Hello everyone, I enjoy reading your posts. There is so much to learn here. So, I've never owned a BMW before. My son is a student at UTI in Phoenix on his way to the BMW STEP program there. He drives a 95 M3. This past April I find a 1968 2000CS on C/L stored there untouched under a carport for 22 years. I am the first caller 20 minutes after the ad is posted. I buy the car sight unseen and with a lost title because that's always the smart thing to do! :shock:
The car still had CA blue plates and was driven to Phoenix when the owner drove home from college in 1988. He parked the car there and there it stayed. His mom sold it to yours truly. I had my son arrange to get the car moved to a secure storage via flat-bed tow service. Of course, we know better than to try and start it, and the tires were dry-rotted to pieces anyway. My son borrowed some rims / tires from a friend's E30 ( I think) for the transport.
I thought it would be fun to get it started, you know, father son project, right? Problem: 116 degrees, storage unit with no electricity, water or a/c tends to limit such endeavors just a bit. I finally went down to see my son Cody and the car around the first of Sept. I decided we should just simplify life and sell it.
Then we worked on it for about 3.5 hours in that storage unit; read: Dante's Inferno. Cody had removed the fuel tank and radiator at my request and had both refinished / re-cored. We put those back in, mounted the wheels with new tires I had ordered. Oh yeah, and put the hood back on - that was fun. During the process of sweating off several pounds and nearly dying from dehydration an evil demon within the car was awakened. It got into my head and caused a sort of crazy, 'where were you my whole life' attachment / possession of my mind.
We started tearing into the engine bay / engine from the top down in order to find the beast and reason with it. This was to no avail. The result of this is visible in some of the pics on the photobucket link. Now the car is on a transport headed to Anchorage, AK where I live. It should be here in the next day or two. The lines of that car with the eloquent simplicity of its factory M10 just won't leave me alone.
Now the toughest part: do I perform a 'sympathetic' restoration to stock or should I drop the bumpers, strip the interior and start a vintage / rallye race project? I am truly on the fence here - help me out! Here is a link to my photobucket sight which should work:
http://s1087.photobucket.com/albums/j461/1968bmw
Sorry for the short-story introduction; just had to get that off my chest.
Regards,
Rob Holland
The car still had CA blue plates and was driven to Phoenix when the owner drove home from college in 1988. He parked the car there and there it stayed. His mom sold it to yours truly. I had my son arrange to get the car moved to a secure storage via flat-bed tow service. Of course, we know better than to try and start it, and the tires were dry-rotted to pieces anyway. My son borrowed some rims / tires from a friend's E30 ( I think) for the transport.
I thought it would be fun to get it started, you know, father son project, right? Problem: 116 degrees, storage unit with no electricity, water or a/c tends to limit such endeavors just a bit. I finally went down to see my son Cody and the car around the first of Sept. I decided we should just simplify life and sell it.
Then we worked on it for about 3.5 hours in that storage unit; read: Dante's Inferno. Cody had removed the fuel tank and radiator at my request and had both refinished / re-cored. We put those back in, mounted the wheels with new tires I had ordered. Oh yeah, and put the hood back on - that was fun. During the process of sweating off several pounds and nearly dying from dehydration an evil demon within the car was awakened. It got into my head and caused a sort of crazy, 'where were you my whole life' attachment / possession of my mind.
We started tearing into the engine bay / engine from the top down in order to find the beast and reason with it. This was to no avail. The result of this is visible in some of the pics on the photobucket link. Now the car is on a transport headed to Anchorage, AK where I live. It should be here in the next day or two. The lines of that car with the eloquent simplicity of its factory M10 just won't leave me alone.
Now the toughest part: do I perform a 'sympathetic' restoration to stock or should I drop the bumpers, strip the interior and start a vintage / rallye race project? I am truly on the fence here - help me out! Here is a link to my photobucket sight which should work:
http://s1087.photobucket.com/albums/j461/1968bmw
Sorry for the short-story introduction; just had to get that off my chest.
Regards,
Rob Holland