E30 M3 Buying Advice Wanted

Hello,

After years of promising myself, I'm now in the position of being able to take the plunge and buy an M3. I've a budget of around £6-7k, which looks to be enough for a 2.3, although there seems to be a wide range of prices.

The car will be used most days, road use only (I have a Seven for track days), so I'm after a good reliable motor. What are specific M3 weaknesses I should be looking for? Are there major differences between early and later cars, or is condition & mileage more important? Where should I look - Autotrader, Find-it etc, or can I still find good cars in Germany?

I live west of London; are there any recommended specialists around who will carry out an inspection?

Any other hints, tips etc much appreciated!

Regards,

Charles

(www.charles.eaton-hennah@cendris.co.uk)

Hi Charles,

I have found what I wanted to post...I have the original article but I am without a scanner....follow the link and select BMW M3 E30 and then click 'Artiklar' and in this section you will see BMW CAR BUYING GUIDE....

Click the pictures and all will be revealed....

Cheers Phil

I have owned these great cars for over five years now and would advise a first timer to buy in the UK. I have bought in Germany before and got great cars but I had friends there and knew what I was buying!

At present there are better buys here, also you can get the car inspected here before purchase. I would recommend Phil at Hartlake Specialist cars in Kent, an hour or so in the car well spent for you. Your budget will get a late model 215bhp model with 80k if you take your time. Look for a car with suspension and exhaust changed and don't be scared of one thats seen the odd trackday, most have!!

Good hunting, it'll be worth it!!

Charles

Can only say what you have in mind is a good idea, I have a 7 for trackdays (crossflow with clamshells!!) too and an E30 M3 for those wet days trawling/overtaking everything on the way to work

I have a 2.3 no evo model which I'm about to change for a sport evo (waiting for service history to materialise!) but you won't be disappointed. The only downside is not practically being able to fit a towbar for the impending trailor, get most fed up driving the 7 up to Oulton park every year!!

Are you in the se7en club?

Jason

The Westie sounds like it'llbe a bit of a wheeze when done!

I'd add a couple of points to M3 geezer, like ensure the syncro on the gearbox is in fine fettle, particularly on the 3rd to 2nd change down and less so on the 5th to 4th especially when doing quick changes - my gearbox rebuild cost in excess of a grand (mind you that was at Munich Legends who incidently have some good cars altho they may be on the pricey side). The rubber blocks between the inlet manifold and the head if faulty give rise to hunting at idle, nota bad DIY job and bit are a little over a £100, ML advised me that they can go within 2 years of replacing but mine seem fine after 2 1/2, seems that these thrashy engines vibrate a fair bit and this causes this prob.

When test driving make sure the owner lets the car warm up fully before giving it the boot, if they boot it from cold walk away - for some reasons these engines don't like it more than other less tuned ones.

As for modifications, offset front top mounts are well worth the money as is a strut brace, mine has a short shift too but would probably not go down that route again as the gear change seems to be fairly stiff and notchy afterwards. Uprated brakes don't hurt either, parts from Eurocarparts or the like, particularly pads are pretty naff, mine has grooved discs and Pagid fast road pads which are pretty effective. I've had some problems in the past with minor oil leaks, cork sump gaskets seem pretty pants but can be replaced with paper ones (not so DIY as the front subframe needs dropping to get at one of them- there's 2 BTW) and the the rocker cover gaskets (DIY) and cam cover gasket are an easy job but can give the impression of a leaky head gasket to the uninitiated.

Decent tyres are a sign of a car being well looked after, you don't appear to be able to stint on the bills for these cars so a big wad of bills would be a good sign too especially as the mileage starts to creep up. Not wishing to teach you how to suck eggs but the last owner has paid some of the big bills means you won't have to. Post 100k miles the ones to have done are possibly a head rebuild (mine had a broken valve spring), something done with the timing chain (either tensioner only or the full bifter - (£1500 potentially) and the gearbox. Incidently 100k seems to be a watershed for these bills and if all the other history matches you'll be fine for another 100k.

By the way mine's for sale to finance a sport evo! Lots of miles (155k) but all the bills are there (£10k over the last 2 1/2 years including servicing and tyres etc), I don't wish to use this thread to sell it particularly but if you fancied taking it for a spin to see how they should be drop me a line. I'm in Buckingham or Oxford most ofthe time. Will throw in a link to some pics if I can remember where on the net they are!

As for specialists I can't comment on Birds but I use Moseley Motorsin Telford - bit of a trek but definitely worth the hassle. Alternatively for example the Dealer close towhere I work (Stevenage) has a techy who has an E30 M3 so if I need stuff done would consider letting him loose on it.

One last point on the aircon, as previosly mentioned the thrashing/vibratey nature of these cars can break the bracket that holds the compressor on (has happened twice to me so I've left it off now) In my opinion the aircon isn't that good anyway so I wouldn't be too fussed if the spec of the car I was looking at didn't have it. Electronic damper control (EDC) is another one of these, those that have it admit that when it goes wrong it's an expensive fix but when working is a good toy to have. Any suspension upgrade seems to be a good thing, whether it's a fairly basic Eibach/Bilstein kit (£600 odd) or something more fancy like Schnitzer or Hartge (£1000 plus) they all bring the improvements you would expect.

Better do somework now I s'pose

jus a few more points after reading jaseb's comments, munich legends seem to be quite pricey, lets face it £10,500 for a d reg nothing special m3 with rot around the windscreen! i don't mean to give them a bad name but they really do need to get real.

try bexley motor works in bexley heath kent for servicing (0208 304 9797) nigel and jags are a friendly bunch that know there m3's inside and out, they also do a short shift kit for £40 + fitting, it isn;t the shortest kit, but it isn;t notchy like the others. and at the price is very very good. also heard moseley motorsport are very good.

jus fitted the neg camber top mounts from bmw (called crash repair mounts as well), i have these with sparco front and rear strut braces and they make a real improvement, my car is running around -2 degrees camber now.

as for brakes try to stay clear of x-drilled discs, i have seen these crack on the m3, i use genuine discs with ferrado ds2500 track pads, these are awesome and don;t need warming up, the ds3000 are good for track only, they corrode alloys and need a lot of warming up.

the rear strut bars i think off the top of my head around £65 +vat, maybe less, they're more expensive as they only come in alloy, they can be a pain to fit, not sure if they make a huge difference, i got mine as i am fitting leda coilovers soon and the bar helps with the stresses going across the strut tower at the rear which wasn't designed to support the weight of the car originally.

back to ML, i think it a shame about them, they are just down the road from me and they seem like a nice bunch of people, they just don;t seem to want to be competative anymore, i think they were good a few years ago, but the m3's aren;t worth the same sort of money anymore and people won;t spend so much on them, i've also heard a lot of people say that they have mis-diagnosed problems before, i suppose this could happen to anyone, i'm just still choked that they wanted £300 (may have been +vat as well) for a pair of fibreglass 1991 dtm mirror replicas, i can get these for £120 elsewhere and for £220 i can get carbon fibre ones which are excellent quality.