BMW restoration... good idea?

BMW restoration... good idea?
I have recently completed restoring a 1988 ford bronco. I'm very seriously considering restoring an early to mid 1980s bmw 3 series or similar. Are these cars relativley simple to work on? Are parts easy to find and redily available online or at a place like pepboys or napa? Are there certain things or dificulties I should look out for in the vintage 3 series?

This is out of no where but is it easy to obtain a roof rack for these cars?
(aftermarket or BMW)

Thanks

i almost forgot are parts expensive? I'm 16 and will be funding this myself.

You will need to go through a local German Service Shop for most of the parts. Parts arent exactly inexpensive for BMW's. Restoring a BMW would take a lot of time and money to get it into the condition acceptable by BMW enthusiasts.

Jazzzmonkey, you might want to search out some car sale sites like craigslist.com for a big city near you and find out how much you would be able to resell the restored Beamer for unless you just wanted to fix it up to be buried in when you die a ripe old age. ;)
cuz yeah parts are high especially if they're not aftermarket but rather proprietary (bmw-only stuff). i just bought a Timken front wheel berring hub assy for about 60 bux. luckily i found a 1 13/16 socket for $10 at Farm to market store vs. it's metric counterpart (46mm) for about $20+.
But every form of gratification has its price. You might try ebay for a Bently Repair manual cause some things are somewhat different than american cars.
Good Luck...

I would say don't do it. That is what I wanted to do (though I can't work on mine myself--I should learn!) and I SERIOUSLY underestimated the cost of parts and the amount of work that would go into it. I have an '86 325 on which I've spent about $7000 (mechanics only) in the last 15 months. It was running and driving just fine when I got it, I might add! The poor girl isn't even worth anywhere near that much in resale.
Give it a lot of thought before you start.

You can get parts for the older BMW's on ebay, forums and junk yards.