Meet "Inki" the eta and her sad story (now with a happy ending!)

[101]

Meet “Inki” the eta. She’s a gorgeous 1987 325es in gleaming Schwarz black with a hot cardinal red sports interior. In a world where upgrades are all the rage, Inki is proud of her diving board bumpers and her original front lip. She has no rust and her original paint shines like new. Her upgrades are minimal – a chipped DME and a full “is” exhaust from an acquaintance who wasn’t so lucky in life. And we did her eyes late last year adding ellipsoids to her already stunning appearance. Other than that, she looks almost the same as the day she left the BMW factory 25 years ago.

Inki is the pride and joy of my son, as well as being his first car. In the year that we’ve had her, we’ve gone through everything in the car together and fixed a number of little things along the way that make her that much more perfect. She’s already an honorary member of the R3VLimited community as she inherited a set of MattB shift boots from rich4rdee, a radiator from jclar, and a replacement 2.93LSD diff from fanofe30s. She was all set for another 100K of smiles and nods from folks who see her rolling down the highway. We were planning her future with a new suspension setup and looking at a S52 swap someday.




And then tragedy struck. A rogue Honda Civic pulled out in front of Inki. Although her fully functional ABS brakes tried and tried, she could not avoid the disaster. The rogue Civic popped its airbags and sent its occupants to the hospital. Inki stayed strong and protected my son without a scratch – a testament to her German engineering heritage.




Now the mission is on to save Inki. Insurance companies being what they are fail to see Inki as anything other than average and want to send her away. Inki is NOT average. While we’re fighting that battle, I need to reach out to the greater R3VLimited community and help her cause by trying to find some nice used parts. She’s a little bit twisted up front, but she is certainly not ready to become a donor car quite yet.

Here is a list of parts that we know we need right now:
· Front diving board bumper and front bumper shocks
· Right side U.S. grille
· Center kidney grille
· Right side U.S. Ellipsoid headlight set assembly
· Air conditioning condenser
· Working electric pusher fan
· A nice shiny hood in Schwarz black
· A nice shiny, rust free right fender in Schwarz black

If you have any or some of these parts available, please PM me. If you have really nice sheet metal parts but are in a different color, that might work for me as well. Shipping would be prohibitive on the bumper and sheet metal parts, but Inki’s cousin - Ingrid the Volvo wagon is always up for a weekend road trip if you’re within say 6-8 hours of Cincinnati.
Help me save this car! I’ve resisted the temptation to embed a Sarah McLachlan song in this post but I may have to resort to that.

THANKS! And happy E30 motoring!


I'll post the parts I'm looking for in the "Wanted" section as well.

[German Audio Specialties]

Man...wish I had some goodies for you and your son. Good luck on the repair!

[ANDRÜ]

Good luck! Keep fighting the good fight Inki

[MattAvino]

sad to see. Do you need a core support? I have a black one for you.
I also have a black hood, but it would need a respray.
My black fenders are toast, you don't want those.
I also have a diving board, US grills, and kidneys (not good condition though).

[freeride53]

gl on the repair, my universal advice would be to opt for plastic bumper/valance while your at the repairs..

[TimKninja]

Theres an 86 es in shwartz at my local JY with a perfectly good front end. Sorry to see this. Hopefully the frame isint bent :(

[DisgustipatedAP1]

Should be awesome to see her restored to new. :)

[101]

Chapter 2

Well - it was worse that we first thought. :(

The entire front end was shifted to the left about an inch. The radiator was pressed against the engine fan, but wasn't leaking. The area where the battery would sit in a 318 was buckled and the glove box latch alignment was off. Most distressing of all was that the right frame rail had swallowed the bumper shock and the area where the A/C dryer sits was buckled. The radiator support was toast. I measured the distance between the center caps of the wheels on both sides --- the right side was a half inch shorter. :curse:

Inki was flatbedded to a totalled car auction facility to be looked at and an estimate prepared by the other driver's insurance company. I wasn't sure what would happen to her yet, so I buttoned her up, removed whatever upgrades I could and since both doors were jammed I made signs for both doors that said "Do Not Open". And with that, Inki was gone.

[101]

Chapter 3 Inki comes home even worse off

Anyone that has had their E30 wrecked know that insurance companies suck when it comes to older cars. I mean, REALLY suck!

The estimate for repairs was close to $5000. That did not include whatever frame parts and straightening would be required. Inki was toast.

Sure, there are a lot of average $2000 E30's out there. And there are a lot of beautiful examples that are worth a lot more, driven by many of you on this forum. I gathered my receipts for the purchase price of the car and about $2600 of maintenance parts that we invested into Inki over the last 9 months.



Here is a truth to remember:

Insurance companies don't care about what you did to reset the maintneance clock to zero. I was offered 5% of that cost. Upgrades can be negotiated somewhat, but if just did the timing belt, replaced the exhaust and diff, freshened up the radiator, belts, hoses, relays, brake calipers and pads, and a whole lot of other stuff, you lose. And lose big. They'll tell you, "It's just maintenance".



I could not come to a reasonable settlement with the insurance company, so I demanded Inki be brought home. At the very least I was not going to let a new 2.93 LSD and a cardinal sports interior get away from me, so a part out seemed to be the next best thing. To say my son was heartbroken was an understatement. :(

Inki arrived home about 10 days later. She was treated pretty rough by the people at the lot. So much for the "Do Not Open" signs I put on the doors.

The right side door:


The left side door:


The right side fender I already knew was beyond repair from the accident, but the left side fender and door were flawless when Inki left. WTF? Now I had something else to deal with. At least she was home.

One of my son's friend had been involved in a similar accident in an E30 a year earlier and he gave us some ideas and references to some folks locally that might be able to help us save her. We weren't sure it was going to be worth it. And I began looking for similar cars and what I thought I might be willing to ultimately settle for without dragging the insurance company to court.

[bmw325csi]

Sorry to see this. Unmolested e30 are few and far in between. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

[DooDanE30]

[101]

Chapter 4 Decision Time - or What to do with a Busted A$$ Car

Since I had not settled with the insurance company on their ridiculous offer, I took a huge leap of faith and decided to try to rebuild Inki with my own money and try to settle the score with the insurance company afterwards.

A little bit of work with the pry bar separated the right tire and the right fender. The last bolt holding the ES air dam to the left fender broke as 25 years of road grime won out over PB Blaster. The air dam itself actually survived intact and was the first part sent to what would become a fairly large parts stash in the basement. I removed the engine driven fan since it was jammed against the radiator. I drove Inki around the block. Of course, she pulled like crazy and the steering wheel position was not quite where it should be. Ugh.

The rest of the disassembly began in my garage:



I drove the now very ghetto version of Inki to a body shop that specializes in BMW's. She seemed a bit out of place among her much later model kin. My son and I met with the owner and shared our story. He looked at Inki and declared "This little car is hurt bad". It also became apparent that he knew exactly what he needed to do to as if he had done this same thing hundreds of times before on E30's. I'm also convinced he had a soft spot in his heart for E30's as they had probably helped him establish his business long ago.

I agreed that I would do all the remaining disassembly, source the parts and put everything back together afterwards. But I had to remain flexible on the timing and he would work her on to the frame machine when he could. I looked around at the dozens of later model BMW's and knew it would be a while. :( I finished the rest of the disassembly and secretly hoped I would not starve to death after I had to pay the bill.





And there she remained for the next 6 weeks - waiting on me to source parts and for her chance to challenge the frame machine.

[Poorboyz]

Any more news on this? I have a mint front fender if you want it. If you are still trying to save Inki I would like to donate any parts I have that you might be able to use. I also have front doors if you need them, they are yours, just pay for shipping or come get them.

EDIT: front doors wont work, mine is a sedan but offer for any other part you need that I have still stands.

[2mAn]

i have an extra grille i wont need. not sure which side it is. if its the one you need its yours, just pay for the shipping

[Poorboyz]

Hopefully the OP will chime in. I would love to see R3v get together and get him the parts he needs since he wants to save his E30.