looking at an 87 325si. couple of questions

[RIPN RAY]

i'm looking at a 87 325si with 231,000 miles (my 93 525 has 255,0000). looks like i can get it for about $1000 usd. the exterior is in great shape, and the interior could use some cleaning and a seat cover.

the biggest problem is that it seems to have a bad headgasket. you can see the coolant leaking out of the engine by the firewall (6th cyclinder i think). is this an envolved job? roughly how long will it take, is there a DIY somewhere?

there also seems to be some loud ticking. is that just a rocker arm adjustment?

does this thing store dtc's, how can i red them if it can.


i'm just looking for a car right now. i'm not sure if i'm going to fall in love with this and sink a lot of money into it.

[winfred]

a m20 I motor head job is varly easy, id figure around $200-250 if it don't need any rockers or any other hard parts to diy, personally unless the car is really something special id find something with a 100k miles less, they are plentiful and cheep enough. a 87 325i only has 4 codes (1 2 3 and 4) that it stores and they won't tell you much, 88 and up have the regular 4 number codes that are common till 95. loud valve train can be adjusted but with those miles it may need some hard parts in the head to really get it to shut up at which point you double to tripple the price to do it right

[RIPN RAY]

i think i've decided that i'll offer him $500 and take it from there. it's not really what i'm looking for. and the only thing good about it is that the exterior looks great. it's definitly a cool car!