Barn Find - The Original BMW 3 Series: E21 323i - Project Castellón: Part 1

coming up the evil twin is back look here's back how is the tropical island a banana gets eaten i branch out and morning exercise aka pushing a dead classy car hello hi and welcome to m539 restorations a channel known for saving neglected and very broken bmws well not anymore no mas amigos time to explore the car world and grab it by the bonnet i want something reliable something that doesn't constantly leak oil what is that and no we don't look girl's back how was the tropical island nice and warm now get rid of it not broken enough no then i quit good you're useless anyway i'll show you useless where was i ah yes reliability say hello to my us project i give you my new nissan gtr ah it's just another broken bmw that's been abandoned for the last 25 years how must have pressed on the wrong button but it's here might as well save it might as well save it what do we have what kind of flavor of bmw is this old and dingy heading down the right path that's reassuring can you pass the grand theft auto test barely kind of claustrophobic in here and i'm three inches and 380 feet tall no key didn't run in over two decades all right i approve it is broken enough time to cheese it out here before that genius makes me push this hunk of metal [Music] say hola to project castellon the genesis the original 3 series the e21 and the top of the line model 323i admittedly i didn't look for this model specifically one late evening before going to bed i stumbled upon this little gem freshly listed for sale in as the project name suggests castellon spain i messaged the seller early in the morning and by lunchtime i did the right thing and sent the deposit for a car that's been off the road for the last 25 years the following day a good friend of mine from alicante sharok went there with his old school classic mercedes tow truck to pick it up and store it with him before it was shipped to me in germany the seller claimed the car didn't have any rust but my friend noted rust in the corner of the rear windows but other than that it is solid massive thanks to sharok for doing the leg work and helping me and frankly all of us to rescue this beauty we are jumping back into action on the delivery day good morning it is way too early o'clock but it doesn't matter because look who's here the driver he came from alicante to frankfurt in like a day he left spain i think yesterday and the guy arrived late last night i don't want to wake him because he's having a well-deserved sleep but a lot of delicious bmw is here just look at it all right here's the deal we have a problem the car doesn't have keys it had the keys you can see them on the pictures but somewhere between my friend going to pick it up in castellon and then transporting car back to alicante the keys were lost not sure how why where but the car doesn't have keys so we cannot steer it because the steering lock is engaged and normally this wouldn't be a big issue because you can just take the chassis number go directly to bmw prove that you own the car and they're gonna sell you exactly for that car for like 56 euros but this is an old car so pretty much everything for it is discontinued well those small bits and stuff the specific key that i need is discontinued it's no longer available for me nw it's going to get interesting i'm also secretly hoping that the key somewhere in the car maybe dropped it or whatever they were not able to find it when they when they were loading the car in alicante also look at that car in the front ferrari lamborghini it's not it's mclaren mp4-12c it is a very very cool car i want one of those as well maybe it's for sale i give you 2 000 euros yeah right i just i cannot begin to describe you how excited i am for this car i mean i've never this car is older than i am i'm gonna have breakfast while we're waiting to be very honest with you i don't like getting up early in the morning at all and i can sleep through a war but if the reason to wake up early is broken bmw i'll be there count me in also where is that thing on the back not sure it looks cool it's a dodge just let's have a look very nice ferrari at the front and we have a dodge in the back just look at this thing we have original spanish plates v stands for valencia beautiful not staying on the car until it's registered in germany four beautiful headlamps perfect size kidney grills chrome bumper that's going to polish nicely rock chips so here's the thing i don't know if the paint is original and i have a paint measuring device so you're going to check that in a bit but i just want to see the state of the paint so far not too good that's the bit of rust oh the guy's up good morning hello how are you hey good you're quick my friend very quick sorry my english they lost the keys in spain so i'm secretly hoping that maybe it's somewhere inside look at this beautiful interior oh please be in here yeah the ignition lock there's nothing there i still oh there's the mirror that's missing the door panel is here this is good it doesn't appear to be here it's not in the pocket the lava ox doesn't look that interesting 93 000 kilometers i think that's original we're going to talk about that in a bit but yeah key is definitely not here yeah can you back it up there like that because this is locked ah this side is worse that's really bad there's a hole there oh that doesn't work yeah that's not the key nothing interesting there look at that that is beautiful and original male bbs these puppies are staying clever is that what it says yes look at the state of the exhaust it's mint not even a tiny speck of rust there oh man just look at the state of the bottom for now i don't see any rust at all how do you open this thing it's it opens on the front doesn't it there we are so i need to see if i can disconnect the steering shaft just does that stay it will i can see the steering shaft there so i'm gonna go get some tools and see if i can push that down and disconnect it that way we can steer the wheels now that won't work oops dropped it oh the dodge thing is running i think actually sounds sweet there is no way that that's going to work because i need to counter hold the bolt back and disconnect it on the steering rack more easily this trucks every three seconds oh yeah i need two hands i'm gonna do this oh there you go now you're in business and this car has a steering rack so the handling of this car it's just gonna be biblical mcpherson struts independent suspension come on i think i'm gonna need a pry bar fry bar pry bar cannot fit okay get a hammer how's your morning going so far problem is it's rusted on yeah spark plug fell out that's interesting i somehow managed to hammer out the spark plug that is always a good sign oh crying out loud finally congratulations this is what i've done i had to beat off the column of the steam rack something that i really didn't want to do because i left a lot of marks on the column but at this point there's no way i can push it into the yard without steering normally i would put a jack over there but nothing is flat here there's no way you can do it with the jack so now hopefully we can just move with our hands wheels and we can get it in is that neutral yeah whoa whoa whoa whoa does your brakes or no no brakes i barely fit in this thing okay good it's working yeah i can't get out all right we're down fixing this car is going to be interesting to say the least oh we have faded paint here no push by the wheels by the wheels much easier how this is power steering human steering can i push this car on my own shut it down [Music] who needs a combustion engine we have human strength beautiful morning to push a classy bmw this collar was only at least from what i found online available in 1980 it's only this model here which is kind of cool it's called olive green i'm gonna go cough up my lung pee the guy and then we'll be back and take a proper look of this thing but you're here now my third delicious friend after 26 years someone's gonna try and rescue you so we're gonna walk past that bugatti over there and look at this beautiful thing look how beautiful it is no idea what model is it's dodge pickup of some sort but look at the interior this thing stunning and look at that beautiful look at the miles not sure if they're original but 32 000 miles wooden steering wheel hula girl i mean whoever restored this thing did a phenomenal job look at the seat look at the bed wood my friends would coast classics presents the dash mclaren is whatever see that every day this you don't see everything i think i should get one of these i would but it's kind of out of my budget i only have money for broken neglected bmws but this one is kind of weathered i wonder if it was cheap yeah look at that not something you want to see on a mclaren the interior it looks pretty good i mean i'd pay even 3 000 for this nice car so i tipped the guy nicely because he helped me and reinstalled my left lung and now i can proceed and get familiar with this car what did i buy what did i get myself into let's start tour de espana on the front we have four beautiful headlights and they look really good actually a little bit cloudy on the inside but you can see original hella so that'll clean up nicely bumper looks really good plastic doesn't even have any marks so the chrome will polish nicely the grille looks perfect what is that branch that's beaten up a little bit but i think that's gonna stay because character small scuff there we have a small bump here the fender looks really good as well considering the age no rust you can see here someone was hitting it with the doors and stuff and i hate this i really really hate and this is why on parking lots i park as far away as possible from another human because humans they don't care about cars not all of them this looks good no rust here antenna or the eye poking device love that but look at this original run-in instructions that is beautiful and rare the chrome looks really good here rust obviously here i believe this is a very common spot on e21 and the window needs to come out for this to repair that properly arch so far looking really good some cracking here and this one this was repainted as well so there was rust here and you can see it coming through now that looks really good no rust just some mud we have bilstein sharks yellow but what do you think about these wheels they are a piece of art obviously you're going to need new tires 185 70 13. let's have a look at the roof overall i think pretty good you can see some small rust stains here and on the sunroof lid but this is not too bad and if i'm not mistaken the old 3 series like the e30 even the 8 series the sunroof lit likes to rust like crazy but this looks repairable rear window that looks in excellent shape even the trim and everything looks great trunk lid you see how beautiful this color looks in sun just spectacular imagine all of this polished or freshly painted tail lights this one looks good no cracks we have rust here i hate rust in here in the corner as well the bumper this one looks really solid we have twin exhaust that was really cool in the 80s and the 323i was the only three series that had the twin exhaust and it looks really really really good shape that hanger is off and that one is gone that's locked with the key that i don't have some surface rust here a bit more rust here this taillight is looking cracked that is a crack there so i'm going to need rear right taillight this will be large so far good but i think this is the worst bit of rust so far that we found because there's actually a hole over there so this stream here is missing hopefully somewhere in the car yep look you see it over there the side skirts look really good no rust at all we have some rust here coming through in the corner that's also not a common spot on e21 and look at this etv itv that's spanish german tooth inspection or mot done in 1995 and that's the last technical inspection that this car received and that was 26 years ago my friends 26 years ago that is a long long time for a car to sit this fender looks beautiful no rust inside as well so let's see what we have in the trunk if it's open that is oh it is no spare that's kind of a shame but this looks really good actually no signs of major rust anywhere so some surface stuff happening there but that'll clean up we have rustage here so that needs to clean up but that just looks like surface rust clean up and treat it toolkit please let there be a tool kit negative on that completely empty so i'm gonna be looking for that here as well looks good so i think this here alone is a really really good sign that there's no major rust anywhere so this glass the rubber seal is missing completely so it's just bouncing in there door card fixed beautiful this door panel looks in really good shape so this is green on green green on the outside green on the inside that's the door handle really neat no way yes power mirrors that's really neat and this here tells me that the car was sitting outside and that window was down and that's how that seed got ruined completely but i really like this is the two-tone combination we have fabric here and this green stuff on the side that's really cool and i want to keep this theme i want to restore this car and keep its originality so i'm going to be looking for a company or some professional that can redo all of this fabric back to original i think that's really neat and we should try and keep it as original as possible some knobs here that does something that as well don't know what that is we have a dogleg racing gearbox never driven a car with a gearbox like this so that's going to take some getting used to the handbrake it works as demonstrated previously the dash it is i think i saw a crack somewhere here there it is it's gonna be super difficult to find one that's not cracked so maybe that's repairable i don't know does not have ac which is kind of odd because this is a spanish car i thought most of them came with ac the headliner looks decent-ish this very crispy he has a sunroof i really wish he didn't have sunroof but it has manual one not gonna try and open that now clutch i bet we don't have clutch of course not no actually that's just spring no clutch to be expected the door handle what is that that's oh no that's the fuel pump cover so i was told they didn't try to start this car because if they did they probably did more harm than good this is the carpet i believe from the trunk door card i thought it's going to be a lot worse but it looks really decent actually so the seat is off there we are i read that they like thrust in here as well that looks good that looks good as well and well it doesn't look like someone tried to remove the fuel pumps which is a big bonus maybe they were just checking if they're working which after 26 years of course they're not working we have a hole for the speakers there is that factory must be yeah there are no speakers in the door panels so no rust on the bottom nope perfect we have a free comb another one that i believe went there so that's ruined door handle yep that's the mirror that was removed for some reason the glass that'll clean up cover for i don't know free towel oh is that wet no it's not that's clean actually yeah but this side was definitely open because you can see a lot more crap in here than on that side which is a shame because if this window was closed the interior would probably be saved at least that's the glove box please let there be something interesting in here boring insurance stuff nothing interesting free tissues we have a sticker 93 000 kilometers in 96 93 and the next oil change 98 000 kilometers so it was driven until 1996 so 25 years off the road and this is great this is a piece of history so i have to keep that i don't have entire history but i have to look at the report again let me pull it up this is the spanish report and unfortunately it doesn't say how many kilometers it had this is the easter the history of inspections and it seems like it had two or three owners but 1988 the 94 94 and the 94 until now one owner so one owner since 1994 and we can call this two owner essentially usually it says kilometers here but since the car is very old they probably didn't know any of that back then and he only goes back until 91 didn't have records prior to that but this service history leave that in there close this oh oh the door is refusing to cooperate while i'm defeated i need thinking juice which is typically beer but it's early in the morning so it's coffee come on there we are yes and now we need to check out the power plant the hood opens the old school way and this is the beating heart of this car the all mighty m20 b23 engine which is an inline six cylinder 2.3 liter engine and it was a piece of art back in the day referred to as one of the smoothest inline sixes in the day 143 ps 190 newton meters of torque and zero to 100 kilometers per hour in 8.7 seconds which is really decent by today's standards but back in the day it was quick really really quick top speed of around 190 kilometers per hour it was it was the fastest three series back in the day i mean i honestly cannot wait to drive this car this here looks not very good not gonna lie and i'm gonna remove a spark plug or two and use endoscope and look inside the engine so we can find out and see if this is going to be service type of revival or engine out and rebuild revival because if the cylinders are full of rust there's no point to even try to start it but if they look clean relatively clean i'm gonna spray some fogging oil and stuff in it let it percolate and then we can just service the rest of it and see if it's going to start also got to inspect the timing belt because this car has a timing belt yeah this is new for me i don't know thing about these engines the oldest bmw that i owned is e31 and e32 with the m70 engine so this is just complete new territory for me donde esta my lamp coolant i'd be surprised if there's anything in here yeah bone dry oh oh got spark plugs two of them here and then the one fell out so it has bosch k jethronics thingy for the fuel system no idea how that thing works that has that giant thing here with hoses and everything you can see the original color b w olive green metallic and this here it actually looks decent i don't know if you can see but it looks clean inside which is a good sign this is the bosch key jetronic fuel system i'm gonna have to do a lot of reading on that see how it works how to service it all of this plastic whatever they're not plastic but maybe they are fuel hoses need to be replaced where's the dipstick there it is so we're gonna check if there's any oil in it that looks clean really clean yeah definitely has oil it's nearly on the minimum but it definitely has oil and it's clean it doesn't smell doesn't look like there's water in it or metal that's torn that's disconnected brake booster oh yeah that's missing the brake fluid reservoir the brake master looks completely rusted so someone was tinkering with this car i just i really hope they didn't try to start this car the guy told me they didn't touch it they just found it and didn't touch it but look at that bolts there spark plug here what's missing there that's not good there's a hole there and something is missing can you see it some connection missing here but no rust in here we're in the corners there's some surface rust here but that'll clean up the battery tray is also rust free here it all looks solid i think now we need to have a look underneath the car i need to get my creeper all right this one's good and you can already tell this is a car that lives in a warm climate there just isn't any major rust on it so far baldwin actually looks good the strut it's not leaking no horrible terrible leaks i mean all of this looks the belt is on that looks good rear main steel leak probably look at this floor and a side skirt it looks great even the middle exhaust looks in excellent shape this is a 40 old car and it looks that good underneath can you see in there from what i can tell it looks really good but it looks like it lived in some sort of grass and stuff fuel filters and stuff i don't know how this the system works on this thing is that the external fuel pumps i don't know i'm gonna have to do some research but i'm really really happy so far how it looks from underneath and no leaks from the diff another option that these cars had is lsd limited slip differential i think once the car is on the left we can read the numbers on the diff and see if it's lsd or a normal one but given that it doesn't have sport seats or sports steering wheel it's probably gonna be open diff floor on this side looks mint as well no major rust anywhere nothing's gonna have to be cut in well and this type of condition for 40 year old car is absolutely dream i have this device this is a paint measuring device and now we're going to check how many panels on this car still wear original paint original paint should be between 110 130 microns and repainted it's going to be 170 80 or so so let's see start starting roof 112 that's original paint sunroof lid yeah 107. that's good two to four so the hood was repainted not original paint 100 that's original paint 188 repainted 112 so only the up report was it painted 105 original paint 220 definitely repainted 217 repainted 196 repainted 123 original 137 that's good so this arch didn't have any work done 100 this upper part was repainted 185 this bit here was repainted yeah you can see they cut it here like that and just blended it in here so i was kind of hoping that the paint on this car might be original considering the kilometers and that's been off through for like 26 years so essentially it was only used for around 15 years but we don't have many panels that still wear original paint and with that in mind the car is going to be completely repainted to original color if this was original color and the same state with some marks a bit of rust here and there i would leave it just like that because of originality but since it was already painted and we have disgusting rust over there we need to sort that out so the coal car is going to be stripped and repainted obviously that's going to come at a very late stage of this restoration first thing as always is mechanical stuff get it running and now i'm going to remove a couple of spark plugs so we can look inside the engine and see the condition of the cylinders those spark plugs look brand new vacuum up the dirt oh two euros actually that is not a brand new spark plug that looks very very old and very black a little bit of corrosion on the tip which is not a good sign this endoscope was a gift from a nice subscriber thank you very much let's see what the inside of this engine looks like all right that's not good there's a ton of metal in it which i don't quite understand definitely some scoring and a bit of rust i don't understand why is there where there are so many metal shavings in there maybe the spark plug threads were stripped and they were doing the repair and stuff so let's remove another spark plug and then i'll show you the pictures heavy heavy carton buildup on this one so this one doesn't look terrible but it's bone dry yeah you can definitely see some surface rust in there so i'm going to quickly remove all spark plugs so we can have a proper look so four looks best so far definitely has some surface corrosion the worst one by far is cylinder number one there's definitely some heavy scoring in there right will it run possibly probably will it run good nope so now i'm gonna vacuum all of the cylinders see if i can get crap from the cylinder one out either way that one has a lot of scoring the rest of them look semi-decent if it's in surface corrosion but again if you spray fogging oil and wd-40 or whatever inside they'll come around and the car will run [Music] so this is my fully patent erectile dysfunction sucking device there we are so i got most of the crap out there's some tiny shavings still in there but that's fine because all of that will fly out out of the exhaust vault once the car is running and also the cylinder is ruined anyway because so the rain is cramping my style but i want to spray wd-40 into the cylinders that's going to help the rust well surface rust and then fogging oil for men that's going to lubricate the cylinders properly for the first start i mean we are far far away from the first start i'm not going to attempt to do it now because the before i even turn the engine over i want to check the timing belt see the condition order because if that snaps then we are risking doing some proper damage to the engine this is cylinder number one you can see some scoring over there and surface rust that's fun of metal shavings not sure where they came from when the spark plug wasn't done or something but you can see some heavy scoring here heavy heavy scoring surface rust and you can see some proper carbon buildup on cylinder number two this is three surface rust again some metal shavings and stuff surface rust surface rust and then this is cylinder number one after vacuuming so i removed most of the metal shavings so will this car run with the state of the cylinders like this definitely will it run good no not really especially cylinder number one but we're still going to check the compression once we get the car running first wd-40 and now fogging oil from that so this stuff is really good because it's going to miss the entire cylinder there we are all cylinders fogged spark plugs reinstalled as well as ignition cables and now the car can sit with oil and wd-40 working its thing inside and when the time comes for us to start working on this car we'll do further inspection and stuff we're gonna remove the wall cover gotta check the timing belt and i think this is not ideal but after 25 years or so sitting it's pretty much what you would expect cylinder one is really bad the rest of them not too bad but we'll see maybe it comes back around once the car is running and the piston rings can scrape all of that crap out and if the compression is low there's no way around it the engine needs a complete rebuild shocks seem decent this is as good as it can get for 40 year old car rust wise and condition wise especially when you find one that's been sitting for very long time if you find one of these cars in germany or any other country where the winters are harsh and there's a lot of salt it's just going to be a complete rust bucket so this for me is perfect i hate rust and whatever rust is on the body that can be easily removed by a body shop someone who knows what they're doing these cars are super super rare and don't even ask me i'm not gonna answer i'm not selling this car this one is mine and i'm gonna do whatever i can to keep it as long as i can obviously this is going to be a huge learning curve for me because i don't know anything about e21 or these old inline 6 engines so any help that you want to provide me with please do i'll appreciate that there's probably going to be a lot of rare parts that i'm going to need to source but from the looks of it it's complete the toolkit is missing i'll need that need the rear right taillight i'm also probably going to replace the steering wheel i kind of like the look of the three spoke and m sport whatever it's not the three spoke sport steering wheel it's very expensive but if you have one for sale drop me a message i really like that one and other than that i wouldn't change anything in the interior also the smell of the car it's actually quite pleasant it smells like an old car it doesn't smell on mold or anything like that i like it also this car doesn't have any cats headers middle exhaust rear exhaust that's it nothing else so that straight six engine it's going to sound beautiful and i can't wait for it i can't stop smiling i really can't i've been sipping my coffee and staring at it for good 20 minutes now and i still cannot believe that i owned a legend a proper bmw classic e21 323i and if you offer me one in mint condition and this one i would take this one in a heartbeat because this car is a survivor and now i can make it my own touch everything make it drive beautifully make it look beautifully and properly enjoy this car and i'm so glad it's in this color olive green and not one of those gray black boring colors this is really 80s color proper retro color and once it's fully repainted it's just going to pop but in the meantime we can polish it and still make it pop i've got updates i found a locksmith in frankfurt who told me he can make me a key if i bring him the cylinder lock so i removed the lock from the trunk that was the easiest one to remove and a couple of days later i'm holding a key and it actually works easy enough the only thing is this key at least for the trunk it's not the same as the one for the doors and it says it's missing a couple of notches or feet here so i need to remove the door lock take that to him and then he's gonna make me a proper key this one works for the for the trunk but he says it's probably not gonna work for the door and for the ignition but in any case this is excellent news because this was only 26 euros and i'm gonna have brand new keys and i'm not gonna have to change all of the locks and cylinders which is really huge i really didn't feel like doing all of that because i already tried to source replacement locks and it's proven to be very very difficult nonetheless so let's try it it works it works i locked it unlocked locked brilliant let's try the ignition yeah for the ignition no dice it is not working it goes in but i cannot turn it so i'm gonna have to remove the door lock because on the door lock there's a code on the bottom and then based on that he can make me the key that's going to work in the ignition as well i've got an update on the previous update i went back to the locksmith with the passenger side door lock and there's a key code on it and he was able to cut me a key well to adjust the old one because he was missing a couple of notches and stuff here so this one should work in the ignition lock let's verify it's still working in the door that it is moment of truth yes it's working it's unlocked brilliant come on come on you worked before now it's a no-go again i have another one let's try that one because he got me two of them oh yeah this one works much better i have two of them now ah this is i think baby jesus so i can reconnect the steering column and then we can finally steer the car but it's such a relief it goes in super nicely bob's your uncle so this turned out to be a lot less complicated than i was anticipating but it makes sense because when you think about it this is just a normal key there's no immobilizer alarm or anything like that it's just like a house he so any locksmith can do it if they have a code it's even easier because he cut this key just based on the code that i gave him so that is spot on and with that the key saga is over we're gonna park it here well not exactly here over there but let me know are you as excited as i am about this project it is a really really cool find in the next episode we'll start working on it try to get it running after 25 years of sitting it'll be challenging but doable the next video is going to be on the e60 m5 i really want to finish that project and finally drive it then i want to start working on project car azure e32 750il again but currently i have a bit of an issue with space as in i don't have any and in a few weeks i'll be traveling to sweden to get that m car that i mentioned in the previous episode that's right another project and you're gonna love that one too trust me so i'm running around trying to find space where i can work comfortably on cars because main issue now is i only have one lift so once i put one car on that left that is the only car that i can work on for the next few days couple of weeks and if i have two or three lifts then i can work on more projects simultaneously i have couple leads so we'll see if anything pans out for now that should do it thank you very much for watching please consider subscribing if you enjoy the video check out the merchandise we have some really cool stuff and also my patreon account should you want to help and support a dingy classic project such as this one adios amigos where am i going now here foreign

Channel: M539 Restorations

Views: 275,193

Rating: 4.9814763 out of 5

Keywords: e31, bmw, 850i, 850ci, restoration, revival, barn find, e39, e38, m5, 740i, 840i, 840ci, 850csi, csi, 8er, 8 series, classic cars, bimmer, 540i, v12, 535i, 750il, 750, e46, m3, m70, road trip, m73, budget, cheap, first start, car project, b7, b8, alpina, restore it, e34, e32, e24, hoovie's garage, hoovie, tavarish, doug demuro, vin wiki, vice grip garage, car throttle, samcrac, e60, s85, v10, challenge, m54, 3er, 325i, chrisfix, detailing, disaster interior, detailing geek, top gear, edd china

Id: 29wVH_TLWmQ

Length: 41min 34sec (2494 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/joefarmer13]

Lol I was wondering what was under the NISSAN cover!

[u/rombick]

Looking for parts is gonna be PITA