[rhudeboye]

I've been so freakin busy of late. Office relocated and things are jumpin. I've been meaning to show everyone my new daily but I couldn’t find the time. By the time I get home I’m beat.

The bad.
The PO let it sit under a Gum tree. The sap would drip on the hood and she let it sit. That in turn allowed it to eat through the clear and paint. She then purchased some touch up paint from BMW. Problem is she got the wrong color. Now how in the .... So the hood and driver fender has silver blotches on them.

The headlight lens has the heaviest oxidation I have ever seen. I've ordered new ones.
The burl wood trim on the passenger rear door has all the tabs broken off. Some genius obviously tried to remove it without removing the door panel.

The Good-
NAV unit works well. But it has a cassette deck?
Leather and carpet everywhere is in good condition, even the trunk area looks new.
Car handles and accelerates surprisingly well. I love driving it.
New tires, years of maintenance records and it was a one owner car. Note all the goodies she threw in.

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[rhudeboye]

Oh I forgot. I just got a DICE unit. Nice lil gizmo that integrates your deck with an ipod. I also have the ash converter. It turns the ashtray area into a dock.

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[rxter]

Nice DD. Maybe a respray would take care of the paint and you've got a near new car.

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[94SilverCab]

Take it to Darryl and turn him loose for a day or two.

Jay

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[rhudeboye]

Take it to Darryl and turn him loose fota day or two."

thx Rex/ Jay

I've been considering both. The respray at RPM (a local body shop w/ a good rep) is $500 for the hood alone. Ouch! My plans were to only pay for repairs on this one and still allow money for the 68 go fast goodies (I still have a ways to go on that car). But I cant begin to tell you just how enjoyable this car is. No serious power but it feels fast. And on a daily commute that's everything. Saves you money in speeding tickets but is still enjoyable. German car-Dude always told me to get a BMW or 944 as a daily and drop the Landcruiser. He was right.

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[Fox944]

nice choice for a DD. E46 3er's are great cars. congrats on the purchase

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[rhudeboye]

Thx Fox

Just like with the Porsche, the Po included all books keys, tools, tow hook full spare, DVDs manuals even the orig window sticker. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif[/img]

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[SHA-JR968]

Good choice, I'm driving my E46 320 Touring since 2 1/2 years and 35 KKM (total 120 KKM now) without any problems.

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[Cloud9...68]

I love E46s; I bought an 04 325i for my daughter. If you haven't already, make sure you have it checked out by a BMW specialist, and familiarize yourself with bimmerfest.com, particularly the wiki, which gives a good overview of things that tend to go wrong with the cars. The most pressing, assuming your car has over 80K, is to replace the expansion tank, which is known to go kablooey at around 80K. Other than that, common problems include the steering coupler, leaking valve cover gaskets, and window regulators. For the front regulators, there is a procedure you can perform to pre-emptively prevent the most common failure mode by tying some tie wraps around the known weak points. I did it on my daughter's car; nothing like an ounce of prevention, especially when it is essentially zero cost. There's a write-up on it at e46fanatics.com. Good luck with the car!

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[Digic968]

Nice car! They are very famous here in Europe as good and reliable.
Only problem here in Portugal is the portuguese taxes... they are simply CRAZY...

Just to give you guys an example:

A BMW 320i costs 40k euros (about 56k dollars)
But if you decide for a better engine, say a 330i like yours, it costs 55k euros (about 78k dollars).

Why this difference you may ask? I guess our government thinks for driving under speed limits people do not need more powerful cars...
Notice also the typical car prices, in a country where the minimum salary is around 500 euros (660 dollars)..

Yes... it sucks!...
Now they also changed the import fees!!!
Until now importing a 968 from Germany would cost something like 6-8k (car cost in Germany, used) + 8-9k import fees.
Now after the regulation changed, the import fee itself would go up to something like 20k!!!

Glad i found a mint 968 that was already in Portugal, otherwise i would not be able to afford to get one....
The good side of this is that the ones already in Portugal will have a better resale value in the future, if the law keeps being a PITA for nice car lovers...

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[rhudeboye]

Cloud. Good tips. I haven't read about the expansion tank. That one is new to me.

The PO has already had all window regulators go and had them replaced. This was done 2 years ago. I cant find a receipt for the valve cover but I remember her mentioning it. Eyeballing it there appears to be no leaks. I'll pull it off when I get some time.

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