Ive been doing my usual purge of autotrader.com and I came across a 1997 with 87K:

http://www.autotrader.com/fyc/vdp.jsp?car_id=213123093&dealer_id=8311522&car_year=1997&model=740I

Ran a carfax and it has flood damage reported in 2003.

Just wondering what kind of experiences people have had with flood damaged cars?

Don't walk, RUN away! There a countless electrical connections and components throughout the car. If water ever gets into any of them (especially if it was salt water) they will eventually coorode and develop poor connections. You could spend the rest of you life and all of your money trying to track them down and you'd never find them all.

It may work fine today, but eventually it will catch up to you. An E38 is NOT the kind of car that you want to have electical problems with. There are plenty of other 7's to choose from, pick one of them that does not have flood damage.

Don't walk, RUN away! There a countless electrical connections and components throughout the car. If water ever gets into any of them (especially if it was salt water) they will eventually coorode and develop poor connections. You could spend the rest of you life and all of your money trying to track them down and you'd never find them all.

It may work fine today, but eventually it will catch up to you. An E38 is NOT the kind of car that you want to have electical problems with. There are plenty of other 7's to choose from, pick one of them that does not have flood damage.

+1

Also, you can get one that hasn't been flooded and in perfect shape for that price.

Thanks for the replies. I figured that elecs would be an issue alright. I was more curious to see what other's opinions on these might be.

It's like anything else, if you go in with your eyes open then you can do ok.

I have a friend that got rising water into his house and it ended up getting into his Porsche (993 C4S). It got into the car and got the carpets wet. The insurance company totaled the car and he sold it to a friend that spent a couple of days cleaning everything. He opened up the DME (it's under the seat) and dried every thing out. When he put it all back together it fired right off and he's been driving it ever since (6 years).

On the flip side, I've seen cars with water lines inside the tach and speedo.....

IMHO, not worth the headaches/heartaches/wallet aches.....present or future.

When you buy flood cars, you only get glass and sheet metal. The rest is not worth very much at all. Some are cool for race cars, but a 7?

Ive been doing my usual purge of autotrader.com and I came across a 1997 with 87K:

http://www.autotrader.com/fyc/vdp.jsp?car_id=213123093&dealer_id=8311522&car_year=1997&model=740I

Ran a carfax and it has flood damage reported in 2003.

Just wondering what kind of experiences people have had with flood damaged cars?

DON'T DO IT!

It may be fine, but there's way way way too much electronic equipment and sensitive wiring in an E38 to risk it.

Imagine if you start to get corrosion, in, say, the iBus harness... that's a nightmare I never would want to tackle.

Just don't do it, you don't need that kind of aggravation!