E24s, three 1985s one Euro-spec turbo, and general questions....

[Andog1]

Greetings, All:
I have just acquired three 1985 E24s and am debating what to do with them. Two are five speeds and the third is an interesting auto; more on that in a minute. Of the two five speeds, one has a quite rust-free body, decent interior (except the cracked dash....), and shot clear coat on the exterior. The other five speed has a goodly amount of rust, but the right person could probably restore it. That's a job for which I have neither the skills nor the interest, so I am thinking I may part that one out. Who knows, maybe I should put the five speed in my 1992 E32....

The third car is a European market unit with four piston front and two piston rear calipers. Curiously, this one has a complete B106 turbo engine in it. I've always thought that BMW only ever put this engine in the 745s; if anyone has any information on this subject, I would surely appreciate hearing about it. Unfortunately, the body on this car is also moderately rusty so I don't think it's much of a restoration candidate.

If anyone has any thoughts on what I should do with these, please post them up. Any ideas on values and or demand for parts would also be helpful. Thanks, Drew.

[Lapis 635 Euro]

Nice find! You are correct, the turbo was never offered in the E24 by the factory but some have been converted by owners. Pictures would really tell us volumes about these cars to be able to help with values. E24-exclusive parts are in demand, just depends what is resuable and working.

[Andog1]

Thanks for your thoughts, Lapis. For sure, everything value-wise is condition-dependent. I've been watching these three cars sit for a while, and tried to buy them last fall. Unfortunately, the now-previous owner had some highly unrealistic ideas about their value. So, I ended up buying a fabulous 1992 E32 735i with only 89k on the clock. Then, just a few days ago, the PO of these E24s called up and offered them at a still too-high price, but we were able to work out a number that was more palatable (at least for one of us....).
Today is major cleanup and dump run day at my house, but tomorrow I am going to assess these cars and get some photos up. In the interim, I'll fantasize about winding up the turbo motor to around 350 to 400 hp and putting it in my E32 either with a stick or maybe, sacrilege I know, with a 6L90 behind it. The ratios in the 6L80/90s would make for some very interesting capabilities.....
Thanks again,
Drew

[e24mpwr]

"Moderate rust" means different things to different people

It sounds like the Euro may have the M635 brakes - might be interesting to see what diff is in it. I hate to see something like that parted out, but depending on condition it might be where you have to go to extract money...

[marc79euro635]

4 pot calipers sound like early e12 based 6er.

[DesktopDave]

I'd agree about the third car, it's likely an early Euro E12 chassis model. The E12 fixed caliper brakes were very high performance hardware for the time. BMW opted to replace them with cheaper & simpler sliding calipers in the later (>8/81) E24 facelift cars. The earlier cars are far more vulnerable to rust in my experience, and parts are somewhat more difficult to find. Oddly, the value is pretty high since they can often swap into the somewhat more desirable E9 chassis.

If that's an '81, I'd expect to see an aftermarket turbo conversion, perhaps a Callaway. Hopefully it's a more modern TCD setup. The BMW turbo motors (M102 3.2 and M106 3.4) don't fit easily into the E24 chassis due to the intercooler plumbing. Those early turbo motors are a lot of fun: pretty strong but also somewhat crude. They tend to suffer from lag, boost creep, heat soak, etc. They're also best run with the matching automatic transmission. The Bosch DME actually combines the ECU & TCU into a single massive controller. It's good to hear that's how the Euro is set up.

As for value, Hagarty puts an '85 635CSi in #3 (good) condition at about $23.5K. I suspect they're mixing up US & Euro trim cars, however. I don't see why a decent manual wouldn't easily see $20K at auction given the current market.

The two US market 85s are somewhat lower in value than the Euro or late US '88-'89 "world bumper" cars. Personally, I prefer the mid-production "diving board" bumper cars due to parts availability and a higher number of manual transmissions. You might have lucked out with the quite desirable Getrag 265/6 overdrive...or the even more desirable close ratio 265/5 "dogleg". Earlier '83-'84 cars used a relatively weak manual gearbox. The Getrag 260/5 wasn't well regarded, and ended up being redesigned into the superior 260/6 for the late production ('87-on) cars.