saw this car shared in a WTB post here and after having my eyes peeled for the last year for something in my price range and rust free to pop up, I decided to pull the trigger on this car after about 80 pictures and a few videos. purchased the car from an enthusiast in Boise Idaho and had it shipped to columbus ohio. car had a broken odometer at 192k (have since replaced the gears and is now fully functional), upgraded sway bars, a chip (not sure what kind), z3 short shifter, aftermarket head unit and speakers, some spring and shock combo (unsure of specs)
here it is arriving very dirty after getting haulted in colorado when they had a huge snow storm about 3 weeks ago.



couldnt wait to give it a wash and get a real first look at it and its condition. car has dings and scratches on pretty much every single panel and scratches and paint fade on the roof, trunk and hood.


front air dam has cracks and as do the fog lights.

seats are in alright condition and will be fine with me until the time comes to recover or replace them with something snazzy and period correct. drivers seat has black tape covering some tears and the passenger has a few cracks. both seat backs are floppy and need inspected.


engine bay is impressively clean and zinc coating is still present in many places

had to take it to the very next cars and coffee in columbus, after being at the bmv 20 minutes before they opened on a saturday and being the 50th+ person in line.

needs a set of ansa exhaust tips. exhaust is all stock and very new from the headers back.

onto the first mechanical repairs! as stated i replaced the odometer gears with a set from garagistic and now its ticking away.
next up was the clutch pedal, it sat so high above the brake pedal it was driving me nuts. having to physically lift my entire leg to get it up onto the pedal. the pedal would want to snap down even with the brake pedal but not do anything toward disengaging the clutch, i tried to dig into this and figure it out but all i ended up doing was breaking my over center spring.

gear shifts were notchy and sometimes difficult. I had a hunch that the car probably had an incorrect clutch master cylinder in it because the portion of the cylinder that goes from the snap ring to the bolt center of the eccentric bolt was just too long.
fast forward a week and im back under it replacing the master and slave, including a new beefy over center spring from ben. here you can see the length differences side by side. while pulling the old master cylinder out i managed to snap the plastic nipple for the feed line and thats where i am now. it is set to arrive tomorrow via amazon prime.

and so here we are! plans with the car is to get it up to snuff mechanically to be enjoyed every minute that it can be. cold starts are rocky so thats up next to try to sort. it needs a new shift knob because this one is broken and loved to pop off. this winter I would love to fix the major dents along with the cracked air dam and a friend and I will likely wrap it something close to alpine white. wrapping a car is something ive just wanted to add to my resume. my friend has wrapped a few cars included an r35 gtr, 2019 sti, evo 10 and more. an old boxy bmw shouldnt be too hard of a job.
down the line I hope to give it a respray in its original color, but I plan to own this for a long time and do things one at a time to make it a good looking drivers car.