TOURING NOW SORTED ,,,PLEASE DELETE..PLEASE DELETE.....

[thebloosman]

[PLEASE DELETE],,,,,ALL WILL BE SORTED IN DUE COURSE!! PLEASE DELETE..... WISDOM....... thank you guys for your great words of wisdom....you know who you are....cheers.

[bigwinn]

You'd be crazy to scrap it, so can that right away. Anyone who buys an e30 expecting them to be mint, even after £5k+ is at best and optimist...

You said it yourself, it's a good shell. So you have a good start point. Man up fella and get on with it, you never know, you may enjoy it!!!

Good luck

Stu

[Grrrmachine]

Took me a while to read all that...

So the gist of it is, perishable stuff has perished! If the shell's still strong and the engine still works, then get the rest of it fixed!

[pnd]

welcome to e30 ownership if the previous owner hasn't fixed everything then you will have to . if they have then they probably won't sell it as a good e30 is a joy to own. but you can get lucky i have unloaded three perfect e30's owing to outright idiocy so they do come up now and again.

[capri_rob]

You can get a very good secondhand exhaust for a lot less than £240

Manifold gaskets are very cheap - if the manifold comes off without breaking any studs its not a hard job - just nuts & bolts and new gaskets - take the manifold off - give it to a machine shop to check its flat and reface it if necessary ( just had to do this on mine - cost £35 )

Fuel gauge could be a dodgy connection to the cluster or at the sender end

Brake light will almost certainly be the switch - DIY and not expensive new.

An un-cracked dash is about £50 plus a few hours swearing to swap it over

Pick up doors as and when they come up for sale - front doors can be fitted from a 4 door saloon. Bide your time and some will come up in the right colour.

Carpets readily available as are door cards.

if it doesnt need a mig-athon the last thing you should do is scrap it - all of what youve described is fixable fairly cheaply.

[suedenim]

Eleven hundred for a runner with tax and MOT (I presume), plus mint leather! All of the things mentioned were visible at time of viewing, so right now you're feeling you went with your heart and paid too much for it? You were happy to deal with all the unhidden costs whilst doing the deal, but now have a niggling feeling of doubt whether you did the right thing. We all do it to some extent when making a major purchase. Stop worrying!!

If you haven't already, go to the wiki pages and digest as much info as you need to (take notes if you have to), you'll soon work out that these cars aren't too complicated, but well engineered and easy to work on. Many of the faults with these turds are well documented! Use the search function too, buy a manual! Even a haynes will get you out of trouble.

As mentioned, parts are available second hand. There is a huge network of traders dealing in second hand parts on here, for stuff readily available it's much cheaper/reliable than dicking around with ebay! - Adit has a set of tyres for sale iirc, most people have exhausts etc but wont always post them in sale ads, PM a trader or put up a wanted ad.

Lift your brake pedal, do the brake lights go out? If they do the pedal will just need adjusting/raising, if not, it will be an electrical issue... best ask someone else to advise!

You will get a lot of satisfaction from sorting out all the niggles yourself, it will also make owning an old car economical as garage bills can easily outweigh the cost of the cars value. If you haven't done so, go around the whole car checking for any major rust - lift the carpets, boot linings and have a good poke around underneath before spending money and time on the above.

Most of all, enjoy driving something different to all the generic, modern crap on the roads!