This true story will make you weep... E30 M3 3.2 Conversion

[buster]

Hello,
Ive done all the work myself,appart from getting the prop done at reco prop.Ian Haynes (Ian332isport) supplied me with all the information i needed and also the electrical info.

I haven't tried the original airbox as it wouldn't clear the brake servo.I chopped a small amount out of the standard airbox and was going to TiG it back up but got hold of this carbon one instead which cleared the servo.

[MFree]

Buster - well as the airbox has been a subject of debate of late so Im very eager to see how it performs... but have you got any kind of baseline to compare it with? I mean have you run the engine before now and if so, with what airbox?

So could you let me know ASAP how it works and if it does well could you let me know where you can get that from new?? i cant see there being a big market for them given the small number of S50 engined E30's i would have thought, but in any case I'd like to know some more about it if possible...?

Cheers

///MFree...

[powerone]

I do hope this finally gets finished, its the longest project ever.

[MFree]

YOU




ME




...and the other 60million inhabitants of the UK who probably know about this project too!

[fuzzy]

do you have an expected finishing date.....or year

[Kos]

do you have an expected finishing date.....or year

depend how far he takes it, it could be ready quite soon if aspects of the car are left un touched ie brakes and interior but i think rob wants them all sorted and the car be "complete" with nothing on the "to do " list" !!

[MFree]

Kos is right, i am having it ALL sorted hook line and sinker! No maybes or in nearly's this time around!

Ok so you've all been wanting to see photos of exactly what state John / Zoom left the car in and what's left to do for ages right? Well finally i have some! Despite the fact that John Moffat dissapeared into the ether owing me Ԛ£500 CASH that i lent him so that he could literally eat and buy petrol as he had no money prior to his mum selling her house and giving him a sum (which is how he ran Zoom basically, on donated family money which is why when that money ran out he was incapable of operating it as a proper gong concern and hence why it went belly up owing lots of now very angry people money! I also committed a Ԛ£1000.00 to auditing my company accounts so that they would be ready for him to relaunch his business within (am i mad or what?) and in addition of the Ԛ£1500 i paid him for the exhaust and intake systems for the car and got just the exhaust manifold and the unusable intake airbox (no exhaust system), on top of this, despite assuring me that he would not charge me for the labour on my car due to it all going so pear shaped and taking 1 year to get to this point, i then offered to rebuild his website in exchange for the labour which i did 70% of for him as well as spending a further Ԛ£200 on Web domain, email server etc, but after i got the car back finally he then told me that he owed me nothing because he had done so much work on the car without being paid for it! (on top of stating he wouldnt charge me for that AND my exchanging my labour, he never specified a figure either so its just more of (what i didnt realise was so prevalent while i defended him in this very thread) the constant stream of half-truths, outright lies and bullshit that came out of the guys mouth!)

So given this, i guess you are all eager to see the amazing work that despite his waving the labour charges, agreeing to exchange that for my labour on the website, then going back on his word totally and blanking all attempts to talk to him, he carried out on my car! First lets look at the brakes he refitted:



Take note of the amazingly well shaped brake lines that look like they were fitted by someone with Parkinsons syndrome (there is a better shot but i dont have it).

Next, remember the corrosion holes caused by sitting around in damp places with a leaky windscreen seal for years, that were welded up by John in the floor and inner wings? Well i dont know if you all agree but to my eye it does look suspiciously like they still exist!



Finally the complete lack of any bulkhead insulation which would have meant that the exhaust manifold would have rapidly cooked the paintwork within hours! When i pointed this out (in one of our last conversations, he replied "You never said that you wanted any insulation!?" - like its my job as the customer to a) notice it had been removed and b) tell him to replace something which is essential and should not be up for discussion or debate!! Its amazing that despite designing the manifold himself, he didnt see how close it was to the inner wing below and hence realise what would happen when it got hot!!!???



Anyway, this update began with a 'despite' - it did, and for good reason, because had John not turned out to be a flaky, immature little boy with zero understanding of how a business should operate and not a moral bone in his body (when someone totally bails you out you don't refuse to even repay the loan in response let alone lie about work you did on the car!) then i would never have gone to CPC and met Phil Crouch. Now, not only is Phil the only educated person who talks in words of more than one syllable that i have met in the motor trade, he also has a great dedication to his work, fastidious attention to detail and a great sense of humor to boot! Seeing that he too needed a Website and general assistance in my area of expertise, namely marketing and media, I have adapted the Website i built for Zoom for CPC which he really likes and has made very credible and useful input into already. So far he has been increadibly straightforward about the work to be done and made a great impression overall. In addition, we discovered that we both share similar aspirations in motorsport, me to return after over a decade of absence from competition and him to broaden CPC's business into the area of race car construction, preparation and tuning. As such, I have decided to work with CPC to prepare an E36 M3 for next years BMW Championship (we can only assume that it will still be sponsored by Kuhmo tyres by then) and Phil will run the car out of his workshop.

So really, although i could have done without being swindled in such a low-life kind of way out of Ԛ£1400 in total (thats just the cash) and getting such poor work done on the car, it did bring me to CPC and hence will bring my M3 project to a perfect conclusion and also allow me to go racing again next year, none of which would have happened had John Moffat not been the total plank of wood that he turned out to be!

As you can see from the photos, the engine came out today and in addition to the holes in the inner wing and floor being welded up on thursday and the bulkhead insulation being fitted to the engine bay after that, Phil is also going to do the best he can to clean the engine up properly, as like every other job John / Zoom botched up, he didnt even attempt to remove the oil and grime from the aluminium components, never mind the corrosion beneath!! Appalling sense of judgement right? How can you get this clean and beautifully painted shell back and then proceed to dump a filthy dirty engine back into it which could so easily be cleaned and made to look good? Amazing - but I guess understandable as John was in a kind of nervous breakdown which ended up with him struggling to leave his bed or the house by the time i took the car back! So, this is where the project is now.

I have also built a really useful Customer Intranet facility for CPC's new website that basically allow customers to login and see updates on their car as its being worked on, incuding photos, by the end this has created a complete diary for the project which also shows how a professional and well organised garage like CPC can properly specify the requirements and development stages for a project and then proceed to stick to that schedule and provide ongoing documentation of that process working, giving me the customer huge confidence and ability to relax, as opposed to most garages who just pluck a total price out of the air and then you dont see anything until the end where the quotation has usually swelled by 50% and as you had no input along the way unless you literally harassed the garage continually, there is every chance that the work has not met your expectations because the requirements for the project were never signed off as part of a legally binding contract like that which I have with CPC!!! I know it sounds like im climbing up their ass, but honestly, its just that the way CPC work is such a departure from EVERY other specialist ive encountered over the years (and thats ALOT!!) and so sensibly structured and open in approach, that I cant help but rave about them! I wouldnt at this early stage already be agreeing to spend nearly Ԛ£20,000 on building a race car next if I wasn't 100% convinced by the CPC way!!!

Here are a few more photos from today at CPC showing the engine coming out...



and JUST what is left to do inside...!!!

[maxfield]

You still have alot to do after al this time.

[Demlotcrew]

You still have alot to do after al this time.

[MFree]

true... but technically false, as *I* haven't got anything to do but source a few parts that are missing and hopefully choose some new seats when Kos buys my red ones! It's all down to Phil and assistant Mark to wield their magic now!

- eeOh

Later...

MFree...

[Morat]

This thread scares me.

[Demlotcrew]

true... but technically false, as *I* haven't got anything to do but source a few parts that are missing and hopefully choose some new seats when Kos buys my red ones! It's all down to Phil and assistant Mark to wield their magic now!

- eeOh

Later...

MFree...

Yeah YOU dont have anything to do, but Phil has so much work ahead of him!

Andrew

[MFree]

Phil is using the standard airbox instead of ZOoms one but as you can see from the photo has had to cut away part of it to fit it around the brake servo...

can somone ask Ian332i to PM me or email me at robsethsmith@yahoo.co.uk to tell me how he managed to retain the standard airbox successfully?

Cheers

Rob



[/img]

[H35-IAN]

rob m8 fair play lol uve gone thru hell and back there!! you got johns number i havnt spoke to him for a long time now sounds like hes having a tough time m8! and you i kno well good luck .

[Demlotcrew]

how he managed to retain the standard airbox successfully?

He did away with the Air Servo and fitted a hydraulic servo in its place which releases the space needed for the plenum.

Andrew

[cpc]

I believe Ian has used the power brake unit from an E28 5 series - lots more pipework and of course we need to install the infamous booster sphere and valve somewhere.

W'ere going to see what effect the manifold cut in has on running underload with a 4 gas analyser down each exhaust port

Then we'll see if it leans off on no 6 .....

[ian332isport]

I believe Ian has used the power brake unit from an E28 5 series - lots more pipework and of course we need to install the infamous booster sphere and valve somewhere.

It was actually from an E23 7 series, but yeah, it's the hydraulic booster system.

Even with this, I had to modify the plenum. The entire front face was removed and fitted approx 20mm further inwards. The mounting flange for the rubber intake boot was also moved forwards by approx 35mm. This was all required to get the rubber intake boot to clear the end of the master cylinder.

If you need any pictures or other info, let me know.

Ian.

[Toby_Unna]

Anyway, this update began with a 'despite' - it did, and for good reason, because had John not turned out to be a flaky, immature little boy with zero understanding of how a business should operate and not a moral bone in his body (when someone totally bails you out you don't refuse to even repay the loan in response let alone lie about work you did on the car!) then i would never have gone to CPC and met Phil Crouch. Now, not only is Phil the only educated person who talks in words of more than one syllable that i have met in the motor trade, he also has a great dedication to his work, fastidious attention to detail and a great sense of humor to boot! Seeing that he too needed a Website and general assistance in my area of expertise, namely marketing and media, I have adapted the Website i built for Zoom for CPC which he really likes and has made very credible and useful input into already. So far he has been increadibly straightforward about the work to be done and made a great impression overall. In addition, we discovered that we both share similar aspirations in motorsport, me to return after over a decade of absence from competition and him to broaden CPC's business into the area of race car construction, preparation and tuning. As such, I have decided to work with CPC to prepare an E36 M3 for next years BMW Championship (we can only assume that it will still be sponsored by Kuhmo tyres by then) and Phil will run the car out of his workshop.

deja vu?

suffice to say John at Zoom Motorsport is the most enthusiastic and skilled mechanic/engineer i think i have ever met - if commitment, dedication to quality and sheer enjoyment of his cars and work counted for power, he'd be the next prime minister! He's gonna treat the car with the dedication and attitude he bestows on his own cars (WOW! - and his M Coupe - talk about BooooYakaSHaaaaaR or wot!??!?)

this is seriously never going to end is it.

[Kos]

Anyway, this update began with a 'despite' - it did, and for good reason, because had John not turned out to be a flaky, immature little boy with zero understanding of how a business should operate and not a moral bone in his body (when someone totally bails you out you don't refuse to even repay the loan in response let alone lie about work you did on the car!) then i would never have gone to CPC and met Phil Crouch. Now, not only is Phil the only educated person who talks in words of more than one syllable that i have met in the motor trade, he also has a great dedication to his work, fastidious attention to detail and a great sense of humor to boot! Seeing that he too needed a Website and general assistance in my area of expertise, namely marketing and media, I have adapted the Website i built for Zoom for CPC which he really likes and has made very credible and useful input into already. So far he has been increadibly straightforward about the work to be done and made a great impression overall. In addition, we discovered that we both share similar aspirations in motorsport, me to return after over a decade of absence from competition and him to broaden CPC's business into the area of race car construction, preparation and tuning. As such, I have decided to work with CPC to prepare an E36 M3 for next years BMW Championship (we can only assume that it will still be sponsored by Kuhmo tyres by then) and Phil will run the car out of his workshop.

deja vu?

suffice to say John at Zoom Motorsport is the most enthusiastic and skilled mechanic/engineer i think i have ever met - if commitment, dedication to quality and sheer enjoyment of his cars and work counted for power, he'd be the next prime minister! He's gonna treat the car with the dedication and attitude he bestows on his own cars (WOW! - and his M Coupe - talk about BooooYakaSHaaaaaR or wot!??!?)

this is seriously never going to end is it.

simlar statement, but they are 2 very diferent people. phil puts his customers first. i had a choice a while back of who to give my car to to get done, zoom/john moffat or cpc/ phil crouch and i chose phil, no out side influence, john never had the energy to call me back and try and take my money. his skill is immence but cannot organise himself, phil can the reason people when to john for work as rob did is he got lot of exposure from various magazines and the work he has done on s50/52 engines is immense (his s52 produced 410bhp NA!!!) and he developed a "kit" for the engine to bolt in to an e30. with that reputation would you not have been tempted???

[johnono]

i think its not a realistic project this its been such a drain on your pocket mfree, why dont u put it on pause until u can "successfully" complete the task.

also the floorpan looks a bit dodgy, are u sure the overall shell is going to be worth the investment?

ive been following this one from the start also,and im gutted for u mate, after all the rip offs, delays and waffling it seems as though u are being taken for a ride geez.

what exactly has been done and what have u got left to do?

This is not a dig fella, more an expresion of fustration on your part.

[MFree]

wo wo wo...

Ok look ill take these one at a time as you are all coming from different angles...

Johnono - Of course its been a nightmare, and to all of you ho of course dont get to go through it, so dont get to sense what people are like, get to know them, watch them change and all this affect the project - but I learn, if you dont learn from your knocks then you are just a masochist right? Kos is spot on, but thats because he's the man that lead me to CPC! Thats because he too knows Phil...

And not im gonna bring you in Toby...

thats harsh mate dont you think? You are spot on though with the deja vu comment, its natural and i was even explicitly clear to phil at CPC that this was my intention/hope - the obvious deja vu is because before I met John and now in this situation, I wanted my car finished properly with class and skill and if that works out then to see if that person also has the skills to get my racing going again, the capability to prepare and setup a winnig car, but not an established team as its too costly for me and i relish the challenge of using my own past experience in racing to make it quick! So its to be expected this deja, encouraged even I think if as i just said to Johnonono, one learns from ones mistakes! John turned out to be nothing like Phil! He was mixed up impulsive boy with no business skills! I was really trying to help him and put myself out there for him but I couldnt just witness him imploding with everything he touched! I could see it was a dead duck and had to get my car out! Phil and CPC itself is as different as chalk and cheese (which ARE pretty different tho if you think of Camembert cheese, the outside is quite chalky isnt it in a funny kind of way? So the 'sayings' board of the UK should change that to "as different as chalk and a supermarine spitfire" right?

Its also not like i EVER contemplated this with any of the other "specialists" who have had their mits on this project, Stratos, Life, GTS, anyone! And by this i mean being confident enough to ask them to prepare and setup a race car program !

:::AND::: that brings me onto Phil and CPC. All i can say is this, there's no point in stalling or pausing (Johnono) now, as finally someone sensible is working on my car! But the only real way, after this thread has worked its magic of draining your hope, frustrating and annoying you ("This thread scares me..." was a recent one wasn't it?!), you all really have to SEE it to belive it... as do i guys, as do i!

So... Phil is really pulling his finger out now and although he wont want to conduct this project totally transparently in the public domain like a soap opera (every man needs his private contemplative time with his project if his project is his passion...) I am using his very useful (i think) Customer Intranet facility on the soon-to-be-launched website which allows CPC to collect together (in a kind of 'more sophisitcated blog' style) all CPC's updates for each stage of the project to me, im automatically emailed when they have reached a milestone on the project, its a cool system and means when completed to these stages and timescales, it can then be seen in the featured cars section which is like the beauty parade of cool cars CPC have converted! Each update contains multiple images too contributing to a properly explained specification of this conversion, so when in Featured Cars, basically aimed at anyone out there who is maybe contemplating a conversion that CPC have done, they can see how CPC works and what a quality conversion that is! With all the scoundrals and outright crooks out there (im the expert right!) im glad someone honest and capable and not expensive like Phil is showing off what he can do to the world! Can you imagine if he had been around 5 years ago on the web, i could have saved Ԛ£10k, 5 years and all that fun with the car! I wish he had been! Yeah where ere you then Phil huh?

So anyway back to this, other than the paintwork, you can all see that my car has become for the 3rd time in total now, a total build again from the ground up... largely because the small number of things done at Zoom after the paintjob were done wrong or badly! This is what Kos is hinting at about the way CPC work...

Keep the faith everyone, just be neutral or positive - no point in yaa boo isn't this is bag-o-shiiiite type stuff now - though there's nowt we can do - its all up to Phil and we'll just sit back and admire the view - D E A L ???

Wick Head.

Faldereee, Falderar...

FaldereeeeeeeH! FALDER AH-HAA-HAA-HAA-HA-HAAAAAR!

: : : : MFree : : : :

[bootyman]

I hear where you're coming from Mfree, but i'll get my baseball bat out anyway. Just in case

[buster]

Phil is using the standard airbox instead of ZOoms one but as you can see from the photo has had to cut away part of it to fit it around the brake servo...

can somone ask Ian332i to PM me or email me at robsethsmith@yahoo.co.uk to tell me how he managed to retain the standard airbox successfully?

Cheers

Rob



[/img]

Before i fitted the carbon fibre airbox to mine i used a mk 2 golf servo.Its smaller but thicker than the e30 one.Therefore only a small amount of metal needed to be removed.I think maybe you should have done that instead of cutting all that out of the plenum.I took about a 1" wide by 2.5" long piece out of the corner.Also,when i fitted the carbon plenum i noticed the servo was still really close so i moved the servo over on the bulkhead by 0.5" to give more clearance.If i fit the standard plenum back on, it would have cleared without cutting and because i used the shorter audi mastercylinder it cleared the rubber boot on the side of the airbox.


Heres a pic of the old plenum,which has been cut and before i shifted the servo over:




cheers
andy

[MFree]

Ben - keep it for baseball mate! There isn't even a 1% chance of history repeating itself here with CPC - as i said in my last post, none of you can be as reassured as i am because you are not in direct contact with CPC and seeing what they are doing - but its just a question of trusting my judgement - Phil is really motoring on the car now, he's sending one of the front suspension legs complete to someone who is going to find a flavour of AP brake caliper that fits behind my Schnitzer wheels, which is great and although expensive and that ive already spent loads on the original Brembo items that Kos now has, its worth the expenditure Im sure of that, because im not going to cruise in the car, its gonna be driven hard and im sure that anyone who's experienced it for themselves will agree, severe brake fade is a frightening experience and i really dont want to end up crashing head-on into something due to this! The original M3 brakes are not all that great anyway but with the heavier front-end on my car and much increased speed possibilities, its highly likely that the standard brakes will simply not be able to cope and after a couple of hard stops from speed within 30 seconds to a minute of each other will i think, total the brakes! So we will see what this guy comes up with; they are gonna be 4-pots not 6-pots as the 6-pots we know wont fit, but something like 300-325mm discs with hefty 4-pots will do the job im sure of that!

Buster - about the airbox and brakes master cylinder issue, What Phil is doing is trying to come up with a mod (the cut-out corner at cylinver number 6 in the photos) which will allow someone doing the S50 conversion who wants to leave the brakes unchanged to fit the airbox with no fouling issues. With my car, we are going to use a Mercedes 190 master cylinder which is much shorter and will allow us to use the normal airbox unaltered, so all he's going to be doing is testing the modified one against the normal one on my car to see if it works ok so he will know if he can in future cases,

I will post some new photos of the suspension on the car later, as ive talked alot about them but no-one on the Zone has seen them yet! And they are gorgeous to behold!

MFree

P.s - Buster can you please re-size that huge photo of the master cylinder because its messing up the page layout making it way too wide to fit in the brower!!! Cheers.

[jonb]

m-free

those pictures are a sight for sore eyes. isnt it time to give up? most of the jacking points and floorplan has gone walkies.

the car wont be worth 20% of what youve spent once finished.

[MFree]

jonb - what on EARTH are you talking about? Theres nothing wrong with the floor other than the one hole that was today welded up!!!

Listen pal, if you havent got anything sensible or positive to say then dont say anything ok? REally this makes me really angry, as i have been depressed about the project at many points when i was being stalled by Zoom and others or had no one to finish it for me and hence no idea of when it might come together... so if ANYONE has the right to be negative about this its ME having gone through what i have with this project, and if i did GIVE UP then id have the prospect of a lengthy process to recoup money via the selling of the valuable parts.. not something id relish and ragardless of that, i really have to disagree with you, we have EVERY part we need to complete the car but the exhaust, all the parts we do have are all virtually new or new and the shell other than these minor welding issues has a Ԛ£2000 paint job which is SUPERB! So why on earth would i consider giving up? the car will be arguably worth in excess of Ԛ£10,000 when finished on the basis that there are for FOR SURE Ԛ£7000 in parts other than the shell... also again you are just factually incorrect in your statement about the value - I will have spent Ԛ£28,000 by the end of this process and the car i think is worth Ԛ£12,000 - it MAY be worth a bit less but for sure Im not about to sell a car with this spec which has 80% new parts for less than the price of an A1 Evo II M3 or an E36 Evo M3 in similar condition, i dont see why i should!! So, 20% of that would be Ԛ£5600 and no-one no matter WHO they are or what they think would value my car at that given that the wheels are worth Ԛ£1000.00 the new carbon parts Ԛ£1000.00 the engine and box Ԛ£2000.00 minimum, the suspension Ԛ£2000.00 as its also brand new etc etc - that already exceeds 20% so im sorry but you are just whistling in the wind there mate...

You may be a quitter... IM NOT! Seeing this project through to its conclusion for sure has required a large degree of character - something you obviously lack.



MFree

[charlE30]

I will have spent Ԛ£28,000 by the end of this

You have PM...........

[MFree]

CharlE30 - Ive replied to your message - its ok now.

Cheers

MFree

[will325is]

Man I just read most of that and feeling really sorry for you that is unbeliveable . I think even if you know nothing about cars I think it would have been worth trying to learn after a couple of years of getting skanked, i mean get engine built by engineer and suspension/brake conversion fitted/setup by garage of course but fitting in lump and wiring etc you can do that yourself from just reading abit and buying jack, engine crane and some cheap tools.

I guess if you earn alot it isnt too bad for you and you just didnt have time to do it yourself and its just easier to pay and not have to work, but if you did you would probly of had car atleast 7 years earlier.

Good luck with getting it finished tho dude you really deserve the car it after all that crap.

[M5pilot]

Just been catching up from the last time I read this thread.

Just like to make some comments:

Looks like its going in the right direction now and seems to me your in safe hands with Phil.

Kos looks to be doing alot to help - top man!

Colour of the car looks very nice.

Alot of E30's have rust issues - jacking points etc. As long as its sorted properly its all good.

If I were in this situation I would just want to drive this car! Once brakes and engine work ok go fro a drive! F*ck the interior, just put any seat in it (even a comfort one!) and go for a drive.

I'm hoping this will be ready way way before summer. Good luck and keep ontop of Phil no matter how good or honest he is. Take no chances!

Sal

[jonb]

m-free

i have plenty of character. mummy tells me so, she also says im special.

i think your off the mark with your valueation of 12k one finished. have you seen that lovely e30 on ebay? the calypso red one with the m3 lump and plenty of other nice bits.

all im saying is that i would be in the nut house by now if i spanked all that money on that car.(shell being the appropriate word)

[MaaasterBates]

I know the Ebay car very well - and it's 10 grand. The difference is, this car started life as a nice unmolested 325i and standard of workmanship is outstanding. It has never gone rusty or needed panels/welding. You can never recreate an original unmolested shell. The engine was fitted by Griffin and it was a known quantity with a verifiable mileage and history. Ten grand is a bargain.

If I was this guy I would buy it for 10K, break up this other rusty piece of shit and sell what you can to recover a few quid. I can see another five grand to make that into an MOT'able useable car and I've rebuilt a few cars in my time (me, as opposed to my cheque book). You can weld up what you like, but it will always be a patched up ringer with an E36 engine. 12 grand? Never in a million years. The market for M3's favours correct original cars, not those created from a logbook and an iffy shell by Frankenstein Motorsport GmbH

BTW I went to Phils and saw what a mess this car is. Those who have worked on it need to be rounded up and shot.

[Geeman]

JonB - nicking my sig!

[Kos]

it will always be a patched up ringer with an E36 engine. 12 grand? Never in a million years.

to the right person it will be imho
its still an evoII, which makes it worth a small fortune , even as a rolling shell!! i sold a converted DIY half arsed RHD cecotto shell with damage OSF corner (it had to be jigged) bent wing, fucked front bumper and rust on the floor, scuttle, for about Ԛ£2500 to a guy looking to do the same conversion. pacerpete saw it and walked away from it, as it needed to much work to go to australia ( a mate of his wanted it)

a pit of repair work on the floor is not a major concern, if done properly it wont affect the value of the car, but having had an engine swop takes away the originality of the car. the 10grand car you are on about is only woth about 7G, mainly because of the engine and wheels. at the end of the day its still a 325i se, what rob has is one of 505 evo 2's with a good engine, amazing suspension set up and a few more tricks.

we all know a restored car is not worth as much as an original ( if look at wrongness as e-type jags and aston martins etc) but a bit of flooring hardly justifies calling it a patched up ringer?? if you called mine a rusty turd well, fair do's as it is at the mo!!!

if you look at it as a track car then the value changes?? eg that white car with m stripes and bulk head mods with the s50, Ԛ£8500 is the asking price?? for a track/competition car its worth it as a street car no. what robs building could be either which opens it up to a bigger market.
the value of a modded car is bery difficult to work out, what one calls beauty or amazing bit of engineering the next man will call an a bastardised creation or an abortion

[jonb]

kos

have you seen that car in question? its fantastic, a very nice e30. all done properly with the right parts. the end result is very nice. its a car i would love to own to be honest. but im a loser with no money.

the evo2 valuation comment is immaterial once the car has been fucked about with. the price of STANDARD m3"s is proportional with regards to the models, ie, more so for the evo"s.

as that materbates person said, the m3 market is a very different one. people who are going to spank 6k at the least on a 17 year old car are going to poke around with a pointy stick and probably have someone with them who knows the score.

anyone remember the silver(i think) e30 m3 with the s50 lump in. forsale last year. about 6k its was, and it didnt seem to be shifting. although someone proper on here did dish the dirt on the car. didnt sound good, but besides that, it doesnt make it a valueable car once pissed about with.