Hey guys welcome back to legit street car. So a few days ago i received an email from a local subscriber saying he wanted to donate a vintage bmw to the channel. So the story is he bought a new m3 and doesn't have anywhere to store it. He has like a one or one and a half car garage, and this old bmw's been sitting around for like seven eight years.

It's got a ton of problems and hasn't been on the road forever, and i get this question a lot in the comments section, and that is why do people give away free cars? Well, people donate cars all the time and they get a little tax write-off of maybe a few hundred dollars, because usually the car isn't worth that much money and that's the case with me on youtube. A lot of these cars just aren't worth much, and they always need a ton of work and the owners. Much rather see them live on on youtube. So when i told brett the current owner of this vintage bmw that i don't keep these free cars that i fix them up and then do something charitable with them, he was even more on board and excited.

So today we're going to be heading over there. We're going to see what we can see see if we can get this thing started and, dare i say, drive, i have no idea, i'm just kind of planning for the worst on this one and believe it or not. I get offered more free cars than i accept, because most of them aren't worth the money to ship them from wherever they are all the way to chicago, and some of them are just rotted out and too far gone to do much with and in those situations. I'll point the owner in the right direction on how to sell their car and i'll send them links to some of the charities that accept cars as donations for a tax write-off and i'll leave.

Some of those charities linked down below in case you want to donate your own car, so we're gon na head out right now in the lightning i'm loaded up with the sonic tool, backpack a jump pack, some lights, because this garage is kind of dark. And if you guys want a quick sneak, peek update on the giveaway lexus then follow me at legit streetcars, on instagram and on facebook. It's at the body shop and let me tell you, the restoration videos are gon na, be amazing all right guys. Here we go, that must be his new m3.

Oh, is it blue kind of looks blue from here all right, so here we are. I just messaged brett to let him know i'm here, but i'm going to take a few moments to gawk over this m3. This is unbelievable, the perfect color and it's a manual carbon fiber trim. He just got this thing.

This is exactly how i would spec it brett. You did a phenomenal job buying this car holy crap yeah. I guess this is beautiful. That's for sure, what color is it uh? It is avis, blue.

This is really rare right and it's an individual color. So um, you know it's a special order, probably a hundred of them wow. Well, i can see why you need the garage space absolutely so i want to get the back story here in a moment, but first i just got to take a look at this because just standing like outside of the garage and seeing the hood pop this way On an old e30, a white one at that very nice i'll get some uh some better lights in here, for you guys in a minute, but let's just take a quick look: gold bbs wheels. Yes, what are these like? 14S? I think they're 14s and let's see brad, told me about this little mirror.

You know when a guy tells you about a cracked mirror on an old car like this, that he's very particular so far, so good. The paint's faded a little bit of rust here, no damage to the roof and, let's see this quarter panel, looks good. Ah such a timeless classic look at this. Ah, this is beautiful.

This is beautiful. It's just got a little bit of patina going on here. A little dent here and i'm not 100 sure, but if this has been a chicago car, its entire life, it is really nice. The glass is intact.

Oh these! Yes, they just don't do this anymore. Listen to that! Just such good positive engagement of the lock unreal. All right, brett, i'm about to get into this interior. I want to see what's underneath these seats, but uh we got to hear the story, man what is going on with this car.

So basically, this car has been in my family since uh, probably 2009. My dad drove it for a few years up until he retired, and it's sad just about ever since this is the third garage this car has been in since it last was road worthy now you were telling me your dad used this as a daily for, like A couple of years right at least two or three years yeah, and then when did that, stop like when was the last time it was actually on the road, probably 2013-ish like right around, maybe the beginning of 2013.. Okay, it's about like eight years, something like that. Yeah, it's been, it's been a minute yeah, it's been a minute yeah, so i just got the m3 and yeah.

We need the space for the m3 in the garage. Okay, so i want to see the car go to a good home. Last time i tried to start it, it kind of made a weird noise, and i kind of just left it alone. After that, this is a straight six.

It's a 2.5 liter, and these did have some issues uh, where the timing belt could snap, and it is interference now brett told me when he heard this noise when cranking, he did just stop right away and he turned the engine over by hand um, and it Does spin it's got oil and everything and yeah, so we're gon na go ahead and see what this sounds like now, brett go for it and just don't crank it for too long. So i hear what this sounds like go ahead: wow, okay, yeah! It almost sounds like it doesn't have any compression. Just from that little tiny bit of cranking, i heard us yeah. There was like a snap or a tick almost over there, all right.

You know, let's uh, let's hold off right now, let's hold off before we go any further. I want to pop this valve. Cover off and uh, see what we can see. I've read that these things can also break rocker arms uh.

So, let's just take a look before we crank it any longer, just a bunch of 10 millimeters. It looks like holding on this valve cover. Okay, i think this bracket just goes with the valve cover all right, i'm just taking this bracket off all together. There we go.

Let's see we can see people this whole this hose coming left. Maybe oh there we go. Okay, all right, um, just taking a look at all these rockers. So far i don't see a smoking gun unless you guys saw it because you were scanning the rockers going from this way is anything broken.

I don't think so. The cam looks: okay, hang on i'll, bring you guys in close. So here we are, unless i'm completely missing something uh the springs. Look, okay, the rocker arms.

Look, okay, nothing is loose and we can see the timing belt is still there not sure if it skipped a tooth or something but uh all right. I think at this point, um we're gon na take some plugs out and get the borescope in there. So we're gon na stick the boroscope camera inside of the cylinders and i'm really hoping that we don't see valve marks on the tops of the pistons, because i'm pretty sure this is an interference engine. And if the timing belt skipped a tooth or two or three.

It could cause this damage and cost me a lot of money, and i don't like spending a lot of money. I, like saving a lot of money, like i do when i shop for insurance with today's video sponsor policy genius. So policy genius makes it easy for you to shop for home and auto insurance in one place, meaning you're gon na get the same or better coverage at a lower price and they've saved new customers. An average of 350 per year on home insurance and they've saved new customers, an average of 435 dollars a year on auto insurance.

Getting started is super easy, just go to policygenius.com legit streetcars you're, going to answer a few easy questions, and then policy genius takes it from there comparing rates from all of america's top insurers. They even handle all of the paperwork if you're switching to new coverage or moving over your existing coverage, and if you bundle your home and auto insurance, you can save even more policy genius has saved customers an average of twelve hundred and fifty dollars per year over What they were paying for home and auto insurance, it's a huge savings, and then you could spend all your money on an old, broken. Bmw like this head over to policygenius.com, legit, streetcars or just click on my link in the video description box to get started. Saving today and a big thanks to policy genius for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself now, let's get the camera in there, i'm crossing my fingers now and hope that there is no damage.

Okay, let's get these spark plug wires off these wires. Don't look too old; actually they look to be in good shape. All right. Let's just pick a random one.

Here see we can see and okay, it is not a 5 8.. No worries brought two different flavors here, so we got the 13th 16th in there. These really aren't that tight, okay, the plug, looks okay, it's an ngk r and not a bad plug, not a bad plug at all. Okay, but it's not the plug that we suspect have any issues didn't really sound like there was compression to me sounds like something kind of major uh.

Let's see here, this is going to be tough. Is this piston all the way up could be? Oh yeah. It's right in our face all right: let's pick a different one! Okay here we are this one's kind of up there too. What's up with that so far, so good, i don't see any brand new shiny marks yet go from a different angle on this boroscope.

It's pretty cool something there that could just be a valve relief at the very edge of the piston, hmm kind of hard to tell all right. Let's do another one, okay, so yeah, that's definitely just a valve relief, that's nothing, bad! That is cross hatchings and the cylinder walls, look really nice and there's another valve relief right there yeah. So i don't really see anything wrong with this one. Let's pull out some more okay, so this one valve relief looks fine.

I don't see any issues here. It's kind of hard to turn the camera. All the way around, i don't know is that a piece of something it's hard to see the entire piston. The cylinder definitely looks good.

Let's keep going okay. This piston is uh further up there huh some scratch marks on here that don't really look all that normal, not gon na lie. Let's see here what is going on there. It's like someone went in there with a pick or something and started to clean the piston.

I don't know that shiny part right. There is what i'm talking about to a little bit on the left on the left-hand side of the screen, see that shiny part all right. You know what i'm going to turn this motor over by hand. I want this piston to go down, so we can get a better look before we do that.

We might as well check out the last cylinder a little scratch mark right. There, probably nothing yeah. I don't see anything here just yet. That's scratch just kind of odd but yeah.

I don't think it's anything all right. Let's turn this over. I want to take a better look at cylinder, one all right, so i got brett down there he's going to turn the crank go ahead, brett, okay! So we're going up now, there's that mark it's clean right there, but man it doesn't look like it dug in keep going down. Okay, all right, um stop right there.

I wonder if it's off just a little bit enough to lower the compression um, but maybe not enough to completely destroy the valves, uh yeah. This is weird all right guys, so we got a different borescope in here with a mirror, and this is uh taking a while. But i'm able to get an angle where we can see both valves brett's down there we're on cylinder one brett go ahead and spin. It over okay, so there we go.

We can see this valve opening okay cool. This is awesome. Nice yeah! I don't see any issues all right keep on going. Let's uh! Let's watch that one go down, so that's your exhaust valve that we're looking at the white one and there we go there.

Is the intake go ahead. Keep it going brett, okay, keep going it's hard to see, we're kind of losing it all right there we go. Keep going we'll watch it seat itself. I know we can't see all the way around, but if a valve hits a piston you're good right there um hold on you know what brett go again.

Keep going it's hard to tell. Is the exhaust fully seated go ahead? Brad, okay: there we go yeah. I think it is seated. I think it was seated i thought for a second.

Maybe it was popping up a little go ahead. Keep going! I wan na watch this one seat again. You can see actually the the bottom of the valve there where it seats in the uh cylinder head and it's clean there. It was.

Oh, there was that noise, so it's making some weird popping noise, but it's all the way over there like on the driver's side. Let's watch this guy close one more turn and we should have this okay, all right, yeah. I think that's good all right. So we pulled the uh fuel pump relay here and we're just gon na give it a couple little bumps here and i feel compression like really good compression coming out.

What is that noise? Is it the throttle that that could be the um the spark plug wires? That's what it is: they're uh they're, just they're jumping - are they still sparking, though i know? Actually, i don't know yeah, let's pop the um coil. Let's take this coil off. Okay, there's that we've taken the coil out of the loop. We have disconnected the idle air control motor and the fuel pump relay it feels like we have compression.

We don't see any damage in the engine. The timing belt looks to be good, go ahead. Bro, let's see what is that noise? Try it again! Okay! Now now it's sounding like normal. I'm not hearing that popper, i'm not hearing the pop either.

Do it do it again? That's always that's a normal yeah! I don't hear that noise anymore, though right i mean i can give it a little extra crank. Yeah give it an extra crank. Let's see, i don't hear it anymore yeah now it sounds good. I was thinking.

Maybe that sound was a binding spring or a broken spring, something along those lines. Yeah, i'm not seeing anything wrong with the springs. Uh go ahead, give it kind of a longer crank again. I want to watch this timing belt man.

It sounds great now that sounds great to me. It sounded like that. The first time when we had the plugs in and everything, that's why i kind of suspected uh that there was something going on with the compression, but i'm feeling all the air popping out of there. I know we could obviously do a compression test would be the end i'll be all for that yeah and i'd say nothing is hitting anything.

I think we're safe. All right. We put the spark plugs in. I just kind of want to hear this again go ahead.

Brent god, it's got something; it's got something off here, all right, all right, all right guys at this point we're just gon na kind of call it quits with the engine right now i don't have my compression gauge on me. I didn't bring everything um. I could go rent one, but i really want to verify that the timing is okay, even if this thing ran perfectly i'd be doing a timing belt service anyway. So i'm just going to go ahead with that in mind, check the timing.

If it's okay, we'll do the timing belt and just kind of dig in, do some more research figure out what this could be. The main issue is that loud ticking and it doesn't happen all the time. It happened in the very first scene when he cranked it over for the first time and it's happened on and off and it's a little bothersome, so i don't see any damage in there. I think it's okay, but i kind of want to reevaluate at home base.

So anyway, with that, let's take a good look at this interior. I want to see the condition of the seats and then i want to see what we can see on the bottom. Make sure this car isn't totally rotted out, because, unfortunately, that does happen to the old e30s all right, so we have that little spot of rust there and uh other than that. It looks pretty good in here.

This looks really solid stickers are in the right place. Okay, uh, let's see the interior so far looks great. Wow doesn't smell bad. It smells like an old bmw, which i like, and let's take a look here.

These things look like they've been on there for a long time. Okay, i don't know how to disconnect them. Oh no way, oh hang on. I got ta get these off.

There's there's clips down here. Okay, there we go. No, have these been covered since new. You got ta, be kidding me.

What you know when you see seat covers like this. It's for one or two reasons: either the seats are destroyed or they put them on to preserve them, and this will tell us oh yeah. These are new. These are new.

Look at that a little dust back there no way. Oh man, mint just totally mint and the interior is in great shape. Oh how many miles we have a hundred and seventy four thousand miles i got ta say i was thinking it would be a lot lower than that. Just everything looks so proper.

All the letters are perfect they're, not even dirty look at this so nice. The only thing i can see so far is it has a crack in the dash, but the door panels look good. We have a really nice headliner and i'm gon na expect this back seat to be pretty much mint, yeah wow, sorry for the lighting, guys i'll give you another show when we get this back two legit street quarters, but this interior is unreal. Look at these cup holders all right: let's see we can see in the trunk.

Now i got the euro plate and it looks like some spare parts. So bretta told me this isn't his first e30 and he had some spare parts from many many years ago. So some interior stuff - oh no way it's an old cassette. Yes, look at this little cassette holder! This is sweet.

We have an extra little console piece right here. Some plastic stuff, newer, ish battery all right a little spot of rust right there, and this is what i'm worried about with a lot of these cars is what's underneath. So we can see this is rotted out right here and what do we got going on here? Some bilsteins lots of spider, webs lots of spider, webs wow differential, doesn't seem to be leaking. The muffler is pretty rusty.

I don't see any holes, though, that stuff's not that important how's the frame well so far, so good. This area here is a little rusty. This is usually where people jack them up by and then they kind of smush in the little pinch weld so no big deal there. This seems solid though the rockers seem to be in good shape.

Lore boards look nice so far, no holes, nothing yeah. The exhaust needs a little bit of work uh. It looks like there's a leak from the transmission a little bit. Let's go to the front.

Spiders have definitely made their home here, but we have a little bit of an oil leak. Maybe power steering leak. Nothing too crazy. I mean it's been sitting here for a long time we can see back there by the trans is a little puddle, no big deal.

We can fix that stuff up these lines are a little rusty, but here is one of the frame rails. Looks to be very very intact and the other side looks the same. That's the important stuff, the floors and the frame don't seem to be rotted out. How good would these gold bbs rims look if they were restored? Oh man and these are 14 inch.

195. 65. 14. 2002 wow 2002.

These are quite old, very dry rotted. So even if we did get this thing to run, he said the brake pedal goes to the floor. So maybe a brake line, or something like that - probably wouldn't be the best car to drive two legit street quarters, which is about a half hour from here all right guys with that i'm proud to say i am the new owner of a 1989 325i and e30 Bmw one of my favorite vintage bmws along with pretty much everybody out there. These cars have quite the cult status and for good reason, and i won't be the owner long though, because after i'm done fixing this up, i'm going to do something charitable with it.

I don't think this is going to be a car giveaway, though i think this is better off being sold, and then we donate all the money to a charity and yeah i'll keep you guys posted, but first i got ta finish up the lexus i got ta Finish up the mercedes v12, i don't wan na become one of those channels where i have like 15 projects going on at the same time. So i don't know if i'll be able to help myself, though on diagnosing, what's wrong with this engine, so i may have a video, an extra video or something soon on this, but stay tuned for the lexus. It's coming up. It's going to look amazing.

I cannot wait for you guys to see the final product and for that giveaway and the best part with this e30 is that brett wants to come, help work on it. He said, you've had how many of these things like four e thirties, okay, cool, so yeah. He hasn't had you know enough time to finish this one obviously and he's moving on from it, but uh he's down for coming to legit street quarters and helping me wrench on this, so that'll help me out a lot too. We can get this done much quicker.

Once i get started so anyway with that, i hope you guys really enjoyed this video if you did give it a big thumbs up share the video subscribe, if you haven't already and most importantly, have an awesome day i'll catch all of you in the next video You.