Kafermeister
02-04-2017, 08:27 PM
Hey all -
Greetings and thanks for the add. I have been reading around and it looks like a decent group of folks here. I hope to be able to fit in well.
I have had an appreciation for German cars for a long time now. In my case it was the aircooled VW and Porsche cars that started it all. Like most car guys, I have had a handful of projects over the years. For me, these projects were mostly comprised of Aircooled VWs and Porsche 914s. I eventually found a 914 from California and it’s on the list of projects to tackle later in life. I also have a 1967 VW Beetle and a 1973 Karmann Ghia convertible. The Ghia was my first car when I was 16. It’s rough. Real rough.
The 67 VW is a car I bought around 2003 and didn’t start on until last year. I drove it to the Cincinnati VW-Porsche-Audi Family Reunion last September. That was its maiden voyage. I guess even at my age people are allowed to do stupid things. That was 80 miles round trip from my house in an almost completely untested car. We survived and the car did well. My 20 year old son went with me and we both had a ball.
Now for my BMW background. I am fairly new to BMWs. I bought my first one just a few years ago. It was a 1995 e36 M3 coupe in Avis Blue. A co-worker had one and I wanted one just like it. When I sold the 1969 Beetle which I had owned for the better part of thirty years, I set the money aside and began looking for a BMW. I found my M3 on craigslist in Murfreesboro TN. The clutch was out but the owner was able to fire it up so I could hear it run. We pushed it onto my trailer and it was mine. My son and I pulled the trans and swapped the clutch with a Gripforce unit and the one piece flywheel. It later became my fair-weather daily driver and I put almost 25k miles on it. This was in addition to the 223k miles it had already accumulated before I bought it.
Just a few months after buying the M3 my old son, who was 16 at the time, decided he may want a BMW. He looked around and found a 1987 e30 5 speed sedan on Craigslist in a barn just outside Indianapolis. He bought it and after some minor maintenance he drove it through high school and into college. He did all of his own maintenance with some supervision from myself. We still have it but it needs some work and my son wants an e30 coupe so he isn’t real motivated to put money into it at the moment.
In October of 2016 a friend of mine said he would love to have my Avus M3 if I ever decided to sell it. It’s was, after all, a very tattered example of an M3. Naturally it had typical e36 interior issues like many others. After a couple of weeks I decided maybe it was time for a change. I sold the M3 to my friend and began looking for newer car to commute to work. I had considered late model cars like 2010-2012 VW GTI’s and BMW e90/e92’s. I was even enamored by a 135i at a buy-here-pay-here lot in Eastgate. A co-worker of mine has a ZHP which he has owned for a very long time and still drives to work daily. I am not sure but he may have even bought it new. Thanks to him I already had an idea what a ZHP was. One day my friend with the old M3 sends me a link to a black ZHP for sale in Lexington KY. At that point I started looking for more information on these cars. The 6 speed manual really spoke to me. I had been looking for an e46 M3 but I didn’t want to deal with the high insurance rates. My two oldest children are under 25 and still living at home so I really needed to be cautious if I didn’t want to make a large monthly expenditure just for car insurance. After all I really wanted four doors this time around and there is no such thing as an e46 M3 sedan. Well, sorta. Now I am thinking hard on the ZHP again.
In what I considered to be a methodical approach to researching cars, I had saved a shortcut on my PC. This link was a shortcut to a Craigslist search I had been performing every few days. Ok, to be truthful, sometimes I would run it multiple times a day. This has been a favorite past time of mine since last December. I would research cars as they show up and run VINs when they were provided. It was a lot of fun learning about the options and what made a ZHP. The goal was to be able to spot one in the wild and not be snookered by someone selling a fake.
This past Tuesday evening I ran my search as I had been doing for the last few months. Finally a car showed up that wasn’t there yesterday. According to Craigslist the ad was placed just three hours prior. There was no phone number in the ad so I took a chance and sent a message via Craigslist. I checked e-mail for the next few hours to no avail. The next morning there were still no messages from the owner. I had pretty much given up ever hearing back. Later in the morning I find that the owner had replied to my query. It seems the car was still available. I made arrangements to take the next day off work and drive down from Cincy. Thursday arrives and we start packing the truck with supplies. GPS x2, tools etc. I had been trying to decide if I should bring a trailer or just trust that the car would be sufficiently roadworthy for the long trip home if I decided to buy it. I eventually decided that if I didn't feel confident in it's ability to make the trip from Knoxville then I had no business buying it so we left the trailer at home. The weather was cold when we started but the sun was out and that made for a pleasant trip. After being momentarily delayed by a radar wielding authority figure just north of Knoxville we ended up arriving at the pre-arranged meeting place with almost an hour to spare. We grabbed a bite to eat and went back to the meeting place. Eventually a blue ZHP sedan rounded the corner. A guy gets out and introduces himself. We checked over the car and discussed it's condition and other attributes. After test driving a few miles I decided it was worth pursuing. This particular example had some really poorly repaired hail damage. This was noted in the ad so it was no surprise but it really didn't show up well in the pictures. I now understood what accounted for the low asking price of the car. He explained to me what he had done to it since he had purchased it. New radiator, water pump, pulleys, hoses, belts. The car really seemed mechanically sound. After a few moments I made an offer. He pondered for a few seconds and agreed. We went to the nearest bank and filled out the paperwork. It was early enough that I was able to message my insurance agent and get it covered immediately. We dropped him off at his super-secret race-car garage and headed toward home. My son was put in charge of navigating the ZHP and I followed in our pickup truck. Unfortunately on our way home a piece of road debris was thrown up and destroyed the passenger side headlight and turn signal assembly. The hood ended up getting crunched a bit in the process but we had already decided it needed to be replaced due to the previous hail damage. Fortunately the M Tech II bumper survived with just mild paint scratches. The Xenon headlight was a total write off. The right turn signal flew over the car and exploded in the road in front of me as I drove over it in the truck. It looked like an explosion of reflective plastic chips had hit the corner of the car. There was nothing I could do but watch. We pulled off to assess the damage. Once we looked the car over it was decided to carry on. By now we now only about 35 miles from home and the car was otherwise fine. The remainder of the trip was as uneventful as the first 200 miles. We pulled in the driveway almost exactly 48 hours after first seeing the ad on Craigslist with my first ZHP and I love it.
Thanks for reading my story. I hope to get to know the people on the board and create some new friendships.
Best Regards
Rick
Greetings and thanks for the add. I have been reading around and it looks like a decent group of folks here. I hope to be able to fit in well.
I have had an appreciation for German cars for a long time now. In my case it was the aircooled VW and Porsche cars that started it all. Like most car guys, I have had a handful of projects over the years. For me, these projects were mostly comprised of Aircooled VWs and Porsche 914s. I eventually found a 914 from California and it’s on the list of projects to tackle later in life. I also have a 1967 VW Beetle and a 1973 Karmann Ghia convertible. The Ghia was my first car when I was 16. It’s rough. Real rough.
The 67 VW is a car I bought around 2003 and didn’t start on until last year. I drove it to the Cincinnati VW-Porsche-Audi Family Reunion last September. That was its maiden voyage. I guess even at my age people are allowed to do stupid things. That was 80 miles round trip from my house in an almost completely untested car. We survived and the car did well. My 20 year old son went with me and we both had a ball.
Now for my BMW background. I am fairly new to BMWs. I bought my first one just a few years ago. It was a 1995 e36 M3 coupe in Avis Blue. A co-worker had one and I wanted one just like it. When I sold the 1969 Beetle which I had owned for the better part of thirty years, I set the money aside and began looking for a BMW. I found my M3 on craigslist in Murfreesboro TN. The clutch was out but the owner was able to fire it up so I could hear it run. We pushed it onto my trailer and it was mine. My son and I pulled the trans and swapped the clutch with a Gripforce unit and the one piece flywheel. It later became my fair-weather daily driver and I put almost 25k miles on it. This was in addition to the 223k miles it had already accumulated before I bought it.
Just a few months after buying the M3 my old son, who was 16 at the time, decided he may want a BMW. He looked around and found a 1987 e30 5 speed sedan on Craigslist in a barn just outside Indianapolis. He bought it and after some minor maintenance he drove it through high school and into college. He did all of his own maintenance with some supervision from myself. We still have it but it needs some work and my son wants an e30 coupe so he isn’t real motivated to put money into it at the moment.
In October of 2016 a friend of mine said he would love to have my Avus M3 if I ever decided to sell it. It’s was, after all, a very tattered example of an M3. Naturally it had typical e36 interior issues like many others. After a couple of weeks I decided maybe it was time for a change. I sold the M3 to my friend and began looking for newer car to commute to work. I had considered late model cars like 2010-2012 VW GTI’s and BMW e90/e92’s. I was even enamored by a 135i at a buy-here-pay-here lot in Eastgate. A co-worker of mine has a ZHP which he has owned for a very long time and still drives to work daily. I am not sure but he may have even bought it new. Thanks to him I already had an idea what a ZHP was. One day my friend with the old M3 sends me a link to a black ZHP for sale in Lexington KY. At that point I started looking for more information on these cars. The 6 speed manual really spoke to me. I had been looking for an e46 M3 but I didn’t want to deal with the high insurance rates. My two oldest children are under 25 and still living at home so I really needed to be cautious if I didn’t want to make a large monthly expenditure just for car insurance. After all I really wanted four doors this time around and there is no such thing as an e46 M3 sedan. Well, sorta. Now I am thinking hard on the ZHP again.
In what I considered to be a methodical approach to researching cars, I had saved a shortcut on my PC. This link was a shortcut to a Craigslist search I had been performing every few days. Ok, to be truthful, sometimes I would run it multiple times a day. This has been a favorite past time of mine since last December. I would research cars as they show up and run VINs when they were provided. It was a lot of fun learning about the options and what made a ZHP. The goal was to be able to spot one in the wild and not be snookered by someone selling a fake.
This past Tuesday evening I ran my search as I had been doing for the last few months. Finally a car showed up that wasn’t there yesterday. According to Craigslist the ad was placed just three hours prior. There was no phone number in the ad so I took a chance and sent a message via Craigslist. I checked e-mail for the next few hours to no avail. The next morning there were still no messages from the owner. I had pretty much given up ever hearing back. Later in the morning I find that the owner had replied to my query. It seems the car was still available. I made arrangements to take the next day off work and drive down from Cincy. Thursday arrives and we start packing the truck with supplies. GPS x2, tools etc. I had been trying to decide if I should bring a trailer or just trust that the car would be sufficiently roadworthy for the long trip home if I decided to buy it. I eventually decided that if I didn't feel confident in it's ability to make the trip from Knoxville then I had no business buying it so we left the trailer at home. The weather was cold when we started but the sun was out and that made for a pleasant trip. After being momentarily delayed by a radar wielding authority figure just north of Knoxville we ended up arriving at the pre-arranged meeting place with almost an hour to spare. We grabbed a bite to eat and went back to the meeting place. Eventually a blue ZHP sedan rounded the corner. A guy gets out and introduces himself. We checked over the car and discussed it's condition and other attributes. After test driving a few miles I decided it was worth pursuing. This particular example had some really poorly repaired hail damage. This was noted in the ad so it was no surprise but it really didn't show up well in the pictures. I now understood what accounted for the low asking price of the car. He explained to me what he had done to it since he had purchased it. New radiator, water pump, pulleys, hoses, belts. The car really seemed mechanically sound. After a few moments I made an offer. He pondered for a few seconds and agreed. We went to the nearest bank and filled out the paperwork. It was early enough that I was able to message my insurance agent and get it covered immediately. We dropped him off at his super-secret race-car garage and headed toward home. My son was put in charge of navigating the ZHP and I followed in our pickup truck. Unfortunately on our way home a piece of road debris was thrown up and destroyed the passenger side headlight and turn signal assembly. The hood ended up getting crunched a bit in the process but we had already decided it needed to be replaced due to the previous hail damage. Fortunately the M Tech II bumper survived with just mild paint scratches. The Xenon headlight was a total write off. The right turn signal flew over the car and exploded in the road in front of me as I drove over it in the truck. It looked like an explosion of reflective plastic chips had hit the corner of the car. There was nothing I could do but watch. We pulled off to assess the damage. Once we looked the car over it was decided to carry on. By now we now only about 35 miles from home and the car was otherwise fine. The remainder of the trip was as uneventful as the first 200 miles. We pulled in the driveway almost exactly 48 hours after first seeing the ad on Craigslist with my first ZHP and I love it.
Thanks for reading my story. I hope to get to know the people on the board and create some new friendships.
Best Regards
Rick