bmw 330 coupe

As a rough guide Fox has a similiar aged car to the one you would be looking at, with the same engine (although his a 5 series) and his is one of the best conditioned cars you'll ever see, yet it can regularly cost him 4 figure sums every few months to get everything sorted.
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Thats because he takes it to bmw for servicing and repair.
 
JamesRJ said:
Thats because he takes it to bmw for servicing and repair.
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you dont get your local backstreet garage to rebuild your VANOS

Most of my local backstreet garages ran a mile from changing the clutch on my vectra, and its just a clutch. I got lots of "its gonna be expensive" and "i'll get back to you" etc.. and the one person who did agree to do it - thought it was the same as the N/A 3.2 GSI and tried to charge me £100 extra labour that he hadnt counted on. I of course refused and told him it was his fault for quoting me too low and not doing his research properly.

Rebuilding the VANOS is something best left to a specialist. Either a local BMW specialist (if you have one near you) or the BMW dealer.
 
I prefer the diy repair/servicing route, keeps costs down and I can spend longer doing the job properly, cleaning parts up, copper greasing bolts as they go back in ect. than a mechanic who's under pressure to get the job done as fast as possible so he can move on to the next job.

Classic example of this is when I bought my BMW it had full main dealer service history and had recently had the front discs replaced. I noticed it had slight vibration coming through the brake pedal, so I though I would investigate. I tried to unbolt the front wheels ( took a big breaker bar to crack the bolts as no copper grease on them ) next thing was the wheels had seized on as again no copper grease used. When I eventually removed the discs I discovered that when they had replaced them they hadnt bothered to clean the hub face up so they weren't sitting flat against the hub. I cleaned the hub up with a wire wheel on an angle grinder, put it all back together and brakes are perfect with no vibration.
 
JamesRJ said:
I prefer the diy repair/servicing route, keeps costs down and I can spend longer doing the job properly, cleaning parts up, copper greasing bolts as they go back in ect. than a mechanic who's under pressure to get the job done as fast as possible so he can move on to the next job.

Classic example of this is when I bought my BMW it had full main dealer service history and had recently had the front discs replaced. I noticed it had slight vibration coming through the brake pedal, so I though I would investigate. I tried to unbolt the front wheels ( took a big breaker bar to crack the bolts as no copper grease on them ) next thing was the wheels had seized on as again no copper grease used. When I eventually removed the discs I discovered that when they had replaced them they hadnt bothered to clean the hub face up so they weren't sitting flat against the hub. I cleaned the hub up with a wire wheel on an angle grinder, put it all back together and brakes are perfect with no vibration.
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All dealers (and trades for that matter) have their ***** that are too busy chasing efficiency targets and bonus.

For a cheap car like this I'd suggest that anyone looking to buy would be at least semi keen on getting their hands dirty and doing simple jobs like pads and discs, but rebuilding a vanos unit is something that even a seasoned DIY enthusiast would think twice about. It's a long, difficult job that last time I checked required the purchasing of some special tools?

It does make me worry what's going to happen to the low end of the car market in 5/10 years time. Cars are getting increasingly complex and harder to run on a shoe string.
 
If this is a second car, which doesnt need to be reliable, then why are you looking at 330's and Mondeo's?

I struggle to think of a more pointless second car.
 
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