You vs your Council, guess who's gonna be the loser?
I feel sorry for you (the rims looked fab), but yeah... Your claim will be denied and they simply will say that you have been careless. They probably will only fix the roads on election year.
Somewhat amusingly, I've received a recall notice in the post!
"Checking / reworking heating and air conditioning blower regulator plug connection"
For a car manufactured in May 2006 I'm impressed anyone is still following it up. The letter came from BMW so I'm wondering if the DVLA pass new owner information on, or if BMW flag it up when they get a new address against a VIN on their parts/servicing system, given the timing.
Made me laugh anyway.
"Checking / reworking heating and air conditioning blower regulator plug connection"
For a car manufactured in May 2006 I'm impressed anyone is still following it up. The letter came from BMW so I'm wondering if the DVLA pass new owner information on, or if BMW flag it up when they get a new address against a VIN on their parts/servicing system, given the timing.
Made me laugh anyway.
Giannis
Staff member
Well, my S60 had its driver airbag replaced as a part of a recall just last month, and it's a late 2004 built car. I guess issues still are identified after all those years!
It's just amusing to me that they launched a car with a catastrophic terminally fatal engine design and construction, and left the owners to sort it out... but.. an iffy plug on the air conditioning after 15 years warrants a recall!
Centurion
Apex Apex Predator
Enjoy the complimantary car wash when you drop it off for the recall!
A very fair assessment.
Amazed he failed to mention the liner issue when talking about it being a practical used car choice!
Pretty cool that Seb Priaulx had one! I've met Andy Priaulx on a number of occasions but I never spoke to his son.... this is them, I think Seb was in Ginetta Juniors at the time.
_____
My particular 320si is currently in the garage having it's MOT done, and, hopefully, they'll find the source of an intermittent starting issue that's gotten worse since winter temperatures have arrived. Assuming it passes, it's also booked in a my local main dealer for it's Recall work, then assuming I haven't had to spend an arm and a leg, I'll finally get it serviced. I then want to get the rear bumper at least resprayed, but possibly replaced, since there's some quite dodgy paintwork there, and the lower grey plastic section has been badly touched up before... then it needs a damn good clean - maybe I'll take it to Motech from the video, they're only about 30 miles away.
Well, the car passed it's MOT without a problem. I took it to a local 'specialist', though they didn't seem that aware of what the Si was... but they gave it a clean bill of health, and a new set of Spark plugs as the the existing ones appeared to be original.
It then went for its recall work at my preferred local dealer. The service guy confirmed the recall notice was two years old, though because it's not a safety recall, they only release the notice in batches of VIN's when they receive them. Didn't bother with the complimentary clean @Centurion, it would have been plastered with winter road smeg after about a mile anyway!
All hunky dory... although...
Might have to keep my eye on this. Service guy said they couldn't see a leak, so I'm hoping it's just overspill from me religiously topping off the oil 1cm³ at a time.
Anwyay.. I watched this video... and now I'm thinking I'm not chucking it about enough
The video features "Busy Child" by the Crystal Method... absolute BANGER!
It then went for its recall work at my preferred local dealer. The service guy confirmed the recall notice was two years old, though because it's not a safety recall, they only release the notice in batches of VIN's when they receive them. Didn't bother with the complimentary clean @Centurion, it would have been plastered with winter road smeg after about a mile anyway!
All hunky dory... although...
Might have to keep my eye on this. Service guy said they couldn't see a leak, so I'm hoping it's just overspill from me religiously topping off the oil 1cm³ at a time.
Anwyay.. I watched this video... and now I'm thinking I'm not chucking it about enough
The video features "Busy Child" by the Crystal Method... absolute BANGER!
Giannis
Staff member
It's a BMW. There's certainly a leak.
I don't know about you, but I'm having a blast. My E39 seems to go through a set of ignition coils every few thousand kilometers, yet everything else on the road feels like alcohol free beer.
I asked a guy from the local BMW club, what to look when buying a used E39. He gave me a 40 points list of what will go wrong with these. So far I've covered 34 out of 40 and I'm still going strong!
My friend, I am lovin' it.
I shall raise a toast tonight, to your ignition coils.. and cheer the simple driving pleasure of a classic RWD, naturally aspirated saloon, with a manual gearbox, and all the CHARACTER* that a 15-20 year Bavarian sports saloon brings.
*BILLS ?
So, small update...
Thanks to the lack of information at hand from the instrument cluster, and my ongoing paranoia about the engine - I bought the Carly OBC widget and app. It's pricey, and I would say not that good in general, but streaming live data to a device in the car via Bluetooth in a somewhat configurable way, is the basis of what I was after.
For instance, there are not temperature gauges on the dash without ****ing around for 5 minutes with the BC button, so.. now I can set this up...
Which, really, is all I wanted.
There's probably about 40-50 parameters to monitor live... I don't yet know what most of them are, or what the values should be, but I like collecting data... so...
I also took a look at the fault codes... and... this seems persistent;
#
.. though the last occurred roughly tallies with when the engine was rebuilt, and as far as I can tell, the fan is doing what it should.
@Giannis I'm still going to get the cable and I'm curious to see what the diagnostics say, but for now, I can see why both BMW and an independent are saying the engine is fine, and bearing in mind the lack of error codes, every value I'm looking at in this app so far seems to be registering something sensible too.
____
In other news, the BMW CC GB has sent details of its track days for this year. I'm hoping to tick off a couple of BTCC circuits... Oulton Park would be special, as it's where I first saw a 320si touring car in the flesh. Just need to get rid of some of these niggling issues first.
Thanks to the lack of information at hand from the instrument cluster, and my ongoing paranoia about the engine - I bought the Carly OBC widget and app. It's pricey, and I would say not that good in general, but streaming live data to a device in the car via Bluetooth in a somewhat configurable way, is the basis of what I was after.
For instance, there are not temperature gauges on the dash without ****ing around for 5 minutes with the BC button, so.. now I can set this up...
Which, really, is all I wanted.
There's probably about 40-50 parameters to monitor live... I don't yet know what most of them are, or what the values should be, but I like collecting data... so...
I also took a look at the fault codes... and... this seems persistent;
.. though the last occurred roughly tallies with when the engine was rebuilt, and as far as I can tell, the fan is doing what it should.
@Giannis I'm still going to get the cable and I'm curious to see what the diagnostics say, but for now, I can see why both BMW and an independent are saying the engine is fine, and bearing in mind the lack of error codes, every value I'm looking at in this app so far seems to be registering something sensible too.
____
In other news, the BMW CC GB has sent details of its track days for this year. I'm hoping to tick off a couple of BTCC circuits... Oulton Park would be special, as it's where I first saw a 320si touring car in the flesh. Just need to get rid of some of these niggling issues first.
LaArtist
Wunderkind of Wheels
Congrats , be safe on the roads don’t be a normal bmw driver.So, after about a year of thinking about it I recently replaced my ol' E87 120d with something new. The 1-er has served me well, but an accumulation of faults and bodywork damage made it simply not worth the hassle or money, I've agreed to give it away to chap that want's something to work on... he will certainly get good value for money
After mulling over lots of E numbers I've never had before, I couldn't shake a certain niggling desire... a desire that's roots started growing back in 2006 whilst watching Andy Priaulx (and Jorg Muller) battle against Augusto Farfus (then driving an Alfa Romeo), for a FIA World Touring Car Championship title... yup I've not been able to shake off wanting to buy an E90 320Si.
Having kept an eye out for any of the 500 originally sold here popping up for sale, it became clear pretty quickly that despite less than 200 remaining on the road, they weren't actually that scarce. The bigger problem was finding one with a sensible history that was in good condition... and most preferably, one whose engine I could determine the history of - since, as I'm sure will get pointed out - the N45B20S has a habit of eating it's cylinder liners. Well after a little over a year, and having seen several examples, and considered only two, I settled on one.
So far, I'm very happy with it. I was going to wait until I'd had chance to clean it before posting, but the weather's been crap.
It's NOT a relaxed drive, nor is it that fast, and it's worlds away from the diesels I've driven for the last 10 years. Having had two M20B20 engined BMW's before (i.e. 2 litre inline 6's), it's not an unfamiliar experience, the primary difference being that at lower revs the sixes were still buttery smooth - this is jittery and torque-less. Once it's warmed up, and you can push the revs further, it starts to make a lot more sense - the power comes in and becomes way smoother, and not unlike the old 2 litre sixes were - with the benefit that the N45 feels like it actually starts pushing out more power, whereas the M20B20 sixes didn't really offer much other than aural stimulation when pushed towards the redline. Handling wise it feels very stable, and the ride is perfectly fine on smooth roads. On the 'fun' roads around where I live, the road surfaces are ****ing garbage it's still fairly composed, but it's not comfortable, but outside of big soft SUV's I'm not sure what would be on these roads. It doesn't crash over the bumps or through the pot holes, but it doesn't absorb much of them either!
But, I didn't buy it because of how it drove, I bought it because as a touring car fan, and a BMW enthusiast, it is a special car - there were no doubt safer choices, faster choices, and better value choices, but the fact is, nothing else I was considering was anything other than just another Bimmer, in a sea of common Bimmers. I haven't felt this happy just to be driving a car since my E24.
Carly is basically a lottery of what you get access to when you subscribe, and it pushes a whole bunch of features that aren't compatible with the car, which is a bit annoying - but to be fair, there's a fair bit of data it reads, I'd image on F-series cars there's quite a bit more.
I've not even looked at the coding options yet - I would imagine there aren't many given the age of the car and lack of iDrive.
I've been keeping an eye out for 'stuck' values, or values that seem unrepresentative, and so far it seems okay. I was expecting to see a problem with the motor temperature value when the engine was cold, but so far it seems okay. That doesn't mean it's giving the correct value of course, and as yet, we've not had the kind of cold weather that's given it an issue firing in the past.
Giannis
Staff member
The only thing I don't dig with the E39, and it seems that's the case with yours, is the level of involvement it requires for its maintenance. It's so well built and at the same time so fragile and with so many things to break that it's bloody annoying!
As my local BMW specialist says: "If you're going to complain about the car every time you come here, f*ck off and buy yourself a Yaris"
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