Does anybody on here own an E46 330i?

Soldato
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Afternoon :)

I've been keeping my beady eyes on these for a while, prices are really tumbling now! :eek:

Seems like £5,500 will get you a post-2000 decent spec 330i with good history and sub-100k miles.

Would be grateful if anyone on here who owns one could tell me a little more, granted at 21 it's going to be steep on insurance but I'm used to that :p

Reliability / Common issues / MPG in the real world would be brilliant. 231bhp with RWD sounds fun :)

Cheers OcUK!
 
Man of Honour
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I own a 330i M Sport 2003 reg.

You won't get a NICE one for the money you are talking. £7900 bought me a Sport with electric memory seats etc etc

Real world MPG - approx 22, mostly urban.

Have had NO reliability or issues with it, except for the common E46 problem of the electric windows.
 
Soldato
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I must have been really lucky as I recently bought a 2001 facelift 330i sport for £5175* which the owner lovingly looked after. It has all the options except sunroof and heated seats. It has done 10500 miles and besides a little rust patch on the rear door sill and a missing rear licence plate light lense, is immaculate and all necessary bits for the mileage have been replaced already (cam sensor, thermostat, bushes, list goes on)

Currently doing 21mpg in short urban trips. Next oil service is in 5750 miles.

Some common faults not mentioned above are window regulators, high oil usage, bulbs out rear warning due to inferior ground connection (easy cheap diy)

The silky smooth engine is a joy and when the opportunity arises, 1st and 2nd gear acceleration is pretty special

*btw Fox - yes I'm in debt but I have a 12 month plan to work my way out of it and I figured I might as well get the car, with the spec that I have sought after for years, while I can and pay off a little more debt and be happy rather than always longing for it whilst paying off debt unhappy - it makes sense in my mind at least :cool:

EDIT: The owner got an m3 and now wants to buy the 330i back from me as he says he cant find another 330i with the same spec and quality for the price - I politely refused
 
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Soldato
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330i Sport for 5k is doable, but not advised - a 330i SE would be in far better condition.

I got mine for £7k (trade), 54k, 2002, Bi-Xenon's + decent 12 month warranty

Got a few niggles which i need to get sorted - rear light cluster which i need to fix (easy) + front doors rattling and front electric window regulators need replacing at some point. Just got to find a spare weekend to do it all! Apart from that it's absolutely perfect.

Uses about a litre of oil every 3000 miles which is good - they can use a litre of oil per 1000 miles! I've haven't had any problems with mine at all, but i expect something to go wrong sooner or later.

Tyres - £450 all round for Ultrac Sessantas or closer to £550 for Potenza's. Don't buy it if it's got Triangle tyres all round as it will have clearly been owned by a *****

Fuel - expensive (V-Power or SUL), seem to spend my life in the petrol station. Getting 26mpg quite easily with a mixture of fast A roads and town. Get around 36 on the M'way.

Servicing - Had Inspection II + coolant flush + brake fluid = £370. And this was at a Specialist.

Insurance - Just renewed it - £1050 for 12 months, 22, very good postcode, 0 NCB.

Costs quite a lot to run, but my god it's definitely worth it. I actually look forward to every time i get to drive my car + the free membership to the "Fox and BMW Crew" club and the "BMW Lane" is a nice perk, as is knowing you're better than everyone else because you drive a German car.
 
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Caporegime
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5k 330i = dog

I don't believe this has to be the case. Sure it'll be a pre-facelift, and probably quite high milage, but there is nothing that means that it can't be a good car.

Note that "good car" doesn't mean cheap to run however, large engined e46's are never that cheap to run, even if they are well maintained.
 
Soldato
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I had a 330i Sport for 3.5 years. Was fun and a very nice car. Good performance, good handling, good looking, nice interior and a decent level of equipment. Not intrusively noisy at motorway speeds, but the acoustically managed exhaust is nice (switches from one to two pipes, adding a burble/roar that is really quite deep at low RPM) for when you are along a B road with the windows down.

On three occasions it caused a sudden £500+ bill (coolant system; air conditioning system; DSC failure). There were a few other niggles that developed such as the final stage resistor (common fault), camshaft sensor (another common fault), steering column joint (another common fault), couple of seized brake callipers (another reasonably common problem!) and broken rear springs (I bet you can guess). These were between about £50 and £300 to rectify. A set of tyres and an alignment was starting to come in at £600+ a time (probably due to an increase in rubber prices), with the rear tyres lasting around 8-15,000 miles and the fronts I guess 13-20,000 miles.

The 330i has the potential to not be an expensive car to run if nothing goes wrong and you service it yourself; the price of general wear and tear parts (brake discs, brake pads, suspension components, air/oil filters, oil etc.) are quite reasonable for a car of it's performance and size. However, it only takes the failure of a few cheaper components or one major system to see the costs soar dramatically. It would be very foolish to ignore the fact that the likely outcome of owning a 330i is going to be some big repair bills.
 
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Man of Honour
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Sometimes they are good, sometimes they can be a bit bad and bill you nicely.

Problem is that if you are lucky they might go a few years between major wallet surgery sessions. This means you get people like Over_Clocker above who simply put petrol in, buy insurance, and nothing breaks. The car is just storing all the bills up for a later date thats all ;)

Mine was a bit like that - it went about 2 years with very little in the way of big expense (Luckily whilst I was back at Uni!) after costing me a fortune in the beginning, and now it has once again begun to empty my bank account on a fairly regular basis, I think once I've had the almost due service done and the tyres fitted I'll have spent about £2.5k on the car in the last 4 months.

It's just not the right sort of car for you judging on your posting history. You drive like a bit of a prune so you'll probably smash it to bits anyway, and you'll be particularly hard on the brakes, tyres etc etc. Worrying thing is you'll probably then bodge it with a set of Linglongs etc and it'll rapidly conform to the old BMW stereotype.

Seriously, you post on here all the time about how your Rover 620 is such a beast you keep it as a 'weekend car' and run some Rover diesel for 'better running costs' and how you fit cheapo tyres to them etc.

These are not the circumstances in which to run any higher end BMW, let alone an older one from the sediment at the bottom of its market.
 
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DRZ

DRZ

Soldato
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It probably will bankrupt you owning and running it and you'll probably die trying to drive it but compared to your current car circus, it probably wont cost you any more than running all your current junk and, whilst you are unlikely to be going fast enough to bin the rovers, you are just as likely to die when they fall apart mid-corner.

Buy one, it'll be funny!
 
Soldato
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Get a good performance car and you should budget a grand a year, when stuff needs replacing it just costs more than a fiesta.

Get a dodgy one that's not been looked after and you could double or triple that for the first few years.
 
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[TW]Fox;16718440 said:
Sometimes they are good, sometimes they can be a bit bad and bill you nicely.

Problem is that if you are lucky they might go a few years between major wallet surgery sessions. This means you get people like Over_Clocker above who simply put petrol in, buy insurance, and nothing breaks. The car is just storing all the bills up for a later date thats all ;)......

I think it has a lot to do with how the car is looked after also... ?

I drive it pretty hard, but at the same time not like an idiot. The car has a FULL BMW dealership service history and all services are always done on time.

Obviously, one day something will jump out at me and cost ££££ to get it repaired, but hopefully I will have another car by then. I generally keep cars about 2 years and then get something better, so try avoid the big bills!!

However, on the 330i, I would say budget £1,000 a year on repairs.

Depending on how you drive, budget £600 - £700 on tyres also!
 
Man of Honour
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I think it has a lot to do with how the car is looked after also... ?

Some of it does but a lot of the stuff that goes wrong is going to go wrong regardless as its not serviceable parts. You could have it serviced by BMW every week that wont stop the heater blower motor failing will it?

It's complete chance - you say you try to keep them 2 years to avoid the big bills, but you buy used cars, so what if you buy one from somebody else moving it on after that 2 year billfree period :D
 
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[TW]Fox;16719513 said:
Some of it does but a lot of the stuff that goes wrong is going to go wrong regardless as its not serviceable parts. You could have it serviced by BMW every week that wont stop the heater blower motor failing will it?

It's complete chance - you say you try to keep them 2 years to avoid the big bills, but you buy used cars, so what if you buy one from somebody else moving it on after that 2 year billfree period :D

I'm quite picky about looking at receipts etc before I buy a car!! EG when I got my 330 it had recently had the brakes done, Inspection II was done and a few more bits. I've only had to get the front bushes done so far, and Oil service.

Both front windows regulators failed though, but is quite an easy fix!
 
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