ChrisO

Passing along the deal that @Jdesign passed to me, I can't logistically make it work and it would cost me too much to transport and store the car from Decorah, IA
1993 M5, guy is willing to sell for $4000 obo, @Jdesign had him at $3500 and maybe he'd take less. Heres what I have gathered from chatting with the guy
Has rusty jack points but little to no body rust, paint looks decent (big dent on door) Has spark but no fuel (just replaced fuel pump) potentially a blown head gasket (because the oil looks murky to him) Has motorsport door handles, rare M-technic mirrors,  M5 throwing stars Has been sitting in a dry garage for awhile  Car is complete. My thought was this is easily a $6500-7000 part out. Would love to see someone here get a deal. Pretty sure just the mirrors, bumpers, door handles and wheels would fetch $3000 rather quickly. 
Edit: I ended up buying it 😬
 
 
 

Passing along the deal that @Jdesign passed to me, I can't logistically make it work and it would cost me too much to transport and store the car from Decorah, IA
1993 M5, guy is willing to sell for $4000 obo, @Jdesign had him at $3500 and maybe he'd take less. Heres what I have gathered from chatting with the guy
Has rusty jack points but little to no body rust, paint looks decent (big dent on door) Has spark but no fuel (just replaced fuel pump) potentially a blown head gasket (because the oil looks murky to him) Has motorsport door handles, rare M-technic mirrors,  M5 throwing stars Has been sitting in a dry garage for awhile  Car is complete. My thought was this is easily a $6500-7000 part out. Would love to see someone here get a deal. Pretty sure just the mirrors, bumpers, door handles and wheels would fetch $3000 rather quickly. 
Edit: I ended up buying it 😬
 
 
 

That was me. I never went to go look at it. It did have body damage and rust, I got additional photos as requested, and the motor was not blown, but I was told it just didnt run. The owner had no time or idea on what it would take to fix it and unfortunately he responded late to me and I bought something else. A lack of details made me skeptical about a 6 hour drive one way. It did have the rare M-Technic mirrors and some interesting parts that would make it worth buying for just those, but I passed up on the deal. I have his email still if you want to contact him, PM me.

Just hanging out waiting for parts that Mr. Pat was so kind to help me out with! 
New interior pic to try out the new phone camera.
 

why do people pay so much for evo 8/9s
im always in disbelief when I see a clapped one with 170k miles for $16.5k

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/vehicledetails.xhtml?listingId=498220671&zip=54301&referrer=%2Fcars-for-sale%2Fsearchresults.xhtml%3Fzip%3D54301%26extColorsSimple%3DYELLOW%26startYear%3D1981%26sortBy%3DderivedpriceDESC%26incremental%3Dall%26firstRecord%3D0%26marketExtension%3Don%26endYear%3D2020%26makeCodeList%3DBMW%26searchRadius%3D0&startYear=1981&numRecords=25&firstRecord=0&endYear=2020&makeCodeList=BMW&searchRadius=0&clickType=spotlight
Seems like a really good deal for only 28k miles+ a hard top and the color combo

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/vehicledetails.xhtml?listingId=498220671&zip=54301&referrer=%2Fcars-for-sale%2Fsearchresults.xhtml%3Fzip%3D54301%26extColorsSimple%3DYELLOW%26startYear%3D1981%26sortBy%3DderivedpriceDESC%26incremental%3Dall%26firstRecord%3D0%26marketExtension%3Don%26endYear%3D2020%26makeCodeList%3DBMW%26searchRadius%3D0&startYear=1981&numRecords=25&firstRecord=0&endYear=2020&makeCodeList=BMW&searchRadius=0&clickType=spotlight
Seems like a really good deal for only 28k miles+ a hard top and the color combo

My man

@snap

@snap

Make sure the exhaust burble is turned off.
 
 
It has nothing to do with your issue, but just make sure its turned off.
 
 

My point remains.

https://chicago.craigslist.org/wcl/cto/d/homer-gleni-e30-autocross-track-car/6811137265.html
It looks a little rough but it has a pretty nice list of parts (e30 m3 suspension swap, etc) 

As far as on-topic updates go, my OBC temp read-out was more accurate today than it's ever been, because it's said -40F as long as I've had the car (no sensor hooked up)

@straight6pwr also had some interesting experiences with his gauge cluster this morning per his Instagram. I for one have not set foot outside my building and don't plan to until 3:00 tomorrow when I have class.

I knew it was cold this morning because the screen on the cluster in my Passat was frozen. Never seen anything like it. Took about 30mins of heat for it to come back from the dead.

Idk y, I thought this was funny

Per request
 


Got the front bumper off and disassembled so I can fix the white paint on absolutely everything lol.
 

Story time! 

I'm laying in bed being lazy on a Sunday, browsing on Facebook. I see someone had posted an ad for a white E36 from craigslist, and I had just told myself not to buy more cars, so I shoot the guy a message 25 min after he posted the ad. The car looked clean, and the interior was cool, that's about all I knew about it. I told myself if the dude wasn't free that day I wouldn't bother, and then he texted me back saying he was free. Cool. I pick up Mike and we go look at it after pulling money from the ATM (ATM dance game) and I intentionally pulled less than he was asking, because I shouldn't be buying more cars. We show up and look at it and find things to be questionable, but largely very clean. The ad said it ran, but he could not get it running for us. This whole time the guys phone is blowing up with messages and such and he was getting annoyed, it was obvious he had owned it for quite some time and never had it working, and he had finally decided he wanted it out of his driveway. He looked at me and said "Well, make me an offer and lets make this happen". I told him that I would need to get a trailer, and didn't have access to one right then and there, so I proposed giving him half the money now and the other half when I picked it up, and I would take the title. We quickly realized that wouldn't work out safely for both of us, and he just agreed to pull the ad and take my word to show up the next day. I had offered him a large percentage less than he had it posted for and he was fine with that. I ended up being able to grab a trailer same day and went and grabbed it, he helped us get it on the trailer and load it full of the many boxes of parts that came with it. Just like that he had more space in his driveway.

Taking it off the trailer was amusing, because the thing felt the full force of the early 2000's car scene. Fully chrome headlights, clear corner markers, chrome inserts in the grilles (wrong grilles) and fully white painted trim. It was a sight for sore eyes. (sorry for the poor pictures, it was quite dark out)
 


In his ad he stated that this car was 1 of 150 ever made, which I largely passed off because I don't know E36 things and it felt like a sale tactic. I knew it had a cool interior and a motor swap. Mike alluded to the fact that the car was more special than I realized, and pointed out the BMW Motorsports door handles which I hadn't noticed while looking the car over. Shortly thereafter I ran the VIN to look at the options and posted the results here. It was a fun day of realizing what I had stumbled across without ever realizing it. 

Fast forward quite a ways and we come to this weekend, the first time I have truly put forth any effort into working on it. 
I checked for fuel pressure this weekend, because when the guy was trying to start it there would be an occasional pop or other noise, so something was happening. 
Fuel pressure checked out and the car had tried to run during the test, so without connecting the MAF I gave the key a turn and my surprise it fired up and ran butter smooth. Super weird. Plugged the MAF in while it was running and it stumbled for a second then continued to run smooth. The good news is that the motor is completely silent and is one of the healthiest sounding motors I've heard in awhile. I shut it off and tried to start it again, nothing. Unplugged the MAF, tried to start it again, nothing. Confusing. 
At this point Mike pointed out (once again) all the points for major vacuum leaks and I knew pulling the manifold off would be required to address what was going on with this OBD1 conversion. I found a handful of odd things, and tons of major sources of vacuum leaks. 

I also identified what motor is in it, and am frankly quite confused by it. The car was advertised as being S52 swapped, and the motor is indeed OBD2 with the M power cover, but upon further review I find it is an M52. I tried to peek at the back of the head to read the vin tag, but instead found a different type of paper tag. 
Just legible enough.
So either the guy that bought the engine was duped (unlikely given this tag) so when he sold it it was sold as an S52 with no quick easy way to check. 
The block has the 2.8 stamp on it for displacement so I'm certain that it is indeed an M52. 
Which brings me to the question, why the heck would you swap an M52 into a sub 100k mile car? It's an incremental power gain, and a fair bit of work. 

Anyway, someone did a bunch of dumb stuff to it and swapped parts around, so I plan to get all of that sorted out (small details) and get things like the seat sliders working again. The trunk needs some alignment help, and the car overall needs a bit of a cleaning. 
I've got new headlights, will be ordering new grilles, and am on the lookout for stock corner markers to bring this back to its original glory days. 

Until next time!

Idk y, I thought this was funny

Idk y, I thought this was funny

Idk y, I thought this was funny

mods please ban this troll

damn you got a lot done in 10 days, lookin good with the 19” arc8’s
edit: I see you brought it home in June now, still lookin good!

Wow