My Hoopte30 Project Attempt #6 - the painless way to earn cash back every day

[AWDBOB]

Everyone needs a good shop cat...keeps out the critters. Did you name the cat hoopty?

Bahaha no but I will if it returns!

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Speaking of mr mjweimer, I bought an injector cleaning machine from him many moons ago and haven't ever bothered to get it functioning.

I used the long start debacle on sedan hoopty as motivation to finally get it up and running.

I did a set of M20b25 injectors for the aforementioned issue and they went from 4/6 completely plugged to a nice flow match result.

Pretty stoked to have this tool in house for future diag.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

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Installed injectors, moved check valve down by the pump, and for posterity's sake double checked my fuel filter direction....

sure enough, the Febi fuel filter I installed didn't have an arrow on it, and the way that looked correct was indeed backwards. Replaced with a Bosch filter I had handy.

Bonus good news, I was able to lift the E30 fully without it hitting my garage door track, which I didn't think would be the case.

A buddy may buy the 4dr hoopty to keep miles off of his fancy daily, so I'm going to keep trying to button up small stuff in the event he takes it home.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr
Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr

[AWDBOB]

This past weekend was extremely busy from a friends wedding, birthdays, SOS fixing inlaws vehicles, you name it.

On Friday or Saturday I started to get bombarded with friends sending me a FB link to a vintage BMW collection being sold off in Cincinnati. The listing details showed some poorly lit photos of a few E30s in a moldy warehouse and said something like "50 year vintage BMW collection, over 100 parts cars". Cinci is only 2hrs away. Knowing I couldn't make anything happen that weekend, I saw how much traction the listing was getting and caught a serious case of FOMO knowing it'd all be gone by then. I said I'd reach out Sunday night to see what's left.

On a whim I messaged my buddy Chris in Dayton who runs a BMW bizz similar to what I do with his friend Timon. They bought the 27 cars in southern IN last year, so I was sure they were already on their way to check out this stash. I said.... save me a couple E30s. I had 20mins free on the way to a wedding so he called me and told me what was there.

Later that day he said he arranged a buyout for all of the cars- 17 to be exact. They all had to be moved due to the building selling.

I'm not sure I ever really said I'll take all of them or knew what I was getting myself into, but come Monday morning I had a Uhaul reserved and was headed there to assess the 6 E30s my name was marked next to on a spreadsheet.

Before I left I did a once over on the Xterra before I towed cars for 3 days straight and found a snapped inner leaf on the drivers side. So I found myself swapping a leaf out at 6am before I had to be in Cinci by 10:30. I found out later that this was but an initiation to the chaos.

The building was downtown Lockland. It was next to a river, and the cars were stored in the basement of said building. No lights, mold on every surface. I walked the cars and started noticing what looked to be a different type of Lichen in the shape of a line on the cars and realized that the cars closest to the river were under water when the river would flood.

We were tasked with getting 17 cars out of said basement. Perpetually flooded cars means nasty rust, locked up wheels, etc. Animals/humans had also been using the cars as their latrine for what I assume was the better part of two decades.

I started by taking home a wrecked by otherwise nice condition '87 325e 4dr with black houndstooth interior, crack free dash, 5sp, etc.

I unloaded the car and immediately realized I had space for.... that one car only. And panic followed.

I was responsible for 6 cars, with space for one, on a 7 figure commercial real estate sale timeframe........

Didn't sleep a wink, extended the Uhaul reservation, headed back to Cinci at sun up and it was a brutal day of breaking wheels loose via snapping drums in half with a sledge and yanking them with an old beat up camry to get them outside.

I got a call the night before from a customer and finally had a chance to call him back. His auto trans blew and needed a manual swap..... all 6 of my parts cars were manual. Two down.

There was a really nice flood line 325eS that another buddy wanted to save..... three down.

An 84 318 was so rusty we couldn't even get the car jacked up, so I pleaded with the liaison of the sale to allow me to part out the 318 and a different wrecked '87 325e out on site since we had a local scrap guy handling the cars that were fully submerged and thus had nothing of value on them and thus he could take those carcasses...... 5 down

That leaves me with the initial car that I took home and a completely rust free cosmoblau 87 325 that I was able to stash at a buddies for now.

What a wild past few days it has been, but it was a really neat experience and felt cool to be a part of.

Chris/Timon got a manual E34 535i and several E32s including a few V12 cars. Ben of Obscure Euro Parts (Cinci based) was the 3rd leg in the deal and ended up with a 750 with individual interior and a 745 turbo E23.

I still have to go back tomorrow to finish parting out my last hooptie, but for now the trailer is returned and it's time to sleep.

I don't care for social media these days so I wanted to type this up to serve as more of a long form calander event for me to look back on.

TLDR: chaos

In no particular order:

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Titanic 318

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[JasonWilson48]

Wow! This all sounds chaotic, but super exciting. It pays to have some good connections to get you these kinds of deals. My family is in the auction/clean-out business, so I'm always about finding a deal and jumping on it quickly. Also, you have to deal with disposing of some of the crap to get access to the good stuff. Looks like you did the same here.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the two cars you saved. Another project thread coming soon with that clean car you're storing at your buddy's?!

I thought my fly and drive, was an adventure. But after seeing this, I need to get out there and get into some more stuff like this lol.

[2mAn]

I'd say the chaos paid off! lol

I'm assuming you made a profit?!

[prisonerofdoom83]

Doesn’t want anymore cars……buys 6 more

[AWDBOB]

Wow! This all sounds chaotic, but super exciting. It pays to have some good connections to get you these kinds of deals. My family is in the auction/clean-out business, so I'm always about finding a deal and jumping on it quickly. Also, you have to deal with disposing of some of the crap to get access to the good stuff. Looks like you did the same here.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the two cars you saved. Another project thread coming soon with that clean car you're storing at your buddy's?!

I thought my fly and drive, was an adventure. But after seeing this, I need to get out there and get into some more stuff like this lol.

It was super stressful at first, but after offing two of the cars and getting approval to part two on site it turned out to be a very fun adventure! If you get it right you can really lock in and catch a flow state when you're working under a tight timeframe with other very capable people and it's one of my favorite parts about the chaos.

And yes you hit the nail on the head re: removing the junk to get the good stuff. Spending a 12hr day breaking 20 years of rust loose to remove the cars from the site only to then scrap half of them to get to the good stuff is the gritty side that is hard to portray until you're the one doing it.

A fly and drive is certainly an adventure because you're handing any control you have over to the car you asked 100 questions about to someone that knows it well but is also likely used to its quirks that you have to learn on the drive home.

In a perfect world, the 87 325i sedan that I fixed up most recently in this thread would get reshelled into the clean early sedan shell from the buy. But that is a pipe dream at best. I need to get my main whip back in action!

I'd say the chaos paid off! lol

I'm assuming you made a profit?!

It definitely did! Things like this are rarely immediately profitable- typically takes a few months (sometimes years depending on how many shitboxes you buy) to get into the green on a buyout.

Since I'm only one person the conversion from a gross parts car to pulled parts clean shiny tested listed shipped sold money in the bank parts is a lot longer/more work than I assume most people expect.

Doesn’t want anymore cars……buys 6 more

TO BE FAIR I have been looking to buy another parts car now that I'm all moved out of the old shop.....but had to get rid of 4 to get the two I wanted lol.



Edit: I forgot pics from today.

I was the last one there and was pulling parts off of the 318 and wrecked 325 until I couldn't fit anything else into the Xterra.

Titanic rust 318 ready for scrap. Actually had a lot of really nice stuff on it. The rust was caused by flood damage, so everything above the Lichen was solid.

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318 lookin like johnny bravo

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uber wrecked 325 mid part out. This car got rear ended at 70mph and the driver walked away. It had some really nice parts on it as it was wrecked before winter driving turned it into dust.

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Upper heater box was perfect so I did a cowl delete for easy access

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Forgot my drill.... sawzall saved the day. No man left behind

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Before I took off for the last time

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[AWDBOB]

The cylinder in my decade old HF 3 ton developed a slow leak so I figured it was time for an upgrade.

I initially bought the low pro long reach Daytona HF jack that everyone seems to like only to find out that the body height is almost 7" (with the highest point being the zerk fitting) and it didn't fit under hoopty for a front subframe lift, despite the nose being low profile.

My old HF jack fits fine with a body height of 5 3/4".

I ended up with this Arcan A20016 2 ton, which was only 1/8" taller than the HF with a much longer reach.

Figured I'd share here in the event anyone else is jack shopping and wants to be able to lift a lowered E30 from the front sub.

Untitled by bimmertown, on Flickr