‘I couldn’t find any…’
A serial car-flipper says he was laughed off the internet for paying $2,100 for a knocking, moldy BMW E46 convertible from Facebook Marketplace. After he replaced the water pump and ran a pressure washer over it, he discovered one of the cleanest late-model E46s many of his viewers say they have ever seen.
Tim of BackYardBoyz (@bybtim), a Washington-state car flipper with more than 357,000 TikTok followers, posted the video on Tuesday. It has drawn more than 2.7 million views.
Tim opens the video by enumerating exactly why he was the joke of the comments section: “I got brutally laughed at by about 1,000 people for buying this thing here from Facebook Marketplace. And they laughed at me because this thing here was knocking. The exterior, it looks like it’s been sitting since World War I. Interior got some good mold. Looks like it’s starting to grow its own tree. And in the trunk, we have our own swimming pool.”
Then he flips the framing: “I sat here scratching my head and remembered that, hey, I’m actually BackyardBoyz. So I collected my tears, changed the water pump, and the engine knock is gone. Shh, don’t tell anyone. I obviously knew that before I bought the car. So who’s laughing now?”
What gives the buy its juice is the platform. The E46 is the fourth-generation BMW 3 Series, produced from 1997 to 2006. Three point two million deliveries make it the best-selling 3 Series of all time, and the convertible body style was sold alongside the sedan, coupe, and estate variants throughout the run.
Two decades on, clean E46s have become a category enthusiasts actively hunt for. The M3 coupe is drawing a median sale price of around $32,550 at auction and a top price of $117,000. Even the non-M 330Ci convertible—the body style Tim bought—has a median trade value of $14,175, comfortable multiples above his $2,100 outlay when the drivetrain is sound, and the body has not been hammered.
Tim makes the same point in passing, more bluntly. “If you know anything about the E46 and how molested they get, I guess you could say over the years, having one in this good condition is absolutely insane,” he says.
The most debated segment of the video is what Tim does after he opens the trunk and finds standing water in the spare tire well and the battery tray. His solution was to drill a small drain hole in each, which divided the comments section.
There is a reason every E46 convertible owner under the video had a take. The car’s soft top has two drain channels routed under the top mechanism that empty water away from the cabin and trunk, and they clog with leaves and degraded headliner material over time. This means that water with nowhere to go pools exactly where Tim found it. Owners on E46 enthusiast forums document this in years of threads.
DJQT, who said they had run into the same issue, told Tim the cleaner fix is to clear the original drains rather than add new ones: “Your drainage holes in the compartment of the roof are clogged — that’s why your trunk fills up with water. I had the same issue and I fixed it with some DIY tool I made myself.”
Several other commenters pointed out that the spare tire well and battery compartment have factory rubber drain grommets Tim missed; pulling them lets the water out without compromising the metal. “You have drain plugs on your spare-tire compartment and on your battery compartment,” wrote Alexandre. Tim’s reply: “I couldn’t find any lol.”
Others were blunter about the rust risk. “Drilled holes open you up for rust,” wrote Apaof4EG. “Suck out the water with a wet vac.”
After a pressure wash and a quick interior wipe-down, Tim took the car to what he called “the OG spot” for the reveal shot. “One hour with the pressure washer, about 20, 30 minutes at the car wash. No polishing, no buffing, and this thing looks like it’s a show car. Genuinely, I am in awe,” he says.
By his own estimate in the comments section, the car is now worth $4,500 to $5,000—more than double what he paid. He is also openly second-guessing the flip plan. “I might want to swap this to a full black interior and keep this thing because this thing just drives so nice,” he says.
Commenter HBS summed up the reversal: “116k mile? Convertible? $2,100? That’s a hell of a deal.” Tim closes the video on the same note—and at the previous owner’s expense. “It’s so beautiful, and it only cost me right under $2,200. That is the power of knowing how to find and identify deals.”
Motor1 reached out to Tim via TikTok direct message for additional comment. We’ll be sure to update this if he responds.
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