The Snow White build thread.

[twenty]

Ladies and gentlemen,

Hello from the other side of the pond. Welcome to the build thread of the Snow White, a 1990 325i automatic convertible in Alpine White.

The story starts in 2021, when a bored guy (that’s me of course) had a midlife crisis during Covid and decided to buy a 168k miles 11 previous owner E30 convertible without doing any research.

Well one poor decision led to many poor decisions and instead of binning the car, I kept going, eventually culminating in tens of thousands being spent making the car factory fresh.

Before I proceed any further. Word of warning. Boys are girls, never ever try to restore a car, especially if it’s a mass market car like the E30. If you have the money, just buy a mint condition one and enjoy it. If you don’t have the money, buy a poor condition one, enjoy it and bin it whenever.

We start at the beginning. Where I’d already spent around £5000 fixing up the car to be presentable.

Christmas Day 2020.

[twenty]

The ln we move on the the stupid part.

On a random whim, I decide I need to freshen up the engine bay. So I dismantle the valve cover etc.

But by this time child no. 2 is on the way. I totally lose interest and time and leave the car out in the half dismantled state, sitting on the driveway.

While this is happening, I come across another dream car of mine, the BMW 8 series E31. I even buy one on auction.

But when my wife learns about it, she’s gets understandably unhappy (understatement). The ultimatum, I can only have one classic. So I decide to let go of the E31, losing £600 in auction fees in the process.

All this time the E30 is in the driveway. Not moving slowly rotting away.

For a change, I finally make a sane decision, I’ll just get rid of it.
But as it turns out, no one wants to buy a non working car. And to my mistake, I didn’t also price it competitively, thinking how much I had spent on it etc.

There’s lesson number 2 right here: you’ll probably never ever get back the amount invested in a car like the E30. Just cut your losses and run.

Sadly, my sanity didn’t last long. After failing to read the market and not selling the car, I make the 3rd and the biggest mistake: restore the E30.

Not just any restoration, a nut and bolt one.