So, I was in the market for a "practical" 4 door..

[Mark Beiser]

And the SD1 Tony had for sale vanished from his site, so I assume it sold.

Anyway, I found a 1974 BMW 3.0S that is totally rust free that runs and looks ok.

The 3.0S is basicly just a Bavaria with every option BMW could think of, exept power door locks.

In 1974 this car left the lot with a final sale price of $12,900 with a dealer installed car phone.
Saturday I paied $1,290 for it, but the car phone is long gone, most of it anyway.

I'm spending this weekend getting my TR7 project all moved to one side of the garage so I have room to park the BMW when I get it moved to my house next weekend.

The car was owned by the same person since it was new, and garaged every night. It has been sitting since 2000 when he had to stop driving due to macular degeneration. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

I need to go through and change all the fluids and ruber parts, and probably redo all the hydraulics.
A good cleaning and some Hide Food and the interior will be in good shape. Just need to repair a small tear in the rear seat and maybe redye one area on the drivers seat.

The dashboard has several large cracks in it, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it yet. The windshield has to come out to remove the dash, but thats ok because I have to pull the windshield out to replace the winshield seal that has about 100 cracks in it. Need to replace the sunroof seal too.

The paint is ok. The origonal color was garnet red metalic, and it was resprayed in brown. There are a couple of spots where the brown paint has pealed off of the origonal paint, but overall it is presentable enough for driving around.

The engine seems to be in good shape, but it has 139k miles on it, so will likely need a rebuild soon, especially considdering how I tend to flog engines. If/when I rebuild the engine, the automatic transmission will find new life being melted down to make more usefull products somewhere, because a 5 speed from a later BMW will go back in. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/driving.gif

I won't be digging into the engine, transmission swap or painting untill I finish my TR7 project though, at least that is the plan!

 

[sammyb]

Cool!

The 3.0 was a great looking and driving car. The only downside was that they were horribly unreliable when new, but that doesn't matter much now -- since all old cars are horribly unreliable.

Interior parts will be rather expensive, but you should be able to find decent used mechanical parts.

Enjoy it. And post pix when you get the chance!
Sammy

 

[waltesefalcon]

Congratulations Mark. I bought a 75 2002 back in November, and I have enjoyed it so far. Its a great running and driving car, thought the engine is getting pretty well worn (I plan on rebuilding it later this summer or in the fall). My bimmer though didn't have the advantage of living indoors, mine needs the seats recovered, and new carpet. It also needs to be repainted, it has accumulated some surface rust under the glass all around, but nothing major. Good luck with it and I hope you enjoy it.

 

[Mark Beiser]

Re: So, I was in the market for a "practical" 4 do

HA! I don't even have it in my garage yet and already I have found a NOS dash for it for $150 + shipping! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Mark Beiser]

Re: So, I was in the market for a "practical" 4 do

I got the car home last weekend, but didn't have time to work on it untill today.
Messed around trying to get it to start for half an hour or so before I noticed that the floats in both carbs were stuck, so raw fuel was being pumped into the engine.
It has two Weber 32/36 DGV cars on it. I called around a bit and was not able to find rebuild kits from any regular parts stores, then I got the bright idea to call the 2 local British parts places I use. Sure enough, both stocked the kits I needed. I just found it amusing that I was going to a British car specialist for stuff for my old BMW, even got an oil filter there. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Anyway, I got the carbs rebuilt and back in place. Drained about 2 gallons of oil and fuel mixture out of the crankcase, changed the filter and put in new oil.

Decided to pull the valve cover off to check the cam lobs and ended up cleaning and repainting the valve cover.

Got it all back together, IT LIVES! It didn't even smoke much! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

A couple minutes later it did start smoking, A WHOLE LOT, so I shut it down.
Disturbingly the smoke just kept getting worse, and was coming from under the rear end of the car, not just the talepipe! The muffler had rust holes in the side of it and I could see a fire inside it.
This is of GREAT concern on this car because the fuel tank is in the trunk right above the muffler. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif

I got the fire out, and have decided to call it a night, hehe.
My hope is that the fire was due to the large quantities of fuel that got pumped into the engine, and possibly wasp nests in the muffler.......at least thats what I hope. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

[Steve]

Re: So, I was in the market for a "practical" 4 do

I th ink that you are aon the right track with your reasoning.....a new muffler will probably fix that problem. Great find, sounds like you're having fun with this project. I picked up a '92 Beemer a few months ago from my father, great car, very practical (it's the 525IT...the wagon). Gotta love these uberwagens.