The car is an 87 325i w/ 156k mi.
I picked it up for $900. It's a ONE OWNER CAR.

When I went to buy it, the salesperson handed me a folder containing every invoice the car has ever had (including oil changes) as well as the motor vehicle purchase contract from the original sale.

Upon opening the folder, i found something VERY interesting:

A notebook detailing every GAS FILLUP the car has ever had, including date, mileage, $ spent, gallons filled (to the second decimal point), and even what GAS STATION was used.

The car came with the original sales brochures, accessories catalog, owners manual, and DINAN catalog from 1987...all in MINT condition:

I found an invoice from 07/94 stating that a DINAN chip had been installed, along with an H1/H4 conversion:

and then, believe it or not there was one more interesting find on top of all this...

the trunk contained a BMW factory repair manual in PERFECT unused condition.

all in all, im thrilled with this car. best $900 i've ever spent.

the few bad things:

rust repair needed on bottom rear of LF fender, and RR wheelwell/rocker panel

suspension clunk in rear, need to check subframe bushings etc for wear

power steering was disconnected by P/O some years back (recorded in files, too lazy to find). tough to park, but feedback is better.

now on to a few basic questions.

the car has been sitting for a few months, are there any fuel treatments i should use to clean it up a little, or does it just need a good old italian-tune-up?

i plan to change the oil tomorrow. records show that synthetic oil has been used multiple times in this car life, but not every time. should i fill with synthetic and risk possible leaks, or go with a max-life or other similar oil? what weight should i use?

records show that the shifter was fully rebuilt at about 90k miles, but it feels sloppy. is there anything i can do to make it shift a little smoother/easier?

any other tips/hints greatly appreciated. first manual car ive owned in 3 years...since my last mk2 jetta was junked. you could say im REALLY looking forward to driving this car.

I'm still wondering where some of you guys find fun cars like this in decent condition(or in this case, great condition) for so damn cheap. I went looking for a project car with a budget of $1k, and all I could find that was remotely fun were Integras that were beaten to death.

I'd totally rock that car though

'54 '74 '90 2010, ja so stimmen wir alle ein! Prosit!

i showed up at doors-open 8am, drove it, and plunked down $900 cash.

as i was signing the paperwork they got a phonecall from a girl from in boston who was getting off the train 5 min down the road to come buy it!

i have some LUCK!

LAKERS!

Former: 1995 Ranger, 2003 GLI, 1995.5 S6 Avant

100$ profit for nothing. Think about it

The original owner of my Vanagon passed on to me the same thing - a handwritten log of every gas fill up, as well as every repair and maintenance item. No invoices, but it all checked out.

That is quite a score. Huzzah!

My grandfather does that. I dunno if he writes down all that info, but he did record the odometer and amount of gas purchased. A holdover from back in the day when cars didn't have trip odometers, lol.

before anyone asks I made a thread earlier about the insane prices on that forum.

Heh, my parents used to do this in their cars. They had a little logbook in the center console. I actually do this myself, just in Excel: I enter mileage, gas added, and gas price. Lifetime average of 20mpg .

Edit: To OP: treat her well, and bequeath those records and yours to her next loving owner. Please don't tub it and make it a spec-E30 car.

Modified by gas, meet foot at 9:56 PM 3-27-2008

So, how much did the P/O spend on gas?

Nice find

Or an engineer...well, I suppose they're the same thing.

Quote, originally posted by bhtooefr »

clutch in, vroOOOM, slide into gear, clutch out at exactly the right time so that the clutch and flywheel are spinning at exactly the same speed. Very smooth, no clutch wear.

Now, once at a VW show I saw a guy who kept records of every single trip he made in his car, including date, miles driven, and destination... maybe even time spent driving. That struck me as going a bit overboard, but now with GPS and "black boxes", we're not too far away from cars automatically keeping those records electronically.


Modified by VWestlife at 11:11 PM 3-27-2008

GCF - It's Wimblebot approved!

97' jetta GT
92' corrado SLC
91' Audi Coupe Quattro

x2

Quote, originally posted by mixedpartsbmx »

A notebook detailing every GAS FILLUP the car has ever had, including date, mileage, $ spent, gallons filled (to the second decimal point), and even what GAS STATION was used.

I do that too. My parents did it with their cars, so it doesn't seems abnormal to me.

BMWs are built to have crappy feeling shifters; even brand new BMWs have sloppy, vague shift-action.

Ze Germans make fine cars but when it comes to tranny feel the Japanese are wayyyy ahead of them.

PS-please continue the record keeping

Modified by hotweiss at 9:32 PM 3-27-2008

E30's are simple as hell.

True in general but go drive an S5--trans has a wonderful feel.

good car tho, great buy

Quote, originally posted by tjakko »

You should sell it on r3vlimited, you could probably get like 10k for it. before anyone asks I made a thread earlier about the insane prices on that forum.

and I replied to it... it's a joke. Wake up.

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