so i came to know where a nice 323i was sitting, its a really cool car that i just do not have time for. really shame because i really like this car and i had a 528e block too at one point. but instead of doing anything with this car i i found a better owner for it. a e21 guy from Maine.
the car was in danger of being crushed. no one wanted it it was in a body shop owned by a relative of mine for years going nowhere. and then the shop owner decided to get it out of his shop. and it came to sit in this guy scotty's yard...Scotty is a diffrent fellow he looks like shreck, drives a big grey diesel van or a white 70's mercury. used to be a trucker then a cement mixer dude an got all messed up in a cement incident.... now he scraps shit... and collects coca cola toys...
so i saved a cool car from certain death, and its going to someone thats going to gear head out on it. he had a 320 and now has a real nice 323 that only got kinda screwed.
Way over used term. Thats junk, not rare, not a rare find and certainly not a "barn find"
Try this, "while walking around a salvage yard today I found this interesting piece, is it worth anything? It is slightly abused, worn & torn & w/o a clean title.."
tock172 wrote:Cool to find a 323, but the damage looks like it might be costly to repair. Frame/unibody damage?
I'm not a fan of the platform, but a 323 is the best of the lot. However they are tough, my wife was head-on'd on one, no brakes, probably 35+20 closing speeds and I was able to fix that one in my garage. OK, I'm a little extreme, but still if that was repairable, the one in the pic sure should be. The guibo sheared off, I forget if the distributor bent or broke off, the engine stopped going back when it hit the firewall. So a hood and a grill or two is nothing.
The e21 323i stroker i was driving around for a while was a blast, and a battler. That thing was crashed into so much shit, and it still goes stong. (designated 100+km/h drift pig trainer) It's body is rusted too the shit, it's got cut springs, and is currently one wheel drive due to a driveshaft snapping, and it's still awesome. Fuck the damage, stroke it, and have fun!
w0014170 wrote:Way over used term. Thats junk, not rare, not a rare find and certainly not a "barn find"
Try this, "while walking around a salvage yard today I found this interesting piece, is it worth anything? It is slightly abused, worn & torn & w/o a clean title.."
how about 100k mile car sat outside for 8 months....full of very nice parts clean title in a 2nd cousins name, sitting at an assholes house. thats not a scrap yard seen in the pics those are work trucks, that sometimes haul scrap.. car ran great when parked and has lots of maintance and upgrades. former owner couldnt pay the body shop bill so it sat in the back of a body shop for 8 years.
this car escaped the crusher for years because its a sweet car with lots of nice parts on it. and it had a very high budget paint job in the 90's note the techno violet... not a junkyard e21. all it needs really is a hood, and grills and a headlight holder thinggy.
Last edited by 535is-pa on Aug 20, 2010 12:02 PM, edited 2 times in total.
EE TWO EIGHT wrote:since it IS NOT a rare car, I would yank the motor trans and driveline and stick it in a 320i. SLEEPER!
BTW I see 320i's for sale running with the body in great shape on cl all the time for under a grand...most are 700 because they need paint and seatcovers.
535is-pa wrote: all it needs really is a hood, and grills and a headlight holder thinggy.
I'm not sure they're the same, but they might be. I just remembered I've got a complete set of headlight buckets, turnsignals and grills somewhere in my shed I'd love to sell. Let me know if you're interested. No hood though
EE TWO EIGHT wrote:I see 320i's for sale running with the body in great shape on cl all the time for under a grand...most are 700 because they need paint and seatcovers.
It's easy to tell you live in the southwest...all the 320i's around here rusted away 25 years ago.
EE TWO EIGHT wrote:since it IS NOT a rare car, I would yank the motor trans and driveline and stick it in a 320i. SLEEPER!
BTW I see 320i's for sale running with the body in great shape on cl all the time for under a grand...most are 700 because they need paint and seatcovers.
WTF? It would take a lot less effort to fix what I can see is wrong with this one than it would to find a 320i that isn't a MASSIVE POS used as a feline litter box, modify the core support, swap over everything bolted to the body only to end up with a POS that has some cool parts. There's a lot of different stuff in the 6 cyl cars.
EE TWO EIGHT wrote:since it IS NOT a rare car, I would yank the motor trans and driveline and stick it in a 320i. SLEEPER!
It would be easier to repair this mostly-nice one, then stick a 320i badge on.
Anyhow, even a 320i with a 323 engine is hardly a "sleeper." A TCD-S2-equipped M30 in a 320i -- now that would be a sleeper.*
*I think it would be a nose-heavy pig with potentially dangerous handling characteristics, but that's just me.
To the OP, good save. I'm with Kohler on this one. It looks like it would be far, far simpler to fix what you've got than to attempt the fairly complicated business of modifying an e21 320i to accept all the parts that made the 323i a superior vehicle.
And any notion about e21s being "common" is laughable. I see one nice Kastienrot 320i driven by a lady in her 60's from time to time, but that is it. I don't see other e21s unless I'm at a car show. They are probably less common than e12s in New England.
fcontreras has one (turboed M30 powered 320i). a '78, too.
RonP's Dinan 333i has an M30 with a turbo.
Obviously, you're not going to run around on the stock suspension. Things that used to be up front get moved, too. For example, the headlamps go to the trunk.
