I'm trying to weigh up whether to buy a complete donor or go to a scrap yard and buy the bits I need. I know about the Q registration issues of building from bits but interested in what other people thing is a good way to go?

well i bought my donor for £155 and bits i dont need that ive sold have already come to about £130 and should easily make alot more back so ive baiscally got a free engine, diff, steering, axles etc

Edit to say i dont know how easily Sierra bits are to sell though, my BMW bits went relatively quickly

[Edited on 21/5/08 by Miks15]

What sort of Beemer? what sort of locost are you building?

If you can get the donor home and move it on without the wheels on it you will get some very cheap running gear.

its a E36 316.
Its self designed based on both book and haynes so mabye not the easiest way to go.
Im taking a chance hoping mine will go smoothly

I bought parts. No donor to strip. No shell to get rid of. Keeps the peace at home. Not the cheapest way but it is the easiest. And you can buy parts reconditioned.

I bought all my parts separately, except for the seat runners for the drivers' side, and those were from the donor. That's all that came from the donor, which was, in the end, not at all suitable (and still cost me $900 to buy). This is a VERY expensive project if you are in North America, particularly Canada, unless you are a mechanic who owns a garage, and can fabricate things and weld. Over there, a good, useful Sierra donor will save you a lot of time and money. You can always upgrade parts to new later. Just my 2 Canadian cents (that's about 1p).

[Edited on 21/5/08 by RK]

if you take somthing appart you have some idea of how it goes back together.

Plus stripping a donor was one of the highlights of my build so far, blood sweat and cursing when you couldnt get bits off set alight to my hat (rip) mouth full of petrol.

Plus you got a known source of all your bits for SVA.

Get a donor. I didn't and deeply regret it. Use all the donor instruments, wiring and wheels etc. then upgrade as and when u want.

You don't say what you are actually building but I bought a donor package from "Sierra Shack" - NTDWM.

The advantage was that I got all the rear end of an xr4x4 and the front end of a xr4i which means I got the 3.62 LSD etc. Just gives you a bit of flexibility I guess.

Main point for me though was that although I have plenty of room, getting a truck down to my garage to pick up the shell would be impossible.

I went the donor route. I bought a Sierra off ebay for £75. Stripped everything down, partly cause i didn't know whether to go car engined or bike engined (don't tell hellfire), partly because it was educational (seeing how things come apart helps you visualise how they go back together) and partly to sell the rest on ebay!

I bought a Sapphire for £75, it had £15 of fuel in the tank (even though the gauge was reading empty), £25 of tax left on it, sold the gearbox for £25, got a case of beer for the engine, sold the lights for £17, kept, re-used or scrapped the rest.


The list of parts you need / can re-use is pretty long:-

front hubs, brakes, steering rack (manual), steering column, the steering wheel (for sva), column shroud thingy, stalks, handbrake, all the fuses out the box, all the relays you can find (inc the flasher one above the column but behind the clocks), the bulbs out of the lamps, any nuts, bolts etc that aren't rusted up, prop shaft, diff, rear drive shafts, rear brakes, brake master cylinder (not ABS). Wheels to roll the car round on.

There are four advantages of using a donor that I can see, firstly cost. You have said that this isn't such an issue to you, but adding all that lot up is going to cost you a lot more than £75. Secondly, delivery. All the parts you need are there in one package. Think of the number of trips to breakers yards / ebay / motor factors to pick that lot up. Thirdly, loads of projects get abandoned due to people not seeing progress during the build. My advice would be get the chassis to the stage where you can get it on it's wheels and get it rolling up and down the road (with your mates pushing you) as quickly as possible. If you can't get it to a rolling chassis stage because you are waiting to afford / delivery on a new set of £500 alloys & tyres you can loose heart with it. Finally ease of getting parts. I can go along to Halfords or any motor factors, and give them my donor reg, and they can tell me it was a 1.6l '92 reg Pinto powered Sierra. I can get replacement brake discs, pads etc without any bother about sizes etc etc.

All IMHO.




Oh yeah, and because I'm tight / skint, I'm still running round on the donor alloys!

<<<--------- See



HTH

Mike

there are reasons to go both but I would go donor route. That way you will have all the bits so don;t need to go searching for some unusual bolt or spring ir brake plate or ..... plus as you dismantle it, you will have seen how it all fits together.

Dooner root for me too... Cheapest option, but you'd better like cleaning rust/dirt of the parts.

You could buy all new parts and get a new reg plate.. This will be expensive...

Personally I like the idea of knowing it all worked before you took it apart....

Cheers

Dan

i got myself a donor
wrong diff
didnt use the engine
wrong brakes
but i paid £60 for the car and weighed it in for £90
altho i spent about 3 times that on the correct parts doh!!

Well, the idea is that you don't get the WRONG donor! As I ended up doing! I had no idea the whole locost thing is pretty much impossible where I live. But what's money for? Yes, I know it's that yearly trip with the other half to Italy etc etc, but besides that?

i went parts direction and wish i hadnt, you spend more time and money trying to find cheap bits for here and there, i know wish id gone the donor route