My brother wants to sell me his yellow 320i it's a super clean yellow with beige interior, it has a automatic transmission. My question Is would this car be a reliable daily? I drive about 40 miles both ways. Any advice Is appreciated
I daily drove a 1983 320i for over 3 years and put 25k miles on it. My car never stranded me because I knew how to work on it. If I had less mechanical knowledge, it would have stranded me on multiple occasions.
It should be fine, but you will have 40 year old car problems. Wear items will need to be inspected, serviced, or replaced like wheel bearings, Center Support Bearings, bushings, tie rods, ball joints, belts, and etc for it to be truly reliable.
Last edited by Thecatmilton; 05-12-2019 at 05:20 PM.
I’ve daily driven my 320is every since I restored it with my father. Four more weeks and it will get me through my undergrad career. They are more than reliable.
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It all depends how much maintenance your brother has done. As others have said these are 40 year old cars. If it's behind maintenance, 75 mile round trips will cause issues to flare up quicker than a garage weekend toy.
This being said they are fun little cars and it's worth your time
I have had my e21 for 10 years. Started as a daily and now it's my garage queen
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Last edited by jaredmac11; 05-12-2019 at 07:28 PM.
Other than what has been said above, drive and enjoy it. You are going to get lots of attention.
Pictures?
I wouldn't do it for a daily. Super fun cars but you better know general mechanics and have time to mess with them
I have had mine as a Daily Driver since 1995,they do take some work and parts renewing , then they run forever..
Randy
For folks with Dailies.. did y'all sort out Kjet or swap it out or never really have issues? Kjet was why I wanted to go to an m42 but really my technical skills were lacking
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I daily-drive my 77 with K-Jet, but only something like 12 miles per day, and only in the summer. I did go through most of the fuel system (new hard-lines, rebuilt the fuel distributor, new fuel pump, new accumulator) about a year and a half ago; having done that, I would say that is a "must" in if most of the fuel system is original. See also the FAQs with the list of stuff for a new owner - it seems like a lot of stuff, and it is a lot of stuff, but if you were to do all of those things then the car would be reliable for sure.
I daily drove it with Kjet doing all sorts of weird stuff. Sometimes it would idle fine. Most of the time, it either didn't idle or it surged. I got really good at pressing the gas pedal and the brake pedal simultaneously to keep it from dying. If it died while warm, chances are that I would need to tap the starter motor before it would start again. People loved it the few times that happened in traffic.
Moving on to a jetta gli has been nice. I have A/C that can keep up with the sun and it idles. I need to repaint the engine bay in my 320i before I drop the new engine in. Once that happens I'll drive it more again.
Last edited by Thecatmilton; 05-20-2019 at 01:42 AM.
I drive my '78 daily right now. It is about 60 miles round trip from coastal Long Beach into the financial district of downtown LA and back.
It has only left me stranded twice during the 2 1/2 years that I have been doing this. Once was due to the driveshaft center support giving out just as I got to work on day, and the other time was when the fuel pump fuse gave way.
There has been much advice given on periodic "cleaning" of fuse contacts on this board, so there is no need for me to add to that. However, I must stress that the driveshaft center support is really easy to overlook.
I still run K-Jet at this time. No complaints at this moment, but to be honest, it is the issue of emissions compliance that has largely prevented me from "changing up" a few things to improve performance.
+1 to the issue of periodic maintenance. Since I basically do 99% of the work on my cars, I can attest to that.
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