davintosh wrote:Wow; those nasty interior pics are nasty. Bleah... Any thoughts of an interior swap between the old & busted and this one?
It's been thought about.
And the second thought was, way too much work involved,
considering this one is in really good condition,
with the exception of the driver's arm rest.
If it were to be as simple as the E28,
it probably would have gotten done yesterday.
davintosh wrote:The empty coolant bottles in the back would worry me; how do the cooling system & cylinder head look? Any signs of overheating?
Previous owner said no overheating issues under his ownership, which was only about a year.
He did recently replace the upper radiator hose.
Got quite the scare as we were driving off.
The car had sat idling for a good 10 minutes while I gave it one last going over and we exchanged paper.
After getting about a mile from his house I noticed the temp gauge beginning to rise a bit past halfway.
It got to the 3/4 mark just before we got to the freeway entrance, about 3 miles total.
My mind was going nuts, he lied, blown head gasket, the worst.
We pulled into the corner stop-n-rob and raised the hood.
Upon feeling the hoses, and finding them to be quite cool,
my mind began racing again, water pump, thermostat, etc.
I gently began to open the reservoir cap and water began seeping out and then it came to me,
He didn't know how to properly bleed the system.
I had brought along my toolbox, fluids for all systems, some other misc items, and dragged the tow dolly, just in case.
We opened the bleed screw allowing the air to escape and topped off the reservoir,
temp gauge immediately went back to 11:59, so we took off.
Drove about 5 miles, met Rob, carnutdallas, there in south Dallas and had a nice Cracker Barrel dinner and visit,
he'd picked up an E21 seat for me so I got that.
After dinner we stopped to top off the gas tanks,
where I rechecked the coolant level, and topped it off again, just in case.
Refilled my coolant container and the two empty ones in the boot, again, just in case, and headed for home.
Made it the 230 miles without the gauge needle ever getting past 11:59.
First thing I did Sunday afternoon was raise the hood and check the reservoir level,
good to go, just as it had been before leaving Dallas.
davintosh wrote:The outside looks good; the rest you can deal with pretty easily!
Thanks...
As a side note, I found the original owner and service manual in the glove box.
The car started it's life in Maryland where it had been religiously serviced.
There was also a small day-timer where someone else up to through most of 2006 had kept a log of all oil changes, tire purchases, etc.
A big item I was happy to see was in that 2006 period the transmission had been rebuilt.
Other than that, routine maintenance items.
So hopefully we'll get a bunch of major-service free miles out of it.
Now to go and buy a bigger scrub brush.
, not candy.
Doesn't look too bad compared to some of the cars I've seen. Should clean up nicely!