What did you do to your other car(s) today?

[Mike W.]

Tried to put the door panel back on.

Untitled by Christopher Kohler, on Flickr

You gave a valiant try.

I dunno, it's not on. I'd say he has to try harder.

[tig]

Tried to put the door panel back on.

Untitled by Christopher Kohler, on Flickr

[wkohler]

Part of it is still on my roof.

[86GT635]

Part of it is still on my roof.

You're saving it for later?

[nik77356]

Part of it is still on my roof.

You're saving it for later?

Door panel, it's what's for dinner!

[1st 5er]

Flip it 180°.

[nik77356]

On its roof? Which one?

[davintosh]

I put a new set of NGK spark plugs in the e32 today, and discovered that the 16mm spark plug wrench in that car's toolkit doesn't fit the spark plugs that it uses. And there's no spot in the toolkit for a 21mm spark plug tool.

Weird.

[Nanajoth]

Put a 535i condenser in the M5 today. It fits, but you need to make new brackets for it and it will be in front of the oil cooler.

[davintosh]

Not today, but last Wednesday; tore into the e46 to replace the CCV and vent pipes. Took me all. Frickin. Day. Plus part of Thursday to get it done. First surprise was that the oil return passage on the dipstick tube was hopelessly clogged, which is probably what caused the valve to fail. The oil return tube was full of oily sludgy gunk, as was the inlet on the dipstick tube.



I worked for an hour or so trying to clear it before giving up and calling the BMW stealership to see if they had the cold-climate version of the tube as a replacement. They did; $165.34. Crap. Bit the bullet because it needed to be done and working now. While I was there I also asked for an o-ring to go with it. Didn't look at the receipt until I got home; that bit of rubber added an extra $6.40 to the bill.

I had to quit early to get ready for dinner with friends, so buttoned things up the next morning, and got a Check Engine Light when I fired it up, plus it didn't sound quite right. After pulling a few things back out to check my work, decided it would be better to see what the codes were first. Each of the three codes pointed to a different component that was under the intake; one I forgot to plug in ( ) and the other two were swapped. I'd like to know what BMW genius decided that it was a good idea to put two identical connectors of nearly identical length on the wiring block under the intake manifold. Both were two-wire, both had the alignment key in the center, and both were within the same distance of the wiring block. Yeah, I know I should label these things... I'm just really happy that it didn't result in something getting fried. But I'd still like to have a talk with a certain engineer.

Then tonight, in a vain attempt to get the car "ready" for its new owner, I tried fixing the sunshade for the sunroof. Man, what a hokey piece of crap that thing is. I won't go into all the gory details, suffice it to say I gave up and just threw the flippin' sunshade in the trunk. He can deal with the thing, because I'll be boarding a one-way flight out of the country in about 33 hours, and I'm not terribly inclined to care about much of anything at 3am. I'll probably have to concede to a slightly lower price, but oh flippin' well.

[e28Sean]

Sadly, my other car isn't a BMW, but I felt this was still worthy of posting here. Decided to check the air in the spare on the beater, and discovered air was the least of my worries. 20 year old spare, with lots of dry rot, chunks flaking off it, and threads on the sidewall showing, over inflated to about 48 psi

[geordi]

Cut the lawn around LJ's lawn whimsy.





And did a little preventive maintenance by re-dying the leather interior on the 745i.

[Karl Grau]

Dusted off the e30 and went out to East County to visit Dad.

[oldskool]

Dusted off the e30 and went out to East County to visit Dad.

Well, HEELLLL YEEAAHH!!
(I love that car, and Dad too).

Early this a.m. I fiddled around with the relays on the e12 because of a no fuel situation, and then gave up because it was hotter than two foxes fucking, and I saw a spark. Then a really angry looking spider, well, it may have been a roach, but I didn't stick around to get bit and I got bored and decided to go golfing instead. I then came back to the e12 kinda drunk, so I thought it better to address the whole fuel/electricity with a blood alcohol content less than 50%. A lot got done

[yodman]

Drove the E30 to my storage unit to clean it out of spare parts.

Changed the fuel pump and timed the ignition in my Rabbit Truck, but no fire yet.

[jhall]

IMG_2411 (00000002) by Josh Hall, on Flickr

I bought this thing. I am not proud. It has some goodies on it but not much else. $350 for the lot isn't terrible and it's a 5 speed so thats good.

[slammin_e28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-GWAlTuRUY

[1st 5er]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-GWAlTuRUY

Noice!

[MicahO]

Quite some time ago I bought a Landzer chip for the Touring from Saliya. Things got busy, and while I meant to install it before the run to Vintage, it never happened.

Sunday afternoon I had an hour between social engagements, and I was only about halfway through my Aranciata Rossa and Kracken, so I finally installed it! Noticeable seat-of-the-pants difference right off the bat. The throttle is remapped and much more responsive throughout the rpm range, and the whoopie factor when you get into high RPM is nicely improved. Nice upgrade!

[Mike W.]

Drove it! Put 620 miles on the touring yesterday, far too many in 45 speed limit areas in Yellowstone and beyond and far too few out on I70 in Utah with an 80MPH speed limit . Got a record 29MPG on one tank but the Check Engine light came on early on in the day. A quick scan today suggests thermostat with a P0128 Coolant Thermostat (Coolant Temp Below Thermostat Regulating Temperature) Code. One of those fancy electric thermostats which seem to have a short life, but at least nothing to worry about.

[cddallara]

Re-installed the bumper on my Tacoma that the PO removed. Reinstalled the license plate on the bumper that the PO had sheet metal screwed to the tailgate
Installed new license plate lights that were somehow MIA on the otherwise complete bumper/trailer hitch.
Attacked the leftover glue from the PO de-badging the poor thing with a steak knife. With all the residual gouges, I'd rather he left the badging on.

[slammin_e28]

I flushed the AC system and finally got it working in the e34. Come to find out the 525 activates the compressor via the ECU and the 535 via the IHKA. So....with the help of Paul, we figured out that to get it to work I needed to loop pin #4 and 5 at the X20. BOOM! Compressor clicks....ice cold air comes from the vents. Only "issue" is it doesn't compensate the idle for the compressor....but that's no biggy. It's fine.

Then.....discovered the Aux fan wasn't coming on. It's seized up. Fawk. So I did this:





.....and put a new fan in there somewhere. Dead on at 30 mins.

AC will freeze you out of the car now. Love it.

[stuartinmn]

I dropped my 325iX off at the shop for replacement of a leaky head gasket. It was still running fine (no oil in the water or vice versa) but it was leaking oil out of the engine and I was tired of the oil consumption (as well as the oil slick on the garage floor.)

Of course, the next morning I got in my M535i to go to work and the battery was dead. So, with two cars down I had to get a rental car for the day as I had a client meeting I couldn't miss. As it turns out the battery was over seven years old so I guess I can't complain too much, but it did pick an inopportune time to give up the ship.

Here's an interesting thing: I bought a new battery and installed it, and decided I should check amp draw with the engine off to make sure there wasn't a problem with too much current killing the battery. The first measurement was around 0.3 amps which is quite a bit, but then I realized the trunk lid was open at the time so the trunk light was on. I closed the lid, and the reading went down to 0.02 amps - much better. The lesson is to make sure you don't have a trunk light or dome light or something similar drawing current when checking amp draw.

[geordi]

17" wheels for the 745i

[1st 5er]

Read The Bentley and installed the torque converter to the tranny first, the second time around.
Between round one and two, we swapped the pump/bell housing from the E28's 4hp22eh to the E32's 4hp22eh.

[Mike W.]

Cleaned the spark plugs, connectors and cables on the E12. Wow does it run better. Earlier BMWs used kind of an open bakelite connector sort of like aircooled VWs used. I'm not sure where things were arcing, but I'm sure they were. Mix normal dust, 100% humidity in the winter, not being driven much, repeat several years and you get a conductive mold crust. Didn't replace anything, just cleaned stuff up and wow, a nice difference.

[wkohler]

I'm glad you actually spent time on an E12.

I got my tires rotated on the E34.

[MicahO]

The tires on the F100 are over 30 years old. Yeah, really. They pass inspection, but one of them loses air slowly and has for the 25 years that I've known the truck. I've had it on my list to replace them for years, but on a vehicle that only does under 100 miles per year, I just never got to it.

This weekend, my 10 year old and I started that job, though we're also refinishing the wheels in the proper Wimbledon White. This is what we're starting with - 44 year old steelies.....



It's a shame that the original hubcaps cover most of the wheel (not to mention that they scratch the shit out of the them), so we're probably going to break to 'all-original' mold for the moment and go with a circa-'65 center hubcaps.

[yodman]

Autocrossed the 325is.

For a stock car, it gets down and I really want to improve upon it now because I was at the car's limits more than I was at my own.

Tires, suspension, sway bars and strut tower bars are next up.

https://youtu.be/BFU2DfnNLKM

[Hffvdbl]

New shoes on my wifes touring