SLS components and get $1800 back. The shadowline tails would get a few hundred more, and any interior parts that weren't garbage would also work. The stock wheels are an upgrade for anyone that hasn't already put rice wheels or E34 throwing stars on their car.
My statement of value is that cars that are grossly outside the 10-15k window are rare. A car truly worth $1800 is unhread of - you got a hell of a deal. It's hard to really say what a 300k example is worth because there just aren't that many of them for sale
I bought mine for $3900 two years ago with 184K miles ... but the insurance estimate to repair the accident damage incurred by the PO was about $9,000! The left rear quarter was hit hard enough to buckle the roof. The exhaust was cracked from end to end.
I pulled the quarter panel and the roof at a buddie's body shop. It's still got a few wrinkles but makes a great daily driver. It needed the typical $2,000++ of repairs to get it up to par.
It's got 205K miles now. Very hard miles. It's my daily driver and my commute is 2 miles. The poor car rarely gets warmed up before it's shut off. The car also gets tracked regularly.
After two years, it's still hard to keep my foot out of the throttle. It just make such nice sounds above 4,000 rpm ... I'm sure the neighbors think so too since I have a B&B exhaust with a track pipe!
I've got about 212k on mine right now, but the motor blew around 205k. Running with a s38b36 now. I've put way more money in the car than it's worth, but I can't bare to part with it...
Bought the car for 7k in '98 I think it was, with 176k.
Coming up on 219k.
Recent valve job, newish suspension.
Nice and tight.
Track pipe is pretty mean sounding - hard to hear the radio if you know what I mean....
[QUOTE="joe in nashvegas"]Coming up on 219k.
Recent valve job, newish suspension.
Nice and tight.
Track pipe is pretty mean sounding - hard to hear the radio if you know what I mean....[/QUOTE]
How many valves and/or guides did you have to replace? I'm debating doing the same and those all those little buggers sure aren't cheap.
This only needed two new valves (exhaust I think).
I don't recall the cost - either $50 or $100/per valve.
Pretty sure the mechanic did the work (he was a BMW master tech who loved M cars...)
Having just done a valve job on my benz v8,
I would take it to a reputable machine shop (like Blue Ribbon Racing in Nashville, TN).
They go through the whole head replacing what's needed (valves, guides, etc)
I paid $720 for two heads, but that included some cleanup work for my stupid mistakes.
Heads came back all shiny and new looking - very impressive !
All I had to do was install and adjust the valves...
Bottom line is I would definitely use a reputable shop experienced with M heads,
but that's just me....
the motor needs a proper refreshing anyhow, and if I open it,i wont be re-using the pistons or cams anyhow, probably not the crank, and probably not the valves. so i'm not sweating the timing stuff.. either it blows apart or it doesn't... not much i can do about it except drive it like i stole it.
Matt,
If you blow the engine you might not have anything reusable from the long block itself. Scottie Sharpe posted pics of what happened to his S38 when the valve timing did the nasty. It was ugly.
