90s era BMW E36 318tds Touring

[dieselassist]

Once I sell my Disco 1, Im considering buying one of these, if I can manage to find one here; they've come up on my radar as allegedly has 1.7 TD engine, so road tax, while still a wallet crippling government sex crime, not as brutal as say a 1.9Td ...

Being a touring, I can fill the back of it full of welding gear, tools etc, and it may even have a towbar and I can tow a decrepit trailor or A frame the odd shagged ancient car about - is this possible without ending up in a huge plum of smoke on the hard shoulder??

 

Presumably they are glacially slow, but I can live with that, effortless reliability compensating for that...a lad can dream!!

 

Am I dreaming or are they any good, or should I forget the whole idea, n look at some other diesel wagon?? I don't fancy another VAG anything for ahile...

[Lacquer Peel]

They weren't very popular in the UK, most people opting for the 2.5 6 pot, not ideal for Ireland's punitive road tax system.

 

What about an Astra diesel estate if you need a smallish capacity engine in a decent sized estate? Or a small van to avoid paying through the roof for road tax.

[dieselassist]

...had an astra saloon with 1.7Td stove years ago; had all sorts of heartache with it; HGF failure; head was jiggered, brand new head sourced n fitted; HGF went again about 8k miles again; fixed it n flogged it - 'never again' territory !!

[Ghosty]

I don't remember the last time I saw an E36 Touring of any description.

[320touring]

The engine is an m41- it is 2/3 of the m51 2.5td lump.

 

90bhp and 140ft lb of torque-its alright but not all that-the VAG 1.9s are a better engine and more fuel efficient.

 

Sounds like it'd do what you want but be prepapred to be underwhelmed. Also chck it doesnt overheat-they like to banana the head when they do that.

[sludgeguts]

I have no experience of the diesel engined versions, in fact I never know there was a smaller engined diesel version in the E36, I thought they were all 2.5TD...... Anyhow I have the 318i Touring and so far so good. Bit underpowered but a good drive all the same. The big fall down with the Touring is lack of space, the boot is tiny for the size of car, no split fold rear seats and the rear seat base doesn't flip up so no flat load space in there. Saying that it can swallow a full size mountain bike, just about.  

Any E36 seems a bit of a rarity nowadays especially the Touring so for me there's a certain satisfaction of driving something a little bit unique on today's roads and it's been totally reliable so far, pretty economical too. Pleased with it but would prefer one with six cylinders. 

 

Edited to add, the rear seats do actually split 60/40 but the seat base doesn't flip up at all. Not a great bit of design there.

 

Edited July 27, 2015 by sludgeguts

[sierraman]

The big problem here is old tech diesels such as this are thin on the ground now, nearly all that's left are worn out or suffering age related problems.

[dieselassist]

Thanks for the info guys; @sludgeguts - I didn't know the rear load area doesn't flat down - I just presume that it did have a flat load area - what sort of design cock up is that...

 

Im well familiar with the VAG 1.9 TDI's etc - but a lot of these are just so shagged to bits, here - either the engine is shagged, not boosting or the engine is all good, n the best of the car is in tatters/falling to bits - our B roads are quite bad here, full of potholes etc, - the mk3 era golf's seemed to take a lot of such abuse in their strides, but mk4 golf's n B5 on passats cant take the punishment - the up side of that tho is that there is a huge amount of them 'for breaking' so parts is plentiful enough....

[320touring]

Thanks for the info guys; @sludgeguts - I didn't know the rear load area doesn't flat down - I just presume that it did have a flat load area - what sort of design cock up is that...

 

Im well familiar with the VAG 1.9 TDI's etc - but a lot of these are just so shagged to bits, here - either the engine is shagged, not boosting or the engine is all good, n the best of the car is in tatters/falling to bits - our B roads are quite bad here, full of potholes etc, - the mk3 era golf's seemed to take a lot of such abuse in their strides, but mk4 golf's n B5 on passats cant take the punishment - the up side of that tho is that there is a huge amount of them 'for breaking' so parts is plentiful enough....

mk1 octavia estate is what you need

[dieselassist]

 

mk1 octavia estate is what you need          

 

 

 

...had one for awhile 'just to sell on' with my brother; bought it off my sister for small money, after her au-pair trashed it around like a rally car, the rear wheel cylinder let go one night when I was carrying an engine home in the back; approaching single lane road works through a village...scary shit, that was - cant look at another one in the same light now...

 

...anyhow we managed to flog it, thankfully as it was an Auto, which are 'rare' here...

 

I need something other than a VAG derived product, really - Ive had enough of them, as a daily for awhile...

 

I spoke to a mate of mine who works at a diesel specialist, n he reckons the 318tds 'is a good car' - they've had a few in, over the years, n they've only needed small remedial work doin; most of the them in long term ownership of 2/3 years plus - his theory is the chav\drift yob factor has killed a lot of them off...