You will make a lemon juice, or at least you will try. That’s what happened with me at 2014 when I spotted a cheap biimer on German car market and I knew it immediately that I have to import it to Estonia. Back then I had no idea how to make it happen but I gave it shot anyway and contacted with owner who was extremely helpful and gave me all information I needed to take this leap on fate. Of course during our conversation it came out that generator was also f*** so I sourced locally one cheap from junkyard, booked the flight to Berlin and off I went alone to buy my second car with zero knowledge in my pocket.

Quick walk trough the Berlin airport to the bus station, 200km to south there I was….and the car… well the car was in poor shape but what can you expect from 800.- biimer.

So there I was, standing next to this rust bucket near Rosenheim and praying that everything will go well and generator will be the only problem- there was no plan B. Few hours hassle thanks to poor selection of tools and genie was changed, car was up and running with no issues.

Cruising back to Estonia grin on my face when suddenly in middle of Poland battery light decided to come back on. Stopped right next to the mall and lucky I was that only exciter wire had came a loose- quick fix and back on road.

I tried very hard to save some money with economical driving but everything backfired at last Poland city before Lithuanian border. So right before leaving town called Suwalki I checked my GPS and knew that there is only few hundred meters to go until city border so I stepped on the gas and for my surprise police was measuring speed exactly on the city border- they wrote me the bill for 200 zlotts (aprox 50 euros) witch had to be paid by cash. Tooke my driving license, turned around my car, exchanged currency at nearest petrol station, paid the bill, got back my driving license and free to go.

Now to the exciting part. Due to lack of metal on door sills etc I had to made decision to sell it as it is or try to weld the body and repaint everything. First option was too boring and I was too eager to learn something new. So, shopping list was made.

To be honest I had no idea back then what we where doing so many mistakes was involved like using nitro solution to clean the surface before paint, using different primers on wrong order and so on. After this project I became very interested about every aspect of car painting, read the books and articles and and fully painted several cars but finally quit from this due to lack of good environment.

I decided to keep the original paint witch was BMW’s Madeira Violet- one of my favorite paint of all time.

For my surprise result was tolerate able and next owner was satisficed with paintjob. I bought the car for 800.- and sold it after 2 months of work and waiting for 2k. In reality if I include all the spending etc then definitely there was no profit at all so I don’t advise it to do until u are not after experience!

Few tips what was learned during this process:

• It is completely possible to import car from Germany using only selling contract, its risky but doable! (in normal case scenario you have to get export license plate etc @ Germany)
• Never wipe the paintable surface with nitro solution, always use silicone remover! (nitro solution will leave contaminant on surface) :D.

I will try to write complete DIY tutorial about car painting in soon future!

Thanks for reading & stay tuned!