BMW: One Week In

After one week, the BMW has seen a number of updates and a few more are on the way.

All clean, sitting at home.

Starting with the free items, the hood bra was falling apart and made it's way into the trash before the whole exterior got a wash. The wind deflector for the sunroof was a factory accessory and I'm sure helps with a little wind while the sunroof is open, but it was cramping my style, so I easily unbolted it from the roof (also to help better clean the roof).

Shot of the cleaned up interior.

The interior benefited from a vacuum and almost a full bottle of leather cleaner.  The back of the driver seat was put back in place and I cleaned out a few odds and ends left by the previous owner. If you find yourself cleaning really grungy old plastic inside a car, I can now recommend the Magic Eraser sponge. It worked great!

45 minute wait to check out at LKQ on the 4th of July.

Thanks to a tip-off by Kyle, the LKQ junkyard in Greenville just dumped an '88 BMW 5 series on their lot on Wednesday, and being 4th of July, they offered 40% off! I snagged a replacement set of side mirrors (the passenger side did not come with the glass mirror), weather strips for all four doors (the ones in there were extremely rough and falling down), as well as a 10 disc CD changer to replace some parts missing from the one in the car now. The line to check out was huge, but I snagged a bunch of needed parts for $58, when new replacement parts online would cost over $1000!

One ex-CD changer.

Saturday, Luke used his electrical engineer wizardry to diagnose a failed starter.  Sunday, I spent most of the day replacing the starter, but I got it all sorted out and it fires up every time now! At only $66, it was a pretty affordable fix to do at home. I did get a shot of the new cheapo shift knob to replace the one that had broken and could easily be pulled off while making a quick shift.

The Sony unit in the junkyard car looked similar to the one in mine, so I took a chance and it paid off. I replaced the broken cover and now have a 10 disc holder so I can actually use the CD player! $10!

If all that isn't enough, I've noticed the driveshaft's center support bearing seems to be going bad and the rear end of the car is sitting a couple inches lower than the front, so a new bearing and some rear shocks are on order to remedy those issues. The odometer and trip counter stopped counting at some point in it's history, which I've found is a common issue with these cars, so for $17 there's a kit with new gears to get it ticking again. Hey, maybe we can hit 400,000!

The new shift knob that stays with the shifter!

All of that should get the car back to solid mechanical shape, but I'll see what else pops up and keep making small updates as it goes.