Do I save my $1000 BMW or should I kick it to the curb?

My thousand-dollar BMW came with a lot of good parts, but the car has one glaring flaw: It’s a rust bucket.

If our team has any hope of testing the car before its first competition, we have less than six months to finish it, and currently it’s in no condition to even drive around the block.

Going into this project, I thought getting the 2.5-liter BMW engine to run would be the largest hurdle we would face. Fortunately, it only cost us about $200 to turn a car that wouldn’t start into one that idles like a dream, so that issue has been resolved. This leads us into our next big obstacle, repairing the rust.

And when I showed up to take a look at the car, “some rust” looked a lot more like “holes in places where there shouldn’t be holes.”

Of course, the extent of the damage wouldn’t be uncovered until I took the carpet out. That was when the realization hit me: I’m going to need some help.

When I mentioned earlier that I didn’t know how to weld, one of our readers raised a good point: “I wouldn’t worry about not knowing how to weld. It didn’t stop the last person that tried to fix stuff on the body.”

Thankfully I’ve got a great group of friends, so the promise of pizza was enough to get them to spend an afternoon working on a car that they probably all secretly wish I hadn’t bought.

As we prepared to break out the wire wheels and cutting discs, we decided to start with the passenger-side rust first. My assumption is that we’ll get better at the “repair” phase of the project as we go, so we’ll learn on the passenger side and then hopefully do a better job on the driver side.

Unfortunately, it seemed that each bit of rust we cut out uncovered even more rust.

I originally thought we would just be cutting rust from the floor, but the rust had crept up the rocker panel and even eaten away at the lower mount for the front fender.

While we had originally planned for just a couple patches in the floor, it was time to order more sheet metal and get ready for a far more serious repair.

After a lot of pizza and a visit from a forum member to purchase some unneeded interior pieces, we called it a day with a large hole cut into the floor and not a lot of new metal welded in.

I set out to find a replacement fender. The E36 coupe and sedan fenders are unfortunately different, so trying to find a used fender that would fit my four-door quickly became a far more difficult task than expected.

After over a month of searching, I finally found an E36 parts car about an hour from my house that had the fender I needed. The only problem: I was part of the crew that went up to host the Tire Rack Ultimate Track Car Challenge at Pitt Race, so I was currently a lot of hours away from my house. I messaged the seller, and we agreed on a price and time for me to pick up the fender once I got home.

I told the rest of the GRM crew about the sweet deal I just made for the fender, and Tom posed a valid question: “Why don’t you just buy the whole car? That will fix your rust problem, won’t it?”

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Comments

Stueck0514 GRM+ Memberand Reader
10/27/25 12:48 p.m.

I think the real question is whether you value your time more than the process itself. If you’ve never tackled rust repair before and don’t see yourself ever doing it again, then maybe it’s best to pass on this one. But if you enjoy the time spent with others, swapping stories, and learning as you go, there’s real value in that too. My take? Give it a shot. Try saving the car and pick up some new skills along the way. Worst case, if you get halfway through and realize it’s not worth it, you can always walk away.

On the other hand, if you look at your time in dollars per hour and the math doesn’t make sense compared to the car’s final value, then cutting your losses early might be the smarter move. That’s a perfectly valid approach, just not one I usually take myself.

Colin Wood Associate Editor
10/27/25 12:49 p.m.

In reply to Stueck0514 :

Well said. +1 for this advice.

Austin Cannon GRM+ Memberand Reader Services
10/27/25 1:33 p.m.

In reply to Stueck0514 :

The effort / process isn't the most pressing issue, it's honestly the budget. With all of the metal we'll have to cut off of this chassis, we're looking at close to $100 in sheet metal to fill those holes. A lot of the stock suspension bits have serious rust on them as well, so just replacing things that have to be replaced is looking like we'd have a hard time to keep it under budget. Moving to another chassis gives us some extra wiggle room by selling things like spare bumpers, doors, wheels, etc. If we do go that route...

Warlock New Reader
10/27/25 2:48 p.m.

I had the same issue with my '63 truck...the first one I had looked like a good jumping off point at the start, but the deeper I got into it, the worse it got. Ultimately, the answer was finding another one less well-equipped but in better basic shape, and turning the first one into a parts truck. Much lower stress!

Austin Cannon GRM+ Memberand Reader Services
10/27/25 2:51 p.m.

In reply to Warlock :

I think that's going to be the way to proceed with this project. I got the engine running, but the rust is a LOT and the rear end made some awful noises when I put it in gear and let the wheels spin for the first time.

J.A. Ackley Senior Editor
10/27/25 4:41 p.m.

Think of the rust as free chassis lightening.

Austin Cannon GRM+ Memberand Reader Services
10/27/25 4:43 p.m.

J.A. Ackley said:
Think of the rust as free chassis lightening.

This becomes a problem when you can't safely put the car on a lift 😭

Colin Wood Associate Editor
10/27/25 4:47 p.m.

Austin Cannon said:
J.A. Ackley said:
Think of the rust as free chassis lightening.

This becomes a problem when you can't safely put the car on a lift 😭

I mean, if it has enough holes in the right places, you won't need a lift.

wvumtnbkr GRM+ Memberand UltimaDork
10/27/25 5:50 p.m.

That's a "NO" from me Dawg.

Rust like that will never be fully fixed.

Time for a different shell. They made like a bazillion e36. This isn't like an e36 m3 lightweight or e30m3.

Toss that poop and start with good metal. There are enough challenges to building a good racecar. Don't start by wasting dozens of hours just to get back to a baseline.