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Should I take the plunge?


Skotso

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Many tks. for the quick reply & info! VIN indeed starts with 429, interior and dash do fit the picture as well (at least from photos provided).. Now regarding  the engine bay herewith some pictures provided by the seller..

As far fuel injection & correct turbo, what should I exactly look for? Any particular way to verify the genuine character of such parts?

Rust wise, the car seems to be overhauled recently.. yet I have not seen it in person yet and surely need to check lower part as well (where rust is accumulated heavily as far as my understanding)..

Tks. again for reply & support!

IMG BMW 2002 3232020 (15).jpeg

IMG BMW 2002 3232020 (76).jpeg

IMG BMW 2002 3232020 (57).jpeg

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For what it is worth, this is a collector car philosophy issue which encompasses the condition of the car vis-a-vis the price.

 

Sure, by looking at the BAT images, there may be a lot to be done, but from the images, there is a lot going for it. A PPI is always a good thing at least to identify the glaring issues for bargaining. If at all.

 

No glaring rust issues, although it may be covered by the undercoating, save for the rust on the hood and trunk lips...hard to tell.

Seems that the brakes have been re-done.

Interior in pretty good shape, drivers seat split totally repairable.

Dash cluster "usual"

Stereo: I have that one! 25W / channel

Looks to have the provision for headlight wipers, at least the motors.

 

Engine:

Any chance of a compression and leakdown test?

If you can drive it, does it accelerate smoothly to redline?

has a new oil cooler from BMW, which is actually incorrect for the Concourse set, but hey $500-$700 depending on your discount.

Recent alternator.

New exhaust.

 

The rest of the car shows lots of grease that can "easily" cleaned (unless you are Winterton) and the undercoating looks to be original.

 

Of course I (we) can do the "where's Waldo" of potential problems, issues and their costs, but I don't think $100K for "maintenance" is accurate. $50K? certainly, because of the parts, not the labor per se, but finding truly knowledgeable mechanics is problematic.

 

The body seems to be in pretty good condition, the rest, in "driver's quality" unless the injection differential and transmission are sketchy. I would worry more about the transmission than the engine; the 4 speed is actually more rare than a 235/5.

 

A previous comment was that these are "like" a Tii. Not really.

 

Rear driveline? Only the swing axles are the same.

different fuel tank and associated parts.

Different transmission; if you can find the parts they will be AT LEAST $2,000, probably more.

Different engine and injection, (Duh).

Different suspension components e.g springs, rims.

And on and on.

 

i would go and see the car and arrange a PPI. The dealer shouldn't balk at that.

 

Drive it. Does it still stir your soul? if so, then if you are willing to make this a decades long ownership wherein you can drive the car while searching for the mechanical parts for future rebuild, cause if you drive it, you will need it.

 

If you are OK with that, dive in. I think at whatever price point, you could say that you probably won't lose money if you got tired of it or had to sell. The trend is up.

 

My philosophy: There are collectors that rarely or never drive their cars and want them "as new". That's fine, but not me. The whole purpose is to experience the car as it was intended to be. I have and will again when the restoration is complete; i wouldn't think twice of driving 500-1000-2000 miles IF the bugs were worked out.

 

This reminds me of when I purchased my '90 M3 in ~2001. Found it from a collector who had only put 19K miles in so many years. I paid a very "high of market" of $18,500. OMG did I get the razz from the community! How could I pay so much? You should put it in your garage and not drive it....blah blah blah.

 

I chose it as my daily driver. supremely reliable, and uh, sporty. I drive it like it was meant to be. Now have 143K on it and have enjoyed every mile, with few exceptions....and is it worth a bit more now than $18,500 + all the parts and service? Yes, but that wasn't the point for me. I smile every time I get in the car and go for a drive, extra credit for all the thumbs up I get from those who know, be it guys in a Toyota Corolla or a Porsche GT3.

 

So, if you like the Turbo you see, and want to drive it while you find parts and save for the inevitable repairs, then do it, however the future repairs will be expensive depending on your budgets.

 

There will always be detractors saying that the price is too much, only you can determine that.

 

HTH

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I always read threads like this and grit my teeth though what Preupy said is good advice. I live on the east coast. My car was at SCR for about 11 years waiting for a solution to a turbo needing a rebuild. (There is a very very long write up of that odyssey here somewhere. ) There really is no one out here who works on Turbo’s enough to know their vagaries. 90% of the car is really no problem for any decent mechanic to work on. The last 10% however, it makes a big difference if you have some one that has ever seen more then one or two of these. 
 

That said, I did finally get a nos turbo from Germany and have put about 9000 miles on the car in the last 2 years and I love driving it. I do push it pretty hard, though since it wasn’t a restored car, even with all the waiting around for a turbo, I do have to keep working on things. It’s not a cheap car to keep, its not a cheap car to use. It has wear items that you can’t easily get, and even though BMW started a new turbo program they found so many pitfalls they have never put them on sale. But still it’s a ton of fun. And I’d do it again, though hopefully I wouldn’t make the same mistakes vis a vis the turbo issue the second time around. 
 

 

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1 hour ago, Yale said:

I always read threads like this and grit my teeth though what Preupy said is good advice. I live on the east coast. My car was at SCR for about 11 years waiting for a solution to a turbo needing a rebuild. (There is a very very long write up of that odyssey here somewhere. ) There really is no one out here who works on Turbo’s enough to know their vagaries. 90% of the car is really no problem for any decent mechanic to work on. The last 10% however, it makes a big difference if you have some one that has ever seen more then one or two of these. 
 

That said, I did finally get a nos turbo from Germany and have put about 9000 miles on the car in the last 2 years and I love driving it. I do push it pretty hard, though since it wasn’t a restored car, even with all the waiting around for a turbo, I do have to keep working on things. It’s not a cheap car to keep, its not a cheap car to use. It has wear items that you can’t easily get, and even though BMW started a new turbo program they found so many pitfalls they have never put them on sale. But still it’s a ton of fun. And I’d do it again, though hopefully I wouldn’t make the same mistakes vis a vis the turbo issue the second time around. 
 

 

Thanks Yale.

 

So since I am learning,... and I'm hard headed and will eventually get a Turbo, can you help enlighten me a bit on the 10% that can be a problem?

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Everything turbo related of course. The turbo, when these cars were new you could send in a core and get a rebuilt one, that’s what sort of wear item they were. The fuel pump, it is not set up like a normal tii pump so you need specialized knowledge to work on it, the manifold, no longer made and the turbo gets pretty hot and is poorly lubricated, the trans, either four or five speed has unique no longer made parts. Nothing is insurmountable, but if you have someone who works on lots of these like Brian (Preupy) and a few other mostly Cali based folks, then they have solutions to the problems that come up. Sometimes those solutions aren’t that quickly in coming I should add. 
 

I’m not saying don’t get a turbo, in fact I think the opposite. But if you are going to use it a lot, as I do, you will be dealing with the inherent issues about owning a car that was designed and sold perhaps a bit before there was enough technology and knowledge to make it robust. 

 

 

 

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Yale!  That just provided a lot of the perspective I was looking for. I think I get it now.

 

It is really unfortunate that BMW isn't supporting by making parts for these cars, but I guess that's business....

 

 

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Well check this out, in 2012 Florian Lautenbacher If BMW told me that bmw are making turbos for our cars. In January of 2013 he said looks like we will have the turbos in April or May. Of course I called him a number of times and the turbo was always just a few months off. In September Florian disappeared from BMW and I wrote to Karl-Heinz Adamski but didn’t get anywhere. In 2016 a friend who was a German banker asked about my issue to a friend who worked for BMW who said have Yale contact Georg Blumoser as he is in charge of the classic parts department. In March Georg told me Florian has basically messed everything up and they had to start from scratch. But the turbo part would be ready in a few months. I asked for and got the new part number, 11 62 1 259 307. “The turbo will be ready July or August.”

 

in May of 2016 Georg had told me he would be at Legends of the Autobahn In August and possibly bringing a sample turbo with him. So I went out to car week in California with my German banker friend who by chance was in nyc on holiday. Georg wouldn’t speak to me, he would talk to my German friend however and there still seemed to be unexplained issues with the turbo. 
 

I called Georg a few times after that until he told me he is no longer at BMW Classic parts and that now I should talk to Jutta Fischer. I wrote and called her as well over the years and basically got the same rainbow pot of gold story from her. 
 

So BMW tries to make parts for these cars, but they seem to have no better luck then anyone else. 

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Reading that just gave me a tinge of nausea.  Nice to hear these people are at least outwardly receptive to your suggestions, less nice to hear that nothing has has come to fruition. I can't believe that they are unable to make them.  It'd be interesting to hear what the problems they're having are.

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26 minutes ago, Skotso said:

Reading that just gave me a tinge of nausea.  Nice to hear these people are at least outwardly receptive to your suggestions, less nice to hear that nothing has has come to fruition. I can't believe that they are unable to make them.  It'd be interesting to hear what the problems they're having are.

 

I think it's just a very low priority for them.  Sadly, most large corporations are run by finance people.  No finance person is going to be interested in investing R&D money to support 500 or so car owners.  No money in it.  BMW is happy to use the Turbo as an historic halo car to support the Brand, but is unwilling to support them with essential parts.  Same principle applies to the much more plentiful tii's.  

 

Call me cynical...

 

Greg

January 30, 1973 Agave tii

April 24, 1974 Chamonix Turbo (German delivery)

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I think they made it and it didn’t hold up. So they put one on their own car which is used sparingly but don’t want yo actually sell them as they feel they will look bad if their newly designed turbo disintegrates upon use.  

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