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So the works BMW tourer has got a bit of a problem. At 193,000 miles it might have an injector fault. It's fires up and drives great but occasionally it won't start and you have to leave it a while. It could be one, or it could be all six, who knows?? Anyway, i've been instructed to get rid and i'm not sure if it's worth selling or scrapping.
It's an E46 330d, Everything works inside it, the interior has had 12 years of being used but it's not too bad, it's had a new clutch and a bunch of suspension things sorted and recently sailed through it's MOT. It's had fresh oil every half service intervals and prior to us having it it was equally looked after.
Do people buy things like this or should I be calling a scrap yard?
Cheers.
Someone will buy it.
Stick it up on fleabay with a starting price of £scrap-value and hope for the best.
If you have the time/patience/space to keep it you get the most if you sold it for parts.
Or sell as much of it for parts as you can then scrap the rest, you will get about the same as if you had sold the whole thing.
Sell it or take to a scrap yard..... and they'll probably sell it.
Its only a repair. Describe the repair required in your listing/ad. Someone who is happy to make that repair will buy it. The guy who did the injector seals on my merc has a side line of buying cars like yours, fixing them and selling them again.
Stick it on ebay as spares or repairs with an honest description. It will sell for good money.
There are a few items I would look at for that. A few sensors or maybe the fuel pump. Definitely fixable but I guess 193k is a lot so other things could follow. But not worth scrapping just yet. Any more details of the car? Definitely give me a shout if you are serious about just weighing it in.
It's a 51 330d, blue, 17" alloys (plus 3 spares), SE spec but it's got a few things from the M pack on there too. Heated heats and washer nozzles, 6cd, cruise, actual 44mpg on the motorway (it reckons 50.5mpg+), rear parking sensors, split tailgate, electric heated folding mirrors, loads more stuff, which is making me think it's worth something at least.
The fault is, it won't start occasionally after being driven, when it's going it doesn't miss a beat. It seems to always start when it's been left for an hour or more, so you can imagine being at the petrol station the other day was loads of fun. The garage (they're a bit useless, they didn't know it was a 6 cylinder for a start) said it would need all 6 injectors doing but the AA chap reckoned it could just be one, who knows. It gives little information in the engine management thing about what the problem is.
So what kind of money would I be looking at for scrap? I appreciate that the best thing is to part it out, but we don't really have the space or time for that.
Cheers again for all the suggestions.
Looks like this:
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What have you been quoted for repair?
So what kind of money would I be looking at for scrap?
A lot less than you'll get selling it on ebay - seriously you shouldn't even be considering scrapping it. As suggested above, put it on ebay with a starting price of what you'd get from the scrappy (phone them up to find out - typically £100 to £200 I believe) and you'll be surprised. I got over £400 for a 13yo Pug with lots of miles in pretty tatty condition, which I'd considered scrapping! You should get considerably more for a Beemer in decent nick with a fault which probably won't be terribly difficult to fix for somebody with the time and knowledge.
Get someone to test your cam sensor. Its a common fault on 330d 🙂
Not sure on the weight but probably looking at £200-250 in scrap value. But a 3 litre diesel is too nice to scrap.
I'd definitely be looking at a couple of sensors first (cam as above was my first choice but also fuel reg etc if that's not it).
id be heading to a garage that knows BMw for a start - your one sounds like a shambles.....
Agree with trail_rat. Find yourself a decent local indy BMW garage for diagnosis. Where are you based? If midlands I can recommend a few (Several of my friends are ex BMW dealer techs)
Crank sensor most likley, they fail when hot then start working again when they have cooled down. It should have logged an error code so with getting them read.
Don't scrap that!
Get it to a BMW indy and use the proper diagnostics software - it should give you a decent attempt at finding a fault code, or seeing how the individual injectors are perfroming.
Failing that, try flogging it on one of the BMW enthusiast sites.
3.0d engine is lovely...
I was offered £200 scrap for an undrivable (singlespeed!) Focus at scrap, ended up getting £550 for it on ebay. Which was weird because I tried to sell it as a runner for £900 before it broke and got no interest at all!
If you decide on the ebay route, keep it simple- start price is your scrap value + any other value (I included the tax rebate and the fuel in the tank), that way you can't lose out. Pitch it accurately and clearly, good photos... And I'm not sure but I think my line of "It's not right to scrap this, someone can fix it and it'll do them great, I'd sooner sell it for the scrap value than scrap it" was well received too.
But yeah, if it's not at least had its codes run that's the first step. Might be cheap ones available for your model (I was "offered" to pay £75 to have a dealer do mine, so bought a USB reader for £20 instead). Slightly surprised the AA didn't do this already tbh.
YGM Wozza 😀
Dont scrap it +1!
Someone like me will have that as a work hack. It'll be half full of reciepts, dust and tools within the week!
Toby, That's exactly what we used it for.
Cheers for the advice on not scrapping it, it turns out one of the lads in the office is happy to take it as is.
Christ, if you'd offered that on sale on here you'd have lost your arm at the elbow
I was offered £200 scrap for an undrivable (singlespeed!) Focus at scrap, ended up getting £550 for it on ebay. Which was weird because I tried to sell it as a runner for £900 before it broke and got no interest at all!
I had a dinglespeed Transit, turned out to be a really simple problem, which cost me £15 in parts and another £25 for some gearbox oil, threadlock and gasket sealer, most of which is still left. Took about 4hrs, and that's for a novice like me to fix. Someone got a bargain with yours! My first reaction when it happened though was 'Arrgh, gearbox has had it, that's going to be expensive!' I can see why people would be inclined to get rid with a problem like that.
If I see another singlespeed Tranny advertised for cheap I'll buy it, should be easy to make a quick few quid.
With mine it was clutch slave- which is a pretty big deal on the Focus, concentric cylinder means the engine's got to come out. So the price of repair or my time fixing it (buying a lift etc) made it more sensible just to get rid considering I'd be fixing it to sell it anyway. (also, once the motor was out it'd be insane not to change the DMF and clutch plates)
(ok, it [i]could[/i] change gear, it just really didn't want to do it while moving, most of the time it'd just get stuck in neutral if you tried. So getting it to go anywhere mostly meant starting it in 3rd and pulling away on the starter til the engine fired. So exactly as practical as singlespeed mtb 😉 )