I think my E46 BMW is scrap.
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00:00Hello! So for those of you that follow my E46 track car build, we have an issue.
00:07This is entertaining for everybody, actually. So here it is, looking great,
00:13right? I ran Time Attack with the Road to Time Attack series last year. However, my
00:18car's rusted out. I've just discovered this. Alright, I want to show you the
00:22extent of the damage, if I can. Need your opinions. Here's what's left of the
00:33rocker. There's the jack point. This was the one I paid to get reinforced. It was
00:38like 500 bucks for that. Alright, so take a look here. This is the rocker. You can
00:46see up inside the rust goes like two inches up and there's two layers of it.
00:51That goes down here and there is a bit that I was ripping off. This is where the
00:59metal starts to get good again. So all in all, I don't know if you can see, angle that
01:06so from here to about here is completely gone and then we've got this area here.
01:13Alright, so this is rotted out. This whole area flexes and moves. Okay, that's where
01:24the jack point. Now on that side, you can see the jack point, the whole area around
01:29the jack point is completely rotted down about two pins back and the metal gets
01:35good again. The front, the front's actually pretty good. It's actually half
01:40decent over here, but it's still, you can see that this might be weakening coming
01:44from the underside. I was going to hammer that with a little bit and see if I can get it to
01:47break through, but otherwise under here, it's not terrible. But either way, here's
01:54the state of the underside. What do you guys think? I want your opinions. So I have a
01:59couple options. One, you can scrap the car entirely and try something totally
02:04different, but that would be stupid because I've got all these very
02:08performance, specific performance parts that are meant for the E46 and I like this
02:13chassis a lot and I like E46s a lot and I don't really want to get out of them. So
02:18about 2000 bucks, between 1000 and 2000 bucks gets me a used E46, like an entire
02:24new car. So if I can find one that's completely clean, maybe I should do a shell
02:29swap. When I'm doing that I can drop everything, go right from the ground up
02:33and do a full build, proper bushings, make sure everything's clean and properly
02:37installed, and then I'll have a really good track car. So I need your opinions.
02:42Do I try and pay and get this one fixed? Or do I just do a shell swap and start from
02:50the ground up with a cleaner chassis? Also, for those of you that are in the E46
02:54world, it's not that hard to be deceived by what the outside of a car looks like
03:00when you're buying it. Because when I bought this two years ago, it didn't look
03:04anything like that to me. There's like a layer of protectant on the chassis
03:08underneath, and it's kind of rubberized and the rust doesn't always peek through
03:13there. The weakest point is the rear jack points right around the right where the
03:17jack point is. You can just poke that with your finger and you might hear it
03:20go. Alright, that's how you know there's rust underneath. Water gets in there and
03:24it sits around the jack point, it pools up and it just rots it out from the
03:26inside out, not from the outside in, right? So that's why it's a bit deceptive. So
03:31just pay attention if you're buying one of these and go check yours right now. I
03:34don't want to make you panic, but this did not... mine did not look like it had
03:37rust when I got it, and there's a lot of rust. I think this car is pretty much
03:42scrapped to be perfectly honest. Give me your opinions. What do I do? Do I do a
03:47shell swap or do I try and get this repaired? If I do a shell swap, I can pick
03:51any color I want. I kind of want a black one.
04:01Whoa! Just a little bit of a hit. Edit that out, edit that out.
04:10Whoa!
04:15Take two.
04:18From here, I've got to steer the outside as opposed to...
04:26So your best is a 128.8. That's terrible. Thomas, you are very good on camera.
04:47you