{"id":864,"date":"2009-02-02T15:38:34","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T21:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davintosh.com\/?p=864"},"modified":"2009-02-02T15:38:34","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T21:38:34","slug":"my-528e-the-good-and-the-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/2009\/02\/02\/my-528e-the-good-and-the-bad\/cars\/","title":{"rendered":"My 528e; The Good And The Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/my_84_528e.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/my_84_528e.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"my_84_528e\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-865\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Well, I&#8217;ve lived with my newly acquired old car for about a week now, and feel like I know it pretty well. It&#8217;s got its quirks and its issues, but I&#8217;m pretty well convinced that those quirks and issues can either be dealt with or lived with, and even more convinced that I got a killer deal on it.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have any photos of it yet (they&#8217;re coming&#8230;), but thought I&#8217;d enumerate the good and the bad here, for posterity if nothing else:<\/p>\n<p>The Good:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is no body rust. Period. I&#8217;ve seen nothing on the rockers, the fenders, the trunk, the underbody, or anywhere else. Clean, clean, clean.<\/li>\n<li>The engine pulls strong and the transmission stays in gear (once you get it there).<\/li>\n<li>The car tracks straight as an arrow going down the street or highway; doesn&#8217;t pull or wander.<\/li>\n<li>It rides solidly on rough roads; I drove down a gravel road the other day at 70mph, and it felt like a highway. Going 60 in this car feels like 35 in my Suzuki (that could get me in trouble!)<\/li>\n<li>The clutch is good, and feels like it has lots of life left in it.<\/li>\n<li>All the glass is intact, as is the trim.<\/li>\n<li>All but one of the power windows work, as does the sunroof.<\/li>\n<li>The local self-serve junkyard has an &#8217;84 528e on the lot, and it has many of the parts I need.<\/li>\n<li>The tires are nearly new, and should last a good, long time. And the previous owner spent a little extra to get the speed-rated tires. Sweet!<\/li>\n<li>It has a full-size spare tire in the trunk, and it&#8217;s mounted on the same style wheel as is used elsewhere on the car. Look for a feature like that on a US-made car. The tire and wheel appear to be used, but it holds air and won&#8217;t look dorky if it&#8217;s pressed into duty.<\/li>\n<li>No fluid leaks underneath.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Bad:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The driver&#8217;s seat is shot. I was climbing in at lunchtime the other day and heard something rip. At first I assumed it was the seat, since it already has tears in it, but it turned out to be the rear pocket on my jeans. I think it&#8217;s trying to get at my wallet.<\/li>\n<li>Although the body is rust-free, the paint is in rough shape. The previous owner said that it had been painted prior to him buying it, but it did not get a clear coat. He had been trying to keep it buffed and shining, but he&#8217;s been dealing with cancer the last few years and hasn&#8217;t been able to keep up with it. The paint is oxidized and stained, but may only need a good buffing to shine again. I&#8217;ll give it a go when it warms up.<\/li>\n<li>The shifter is floppy. Something is broken\/worn in there and keeps it from shifting as crisply as I&#8217;d like. And when it&#8217;s cold, it does <em>not<\/em> like to go into 2nd gear. Even when its warm it takes some extra care to get it into 2nd. <\/li>\n<li>The left turn signal doesn&#8217;t work when the running lights are on. When the running lights are on the left turn signal indicator on the dash glows dimly; there must be some crosstalk on a wire somewhere. <\/li>\n<li>The front bumper is bent and has a goofy nose-up look to it. Looking under the bumper, one of the three bolts holding the bumper shock in place on the left side is loose, so the bumper moves up &amp; down a little on that side, making a thumping noise at times. I&#8217;d love to find a set of European bumpers for it and ditch the diving boards, but this shouldn&#8217;t be too difficult to fix, and will get me by until I can find the Euros.<\/li>\n<li>The muffler is gone. I stopped by my once favorite muffler shop last week, and was quoted $400 for a replacement. Ouch! I assumed that they&#8217;d be able to splice in a piece of pipe and weld up a standard non-OEM replacement, but the guy at the shop wouldn&#8217;t even consider it. My next option is to look for another shop, or bite the bullet and buy a replacement that I can bolt in for about $150. Ouch. Confirmation that it&#8217;s trying to get at my wallet.<\/li>\n<li>The heater controls are missing knobs.<\/li>\n<li>The antenna is broken, so the radio doesn&#8217;t work. <\/li>\n<li>The armrest on the driver&#8217;s door is broken.<\/li>\n<li>There are tears in the headliner, and what isn&#8217;t torn is pretty brittle. I may have to learn some upholstery skills.<\/li>\n<li>The BMW badge is missing from the hood, as is the &#8216;528e&#8217; badge from the trunk lid. I found a place online that has them marked down, so I might have to place an order&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>The doors all need adjusting, and some of the door seals need replacing. The window channels are also a bit worn and leak air &amp; water.<\/li>\n<li>The carpet is dirty and worn, and the original BMW carpet floor mats look like crap. The carpet may be able to be spiffed up, but it&#8217;s replacement time for the mats.<\/li>\n<li>The leather on the other seats is dry and brittle.<\/li>\n<li>The cover for the access hole between the windshield and the sunroof for the sunroof motor is missing.<\/li>\n<li>One of the door lock knobs is missing, and another is broken.<\/li>\n<li>The odometer isn&#8217;t working.<\/li>\n<p>\t<del datetime=\"2009-02-02T16:02:27+00:00\"><\/p>\n<li>The parking\/emergency brake handle needs some work; the release button is recessed in the hole, and takes some dexterity to press. My finger hurts from that.<\/li>\n<p><\/del>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While those two lists look a bit unbalanced, I think the good outweighs the bad by a lot. And taking into consideration the $800 entry price&#8230; I can put a lot into it and still not exceed what I&#8217;m hoping to get out of the Suzuki.<\/p>\n<p>And some of the issues are pretty easy fixes; like the e-brake issue I mentioned&#8230; I read a post on mye28.com this afternoon, and it turned out that the lever has a plastic cover on it, and it&#8217;s just a matter of twisting\/pulling on the thing to get it back to where it ought to be! Draw a line through that baby!<\/p>\n<p>And some of the others might be almost as easy to deal with; a local junkyard has an &#8217;84 e28 in the self-serve yard, and it has the same color interior as mine, so some of the missing\/broken interior parts may be only a short drive and a few dollars away. The same night I bought the car I found the mye28.com forum, and saw a post from one of the members in the Twin Cities area who has a wrecked &#8217;88 that he&#8217;s parting out, and I&#8217;ve got dibs on the seats for a cool $150. Powered and heated sport seats, no less. If things work out, I&#8217;ll drive up there on Thursday and pick them up. He&#8217;s also got some of the other miscellaneous parts I&#8217;m needing, so here&#8217;s hoping that works out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I&#8217;ve lived with my newly acquired old car for about a week now, and feel like I know it pretty well. It&#8217;s got its quirks and its issues, but I&#8217;m pretty well convinced that those quirks and issues can either be dealt with or lived with, and even more convinced that I got a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bmw-of-the-day","category-cars"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}