I Spent $40 Detailing & Restoring My Abandoned V8 Manual E39 BMW! 1 Day DIY Restoration! LEGIT FLIP!

hey guys welcome back to legit street cars and welcome to the first episode of legit flip a series where i buy interesting and mostly broken cars that still have some meat on the bones these are cars that have repaired and cleaned up properly could turn a big profit now i buy many cars for the channel i try not to get ripped off when i buy them and sometimes sometimes i make a little bit of money when i eventually sell them but i don't seek these cars out with the sole intention of flipping them i'm usually just looking for cool interesting cars that i like and that i think you guys would like and i certainly don't repair and modify these cars with profit in mind so nothing at all in the channel is gonna change i'm still gonna buy and fix up the same cool cars that i would buy anyway but now every once in a while i'm gonna come out with a legit flip series and i'm kicking it off with this my 2001 bmw 540i with a manual transmission that i paid only 900 for a big difference between these cars and this series versus my other channel cars is i'm gonna be showing you guys all of the financials i'm gonna break down exactly what i spend on the cars and i'm gonna show you what i make on the cars or what i lose on the cars so i flipped many cars in my day and most of the time you make money but sometimes you get totally burned and you lose money and i'm not gonna hide that so flip cars like this are gonna follow three general rules that i made up for myself a long time ago when i used to flip cars all the time first one is don't get ripped off when buying the car second don't do anything to the car that doesn't increase its value more than the repair and third the car has to be safe when you sell it all right so there's a lot more to flipping cars than just that and i promise i'll explain everything as the series progresses but just one last thing to add to this legit flip series introduction before we start increasing the value of this e39 and that is that i'm adding in a little challenge so i'm going to roll the profits from each car into the next flip car and i want to see how much money we'll have one year from now so it's december 2021 right now how much will we have made in december of 2022 hopefully it's a lot i'll leave the reveal video linked down below if you guys want to see everything that's wrong with this car and what we fixed in that video but i'll give you some cliff notes because it's important the two items that we fixed in the reveal video increased the value probably as much as we're gonna increase the value of this car today so it had a check engine light and a misfire so i replaced a coil and fixed that for fifty dollars and then the shifter in the car was really stiff this would be totally apparent to someone buying this car and we were able to lift it up and spray down the linkage for the transmission and it totally fixed it and i'm gonna consider that one free because it was just a few squirts of some penetrating oil so right then and there we bought a car that misfired and had some transmission issues and we fixed both of them for 50 that is huge so now i have a lot of the parts on order that we're going to be replacing on this car to fix up a lot of the mechanical issues but today i want to focus on something that's probably the most important when you're flipping a car and that is cleaning it so this thing was abandoned in a parking garage for a long time it's pretty nasty it's pretty grimy all the way around and it's not doing this car any favors in the value department and if you guys saw that video you know we have some oil leaks going on the valve covers are leaking but on these cars it's kind of hard to tell if that's all that's leaking so we're going to start off by cleaning this engine [Music] all right so i have the main engine cover and these cabin filter housings sitting on the ground so we're just going to go ahead and pre-soak them the pressure washer is going to do a lot of this work so you don't have to waste a ton of product here a lot of people are afraid of pressure washing engines and you should be careful especially with an older european car this is a flip car we don't want to cause any damage so i just covered up the inlets to the air ducting to the cabin that is a large cover with a bunch of control modules so i put two bags on that the wiper motor is a little exposed as well and then you just want to be careful if you're going to use a pressure washer which i'm going to use and just don't blast the water into harnesses just do light mists and i'll show you after but it's most important to dry everything off as soon as you're done cleaning so anyway there's lots of products on the market to clean your engine a general degreaser works pretty well but i like this gunk stuff i've been using it for a long time so we're gonna go ahead and spray this on a dry and cold engine and i'm gonna also spend a little bit of time on cleaning everything on the bottom as well because the valve covers have been leaking for so long and doing this is gonna help me figure out if i fixed the oil leaks in the next video i have a couple of parts i'm gonna be replacing so that hopefully this car is leaking a lot less oil than it is now while the degreaser is doing its thing let's talk cabin filters so this one i vacuumed out it doesn't smell and it looks practically new this one i just vacuumed the larger leaves and it's still pretty nasty but i could freshen this one up and these don't really need to be replaced they don't smell or anything like that but they're only 22 dollars and they're very easy to replace and for some people this could add value to the car if you put it in the listing so we're going to list everything we've done to the car and we could throw cabin filters in there and for 22 i think it might be worth it but you wouldn't always replace things like a cabin filter on a flip car so let's say the filters were very expensive or they were buried somewhere in the dash or you were paying a mechanic to do all the work on your flip car which some people do some people don't touch these cars at all are you going to spend a couple of hundred dollars on cabin filters no you're probably not gonna get that back it's probably not gonna add much value to your flip car you're here to make money you're not here to rebuild someone else's car and in a lot of cases you can vacuum them out like i just did and roll with it and you're gonna be just fine so make sure to only replace things that add value to your flip car and speaking of adding value this is netflix and if you lived in the us and wanted to watch parks and recreation you couldn't it's not available but because i have nordvpn i can virtually transport my computer to the uk hit the refresh button and here it is many streaming services block content depending on your location but since nordvpn has 5200 secure servers in 60 different countries you're covered no matter where you are nordvpn is also the fastest vpn out there and you can get it on your computer phone tv and more so don't let your location limit your content and start exploring today and the best part is if you guys click on my link in the video description box or go to nordvpn.com legit you're gonna get a massive discount off their two-year plan making this only a few dollars a month adding a ton of value to the streaming services you already pay for and they're going to throw in one month additional for free so i just want to say a big thanks to nordvpn for continuing to support automotive content creators like myself now let's go pressure wash this engine all right here we go guys say hello to the haters in the comments section because any time we pressure wash an engine there's always guys down there that say we're gonna ruin something and we've done this like five times on the channel we've never messed anything up but anyway be mindful don't just blast things right into electrical connectors cover some stuff up you're gonna be okay here we go all right so areas like this you can go nuts and look at that you can see the vin clearly this looks beautiful areas like this dirt and grime on the valve cover you can also go a little crazy with areas like this intake that have a lot of connectors and harnesses and whatnot we're just going to take a step back a little bit and just do one of these and in a couple of minutes we're going to blow this all out with air as you can probably tell this is a ton of fun also see ya [Music] i mean that's adding value right there guys this looks beautiful detailing is one of the best things you can do to make your car worth a lot more money don't forget the inside of the hood while you're here i gotta say the color on this car is pretty cool not exactly sure what these numbers are bmw guys comment down below okay so i've cleaned up underneath as well everything's looking really good this only took me about maybe five minutes total and now we're gonna get right into drying so this is looking great we're going to get rid of the bags now and just start drying things by hand and i'm going to fire up the engine and let the engine do some drying as well i love this green this looks so good and it fired right up of course oh this is so much fun guys if you haven't cleaned an engine before i recommend it i really recommend it especially on an abandoned car like this this thing sat in this parking garage for like three or four years it was just nasty it's gonna be the nicest looking part of the car all right and while the engine is running and drying itself let's go ahead and clean these up you can definitely use little brushes here as well but if you have a good pressure washer especially on these plastic panels like this it cleans up really nice but i will mint these out because this is what you're going to see as soon as you pop the hood okay i wanted to show you before and after i almost lost it there you go look at how nice that is all right let's try that again i'll brace for impact all right all right and here's what it looks like before we shine anything up or add the beauty covers so i don't like to do anything to these black plastic intake manifolds especially if they're under a cover a lot of these products claim that they won't attract dirt but they usually do so i leave these dry that way you're not dealing with a mess where the next owner's not dealing with a mess in these little crevices later so this is how we're going to leave the intake manifold nice and dry and clean and then we're going to install all of this stuff which i must say is looking pretty good already now say what you will about beauty covers but the general public they don't want to see this mess this mess of hoses and wires it looks complicated it looks like it can break all the time which it definitely can they much rather see this just a pretty bmw logo it matches the valve covers as well and i gotta say in the world of beauty covers this is one of my favorite i think it looks really good so anyway let me get the other plastics on we'll shine them up and then do a before and after with all the plastic panels back on we're just gonna use a little bit of this stuff to shine things up so you just spray this on a rag or a microfiber and a little goes a long way so we're just shining this up really nice and if this was a car that i was going to be keeping for myself i would just ceramic coat all of this black plastic trim it lasts a lot longer than this but uh you know we're on a budget here all right this is like four dollars and it works pretty well oh this looks good instant gratification this is the best part guys the best part by far so i cleaned up the cabin filters as well i may replace them they're pretty cheap but for now they are very clean a lot better than before especially anything that's black plastic after it's clean you put a little bit of this on it looks really nice we'll have to replace the bushings here but we'll make it look pretty nonetheless and you can even hit up some of these harnesses as well this is one of the better looking engine bays i gotta say especially with a cool color like green to kind of contrast everything all right so this is looking really good but after i'm done i just like to use a dry microfiber especially on some of this black plastic so it doesn't look too shiny i want a nice sheen but nothing too crazy i don't like that slimy look that some of the used car dealers do when they clean an engine so i'm just gonna give this a gentle buff and there you have it guys our cleaned up e39 bmw engine and engine compartment and all of the materials used for this project were about twenty dollars it took me an hour and a half and i think it is well worth it on pretty much any car but especially an enthusiast car like this where the engine is such an important part of the vehicle so i'll give you guys a proper before and after once we're finished and we're back outside with some good lighting but i'm sure you remember this area was pretty nasty and it was a shame because the green paint looks so good and we were able to get into all of the nooks and crannies and reconditioning the black plastic shaves years off the look of really any trim and i think this engine cover and the covers on the valve covers look so so good and we went in here and cleaned it all up right in here was all grimy and nasty from over 20 years of dirt and oil kind of accumulating we've cleaned up the hoses as well this looks so much better and i also went ahead and cleaned up some of the accessories as well so you can see the actual engine the cylinder head right there is clean also and i think for about twenty dollars it's gonna pay off big time when we go to flip this car all right you guys know what we have to do next we have to polish these nasty headlights and i think 2001 was the first year for the angel eye headlights on the e39 so these can look really good and this just looks old and nasty and we're gonna do this for practically nothing oh and you guys are definitely going to learn a lot from my mistakes during these series because i should have done the headlights before i clean the engine now i have to cover up the engine and worry about buffing compound getting all over the place but anyway i really just wanted to clean the engine i was getting ahead of myself all right so first up we're just cleaning this headlight a little bit and i already blasted this with the pressure washer but you want to start with a pretty clean surface also on some cars i like to add a little bit of painters tape just in case you get a little too aggressive you don't want to burn through the paint on the car and this one already has some areas of the paint that are kind of coming apart i don't want to exaggerate any of that all right we'll actually do this with the hood open so we can get the top of the light a little bit better i'll just be more gentle so i don't get buffing compound everywhere there's a lot of kits on the market that you can use to buff out headlights they all work pretty well actually but i have a bunch of materials on hand so we're going to do this on a budget and i think these warrants a little bit of wet sanding but you don't necessarily need to do this in every case because sometimes this yellow haze can be removed just with buffing so we're doing some wet sanding so we just want to make sure that everything is properly lubricated and let's do this [Music] [Music] and then you just want to wipe this off a few times i'm going to do three passes uh with the 1500 grit and then we'll move on to some 2000 and we're done great with water again spray your sanding disk [Music] alright let's switch this over we're going to install our 2000 grit now and i usually start with something like you know an 800 then a 1500 then a 2000 but that's just all i got at the shop right now all right that's it for the 2000 let's get the buffer oh and it's totally normal to see this haze after wet sanding but you can see it's getting more clear and we're getting rid of that yellow film that you can see on this one next up we're just using a foam buffing pad at the end of a drill and i'll leave you guys a link to where you can get this adapter and a bunch of these foam pads and they're very inexpensive and they work great for headlights like this so i'm using a coarse compound to start off with just kind of get this all over the headlight and here we go lot of the kits that you buy at the store basically give you this and a little bit of buffing compound for like you know 30 35 bucks you can definitely do it for a lot less this little guy doesn't make too bad of a mess so just keep it steady go over your passes and like a lot of detailing this is very very satisfying wait till you see the results okay so this is after one pass with the foam pad starting to look good all right that's pass number two wow look at that oh man this looks so good i'm gonna go ahead and move over to the finer compound and finish this one up all right that should be it yep that's definitely it wow these look great so would you rather buy a car with headlights that look like that or crystal clear headlights that look like this so i'm going to throw a little bit of ceramic coating over the lenses just to protect them for the next person but this took about 20 minutes and in material i have i don't know maybe just a few dollars and stuff i had laying around but figure worst case if you buy one of those kits you're gonna have about 35 dollars into restoring your headlights and i definitely think it's worth it all right both headlights are polished out and looking good i've also removed the front plate so we can clean up grime like that and i didn't destroy my clean engine as bad as i thought but i'll definitely give it one final wipe before we're all done with today's cleaning next we have to clean up these wheels so i think these are great looking factory bmw wheels and they have really nice bf good rich tires also but yeah they haven't been cleaned in probably years and this isn't doing us any favors as far as resale value goes first off we're just gonna blast these with the pressure washer all right so it looks a little better and then i'm just going to use some of this stuff that i found at the local auto parts store and we're going to let this sit for a few minutes and i'll go ahead and hit all the other wheels right now too okay so now we're just gonna agitate so i have this little wheel cleaning brush i have this one here and this one here and it's very important that you just keep your wheel cleaning brushes separate from pretty much anything else because these things are going to get nasty with brake dust and you don't want these anywhere near paint so this thing works pretty well at getting in between spokes like this and it's soft enough to where it doesn't scratch the finish yeah these wheels are pretty dirty some of this might actually be baked on but we're going to get it as good as we can i think i've had this brush for 20 years cleaning wheels i believe this was originally a brush that you use in the shower but yeah works pretty well on cars too all right i think that's pretty good for our first pass let's give it a blast not bad not bad at all so i'm going gonna keep on going a little bit more with this but wow what a difference what a difference this would make in pictures also and if you wanted to go nuts you could have the wheels refinished but again we're trying to flip this car it's probably not worth 500 or 600 dollars to get these redone especially because they're not in the worst condition all right guys i'm doing my second pass with this brush on the drill these things come in a lot of different sizes as well these are fantastic this is making the wheel cleanup process go much much quicker every so often i'm just spraying the wheel cleaner right there on the brush and it gets in everywhere really nice and you can even do the tires as well tires get pretty grimy also i'll leave you guys a link to a kit that i bought off of amazon for these they're sweet [Music] so not perfect but a lot better all right we have a clean engine we have restored headlights we have cleaned up wheels what's left to do clean nasty stuff like this and nasty stuff like this [Music] nice not nice now it's nice now clearly you have to be careful don't spray inside of your disgusting trunk the interior cleaning will be for another video but this makes cleaning up channels like this very very quickly if you can just blast it just like cleaning your engine be smart about it all right this ought to be good yes yes one of my favorite things to do and so although this looks much cleaner unfortunately this was a weak point in the e39 the water would collect just like this and it would rot out the quarter panel right here so this is still pretty solid but to repair this properly would require a lot of time and money at a body shop so we might be leaving this all right so i'm not going to show you an entire car wash you guys have seen that a million times but i have to focus in on the most satisfying parts of washing this car like areas like this so all right foam cannons are usually pretty satisfying so i had to show you that but let me finish washing this car and we'll bring it back outside for a few before and afters and then we'll tally up some costs all right hang on before i dry the car i have to show you this paint color look what was hiding under all of that dirt this is absolutely gorgeous and i'm usually not into greens but on this car with the tan interior it just looks absolutely perfect and so we started with this and now we have this and i gotta say i am liking this car more and more every day so our wheels went from this to this and we went from this to this and i think the headlight restoration was my favorite part of the project i think these look so much better i think they make the car instantly worth more money but what do you guys think out of everything i've done today what do you think is going to add the most value to this car and for the engine we went from this gigantic mess dirt and leaves and grime everywhere oil caked up all over the place and now we have this a very clean a very presentable engine and engine compartment and i take it back this is my favorite part this looks too good this was a lot of fun an hour and a half is all it took and i'll say this again this green in the engine compartment looks fantastic so when we take pictures to list this car this is definitely going to be something that people zoom in on and i think it looks amazing and in the next episode we're gonna fix up some of these oil leaks so it stays looking like this and i'll show you what the bottom ended up looking like it's pretty nice okay that's enough got to shut the hood at some point but overall i think this car is looking so so good obviously it's nowhere near perfect to make a car like this perfect would cost a lot more than it's worth and that would defeat the entire purpose of the flip so we do have some scratches like this so i'm not done with the detail portion of this series i'm gonna try and get out as many scratches as possible and clean up this paint we have some pretty decent clear coats so this is a good candidate for some more detail work and i will also have to figure something out for this wheel the paints has pretty much all peeled off and i believe i have a front wheel in the rear on the other side but overall i am loving this 540i this is probably the hardest part of flipping cars is when you fall in love and a v8 bmw with a manual transmission for 900 bucks is definitely a car you can fall in love with oh and i'm gonna have to do something with this interior so if you saw the reveal video you know that someone dyed portions of this interior in dark brown like the bottom of the door panel and the dash and the sea trim and i love the color combination this looks amazing it's actually going to look too good in pictures but the seats are not in the best of condition they dyed these as well i'm going to see if i can clean these up i'm not exactly sure what's going to happen but i would say right now the interior could bring down how much this car ultimately brings in if i can't clean it up but either way this would be something that if it looks good in a picture i would probably mention in the description so someone's not surprised that these seats have been dyed it probably wasn't done professionally but there are some things like that that you're going to want to list so you don't develop a bad reputation so i think i've put about 100 miles on this car since fixing the coil no check engine light still and our little traction light that was right there disappeared also after i did the coil so the only light we have left is the airbag light all right guys so let's talk financials 900 car in the last video i fixed two issues for 50 and then i put about 50 worth of fuel in the tank so we're at an even 1 000 and for everything that i did today i spent about 40 so 1040. for a clean title running and driving 119 000 mile e39 540i with a manual trans i think we did really good on the purchase of this car and watch the reveal video if you want the full story it's kind of interesting but i just ran into a good deal it happens so with that what do you guys think of the series what'd you think of the video do you have any suggestions drop them down below i had a blast with this one and in the next video we are going to spend a little bit more money on this car we got to get into some mechanicals that i think are gonna increase the value even more uh and then some more detail work and we're gonna flip this one pretty soon actually and then you guys will know how much i made on this legit flip so if you haven't already follow me on social media i'm at legit street cars basically everywhere give this video a thumbs up share the video with your friends subscribe if you haven't already and most importantly have an awesome day i'll catch all of you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: LegitStreetCars

Views: 519,124

Keywords: V8 MANUAL E39, HOW TO FLIP A CAR, LEGIT FLIP, CAR FLIPPING, RESTORING A CAR, FIXING UP A CAR TO FLIP, CAR FLIP TV SERIES, 540I, BMW, IM FLIPPING A CAR, CAR FLIP CHALLENGE, HOW TO EASILY SELL A CAR, DETAILING A CAR TO FLIP IT, E39 BMW

Id: tS74Bt1w1Vc

Length: 29min 24sec (1764 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021