Does it end? (Project car - e36)

Hi all. Just looking for some advice (or friendly words of encouragement ..) 

I currently have a project e36 (328i sedan / manual) that I've been working on for the past year and some months. I got it for "cheap"  and have probably 3k in altogether. I've only really owned Japanese cars prior to this purchase and am having some second thoughts - especially as repairs and maintenance items keep coming up

I initially bought it due to the fairly desirable drivetrain and the aftermarket suspension (H&R race springs, Bilstein b8, big front / rear swaybars) I've fixed a lot of it, bringing it from coming home on a flatbed to reliably driving and some maintenance along the way. The cooling system has been overhauled, PS overhauled steering rack replaced, various rubber replacements, and just bought parts for a brake overhaul and seal to fix yet another leak.

The paint is toast from the high desert sun and ~30 years of daily driving. I'm not sure what else it is going to need in the next year but it seems like it never ends. The previous owner did enough to keep it going (neglected) but sold it when the water pump went out. It is really fun to drive and makes good noises.

Thank you for reading this far. I took this project on as bringing it back to good condition and keeping it out of the drift scene (which, not a good reason to "save" a common car in hindsight). Has anyone attempted something similar? Any regrets or change in path? Any advice for the next time period of ownership?

Sounds like you've done a lot of the heavy lifting to get it to where stuff is "improvement" instead of "less broken?"

It never ends. Cars start trying to disassemble themselves as soon as they roll off the production line. There's a fair bit of variation in how and how fast they do it, but it's pretty much a given.

I think it's all about how much you like the car and whether the enjoyment of the car and the satisfaction of the work are worthwhile to you. If it's working for you, rock on! If/when it isn't, move on. It's easy to go all "sunk cost fallacy" and so on. I mean, if you've got a fifteen minute/$20 fix that makes it more salable, great, but once you're not into it, you're better off doing the terrible, terrible anti-investment of playing with cars on one that's giving you joy as a return on investment, because few are going to give you anything else.

I do not always take my own advice, and I am not sure I'd answer the same way next week. I had a bunch of deferred stuff on my MGB and some of it made me think I wasn't as into the car as I wanted to be, and then getting rid of a couple of little bothers freed me to enjoy driving it, and I'm back to both enjoying the drive and being excited about the improvements I want to make.

Only $3k into it? What better would you buy for $3k if you could magically "uno reverse" the decision thats giving you pangs of regret?

The real question is have you had a chance to really drive it hard? Does the car speak to you? Do you get any enjoyment from the tinkering?

You have an amazing chassis thats rewarding to drive and a blast to toss around while being faster than it should be on paper. All while investing basically nothing into it. But more work is yet to come most certainly. Either enjoy the drive and the tinkering enough to make it worth it as a hobby, or gtfo as soon as possible.

My e36 has a plastidipped paint job that was probably 250 bucks and held up relatively well while looking 100% better than the original paint as a heads up. 

In reply to Jesse Ransom :

Most of it has been driveability improvements, aside from the rack, which I rushed the PS line job on and stripped some threads out. Whoops. I did manage to get some M3 seats which helped aesthetically. I'll take inventory of small improvements and see where that gets me. 

I've owned my E36(m3 swapped 318ti) for 11 years and 55,000 miles. My total investment is $22,500. I feel you so hard. 

I feel you, I've got a couple e36 and this one was supposed to be a parts car for my nicer one but it became my daughters car. It needed a LOT of work and parts but what else am I going to buy or build for $3k or so?

In reply to Olemiss540 :

You have a good point.. took a quick look over Marketplace. It is a desert in terms of entertaining or fun cars.

I haven't had a chance to get it outside of the city but whipping it around (when safe!) has been fun. Once I get the oil filter gasket and brakes complete, I'll feel better.

 The tinkering is fun but ffs it seems like every project takes 2x - 3x longer than I mean to. I've come to the conclusion they'll have to be in chunks of time while holding no deadline. 

I plastidipped the trunk for a bit.. did not come out great. You use a sprayer set up or rattle cans? 

Wagner sprayer. The jobs get easier as you get experience with each area of the car. I find the e36 extremely DIY friendly considering access, bimmerforums documentation, parts availability, etc. Aside from interior touch parts. They blow HARD. Grew into wrench turning with an e36, even replacing head gaskets eventually with no issue. Have fun!

EchoTreeSix said:

In reply to Olemiss540 :

 The tinkering is fun but ffs it seems like every project takes 2x - 3x longer than I mean to. I've come to the conclusion they'll have to be in chunks of time while holding no deadline. 

Hate to break it to you, but that's every project for EVERY car.  I routinely underestimate how long routine stuff is going to take on my project cars.  It's just the reality of doing your own work, sometimes the easy stuff gets hard.  The only way to get around this is to either only buy new cars, or pay someone else to do your wrenching.  Either way it's going to cost you, either in blood, sweat and tears or cold hard cash (and blood, sweat and tears).

In reply to chandler :

No kidding. At least I know what has been done and can fix any bodged jobs along the way.

Great looking car btw. 

I have 2 e36 coupes (325is, 328is) both have had very questionable pasts, one having been v8 swapped with a 350 but *nothing* else done to properly support it and the other was a previous insurance write off turned drift car. 

Both are a lot of fun... when they work. The drift car just needs a bunch of panel bashing and general maintenance since it got crashed then sat 7 years before I bought it. 

The v8 swap is a pandora box of problems. Fix / upgrade one thing and discover about 4 other things that are a combination of age and janky build ethics. 

I kind of enjoy the challenge of them being problem children because when they work, they *work*

My first car was an E36 with 175k miles on it. BTDT. I loved that car but I was constantly doing stuff. 
It would have felt more worth it if my effort had kept it nice but that didn't happen. The interior is famous for falling apart and mine did. The paint started peeling from a bad respray (not the cars fault) and after it failed smog for the 4th time I called it. 
 

I still miss it. 

Is this car your only car? Time deadlines make projects a lot less enjoyable than they otherwise could be. My fix for project car stress was to buy a reliable backup car, in my case a GMT400 K1500. If I don't finish a project, or if I break something, I can always just take the truck instead until I have time to figure it out.

My 16 year old son is learning this.  Last summer in June I bought a $500 1986 SAAB 900 Turbo, I explained to him it was going to be a lot of work to get it back on the road.  8 months later we drove it home from where we were working on it and it promptly popped a HG.  Got that fixed and now the front main seal it leaking to bad to drive, a wheel bearing is bad and the motor mounts are shot.  

If you like the car, keep at it and at some point it will get to where you want it to be.

In reply to 06HHR (Forum Supporter) :

"Sometimes the easy stuff gets hard"

Yeah, that sums up more or less the whole experience so far LOL. 

Sorry y'all. New poster limits and I'm not sure how to quote multiple people, at least on mobile. 

gearheadE30 said:

Is this car your only car? Time deadlines make projects a lot less enjoyable than they otherwise could be. My fix for project car stress was to buy a reliable backup car, in my case a GMT400 K1500. If I don't finish a project, or if I break something, I can always just take the truck instead until I have time to figure it out.

Fortunately I have two others that function as a daily. It's pressure from myself - basically not wanting to leave a non-running, or in pieces, car in the driveway. 

In reply to EchoTreeSix :

At any given time at least 75% of this forum has a non-running car in their driveway.   I know I currently do..   You'll fit right in here. 

In reply to 06HHR (Forum Supporter) :

Raises hand.

In reply to 06HHR (Forum Supporter) :

And not a single one of us has every car the way we want it to be. 
 

I think this is the most common thread in all of car-dom. The great equalizer haha

06HHR (Forum Supporter) said:

EchoTreeSix said:

In reply to Olemiss540 :

 The tinkering is fun but ffs it seems like every project takes 2x - 3x longer than I mean to. I've come to the conclusion they'll have to be in chunks of time while holding no deadline. 

Hate to break it to you, but that's every project for EVERY car.  I routinely underestimate how long routine stuff is going to take on my project cars.  It's just the reality of doing your own work, sometimes the easy stuff gets hard.  The only way to get around this is to either only buy new cars, or pay someone else to do your wrenching.  Either way it's going to cost you, either in blood, sweat and tears or cold hard cash (and blood, sweat and tears).

Your loving wife (if you have one; gf, etc) will likely be a very accurate source of how long a job will take. 

I say it'll take me an hour, she says ok, see you in three.  I'll explain, no, not this time, it's really just a quick pull and replace, hour max.  She says "ok, see you in three".

She's right 98.87446% of the time.

In reply to ГУЛАГ мальчик УР следующий :

This, exactly.

The logical next question is"why do I chronically underestimate?", and I do have one working theory for that. Experienced wrenches have a pretty good idea of what any given fix might take given prior experience, firsthand eval, etc. But in our minds, everything is straightforward and easy. Threads aren't stripped, bolts aren't lost or broken, the nine other things removed to get at the thing of interest come off and go back on as they should, and the last person to work on the car was competent and left no surprises. Our seek-pleasure-avoid-pain genes then down-select the happiest best-case estimate for our reference, and while I know I can do [insert automotive chore] in an hour, it's on my car which is something I care about and strap my ass into at high speed, so I'm going to damn well take my time and make sure it's right, as well as everything else along the way. I'm not working in a flat-rate shop on someone else's abused, boring appliance, so there's no need to set a record.

The "should I stick with this car or cut my losses" is tantamount to a normal person asking "am I mentally sound", but everyone here has made peace with the negative answer and the notion that it's all a matter of worth to us individually. The theme is universal and covers the entire spectrum of not-new cars from daily drivers to projects to track toys and everything in between.

The list of broken things or desired improvements never really ends, but it sounds like most of the big things are handled. Just drive it until you love it or hate it.

In reply to chandler : Having seen other hard topped E36  verts on the road, yours should get some thumbs ups. Almost vintage.  Kinda only needs more work. Get it to where it just needs shop doable maintenance. $1000 or so in, and the option of selling or keeping could balance out. 

moto914 said:

In reply to chandler : Having seen other hard topped E36  verts on the road, yours should get some thumbs ups. Almost vintage.  Kinda only needs more work. Get it to where it just needs shop doable maintenance. $1000 or so in, and the option of selling or keeping could balance out. 

 

My 18yo daughter drives that one, she said people are always honking and waving haha. I have a grey one with a hardtop as well though it never gets driven as the interior is so crappy. Dove interiors seem to fail more rapidly than camel

The Mustang was going to be as follows:

Fix the power steering and AC. The add sumbframe connectors and Cobra front brakes.

I put Lucas Stop Leak in the power steering and it did as advertised.

Then I discovered the Bullit wheels rubbed the control arms. While installing the rack travel limiters I discover the rack is leaking slightly.

We took it to autocross and now the clutch slips. Investigating as to why......will know tonight.

Autocross also revealed the LSD is not working.

So now it's fix the clutch, fix the AC, fix the diff and then do the subframe connectors and brakes.

It also needs no door seals and the window tint is junk.

I am looking to have the mechanical bits done by mid October and the cosmetics over the next year.

In reply to Tom1200 :

Starting to see this as the challenge of working with old cars, and maybe not so much a BMW/Euro thing. I'm glad that it isn't just me.. but I also hope that your newfound needed repairs go smoothly! 

Recently pulled the tail lights out because the bulb "holders" wouldn't come out. Discovered some light rust developing in the panel. At least it's light!