Diary of a £550 snotter

[wombat172a]

Afternoon all,

Recently I decided that I needed to get rid of my land rover and find a car which is a bit more capable of doing the motorway runs between plymouth & london. It may also be called upon to head to track when the TVR Wedge invariably doesn't work (last time I missed out on a track day at rockingham, so I don't want to miss out again).

So with the landy gone I started looking at seeing what I could get for not much money, and the shortlist basically fell to E30s E36s, and E34s. Yesterday I came across this advert on autotrader:

Autotrader Ad said:

1995 (M reg) Saloon 111,751 miles Manual 2.5L Petrol 111,751 miles, 4 Door Saloon, Petrol, Manual, mot aug 2011, sony face off cd radio, alloy wheels, all good tyres, elec sun roof, elec windows, full leather interior, clip off tow bar, central locking. £595.

Day 0:
Due to the tube strike it took me ages to get out to west drayton, which meant I had to view the car in near dark. Never a good idea I know! Also, as my insurance doesn't cover multi-car use, and the guy wasn't a dealer, I couldn't test drive it. Nor was there any service history (just the last two MOT certs). Really not ideal, but this is the bottom of the market for these cars. At least it was HPI clear, unlike one I looked at a few days before.

Anyway, after giving it a good as a look over as I could I decided that it was worth a deal. Agreed on £550 and the deed was done.

Sorted out insurance online and I'm now good to go with my new BMW 525 (my first BMW too!). All is seemingly good, but I notice the temperature guage creeping up on the motorway. Before long I've got the heaters on full to keep the guage at about 3/4ers, and I'm left wondering if I'm going to regret my decision.

(for comparison I had to buy a new camshaft kit for the wedge aswell, which was £400)


Day 1:

A couple of gratuity shots:



After a bit of research I've concluded that it's either the waterpump or thermostat playing up. So I've ordered both to be safe.

Cost of parts: £41.30 delivered.
£550 snotter running costs so far: £41.30

Hopefully they'll arrive and I can fit them before running down to Plymouth this weekend.

[Great Pretender]

I like this thread already

[J4CKO]

Hmm, 525, overheating, good luck with that one !

[laam999]

I can see this being in my "top threads of 2010".... if I had a list like that.looking forward to all the updates.

Liam

[Graebob]

Good luck man, E34's are fking fantastic motors. Even if you completely lose the engine, it'd probably only cost a couple of hundred quid and an afternoon to swap it for a good one.

[FWDRacer]

Graebob said:

Good luck man, E34's are fking fantastic motors. Even if you completely lose the engine, it'd probably only cost a couple of hundred quid and an afternoon to swap it for a good Bigger one.

EFA.

Great 550 quids worth. My old man's TDS went to the moon and back several times. Modern zimmers are a POS in comparison.

[Uwe Seeler]

A £550 car to do Plymouth to London trips?

[wombat172a]

Uwe Seeler said:

A £550 car to do Plymouth to London trips?

I used to do it regurlarly up til about two years ago, in a merc E220 (W124) that cost me £800. That machine also managed to get to the alps and back twice, as well as trips to wales->east anglia->london all in one day whilst loaded etc. Never let me down, and it's still going strong (my parents now use it daily). So that's the benchmark that I've set for this.

I may have to revise the first costs, as the parts supplier are struggling a bit.

[JFReturns]

Looking forward to updates!

[rallycross]

Should be fine my mates 525 has done 210k miles and going strong

Check the rad fan viscous coupling that might be the cause of it running hot

[declasm]

Good man - can't beat old BMWs! I agree with your reasoning, there's no reason why this £550 car won't be up to your long motorway trips (once you stop it overheating!) - my last E30 bought with 120K on the clock did another 20K in my charge with few issues (and nothing expensive)and sold for a bit more than the £700 I paid for it!

Incidentally if you find the engine problem is terminal I have an 540i for sale in the classifieds...

[Rocksteadyeddie]

Loving the value here. I will watch with interest.

[carter711]

Watching with interest!

[theironduke]

Love E34's...

First thing that springs to mind...Ronin

[soad]

Looks very tidy from the outside - what's the interior like?

Good buy me thinks.

[dannytherev]

Always liked the E34's

[matt21]

I love these, bought my 525i Touring with leather etc... for £400 with 202k. Barely anything went wrong over 28,000 miles and 2yrs and still blatting around approaching 240k.

[John.]

I had an e36 316i se payed £500 for it and sold it with 237k. It was an excellent car and once i got my brother to replace the clutch she was a dream to drive and even the air con was cold.

Good luck with the over heating. I hope you get many trouble free miles

[downthepub]

I bought a K-reg E34 525i a few years ago for 450notes, it did the overheating thing as well in heavy traffic and as mentioned above it was the viscous fan coupling. Put a bolt through the fan have it run all the time if you want to fix it on the cheap. My E34 was bought with 184K on the clock, ragged round Europe on a banger rally and then flogged with 187K to a mate in the pub for 375quid. He then ran it for eighteen months including MOT'ing it for 50quid (dam US keyboards with no pound signs!).

Top shedding.

[bob1179]

I love the E34s. A mate of mine had one on a 'K' plate and it ran like a dream (with the best part of 200,000 miles on. I had an E34 but went for the 540i instead, that was a wonderful motor, with a lot of power.

Just one thing though (I could be wrong here), your wheels look to be the 'metric' ones. Have a look at your tyres and see what the dimensions are, metric tyres cost a bloody fortune. If they are metric, you might be better off buying a second set of wheels for it in the normal imperial size.