Shed of the Week | BMW 330i (E46) Touring
Make green great again with a Shedly slice of classic BMW
How many chickens can you fit into the back of a BMW E46 Touring? It's not a question you hear every day of the week, admittedly, but the sight of a Rhode Island Red running around the Old McDonald location of today's sub-£1500 tempter has taken Shed back to a time when you could barely hear yourself think for car cabin capacity guessing competitions. How many kids can you get into a Mini, how many footballs will fit into a caravan, how many dead squirrels go into a Ford Zodiac, that sort of thing.
Shed seems to recall that the earliest versions of these comps had an actual purpose to them. In the early days of the Beetle's US invasion, Volkswagen was very keen to show a doubting American public how many people actually could fit into it. The current Beetle record stands at twenty, but that wasn't about convincing buyers, it was university students drawing attention to human trafficking. How far 20 sweating fools would get in a Beetle in traffic is another question, though it would probably have been a bit further than three and a half tons of people would have got in this unsuspecting VW camper van.
In terms of how many chickens you'd be able to ram into an E46 Touring, the number wouldn't be that high. The 3 Series wagon was never that serious a load-carrier. It was much more a lifestyle vehicle designed to give other road users the impression that you were a thoroughbred enthusiast type who occasionally had to stoop to the level of carrying stuff. Shed says this without a trace of sarcasm, having owned an E46 Touring himself. Fact is that you could probably shove more chickens, living or otherwise, into a Mondeo hatch than you could into a Touring.
Far better to look at this Shed as a powerful Three with a funny shaped back end. Then you can concentrate on the good bits, of which there are a lot. And judging by the ad, many of those bits are quite new too. Shed's never quite sure what to think when a big schedule of works appears to have been carried out on a car. It reminds him of the bittersweet moment many years ago when he passed 60 and thereby qualified for free prescriptions. Great that his drugs were suddenly free, not so great to realise that overnight he had officially turned into an old git.
With this BMW, it's great that all this work has been done, but perhaps not so great that it all appears to have been done relatively recently. Combined with the absence of much in the way of paperwork, you come away with the impression of a car that was either starved of attention or ruthlessly beaten earlier on in its life, or both. Which raises the next question: what else might be in store?
Well, you won't have long to wait there because you'll be inheriting a few ongoing faults with this car. Cracked screen, non-functioning sunroof and rear wiper, faulty central locking, scuffed alloys, blowing exhaust, patchy paint, and an oil leak (despite the new rocker cover gasket fitted by the previous owner). None of them individual deal-breakers maybe, but enough to give you pause and make you wonder about the gap between perception and reality when it comes to 'premium' vs ordinary marques. It doesn't matter what badge a car wears, if it's been treated poorly it's going to struggle to wag its tail like a happy puppy.
To his credit the vendor does describe his 330 as imperfect. If you can take all the negatory stuff on the chin and carry on with the good maintenance/mending work, you'll be looking at a refined and big-hearted petrol six (the M54B30) with 228bhp at 5900rpm, 221lb ft of torque at 3500, a 155mph top whack, a six-second 0-60 time, and mpg figures in the low 20s in town, or around 30 overall. Road tax will be £265 a year, but insurance on a classic policy shouldn't be too ruinous.
Other stuff might be though. Problems with the VANOS variable valve timing system have been trumpeted far and wide, and Shed thinks this car has the doubled-up system, but if you ask a BMW specialist they'll tell you that VANOS failure on an M54 is rare. If you're unlucky, fixing it on an M54 will be dear. Like £3k's worth of dear.
These engines have another gadget which is called a DISA valve. DISA stands for Differenzierte Sauganlage, or differentiated intake system valve. Some folk call it an intake manifold adjusting unit. It's basically a flap that controls the length of the variable intake manifold, increasing low-rpm torque and high-rpm power. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but in a 20 year old car a swivelling flap is just another thing to go wrong. The symptoms are a rattle, a buzz, possibly a click, and maybe a woo-hoo, plus a lit SES warning light, rough idling and poor low-rpm pull. If you ignore all that lot, the ultimate symptom is engine failure. For sixty notes or less you can get DISA repair/upgrade kits that let you replace the dodgy flap and driver.
Door lock barrels, door seals, window regulators, ignition keys, thermostats and tail light circuit boards all blow. Seatbelts squeak. If the airbag light stays on, it might just be a faulty passenger occupancy sensor, which can be cheaply bypassed. Driveshaft 'flex disc' failure can rip up the diff. Leaks from the diff are often output shaft seals, which are inexpensive to replace. Rear springs snap on the bottom coils, the top rear suspension mounts get stressed, front and back subframe bushes go. Floors crack around the subframe mounts.
The oil filter gasket hardens up and leaks, and the crankcase vent valve can fail. Either of these could explain the wetness on this engine. The PCV problem can also cause sludging. The coolant system can go in any number of places, and by the looks of it this car has suffered mightily from that as the entire system seems to have been replaced.
Shed thinks that the colour of this one might be Boston Green, but he's made wild claims like this before and lived to regret it. Please pop your own opinions and knowledge nuggets in the usual place. The MOT runs to next July and mentions a couple of light nicks to both front tyres, along with the aforementioned oil leak and exhaust blow. It doesn't mention rust, which is unusual. Wings, arches and jacking points are all vulnerable areas on E46s. So, the big question: how many people will fit into a 330 Touring? Well, it depends on the people. If it's Mrs Shed you're talking about, just the one. And even then only if you lie down both front seat backs.
The SOTW story in general should be scrapped. Canned. Binned. Fininto.
Old, previously premium expensive cars are simply s
te at this price point. Spend the extra cash and have a FMDSH example that's been looked after perfectly.Alternatively, hand over the hundreds of notes per month that you would pay in maintenance anyway to the finance company and have a actually nice to drive car on PCP.
Part of the fun of buying something of this ilk is feeling you've turned the clock back and wafting along full of satisfaction knowing you paid next to nothing.
Then you look at all the things that don't work and the fuel consumption and as stated the money pit it's likely to become. doesn't make much sense as a daily nor a weekend 'toy' in this overall condition.
The SOTW story in general should be scrapped. Canned. Binned. Fininto.
Old, previously premium expensive cars are simply s
te at this price point. Spend the extra cash and have a FMDSH example that's been looked after perfectly.Alternatively, hand over the hundreds of notes per month that you would pay in maintenance anyway to the finance company and have a actually nice to drive car on PCP.
Old, previously premium expensive cars are simply s
te at this price point. Spend the extra cash and have a FMDSH example that's been looked after perfectly.Old "premium" cars are not for everyone, and ideally you need strong mechanic skills, plenty of free time at weekends, and more than one car in your fleet in order to enjoy the experience. Just because it doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean SOTW should be scrapped.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=17...
I've got a 328 Touring (£1,200 on eBay with 92k). Beyond servicing, only problem has been the hedgehog (heater fan resistor - cheap component, absolute sod to get at). Fab cars, much prefer them to the subsequent ones.
7 years later and another now 50k, I'm looking for a 330 manual (has to be London ULEZ compliant, which is about post-2002) and having real trouble finding one. May have to go for a E46 330 convertible instead (kids now old enough to take the train and the cat can lump it)
On your point though, yes chuck away hundreds a month on the never-never and you could have something reliable with ice-cold air con. Or you could gamble on something interesting and you may get lucky and not have to spend much at all. Or it becomes a money pit and you can sell it on and make a small loss.
The missus spent over 30k on a brand new Q3 which is fine as it’s her money and it’s a nice car. If it had have been me, I’d have spent 3k on an XJ6, 7k on an E46 M3, both of those are at the danger end of the spectrum, but I’d have 2 really fun cars and 20 grand in the bank.
- Rust - mine was limited to the arches (all of them to some degree)
- Gearstick wouldn't centre (on the plus side it was the manual, not the slusher of today's SOTW)
- Suspension components - it was very needy, just like the Alfa 156 that preceded it
- Airbag light - of course sir. Like all of them, mine was the passenger seat occupation sensor, so it got bypassed. I learned BMW coding afterwards, which would have been the better solution (you code out the sensor, then code out the seat belt reminder)
- Erratic idle (as mentioned in the article) - good luck sorting it. Mine had a split intake hose, every vacuum pipe crumbled as I touched it, so everything was replaced. Those caps around the back of the manifold - replaced them. Idle control valve - replaced it, including the grommit it sits in. Oil seperator - replaced it. Vanos rebuilt with new seals - check (not thousands as per the article, just google Mr Vanos). Exhaust camshaft sensor - check. Even the DISA valve. It's actually rarely the DISA valve that's borked. OK, it was a lit better by the time I finished, but there was always some hesitancy there, right to the bitter 2 stroke end. Which leads me on to...
- Oil consumption - I was throwing a litre into it every 500 miles in the end
- Cooling system - the bottom of the bowed radiator crumbled, luckily not far from home, so it got a new radiator. A week later the expansion tank decided it too would split, dumping that new coolant in the work car park. A month or so later, the water pump said 'I'm out' too. And they were a pig to bleed properly every time (nose of the car as high in the air as possible for it to burp out any air locks)
Lastly I'm not sure the Touring floors were as susceptible to being torn by the rear subframe as the saloon & coupe - I'm sure someone will know more than me (many do).
or would you rather the mods policed thoughts like Mr Charrington in the novel 1984?I've owned plenty of old cars, and each time I buy I convince myself they're worth it. In the end it's just headache after headache. Ask yourself this.. Why have they depreciated so much? Why is every car buyer not grabbing these apparent jewels?
Why would it require to be worked on by a specialist? It's a BMW, it's not a Bugatti Chiron... it's not even an M car FFS. Most mechanics will have worked on loads of them and they're not beyond the skills of a relatively competent home mechanic.
Cheap lease or PCP is what, £3k in the first year at the least? So you could buy this, have it blow up, buy another shed, have that blow up, buy another and would still only be in it as much as you'd paid for a f
king boring diesel A class.You win some, you lose some. That's the joy of shedding.
Why would it require to be worked on by a specialist? It's a BMW, it's not a Bugatti Chiron... it's not even an M car FFS. Most mechanics will have worked on loads of them and they're not beyond the skills of a relatively competent home mechanic.
Cheap lease or PCP is what, £3k in the first year at the least? So you could buy this, have it blow up, buy another shed, have that blow up, buy another and would still only be in it as much as you'd paid for a f
king boring diesel A class.You win some, you lose some. That's the joy of shedding.
SOTW is a weekly highlight, for most of us. I'm lucky in that 0- at the moment - I can afford to run cars that are not SOTW material, but you never know what's around the corner and I always imagine a "What if...?" scenario where I get made redundant or some such, and have to return to shedding, so I occasionally trawl through the Classifieds. (Don't tell the OH, but I secretly long for a return to shedding...)
I wouldn't buy this though. While trawling I found a Saab 9-5 Aero Estate which is bigger, as quick, newer and a manual. I'd buy that.
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