I wanted to introduce myself to the Spec E30 community. My name is Justin Silver and for those I have not yet met, I look forward to meeting you in the near future. Those that I have had the pleasure in meeting seem to be an excellent group of people.
I will be starting a build project as of today! For those of you that may have forgotten the joys in searching for a baseline track candidate, I thought I would try to briefly summarize the excitement has it has been for me.
I started looking aggressively about 2.5 months ago and I’m happy to say that I am still married and no words of divorce have been spoken as of yet. It is not easy to find a candidate that has not been molested over the years with a reasonable amount of miles (less than 250K). I was picky over a 2dr newer style body but in doing so, I lost good candidates to other quick buyers. It was clearly evident that these cars were sought after and if priced right, you needed to be one of the first callers to get the car.
After 1.5 months of searching in every possible resource I could think of (incuding Craigslist searches in 8 different States/Counties), I found the project car I wanted. Despite the advice that C. Cobetto gave me in not purchasing the car from Long Island, NY, I did. It is a 1988 325is 2dr automatic. Should have listened but the original owner with 132K got me all giddy. By this time, I didn’t want to lose another and just wanted to touch, smell, and drive one. Now I need to sell it in hopes that the next buyer won’t get spooked by rust. The daunting task of doing a 5spd swap was not fun so I continued the search.
Two weeks later I purchased car #2. A very nice, originally owned 1989 325is with every oil change recorded! Wow, and I got it for a great price…Again, an automatic but newer body style. This meant it was the 4.10 LSD…Hmm…one other item/cost to think of just go get it close to the base. Still not happy and I was back to searching in a myriad of locations.
One week after the second BMW, I traveled from my home in Northern VA to Charlotte, NC to visit family. I knew there was a potential candidate in Raleigh so I met Carter to look over the ‘87 325is 5speed. I convinced my wife to ride with me 2hrs out of the way for car # 3. The engine had a bad skip in it while on throttle and it was in overall bad shape and they wanted too much. Needless to say, we returned home after 1AM without a car. Gee, I’m glad she still loves me.
Well, yesterday I found a candidate that I didn’t want to lose. Thanks to Carter for talking me out of being stubborn with a 2dr, I pulled the trigger on a very well maintained 4dr 5spd 155,000mi and well maintained! YES! No more thoughts of a tranny swap…I can just order parts to begin the project!
Now I have two BMWs I need to sell so I can afford parts for this one. I guess that’s what you get when you become impulsive about buying good track candidates. Not very expensive upfront except when you multiply by 3.
I was at VIR in February and I’ll be down there again at the end of March for instructor school. I better hurry with getting these two sold…My wife has been talking about kids and buying a house!
I look forward to sharing information, having good times, and eventually competing with everyone later this summer!
Justin
