SOLD: 1985 528eA Socal
Posted: Jan 02, 2021 12:35 PM
The car was purchased from the original (I think) owner in January 2001. We’ve put about 96000 miles on it since then. It went from being our primary transportation to my wife’s around town car, and now we feel it’s time for her to have something newer.
$4500









Some underneath photos for east coast skeptics:











- Blue-plated California car with zero rust and no accidents
- Garage-kept for past 20 years
- New timing belt, tensioner, water pump, coolant replacement and valve adjustment less that 1k miles ago
- Runs great and very reliable. No shimmies or shakes. A smooth, comfortable driver
- E39 15” Style 29 wheels. Tires in good condition.
- Gets decent mileage (20 in the city, close to 30 on the highway if you’re careful)
- Near-new factory windshield and gasket
- Perfect crack-free dash with dash mat
- Euro headlights with working city lights (they operate with parking lights)
- Rear foglight positions wired as additional brake lights
- Clean interior with 535i steering column and steering wheel and custom (Bavauto) rubber floor mats
- Keyless central locking
- Complete 535i toolkit
- Single-stage alpinweiss paint is holding up well
- Includes Thule roof rack with wind deflector, and a lot of spare parts (spare H1/H4 headlights, ICV, windshield wipers inserts, spare cylinder head, etc, and a not-too-bad but a bit rusty on the inside euro front bumper with brackets and euro turn signals that I never got around to installing).
- Has always easily passed smog test
- E46 manual front seats in front. Driver’s seat is just starting to split a little bit. Cloth rear set with no tears.
- 248k miles
- Gas gauge is optimistic
- Temperature gauge only works reliably in the summer
- Leaks both engine oil and ATF. Not enough to be noticeable on the dipstick between oil changes, but enough to get the pan wet enough that I need to clean it up every week or so.
- Some dings, particularly as shown in photos. Some on the roof from an earlier roof rack (damned bikes! – my fault) and one on the hood from the kayak whose strap broke and fell into the bike stand which got knocked over and hit the car (not my fault)
- Some small tears in headliner over right C-pillar
- Has fairly new A/C compressor running R134a, but needs a can of refrigerant once in a while. And cools about as good as an e28 A/C running R134a. A lot better than nothing, but not totally adequate.
$4500
Some underneath photos for east coast skeptics: