[D800]

Evening all.

Looking for a little advice on a 2007 e91 320D I recently acquired. In honesty when looking I was over focused on getting an m47 one with lower mileage. The car is also pretty clean externaly save for a few scratches and bit of paint deterioration, barely any rust on exterior body panels at all, just a tiny bit of bubbling in the rear arch lip down low.

Foolishly I didnt really have a good look under it and in my defence there is a lot of plastic and felt in the way but I have now had a good look and hmmm its not great in my opinion. (sorry the pics didnt resize for some reason).



Up side of sill near fuel tank



Front rear subframe mount area



rear rear subframe mount area



behind felt wheel arch liner at bottom of arch



The rust behind the rear felt material arch liner (last pic) I am pretty sure if i poke about at it it would go through so i left that alone but aggitated some of the rest of it with a screwdriver and dremel tool and there were some fairly substantial flakes (5-10p sized) that came off from the back of the rear sills near up behine the fuel tank.

The rust near the rear of the 2 rear subfame mounts is more superficial and its fairly solid there. I fear it might be pretty bad behind the side skirts but havent touched those. There is a lot of mud and dirt caked in there.

I basically was interested to know if i got a particullarly bad one or if they are all likley to be a bit like this at this age (15 yrs)? I came from a 21 yr old mk4 golf that had no rust like this underneath, just a few small scabs on the bottom of the doors. I am not sure its worth attempting to fix, would be a lot of time and effort I feel. Thining of moving it on and looking at an LCI in the hope of being a bit newer it would be a bit better.

Cheers for any thoughts,

Dave

[0l0dom0l0]

The subframe itself being rusty is very normal.

However the sills and other bits on yours do look a lot worse than I've seen before. The fact that the rear arches are going is usually a give away and would put me off straight away. The E9X platform doesn't really suffer the same rust issues as the E4X did.

I would move it on. It could be either accident damaged in the past or have lived near the coast. In my opinion it certainly isn't worth repairing as an N47 engine of that age is a risk in itself. I assume you are aware of the timing chain issues?

The car could quite easily turn into a money pit very quickly so would be best just to get rid. Some people may disagree.

[D800]

Originally Posted by 0l0dom0l0

The subframe itself being rusty is very normal.

However the sills and other bits on yours do look a lot worse than I've seen before. The fact that the rear arches are going is usually a give away and would put me off straight away. The E9X platform doesn't really suffer the same rust issues as the E4X did.

I would move it on. It could be either accident damaged in the past or have lived near the coast. In my opinion it certainly isn't worth repairing as an N47 engine of that age is a risk in itself. I assume you are aware of the timing chain issues?

The car could quite easily turn into a money pit very quickly so would be best just to get rid. Some people may disagree.

thanks for the thoughts and I think I agree. Its the M47 not N47 (one of the last I guess) so no timing chain issues and only 115k miles, also runs really well but I think with this age of car milage is probably less important than condition. Wierdly the subframe itself isnt bad at all. possibly been repalced at somepoint. The external bubling on the rear arch lip shoulf of been a give away, you're right...