help me decide. ship car here or just the good parts.

[87-325ic]

Hello R3v.
I need some advice, opinion, help on somethjng.
My old e30 got flooded, it was underwater for over a day. Its in North Carolina. It has tons of good parts on it, some worse than others now. Its a convertible.
I just picked up a new e30, a 325e coupe. It has lots of potential, lets put it that way. I live in colorado with it now.

Heres my delimma. I wanted to ship the old flooded vert out here, strip what I want, and part out the rest. Now I am thinking of stripping parts back in NC and sending them here.
Some pros and cons. The cost to ship the vert out is just over $1000. I could put that money towards the eta now. I dont really want to store the vert here for too long nor do i have much space to keep it. I dont have anyone back home that can take parts off for me. It can stay at home in NC for years with now worries. I could store more parts there for longer.

What would you do? how well do convertibles part out?

Things i want from vert. motor (i top end swap). Transmission as a spare, 3.73 lsd. 95 m3 steering rack. All pretty new hoses, sensors, etc. Springs and shocks.
Once i take the parts i want off, itll barely be a rolling chassis.

I did want to ship it here and swap it all. Then rid myself of the vert, while keeping some parts. Now i want to keep it there, where i can actually store all the spare pieces, and send all the good parts out here..

Obvioisly i cant make up my mind. Please help advise me.

[nrubenstein]

Will you be driving from NC to CO, or will you have to ship all that stuff anyway?

[exhaust]

I ship a lot of parts of smaller parts (biggest has been an LSD) and am good friends with a shop that ships a lot of larger parts. Shipping over a drive train alone would be upwards of $600-700. (Don't forget things like the driveshaft) Than you still have all the smaller parts.

I'd ship it over and part the vert of and try to sell the shell as fast as possible. Look around for cheaper shipping options too if you can.

[djjerme]

Complete M30, plus driveline, exhaust and everything else in a crate was only 300 from Virginia to Oregon. If you get in a crate and go from dock to dock it's not that expensive. But if you are just trying to make money, it's probably way more trouble and overhead then it's worth.

[87-325ic]

Will you be driving from NC to CO, or will you have to ship all that stuff anyway?

I thought about driving.. but its cheaper to fly. By a lot. Airfare and shipping a pallet seems to still be way cheaper than shipping the vehicle.

A quick look at others costs on uship and it seems reasonable to get a pallet sent for under 500. I forgot to add the headers and full exhaust to the list of parts.
I do want to keep a lot of parts from the car, but not necessarily here (because im renting and may move to a different living situation at some point.)

[GT BMW E30]

It was under water for a day...... Not to mention the days passing. Not to many parts will be salvageable.

[Stanley Rockafella]

junk it

not like it's anything special like an e30 m3 vert

[87-325ic]

Yeah, but i like to think of it as an extended dirty water rinsing.

Id imagine nothing is wrong with things like, the shifter, door handles, window seals, intake manifold, etc etc.

What i really want from it is: top end of the I engine, headers, exhaust, steering rack, headlights, grill, lsd. and springs, shocks, mounts, control arms..
Do you really think these are ruined by water?

[mr2peak]

Probably a really good idea to rebuild everything on the car. Probably a bit of water in the diff, etc. Good parts are there, but it's going to take work.

Shipping the whole car will probably save money

[ForcedFirebird]

I ship a lot of parts of smaller parts (biggest has been an LSD) and am good friends with a shop that ships a lot of larger parts. Shipping over a drive train alone would be upwards of $600-700. (Don't forget things like the driveshaft) Than you still have all the smaller parts.

I'd ship it over and part the vert of and try to sell the shell as fast as possible. Look around for cheaper shipping options too if you can.

$6-700 is very high honestly. If you freight a lot, look into an LTL broker. It cost us $800 to ship 5 pallets from Miami to Indianapolis, and that was with a lift gate in Indy. One had a Bridgeport milling machine on it (~2k lbs), one was light boxes, the rest were 6-800lbs each. Now, just one pallet to the same location was $3xx, so it seems if you double your LTL size, doesn't mean the price will double. Last year I shipped a rebuilt engine to NJ and it was $325 (3x3x3 boxed), roll cage kit to NY (4'x1'x6' boxed) and it was something like $200.

87-325ic, now on the other hand we shipped an e30 from Miami to Indy and it was $600 on an open carrier. Might be easiest to just ship the whole car in your case. I do know they charge more if the car can't pull on the trailer under it's own power, but might be worth looking around if you have that kind of value in parts on it.

[87-325ic]

$6-700 is very high honestly. If you freight a lot, look into an LTL broker. It cost us $800 to ship 5 pallets from Miami to Indianapolis, and that was with a lift gate in Indy. One had a Bridgeport milling machine on it (~2k lbs), one was light boxes, the rest were 6-800lbs each. Now, just one pallet to the same location was $3xx, so it seems if you double your LTL size, doesn't mean the price will double. Last year I shipped a rebuilt engine to NJ and it was $325 (3x3x3 boxed), roll cage kit to NY (4'x1'x6' boxed) and it was something like $200.

87-325ic, now on the other hand we shipped an e30 from Miami to Indy and it was $600 on an open carrier. Might be easiest to just ship the whole car in your case. I do know they charge more if the car can't pull on the trailer under it's own power, but might be worth looking around if you have that kind of value in parts on it.

Thanks for the response. this is the same dilemma I was pondering.
shipping the whole thing, open carrier, inoperable, i got quotes from 700-1500. Its been on the truck dispatch market for a week or two now, for 900, and there have been no repsonses. 1000 was offered, but I wanted to wait til something cheaper might happen.
In this time I got to thinking about my current idea.. Should I just wait, strip the parts I want back home, with a family visit thrown in, and send what i really want out here. Also, that lets me store the vert chassis somewhere. so when i want some random connector, brake hard line, or power steering pump, or something random.. i have a decent spare stored.
that also lets me spend money on the eta in the driveway now. and maybe i'll save a few hundred too, because shipping pallets looked real cheap. relatively.

The big this i realized, is i dont want a spare chassis sitting at the place i currently live.

And, i also want to get parts off the vert sooner than later, so it wont sit any longer.but i cant really fly back to nc to strip this thing right now either.

yeah. first world problems.

[kid8]

I recently had a car shipped with uShip that I won on ebay. It cost around $560 to get to me. The company on uship wasn't event the ones who shipped it, they just brokered the load out to another carrier and kept a large chunk of money as a fee. They had great ratings on the site, but they were honestly pretty awful and had no communication with me what so ever. The actual carrier was great though. Also, they only paid the shipper $315 for the load for 850 miles.

If you're not in a rush to get it, I'd call around to local carriers in CO or NC and see if you can't get a much cheaper rate on shipping the entire car to you. I would have done this myself if I wasn't under a timeline to get the car picked up from the seller.

[flyboyx]

Yeah, but i like to think of it as an extended dirty water rinsing.

Id imagine nothing is wrong with things like, the shifter, door handles, window seals, intake manifold, etc etc.

What i really want from it is: top end of the I engine, headers, exhaust, steering rack, headlights, grill, lsd. and springs, shocks, mounts, control arms..
Do you really think these are ruined by water?

Did you drain all the fluids after it flooded? How deep did the water go? Was it salt or fresh water? If it got as high as the top of the dif and you didn't flush it, I would assume it's no good unless proven otherwise.

[varg]

It was under water for a day...... Not to mention the days passing. Not to many parts will be salvageable.

As long as it wasn't salt water just about everything that isn't electronic should still be plenty usable. Assuming the engine had been run relatively recently just about everything inside would have an oily coating, preventing rust. At the worst there would be rust in the bores, but probably not severe enough to trash the block, maybe not even severe enough to warrant a rebuild if the water was drained before too long. Same with the transmission and differential. Sure the soft parts of the interior and the cluster, ecu, afm, etc. are trash, but everything he mentioned wanting to pull will be just fine.

[87-325ic]

haha.. water as high as the top of the diff. The car was Under 10 feet of water. a facking submarine. Part of me wants to chop it up into a submarine styled LeMons car.

It was being started and moved around every month or so before the flooding.
My dad had some neighbor "mechanic" drain all the fluids a few days later, and i think he put kerosene in the crankcase, etc.. I think that was done to "dry it out". I'm not 100% sure. I went home for christmas and saw it, and was surprised that everything wasnt soggy and rotten inside, and so I got some hope for it.
It looked like the guy even pulled the boots on the steering rack to drain those.. That tells me that mayybe he did a thorough job..

i think it needs to be gone through more, with new fluids, and have everything turned over by hand, then drained and refilled.

I have been unable to get to it to do anything with it.