- Replace rear wheel bearings - too difficult without the right tools, so leaving it to the trusted mechanics.
- Do timing belt job - no records when this was last done, so forced to do one. Might as well do the whole shebang too...water pump, hoses, tensioner.
- Make it waterproof - There was a missing gasket on driver side door (WTF?) , $10 Kragen special ghetto fixed that. Antenna gasket is missing...parts on order
- Fix valve cover gasket leak - will do same time with timing belt
- Inspect suspension - shocks are definitely blown. Not sure about the bushings, tie rod ends and steering rack.
Friday, January 26, 2007
To Do List #1 - Daily Driver Mode
First thing's first. Get the car usable:
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The Paper Trail
So first thing Monday I took the car into my newly discovered favorite BMW shop (thank you E34M5 mailing list!) to look at the bearings. I had originally considered doing the job myself, but research showed it would be quite an undertaking and worth the labor cost to have someone do it (especially since they have the tools). Quick drive around the block with the mechanic showed that it was indeed the right bearing. Insider tip: weave car left to right to isolate which bearing is bad. They quoted a reasonable price, but couldn't do the job that day, so I decided to head off down the street to the DMV to square off the paperwork.
Having not scheduled an appointment, I braced myself for the worst; bringing along my trusty iRiver and several unread magazines. But even without an appointment, the lines were surprisingly short. My number was called in about 10 minutes.
I was a bit nervous given the strange ownership trail that the car would end up stolen or some other weird crap, but luckily everything checked out. Big problem, though...I (stupidly) put down the wrong sell date on the back of the title. The guy tells me, "you'll have to go back and get a revised bill of sale from the seller with the right dates." Oh, great. That's not gonna happen. I ask, "Could I change the date I wrote down on the title?" "Sure," he said, "but you'll have to pay late registration fees". Great. I don't care, I just want the paperwork done with. Turns out that it was only $16 in late fees (woo hoo!). And so, after some typing in his computer and a $54 debit on my card, I was good to go. Registered! I love buying ratty old cars: forty-odd bucks in total registration fees and taxes! As opposed to the two thousand something initial layout and $300+/year for a brand new car.
Having not scheduled an appointment, I braced myself for the worst; bringing along my trusty iRiver and several unread magazines. But even without an appointment, the lines were surprisingly short. My number was called in about 10 minutes.
I was a bit nervous given the strange ownership trail that the car would end up stolen or some other weird crap, but luckily everything checked out. Big problem, though...I (stupidly) put down the wrong sell date on the back of the title. The guy tells me, "you'll have to go back and get a revised bill of sale from the seller with the right dates." Oh, great. That's not gonna happen. I ask, "Could I change the date I wrote down on the title?" "Sure," he said, "but you'll have to pay late registration fees". Great. I don't care, I just want the paperwork done with. Turns out that it was only $16 in late fees (woo hoo!). And so, after some typing in his computer and a $54 debit on my card, I was good to go. Registered! I love buying ratty old cars: forty-odd bucks in total registration fees and taxes! As opposed to the two thousand something initial layout and $300+/year for a brand new car.
Monday, January 22, 2007
How Not To Buy A Car
I must have been desperate.
On the road to acquiring my future race car, along with a bunch of other rules, I've managed to break my biggest rule of all: Never buy a car at night...
On Saturday afternoon, Shirley and I took a nice little drive to Sacramento to look at a potential little gem in the rough: a 1990 325i with a relatively clean title (more on that later), 160K miles on the clock, and a reasonable $2K asking price. Leaving Fremont at about 3:30, and staring at stop-and-go traffic at the 238, I was doubtful that we would beat the sun. 2 minutes of deliberation and I made the commitment: "The car will be gone tomorrow", I told myself... "You'll kick yourself if you don't go". "At least you'll have spent some nice quality time with your woman in a quiet drive through the country"... "We could pick up Mexican food along the way"... And on and on...
I motored that little 2.2L in Shirley's old Accord as fast as I could. But there was no way I could beat that sun. And to top it off, right around Vacaville, I look over the median and the 80 westbound was absolutely deserted...a quick call to 511 revealed that the freeway had been shut down. And sure enough, we began to track a long line of cars stopped in bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way out to Dixon(!!). Great, that means we won't be able to get home. Well, too late now.
I pushed the accelerator even harder.
2 and a half hours later, we arrived in Sacramento and came across the car dimly lit by the green apartment lights and the Accord's headlights. Not bad, I thought. Armed with my trusty MagLite, I proceed to do the usual checks for rust, wheel bearings, sludgy coolant, strange smelling oil, bad clutch, body panel VIN tag matching (all except for hood and fender), and oil leaks (a bad one at the valve cover gasket). The paint is pretty much jacked, but no concern -- I just need it to survive a year, then I'll consider a respray. No record of timing belt change neither.
Now the interior...seats: jacked (but I don't care); water damage - none that I could smell or see (in this light); dash cracked (again, don't care); sunroof slow/barely operable (also don't care); locks, windows, mirrors, radio are all working (surprisingly!); steering wheel jacked (don't care). No holes in carpet either. Hmm...not bad, just a bunch of little stuff and I could drive this thing to work.
OK, now the road test... Fire it up, whoa. Bad muffler. Owner tells me exhaust was replaced with a ratty one. Fine, no problem. I look underneath and sure enough, brand new stainless steel B-pipe connected to junky old (I assume original) muffler. But wait...what's this? Even in that dim light, anyone can see that the tiny tube under there shuuuure ain't no catalytic converter. I ask the owner for a smog check receipt, and sure enough, it passed. How da heck did they get this thing to pass smog? Whatever. I'll decide later if I wanna be green and save some trees for the next year until it becomes a dedicated track machine.
Idles great, ease into first, roll down the driveway. Pull out onto the street, accelerate. Wow, lots of power with no cat. No missing, and no strange pulling side to side. Brakes and transmission are solid, no bad whining from rear end. Whoa...what the @#*&$^*@# is that noise! Get it up above 40 and the moaning is even louder. It gets loud enough that we could barely hear each other talk. Owner claims it's related to the exhaust, but dipping in the clutch and rolling in idle shows it's definitely not engine speed sensitive. Rear wheel bearings are a common fail point in these cars, so my entirely amateur and unprofessional diagnosis is a $50 bearing and $200 or so replacement job. And hooooieee are these shocks blown. This thing feels like a boat. Perfect, I was going to junk the suspension anyways. But I might have to do it sooner than I hoped.
Lastly, the paperwork. And here's where it gets kinda weird. The car was donated to charity in May of last year from the second owner (who owned it since about 60K miles). Between May and now, not sure how it got into the current owner's hands. But basically, there is no real proof that this owner actually owned the car. The charity had filled out the paperwork to sell the car to someone in November, but left the buyer fields blank. Hmmmm. The CarFax ran clean (car isn't stolen, no salvage title, mileage all looks good) and she seems like a decent enough person living out of a well-settled-in apartment. She talks a lot...but doesn't come across as a crook. To top it off, there's no service records. At minimum I'm staring at a timing belt & water pump job. At worst, I'm looking at a new motor. I can't believe how much I'm rolling the dice on this thing. But then again, I'm not thinking straight...
So I do the math in my head and offer her $1700. Big mistake...she immediately accepts. I kick myself for not following the rule of starting out well below your best price and work your way up from there. It's late, it's freakin' freezing in Sac, and I'm tired.
Shirley laughs at me, but God bless her, is entirely supportive through this whole ordeal.
Traffic on 80 westbound hasn't cleared, so we U-turn at Dixon and head south on 113 (to 12 West). 2 hours with bad bearings gives you a really nasty headache, especially when you're sweating bullets over the prospect of an unknown timing belt that's libel to snap at any moment (or 40 thousand miles from now). We stop somewhere in Vallejo to take a break (Auto Mall Parkway?) and get surprisingly very very good Thai food at Cha-Am (their soup special was amazing!). Head back on the road and finally get home around 10:30 at night.
And with a fairly long winded introduction, my road to wheel-to-wheel madness begins.
Up next, dealing with the paperwork police and taking full inventory of what I'm getting myself into.
On the road to acquiring my future race car, along with a bunch of other rules, I've managed to break my biggest rule of all: Never buy a car at night...
On Saturday afternoon, Shirley and I took a nice little drive to Sacramento to look at a potential little gem in the rough: a 1990 325i with a relatively clean title (more on that later), 160K miles on the clock, and a reasonable $2K asking price. Leaving Fremont at about 3:30, and staring at stop-and-go traffic at the 238, I was doubtful that we would beat the sun. 2 minutes of deliberation and I made the commitment: "The car will be gone tomorrow", I told myself... "You'll kick yourself if you don't go". "At least you'll have spent some nice quality time with your woman in a quiet drive through the country"... "We could pick up Mexican food along the way"... And on and on...
I motored that little 2.2L in Shirley's old Accord as fast as I could. But there was no way I could beat that sun. And to top it off, right around Vacaville, I look over the median and the 80 westbound was absolutely deserted...a quick call to 511 revealed that the freeway had been shut down. And sure enough, we began to track a long line of cars stopped in bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way out to Dixon(!!). Great, that means we won't be able to get home. Well, too late now.
I pushed the accelerator even harder.
2 and a half hours later, we arrived in Sacramento and came across the car dimly lit by the green apartment lights and the Accord's headlights. Not bad, I thought. Armed with my trusty MagLite, I proceed to do the usual checks for rust, wheel bearings, sludgy coolant, strange smelling oil, bad clutch, body panel VIN tag matching (all except for hood and fender), and oil leaks (a bad one at the valve cover gasket). The paint is pretty much jacked, but no concern -- I just need it to survive a year, then I'll consider a respray. No record of timing belt change neither.
Now the interior...seats: jacked (but I don't care); water damage - none that I could smell or see (in this light); dash cracked (again, don't care); sunroof slow/barely operable (also don't care); locks, windows, mirrors, radio are all working (surprisingly!); steering wheel jacked (don't care). No holes in carpet either. Hmm...not bad, just a bunch of little stuff and I could drive this thing to work.
OK, now the road test... Fire it up, whoa. Bad muffler. Owner tells me exhaust was replaced with a ratty one. Fine, no problem. I look underneath and sure enough, brand new stainless steel B-pipe connected to junky old (I assume original) muffler. But wait...what's this? Even in that dim light, anyone can see that the tiny tube under there shuuuure ain't no catalytic converter. I ask the owner for a smog check receipt, and sure enough, it passed. How da heck did they get this thing to pass smog? Whatever. I'll decide later if I wanna be green and save some trees for the next year until it becomes a dedicated track machine.
Idles great, ease into first, roll down the driveway. Pull out onto the street, accelerate. Wow, lots of power with no cat. No missing, and no strange pulling side to side. Brakes and transmission are solid, no bad whining from rear end. Whoa...what the @#*&$^*@# is that noise! Get it up above 40 and the moaning is even louder. It gets loud enough that we could barely hear each other talk. Owner claims it's related to the exhaust, but dipping in the clutch and rolling in idle shows it's definitely not engine speed sensitive. Rear wheel bearings are a common fail point in these cars, so my entirely amateur and unprofessional diagnosis is a $50 bearing and $200 or so replacement job. And hooooieee are these shocks blown. This thing feels like a boat. Perfect, I was going to junk the suspension anyways. But I might have to do it sooner than I hoped.
Lastly, the paperwork. And here's where it gets kinda weird. The car was donated to charity in May of last year from the second owner (who owned it since about 60K miles). Between May and now, not sure how it got into the current owner's hands. But basically, there is no real proof that this owner actually owned the car. The charity had filled out the paperwork to sell the car to someone in November, but left the buyer fields blank. Hmmmm. The CarFax ran clean (car isn't stolen, no salvage title, mileage all looks good) and she seems like a decent enough person living out of a well-settled-in apartment. She talks a lot...but doesn't come across as a crook. To top it off, there's no service records. At minimum I'm staring at a timing belt & water pump job. At worst, I'm looking at a new motor. I can't believe how much I'm rolling the dice on this thing. But then again, I'm not thinking straight...
So I do the math in my head and offer her $1700. Big mistake...she immediately accepts. I kick myself for not following the rule of starting out well below your best price and work your way up from there. It's late, it's freakin' freezing in Sac, and I'm tired.
Shirley laughs at me, but God bless her, is entirely supportive through this whole ordeal.
Traffic on 80 westbound hasn't cleared, so we U-turn at Dixon and head south on 113 (to 12 West). 2 hours with bad bearings gives you a really nasty headache, especially when you're sweating bullets over the prospect of an unknown timing belt that's libel to snap at any moment (or 40 thousand miles from now). We stop somewhere in Vallejo to take a break (Auto Mall Parkway?) and get surprisingly very very good Thai food at Cha-Am (their soup special was amazing!). Head back on the road and finally get home around 10:30 at night.
And with a fairly long winded introduction, my road to wheel-to-wheel madness begins.
Up next, dealing with the paperwork police and taking full inventory of what I'm getting myself into.
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