How to Buy a Budget Friendly Project Car

hey guys chris fix here and today i'm going to show you how to buy a project car on an affordable budget like an actual affordable budget now i work on tons of project cars probably because a project car is never done but you guys always ask me chris how do i get started what project car should i buy and the answer is actually really easy it's a car that you're passionate about it's a car that you want to drive you want to fix up something that you don't worry about what other people think you actually like it and you actually want to work on it that's the project car you should buy and buy affordable what does that mean well if you can afford a new cell phone you could afford any of these project cars including the new one that i have underneath this cover for example my first project car ever the drift sting i got this car for right around a thousand dollars and my goal from the start was to turn this car into a drift car and learn how to drift and she went from a non-running car that was about to go to the scrap yard to a track car that's been super reliable and fun to learn to drift with and don't you guys worry for those of you who followed the drift staying build you know there are two major things left to do this car one of them is installing a supercharger i have a used celine root style supercharger which is not made to go on that engine it just doesn't fit but i think i have a couple ideas to make it work and if it does we'll double the horsepower output on a budget reliably for this car and then the second thing is to install a roll cage that way i could hopefully move from group b to group a and learn how to tandem now the whole point is this car has been the perfect project car it was affordable and i didn't put a ton of money into it and i did it over time and it's been great it's been reliable it's been fun i've learned a ton and that's what project cars are all about another example is the 300 del sol that had a head gasket leak and a worn out suspension so i unbolted and removed the head replaced the head gasket and rebuilt the entire front suspension and finally i cut out a rust hole underneath the passenger seat and i welded in a new piece of sheet metal so it was safe to drive and now i have a perfect working running and driving del sol for under a thousand dollars and next up for this car is a budget turbo kit install with common hand tools at home in your driveway it's gonna be a blast it's supposed to double the output of this car so already a light car a lot of fun to drive and now we're doubling the power so these two cars give you really good examples of what a budget project car can be and i have a lot of stuff to do them so you're probably wondering to yourself chris why did you get yourself another project car well because i was challenged by ebay motors to do the 24 hours of lemons race yes lemons not le mans if you've never heard of the 24 hours of lemons it's a budget endurance race that anybody could join you only have 500 to buy your piece of junk car then you're gonna have to fix it up and race it all of that for 500 bucks and they have judges to inspect your car and hear your story to make sure the car is really 500 check this out so what are you saying you paid for the car 300 and uh wilson motorsports wilson what's wilson motorsports my brother your brother we did the cage so your brother gave you a car is that what you're saying no i bought it for 300 bucks yeah that's like giving you a car except you pretended to give them 300 and as you can see they don't fool around but the whole idea is to keep it affordable so anybody could race instead of buying parts to make your car go faster and then whoever has the biggest wallet is pretty much gonna have the fastest car you're buying a piece of junk and you need to maintain it you need to keep it as reliable as possible so you can finish the race and not get towed off the track so keeping old unreliable cars running is my specialty so this race is right up my alley the hardest part is finding a car in this expensive state that is less than 500 that's halfway decent that's somewhat quick so while searching ebay motors i found something that is local to me and below my budget so i jumped on it right away and it was a non-running v8 mercedes clk 430 and i paid 300 the problem is this car is a basket case like really really bad the worst car i've ever bought the story goes that the battery cables were crossed and that's why it's not running but i'm pretty sure this thing was flooded the entire interior the seats the door panels everything was covered in mold which wasn't a big deal because it was going to get gutted the problem was after diagnosing the issue the car needed a couple of computer modules and unfortunately you need to go to mercedes to code them and there's no way i could do all that for two hundred dollars so i realized this wasn't the car i sold it for four hundred dollars to a scrap yard made a hundred dollar profit and i had to find a new budget race car so since shipping the car doesn't count towards the 500 bucks i found this car in maine and it is a 2004 bmw 330 xi you guys wanted a european car on the channel well here you go and i'm super excited about this car not only is it a good car for the endurance race but it's a really good car for the channel because they are coming down in price a lot and the platform is great for drifting for autocross and it's becoming more and more affordable so this one has a three liter m54 engine in it and it has unfortunately all-wheel drive but the good thing is if we look inside here we have a six-speed manual which is perfect so real quick let me show you the listing and how much i got this car for so here's the listing on ebay motors you can see he's asking two thousand dollars and he has a make and offer button which i love to see if we scroll down the history check comes out pretty good he does have an accident on here i spoke to him about that it was a light fender bender nothing bad and we do have a low auto check score but he did a great job showing the pros and cons in his description he also did a good job with the pictures so he lists the pros as it's a solid running car he says it runs and shifts great apparently it has a zhp camshaft installed but he said he doesn't have any proof of that that's what the previous owner said he also said it's been lowered but it really doesn't look that low it's a six-speed it's all-wheel drive but i personally see that as a negative i rather have rear-wheel drive and it has an aero package now the cons you can see it has tons of dents and scratches and dings and he said it's been keyed there's no power steering and he said it definitely needs to be replaced because you can't steer without it there's a rear end clunk there's some rips in the seats the oil light turns on the sunroof is jammed open it leaks oil but that's all bmws and one thing i want to include is it has 230 000 miles which is a lot so this car seemed like the perfect car to fit the bill to turn into a lemons car i made him an offer it was a little low a thousand dollars and i knew he'd come back so he came back at 17.50 i told him hey needs a lot of stuff i am a real buyer i will get a tow truck tomorrow to pick it up i will paypal you all the money tonight and uh we met halfway at 1100 and i'm super excited about this challenge i want to thank ebay motors for supporting the video and challenging me to do this because this is gonna be a lot of fun and that is how he became the owner of a bmw e46 for eleven hundred dollars and there's a reason why it was sold to me for eleven hundred dollars this is a tough sell because the exterior of this car is an absolute mess it has dents it has dings cracks it's scratched it's keyed along the entire side look at the size that dent right there keyed along the entire side all the way back not only on this side but the other side as well and we also have some rust issues but that's okay because we aren't looking for a car that is perfect on the outside we want a car that's perfect on the inside or at least as close as perfect as we could get we need something that's reliable it's a race car we don't care about the looks we care about reliability it being able to start every time the suspension being good the engine and transmission being good and this car fits the bill pretty good with all that except maybe reliability we'll find out but that leads me to my next point and this is something very important that anybody who's getting a project car should completely understand this is called the project car triangle pick two if you want something cheap and reliable it's not going to be fast if you want something cheap and fast it's not going to be reliable and finally if you want something reliable and fast it is not going to be cheap now the interesting thing about the lemons race is they kind of pick the first one for you it has to be cheap so that means you only have one left do you want it to be reliable or do you want to be fast and the reason why i picked a bmw is because we're going to try to walk that fine line between reliable and kind of fast especially for such a cheap car so that is something very important to understand if you are interested in getting a project car and speaking of reliability there is one major reliability issue we need to solve right now and that is when the car gets turned on she wants to stall or idle poorly let me show you and you can see how that idle just dropped down almost stalled but now it's kind of i mean the car is vibrating a lot it's shaking it's almost like it's misfiring that idol is not staying steady so that is not good that is not what a race car should be doing so let's figure that out so what we're gonna do is we're gonna scan the computer using a bluetooth obd2 scanner and this will give us any check engine light codes that we might have to give us a pinpoint on where the problem is now typically the obd2 port is under the driver's side of the dash in this case on the bmw pop this off and the scanner plugs right in here just like that good now grab your phone open up the app let's hit read codes it connects automatically good now this scanner will do advanced code so you could check the abs you could check airbags you could check transmission codes all those system modules we're gonna just do a check engine light check it's gonna scan the computer and pull up any codes there are perfect we have two codes now the two codes it's giving us is a system to lean and a coolant thermostat i'm more concerned with the system to lean let's start with that apparently this code is very common for this car and it gives you a list of possible causes but what i want to see is the frequently reported fixes it says replace mass airflow sensor so that's the most frequent reported fix let's start there and let's go check out the mass airflow sensor i'll show you how to test it let's go pop the hood and then now your mass airflow sensor is going to be behind your air box so our air box is right here and you can see right there is the mass airflow sensor and we're going to want to unplug this and leave it unplugged all right so now we're going to start the car with the mass airflow sensor disconnected and what that's going to do is the computer is going to go off of built-in air fuel ratio tables and not use the mass airflow sensor so we're going to basically remove the mass airflow sensor from the equation if it runs right then we know the mass airflow sensor is bad let's check her out perfect just what we wanted to see you can see the idle has leveled out it started right up perfectly so now we know the mass airflow sensor is bad let's go replace it start by loosening up this hose clamp with a flathead screwdriver just like so and then pop off the retaining clip on this side and on the other side and then this could come right out out with the old and in with the new well kind of new we're doing this on a budget so this sensor is from the junkyard and you want to make sure that you have the airflow arrow in the correct direction that's very important snap on the clips and make sure to seat the intake tube all the way onto the sensor and tighten it down so it's snug good finally reconnect the wiring harness to the sensor like so all right moment of truth let's go start her up and see if we fix the problem okay that's a good thing our idol isn't going low where it's trying to stall looks like the idol is leveling out it's nice and consistent so it looks like we fixed our first problem getting this car more reliable by the second now let's go for a ride and let me show you our second major problem all right me and coop are going for a test drive here and the next major issue huge issue is this steering so there's no i can't even turn the steering wheel oh man this is just so difficult to turn there's no way we're gonna be able to use this for an endurance race without this power steering pump fixed all right coop so now let's go for a ride and do my favorite thing test this car out on an entrance ramp to see how much pep it has apparently this goes zero to 60 in seven seconds and this could do the quarter mile in about 15 seconds so it's not fast but it's not really that slow and it has some pep getting onto the highway and if we can keep it reliable i think we have a competitive car now you can probably hear some wind noise and that's not because of an open window it's because the sunroof does not close it's jammed open so let's go head home and i'll show you how to fix that right coop all right we are back at the house let me show you what's going on with the sunroof and how we're gonna fix it so if we go to try to close the sunroof for whatever reason it gets jammed up and backs back out and this is definitely not good because if it starts raining we have a problem so how do you fix this well it's actually pretty easy on a bmw start by carefully slipping a screwdriver behind the panel to pop the panel down like that and right there is the sunroof motor so grab a t25 torx on a ratchet and we could spin the motor until the sunroof is closed all the way good now we can push the panel back in place making sure it snaps in and that's all there is to it now we don't have to worry about this getting water inside the car because it was stuck open and all the wind noise and stuff i think i'm going to delete this for the race and put a piece of carbon fiber or fiberglass it's driver safety so it's a free modification uh it'll take weight from the roof and also make it safer so that we'd have glass above our heads just in case you roll over or something so now okay well that doesn't close maybe that's what jammed it up well i'll leave that for now but that is how you fix your sunroof if it gets stuck open like that beautiful so that is sealed up i hope that helps some people out there because if your sunroof is open you get water in there it just makes a mess of your interior and that's never good so the sunroof is fixed the mass airflow sensor is fixed so the car runs and drives perfectly right now except for that power steering pump don't worry we'll have an entire video on how to replace the power steering pump and get that all fixed up that'll apply to many different makes and models but the next thing i want to do is introduce you guys to the race team yes i said race team because this is an endurance race it could be 14 hours it could be 18. it could be 24 hours you can't race and do all this by yourself you need a team and this is another reason why i really wanted to do this race because i get to invite my friends bring them on and we get to have a blast together and that's what it's all about so there's no better way to introduce my race team than this right here i hope you guys enjoy it choose your race car driver chris hey guys chris fix here america gary if i'm not flying i'm fishing so i bought a bmw [Music] don't worry guys i got it on video all right let's hit him with the soapy [Music] water [Music] let's race common hand tools and some thread locker are all we need to win and if you can't tell we're having a blast already i hope you guys enjoyed that we're having a ton of fun but real quick i should tell you guys a little bit more about the other drivers my buddy ari he's great with cars he swapped a 600 horsepower supercharged engine with a manual transmission into his crown vic so he has a ton of diy experience my buddy gary also has a lot of diy experience in this case he's done a lot of suspension work with his raptor and he brings it to events to jump sometimes sending it a little too hard my buddy aaron same thing works on cars he actually drifts a bmw and he has a bmw car buying problem basically every time i talk to him he has a new project bmw and finally my buddy pierce his first car is a bmw he's just learning he's tearing everything apart and he's still learning how to drive stick but he's gonna be very valuable in the pits for when things go wrong and break he's also great at filming so that's gonna be helpful so that's our racing team those are my friends we actually have really good chemistry together which is great win or lose we're going to have a blast doing this race i cannot wait now these are my good friends and i want to make sure everybody in the race team is extra safe so we got the top of the line safety equipment i showed you guys some of the safety equipment real quick but i want to show you in a little bit more detail because this is very very important so we have fire retardant socks we have one piece multi-layer fire retardant racing suit this is a really good racing suit we have our head and neck restraint we have our helmet fire retardant gloves and fire retardant balacava think of this as like a ski mask except it's fire retardant and made for racing so that will protect us in case of a fire now if there is a fire we don't want to rely just on the suits so we're going to be installing a 10 pound fire suppression system that'll be routed into the engine bay and into the cabin to keep the driver nice and safe this is a real race this is serious this is multiple cars full roll cage and full racing i mean we're gonna be going 120 miles per hour on the streets so it can be very dangerous it's not something to fool around with now i'm curious are you guys interested in seeing a video on how to install the fire suppression system or how to install the battery isolator so if there's an accident you could cut your battery and all your electrics quick and cut your engine quick or how to install i don't even have to ask this one i know you guys want to see this how to install a quick release steering wheel that'll happen so we have all that stuff we have our front and rear tow hooks we have a full six point race harness and a full containment seat with the side pieces here so that your head doesn't get whiplash if there is an accident now you're going to be bolted in you're going to be strapped in you're not going to be able to see behind you very easily so i did end up getting one of these mirrors that way you could see around you and that is all the safety stuff now konig hooked us up because we want our pit stops to be as quick as possible and in an endurance race the tires are gonna wear down i don't know how many tires we're gonna go through but i would guess one or two sets so we're gonna have wheels ready to go with tires almost like uh think of it like nascar or formula one except probably not as fast but we're gonna have brand new wheels check these babies out these are counter gram wheels they are so nice they're gonna look so good on there and this is where i need your help so what tires do you guys recommend for this type of endurance racing if you have any experience that would be greatly appreciated we have to use 190 tread wear or higher and we're trying to look for something that has good life but more importantly good grip and will hold the heat well we want to make sure we stay nice and grippy so that we have good grip around all the turns so thank you koenig for hooking us up with three sets of wheels that's just some of the wheels we have three entire sets which is insane now safety equipment gets expensive quickly all this gear here costs about two thousand dollars per person that is a lot of money five person race team i think you could do the math it's a 500 car we put 10 grand into the safety equipment so that's where it gets expensive the safety equipment doesn't count towards the 500 budget but we want to be extra safe so we got all the top-of-the-line stuff now you're probably thinking that's not very affordable but the one good thing is go to your local speed shop for example stable energies that's my local speed shop they are awesome they hooked us up big time i said hey let's get your decal on the side of the car let's do a really cool livery we'll have ebay motors we'll have stable energies we'll have konig wheels of all these brands that helped out with the build on the side of the car in a livery like a real race car and uh for that they gave us a good discount to save us some money don't be afraid to ask even if you're a first time racer even if you're not a big youtuber you don't have to be stable energies sponsors most of the club loose guys and they're grassroots drifters so don't be afraid to ask if they have some type of deal going on where you could help promote their shop and the local shops are the best those are the small businesses you want to help out so thank you very much stable energies i'll be sure to include a link in my description to these guys they have a lot of great equipment they have the best prices and they will help you out that's the one good thing i know i'm going to pass tech and we'll have the best top of the line stuff and i want to keep my race team safe so that's what we did right there now you're probably wondering to yourself chris you said it's a 500 card but you paid 1100 how are you gonna pull that one off well let me show you now for every ten dollars that you're over that 500 limit you get one penalty lap and at 600 over our limit we have 60 penalty laps and that makes us not competitive but the rules allow you to sell non-safety items so what are considered safety items well we're going to have to get a quick release steering wheel so that's a safety item so we can't sell our steering wheel we have to have a racing seat that's a safety item so we can't sell our old seat anything that doesn't have to do with safety well that's fair game so we need to get 600 out of our race car let me show you how i attempt to do this first off we're gonna sell this ashtray and radio bezel i found a bunch of listings on ebay they're around 60 70 and ours is in decent shape the springs work and it could use a good cleaning so we'll have no problem getting 50 bucks for it right above that we have our radio these are going for about a hundred fifty hundred sixty dollars on ebay i figured ours is in pretty good shape we can make a quick sale at a hundred and thirty dollars along with the radio this car comes with the upgraded harman kardon system on ebay they go for 270 plus dollars so i figured our system sounds great we could probably get about 250 no problem next up we could sell all the wood trim in our car and we have a four-door so we have a bunch of good wood trim and this is in great shape i could wet sand it and polish it and make it look literally brand new there's no cracks or anything right now on ebay they're going for 150 so i figured for our set we could charge 130 and that brings us down to 540 40 over budget or four penalty laps and i could live with that there might be some other stuff we could sell in here if you could think of anything let me know that's pretty much all i could think of and i'm going to go get those things listed on ebay and finally if you want to create a livery for this car here's a side profile take a screenshot you could dm it to me or email it to me every team in lemons has a theme so we need a cool theme for this car let me know what you got that's the new project car super excited i hope you guys are excited as well budget e46 european car for the channel if you enjoyed the video give it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber consider hitting that subscribe button and as always all the tools and products i used in this video are linked in the description including all the safety gear so you can easily find it

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 3,749,698

Rating: 4.9534578 out of 5

Keywords: ChrisFix, BMW, ChrisFix BMW, Race Car, ChrisFixit

Id: _U5XcrifRjQ

Length: 22min 23sec (1343 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Olafmihe]

The way his engine bay looks i can feel the Vakuum leaks;).

[u/AsusTec]

not again. he just jacked up the price of e46's. i really hate when youtuber popularize them, its awful.

[u/BetitoRoks]

Honestly, i’m excited. I really like his content and i’m excited to see what he’ll do with his e46. Coincidentally, i’m thinking about starting a team at my school for a lemons race so it all lines up perfectly

[u/VirtualVoidSK]

i believe it is 330ix (not 325).

the MAFs there are well known to be mad after all those years... however also check your fuel pressure.