Opinion Wanted! Car for sale

[leadnub]

Hi guys, first time poster so if im doing anything blatantly wrong please tell me. I'm in the PNW tryna pick up my first E30, and I found a pretty cheap beauty after monitoring craigslist for about a year. Problem is, it had a collision on the front right side (see ad attached) but otherwise looks real pretty.

https://seattle.craigslist.org/kit/cto/d/eis-bmw/6630741092.html

I've been reading a bit on people fixing front end damage by repairing the "core support" at a shop as long as there is not extensive frame damage. I just contacted this fellow and am going to get more details soon, but i guess my main question is if this would be a worthy pickup. Hard to tell from just photos right now but I'm curious if any red flags jump out at you or if you have a good guess as to what is going on and what kind of a repair this would be.

My plan of attack, once inquiring how the cars other systems are, would be to take the car (after asking the seller) to a Bavaria auto shop or somethin similar to see what they can do with it and make a judgement then. Any help is much appreciated though.

[2mAn]

title is clean. go get it. you can find a hood and fender

[majdomo]

Just get a good thorough ppi and start shopping for hood / fender. Plus talk down the price. Might as well.

Good luck and have fun with it!


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[efficient]

looks like a nice car and easy fix.

[FNG'sE30]

Nice looking e30 especially the interior which can be expensive to fix. It looks like the grill was damaged as well as the bumper trim. Have you also looked at Autotrader to see what is outside the area? Maybe a 325is in better condition with a baby 6-cyl and less mileage?

I flew to Colorado Spring to buy mine from the original owner (had a slide out tape player!), and then drove it back for $3600.00 with just over 122k miles on the Odo'. He had tons of pictures and I called a local shop to inspect it before I bought it. It would have been double the price if I had bought it in the PNW.

Tons of BMW parts sellers... Pelican Parts (Cali), BavAuto (Maryland?), Turner Motorsports (Massachusetts), Ireland Engineering (Cali), and many, many more! This is just the places I've bought parts from... Oh, and a few from Amazon, but you really have to find the correct BMW part numbers to cross reference them to Amazon (RealOEM)... Good luck on the hunt!

[leadnub]

Update: owner sent me an itemized list (which I can post later) for when he got it looked at to repair and it totaled to 5200, about 2700 of that being parts. How much could I expect that to go down if I source cheaper pick n pull parts myself? Still a worthy endeavor?

[McGyver]

Still worth it. I would assume that it would be less than $300 for a hood, fender, grill, and sealed beams at a junk yard. As long as you wait until an Alpine White II car shows up, you should be good. White is single stage, so you should be able to cut, polish, and wax anything you find to make it look really close to the rest of the car. Alternatively, getting a hood and fender painted should be less than $600. So for $1000 on top of a $3400 car, you have something that is selling for around $6000 these days.

[matias88e30]

Go get her dude!!! Easily fixed!!

[majdomo]

Update: owner sent me an itemized list (which I can post later) for when he got it looked at to repair and it totaled to 5200, about 2700 of that being parts. How much could I expect that to go down if I source cheaper pick n pull parts myself? Still a worthy endeavor?

What could possibly go wrong?? :):)


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[E30 Fitment]

In my opinion, I would look for another e30. I think to replace all those front end parts in a condition to match the rest of the car would get pretty expensive. I'm not sure how many e30's are up in Washington, but I think you could find a better one out there for the same price as it would cost to repair that one. Especially with 280,000 miles on the engine, the price seems a little high. Also if the interior is your main selling point, I see quite a few people selling interior parts for not terribly high prices, and it might be cheaper to buy a car and just replace the interior. Overall its not too bad of a deal, especially with the interior, but I don't think it's going to be cheap to replace all those little parts. It would definitely be do-able, I see a lot of people selling fenders and grills, but the with car's condition, it might be hard to find high quality parts.

[jeffnhiscars]

Makes no sense to spend $5200 to repair a 280k car but you will not get it done for $1000 either. I also believe AWII is 2 stage. If you repair it for half the estimate you're in it for $6k. Is it worth that to you and what else can you get for that $$$

It really depends how comfortable you are dealing with body shops. I had similar damage on an e30 I owned for close to 2 decades and while the repairs were "ok" it never felt the same to me so I sold it.

Think about what you'd pay for it if it hadn't been hit...$5k...$6...$8.

[leadnub]

Dang really appreciate all the input guys! Seeing as this is potentially my first E30 I’m wary to take on such a challenge/potential cash pit, especially if it’s not road worthy to begin with (what fun is having an E30 if you don’t drive it?!)

The owner claims the car is mechanically sound and still drives properly(not road worthy because of the lights though) so my plan of action was to at least go gaze at it in person and see how/if it drives. If that goes well then ask the owner to trailer it for a ppi/bodywork inspection to see how much I would pay to get the thing road worthy if I sourced most of the parts on my own from junkyards and such. From the itemized list he sent me the hood alone was $500 for part+painting so I’m sure there’s money to save if I found a good donor car.

In the meantime I will be doing deep thinking and evaluating all my options very carefully. Thanks again and happy to be in the community, just need the right car without rushing into irreversible pain with a problem child ;)

[Motheye99]

Paint looks good beside the obvious damage, id talk him down considerably as 6 months ago i bought a white 318is for 3800$ paint isn't great but it had a clean title, 200k miles, and just as clean of a interior. Need suspension work though. I don't know if this is going to help you but as my car is the same and the same price range it might help you to gauge the price you should pay for this one. The 318is 100% lives up to the hype, such a fun car to shred in.