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Seeing as this is my 2000th post I thought there was no better way to celebrate than to introduce my latest BMW and project..a 2500 E3 aka project paper weight. So the story goes, my hawkeye brother spotted this and a e12 525 for sale on trademe as a combo deal so ended up nabbing them for a bargain. A few months later he messaged me asking if I knew anyone who might want to buy them as he had too much going woth starting his own business. So sold the e12 and a $1000 later the e3 is mine. Where does project 'paper weight' come from? Well it hasn't been run in 10years, rego is still on hold somehow and is mostly complete. It's likely to not do much for the next 6 months while I finish off a few things on the convertible. First step is to get it running and give it a thorough going over. There is rust but so far have only found it in the body panels and then slowly restore it. I got the car 2 weeks after the birth of my first born so hes a good gauge of how long the restore takes.. hopefully it's done by the time he is old enough to drive ?

Most of the sockets and spanners are SAE. The purchaser has to take all. There are some special items here but I don't have time to list everything itemized. I also have quite a few special tools BMW repairers might like as well. Lets start off at $500 ono and go from there

It's gonna cost me 3.5k all up, not bad I don't think haha damage looks worse than it is, look past the damage please, all I really need help with is piecing it back together, I have no reference to go off

Don't start that one again. Although a big old 7 series like this does scream "drug dealer car" so maybe a body or could be the stash? Let's go halves and find out which one! As for the Toyota V12 being cheap - if you think BMW Original Parts are expensive, Toyota can take things to another level for the less common stuff. And that was even with a hefty discount!!

Another small update: Changed the spark plugs last night (the old ones were pretty shot) and pulled a whole lot more of the interior out. I've pulled out pretty much everything from the front seats backwards including radio, wiring, speakers and door cards so I guesstimate that the car is ~ 60kg lighter now. A compression test was done a few weeks ago and I'm pleased to say the 266,000km engine is at 180psi across all 6. . A set of BC gold coilovers will be going in shortly along with a set of E46 330 brakes which are on their way. Progress has been a bit slow but I plan to have it suitably equipped for the Eurohaus track day at the end of October.. The plan is to install braided brake lines, new brakepads, rear trailing arm bushes, a 3.64 diff, Fenix radiator, fit the semi-slicks and find at least one new bucket seat for a decent price. *Apologies for the poor quality photos. Will be taking a bunch more on a decent camera soon.

Yea they do. They actually helped with deciding on a final colour too. Going with the Audi Nardo Grey, with everything else black

Boot cannot open --> dead body?

Haven't really done much to the car during winter, but finally got a chance to take it out and do some skids. It was a wet day at the Motorkhana held by HCMC at Waikaraka Park, but it sure helped getting around those cones. The LSD really changed the way the car drives - so much more forward momentum than the locked diff, and getting it sideways and keeping it there was very predictable. 10/10 After the first 2 tests I was surprised to find that I was leading, but made a couple of mistakes on the 3rd course, and then the 4th course suited the faster cars, so ended up 7th overall, with 2nd in class (it's an M44, so it puts me in the 1800cc+ class). Very happy with result ?

Catching up on things which have been done since the last post. Around May 2017: Completely stripped out the car (rear seats, carpets, etc) and took everything to the dump: Installed some rear top strut mount reinforcement plates: Scored some used rally tyres and bought wheels to fit them to - on a side note, a stripped out compact can fit more wheels/tyres (17 in total!) than an X3 with the rear seats folded down (8 with with room for at most another 4):

Also can't remember if I shared this before or not, present from Kayne Barrie when he rebuilt this motor last year. Those with a keen engineering eye may spot something wrong here ? Untitled by Christian Taylor, on Flickr