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Hi all,

Hoping for some thoughts/advice from experience E86 owners please on this car for sale....

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204715177094 ... R-7x5fXTYw

Couple of my thoughts,

1. The front bumper needs some repair and respray - its stratus grey. Will this be tricky as it is metallic?
2. The front fog lights are filled with moisture - what's the cost to replace both?
3. Have people had experiences of some seat repairs? Improving the padding to take out some of the 'sagging' and some colour restoring? What approx costs should I be allowing for this?
4. The outer silver rim on the wheels has had some kerbing to a few of the wheels (the darker grey inner seems ok) - can the outers only be repaired and sprayed? Again, what approx costs should I allow.

Any other thoughts / comments would be appreciated.

Stratus Grey - nice!! Wont be the worst to match but a very nice colour.
Front fogs: about £100 each side. These are notorious for the silver lining crumbling away
Seat repair: DIY with Furniture Clinic about £60 and it'll come up very well. Done professionally anything from £300 to £2k
108 alloys: notorious for corrosion. These are real split rims and will cost around £500 to get split and repaired properly. I've had two sets done and the corrosion under the old paint was horrible. IMO you'd be better off selling them and getting a good set of MV2's or CSL's that aren't hiding the devil.

Looking at the MOT history the front shocks need replacing. They have 'a light misting of oil'. ie. nearly if not already dead. Budget £250 plus labour to have them replaced.

Nice spec car. Shame it hasn't got heated seats. Heated / electric seats can be retro fitted but not plug and play on this model and the initial outlay on replacement seats isn't cheap. (£800-£1k)

Street wrote: Tue Apr 02, 2024 6:26 pm Shame it hasn't got heated seats.

This might be a good catch. The advert says "Electric heated seats" in the Features section but I can't see the buttons in front of the ashtray in the interior pictures. OP: heated seat controls (when fitted) are just in front of/above the left and right top corners of the ashtray in the centre console.

I owned my E86 for nearly 10 years without heated seats and it didn't bother me because I'm not a big fan. However, some people are and not having them can make the car a little trickier to sell.

I think Street has covered it all, especially his comments about the wheels.

My 2nd Coupe had 108s and I sold them while they were still in decent condition after buying a set of E89 wheels on here. Cost difference was minimal too.

It's a rare colour and has Piano Black trim too which looks great, plus it has the Xenon headlamps although IMHO that looks like strong money given the mileage, paint and wheel issues.

My 1st Coupe had heated seats and Xenons but my 2nd had neither. I missed the Xenons much more than I missed the heated seats!

I can’t see the wheel damage you mention - indeed the advert says they have been refurbished.

The seats - again I’m not sure what you are seeing here - every older BMW I’ve ever seen has seats that look like that (including mine!). The leather goes a bit loose but the padding etc is perfectly fine. I’ve heard you can revive them with a heat gun but I’ve yet to try mine.

Fog lights - they suffer from stone damage which is probably why they are full of water so you’ll spend a chunk of money on them and they’ll likely get broken again. They are not tested for the MOT on a car of that age. Some people blank them off.

Street wrote: Tue Apr 02, 2024 6:26 pm These are real split rims and will cost around £500 to get split and repaired properly.

I'd be very happy at that price - in grim West Yorks I've had a minimum of £800 to a maximum of not touching them, and the condition isn't even that bad.

Thank you for the helpful comments. I hadn't picked up on the shocks so helpful for negotiation on the price.
I agree its strong money at £7800 with the mileage and the work required.

Ive had a quotation from The Wheel Specialist in Leeds (my location) for £560 for them doing. I would rather keep that style to be honest and refurb if possible.

Ive been sent a few extra photos than that included in the advert which informed me better on the seat and alloy condition.

What should I be allowing for labour for the front shocks? IS it a long job? Anything else worth doing at the same time for efficiencies?

I’d take a couple of hours to do both front shocks so a garage would probably nearly halve that!

The springs will have to come off the old shocks so personally I’d replace them if they look original. £40 a side. The drop links will also be semi removed in the process so for an extra tenner each side I’d swap them for new as well.

Create your shopping list on AutoDoc and wait for a good discount. Buy as much in one go as you can to offset the £8 postage. If you won’t be doing the work yourself you can give the garage the parts and save a few pounds.

Good photos and a well written description.
I think I'd be tempted if I was looking for a nice coupe.

Looking at the list of corrections that you want to do to the car, I would estimate a garage would charge £500 for a quality respray of the front bumper, fog lights £400, outside wheel rim refurbishment, £60 per wheel plus tyre removal and refit assuming the bolts come off. The seat could be replaced by a used one,£150. Front shock could also be around £500 to replace. At the end of the day although non-urgent, the work would come to a considerable sum of money. The mileage is something that when you come to sell the car could be a problem. Although these cars are capable of high mileage, it does have a bearing on the resale. If you want the car, some hard negotiation on the price would be necessary.

Regarding the seats, are you concerned more about the seat base rather than the bolsters on the seat back?

The drivers bolster, from what little we can see, actually looks quite good.

The drivers seat base however, could be from the angle slight fish eye effect, looks like it needs some extra padding. Now with the seats not being heated this makes the task a little easier because the heat pads on the sides are normally stuck to the foam. You won't have those and so you can stick some padded material onto the foam. It won't need to be very thick to make the difference. 3mm thick over the side foams will pull that leather tight again.

Morning gents - photos of the seat in question. I just think it needs a bit of TLC.

With regards the alloys, they are all like this. Inner piece looks ok but outer rims are corroded and/or kerbed. Not sure if they are polished or painted. I'm not looking for perfection, will a company leave the 2 pieces bolted together and just repair and respray the outer piece (assuming they are already sprayed?)

You can paint them without splitting the rims but it would be a bodge job. Corrosion could occur around the bolt holes

From my experience with split rims, a lot of wheel refurbishers won't touch them as they a lot of hassle, and if they do it's expensive. I had a set on my Jag, I ended up getting them sprayed, but it's a bodge, not as good as powder coating and then the bolts on one wheel started exploding! I would keep an eye out for a good second hand set of alloys, always someone on here selling something.

Shame you're not looking for a 3.0 E89, there's nice one for sale on here with half that mileage for not much more money and better condition: viewtopic.php?f=41&t=145788&p=2063902#p2063902