Do you ever have days when it seems like the universe is plotting against you? I just had one of those. On Sunday, I tried to have some fun on what was one of the last warm days of the year, but not a single vehicle I had nearby wanted to play nice. My 2023 Zero DSR/X electric motorcycle press loaner refuses to charge, my BMW 530xi wagon immobilized itself, and my trusty Smart Fortwo even found a way to break. Oh, and for good measure, I somehow broke a once-running gasoline display engine, too!
The first week after my birthday was a rough one. I rung in 32 years on this planet with a fantastic visit to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry followed up by a chilly, but thrilling run in a Can-Am Maverick R X RS. Then things started sucking immediately. I spent the week sick and with my head pretty much in a fog.
I started to feel better on Friday, which was great because the weekend called for rather pleasing weather. I hung out with my wife on Saturday and planned on going for a fun motorcycle ride on Sunday. Clearly, the universe had other plans.
The Motorcycle
On Sunday morning, I decided to hook up my 2023 Zero DSR/X press loaner to a charger for one last ride. The company is sending a truck to pick up the bike this week, so if I want to enjoy this machine one last time, Sunday was my chance.
Unfortunately, the motorcycle was dead without any sign of life. The Zero has been sitting for well over a month. I stopped riding the motorcycle because the one public charger in my town that was able to top up the motorcycle went down indefinitely. I recently found another charger that I wanted to try. Unfortunately, sitting for over a month not only sapped the rest of the charge out of the high voltage battery (it was parked with about 19 percent charge) but the 12V battery was dead, too.
I didn’t think this was a huge deal because I knew that the home charger worked well. It was just slow. I figured if I could get about a 10 percent charge into the high-voltage battery I could ride it over to the public charger and top it up there. I just couldn’t do the full charge at home because not only would that have taken 15 hours, but charging an EV for too long trips the circuit breaker in a neighboring garage. Yeah, my garage shares a circuit with two other garages.
Anyway, I plugged in the home charger, got the green light that indicated the charger itself was ready, and plugged it into the Zero. I got nothing. The motorcycle didn’t react whatsoever.
I then tried to brute force things. I charged the 12V battery externally and then hooked it up. Alright, the bike finally had life again. I then checked the temperature. It was 55 degrees outside or more than warm enough to charge. I plugged in the charger and…nothing. I checked the bike’s error messages and I found some turn indicator and throttle input errors relating to the loss of 12V power, but that’s it. I cleared those errors and plugged it in again. Nothing happened.
Checking the battery status screen, I then saw that the motorcycle thought the charger wasn’t even plugged in. The charger had no errors and the bike showed no errors. As far as either the bike or the charger were concerned, nothing was plugged in. Great.
I checked fuses, checked the high-voltage connectors, and even tried different outlets. No vice. The Zero is zeroed out. As a last-ditch effort, I left the Zero connected to the charger all of Sunday. Would you be surprised if I told you nothing happened? Doing some digging, it sounds like Zero owners who have experienced similar symptoms often had a bad onboard charger. Is that what happened here? No idea, but the bike isn’t saying.
Zero is picking up the motorcycle this week, ending my 1 year, 6-month run with the bike. Unfortunately, my last experience with the Zero might be walking it a quarter mile to the pickup zone. Oh well, I could use the exercise.
The BMW
But that didn’t solve my desire to have Sunday fun. I have two other motorcycles at home — the teal BMW R60/7 and the Suzuki RE-5 rotary bike — but I don’t ride them in the winter. With the Zero out, I thought maybe I’d go for a luxurious ride in the BMW E61 wagon that I bought from the Bishop. This car has never failed me and in the worst case, I could just drive out to my warehouse and fire up my Buell Lightning and still get in a fun motorcycle ride. Surely the BMW would have to work, right?
I started the E61 just like I’d run any car that has sat for a few months. I let it sit, warm up for a while, and shake out the cobwebs. Once the BMW seemed warmed up, I topped up its tires, checked its oil, and made notes of anything I might want to replace soon. My only note was a power steering pump whine.
Eventually, I hopped in, fired up my tunes through the car’s glorious surround sound system, and set off. I didn’t even make it out of my neighborhood before I saw a James Bond-style cloud of smoke behind me, uh-oh.
In pretty much an instant, the car lost all of its coolant. This was as much impressive as it was shocking. The entire car became engulfed in steam and there was a trail of coolant blood leading from my parking space to the edge of the neighborhood. The smell of the coolant was sweet but without the sickly component. Yep, my nose could tell that the car was gushing out that expensive coolant you’d get at the BMW dealer. I always knew Bishop took great care of his cars.
I didn’t want to think about the exact value of coolant the car lost in less than a mile, but it probably wasn’t cheap. The immediate problem was preventing the engine from overheating, so I shut the car down where it sat. I tried looking for the source of the leak but couldn’t find it. So, I ran home, got a gallon of water, and got an extra pair of eyes in the form of a Sheryl.
With Sheryl’s help, I was able to determine that one radiator hose liberated itself from a Y-pipe fitting. In the darkness of night, this just seemed like an issue of putting the hose back on and replacing the clamp.
I checked the hose again this morning and discovered it’s way worse than that. The Y-pipe itself was so brittle that it broke off where the hose clamp put pressure on it. So, I’m going to need a whole new Y-pipe to fix this in the correct way. That means the BMW is immobilized until then.
BMW people, is this as easy as it looks to fix? It looks like I just need to yank that retainer clip, pull that lower hose off, replace the Y-pipe, and hook everything back up.
The Smart
Sunday already wasn’t going great. The bike refused to charge and now the BMW can’t stay cool. I lost all of my daylight diagnosing both of these vehicles, but it was still early enough in the day to enjoy a drive before dinner.
As my last resort, I fired up my 2008 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe. I bought this car in 2020 as a Gambler 500 vehicle and then parked it in 2022 as I shifted to daily driving diesel Volkswagens. In other words, this car has sat for about two years as I didn’t really do much with it. That changed back in October as I’ve been selling cars left and right.
Reviving this car after its two-year outdoor nap was fun. It fired right up with a fresh battery and I’ve been doing a lot of little things like cleaning up the panels and removing all of the caked-up mud from the Gambler 500. I even have a cool tool to remove the graphics put on the car by the defunct company I bought the car from.
For a while, I’ve been thinking that things were ‘coming up Milhouse’ for this old and abused Smart. I even got it a new fancy license plate to celebrate the occasion. Then yesterday happened. In what was almost an instant, the car went from a quiet and tame vehicle to being ear-splitting loud, like I got an instant straight pipe that dumped right under my butt.
Now, as one of the foremost experts on the Smart Fortwo in America, I knew exactly what happened. Without even checking the exhaust I knew the muffler flex pipe failed. It’s a super common issue on Smarts. However, the failure isn’t usually that instant. It tends to take at least a little bit of time.
This morning, I checked under the car and honestly, I can’t even be surprised anymore. Structurally, the flex pipe mesh looks fine. Instead, it failed entirely where it meets the flange because of course it did.
Thankfully, this failure doesn’t stop the car from driving, but my fuel economy has plummeted and I’m sure I’m losing hearing. So, that needs to be fixed pronto.
The Micro Engine
So, with three vehicles broken in one day, I decided screw it, I’ll just stay home, play with my birds, and maybe screw around with my tiny BMW R90S engine model.
My mom gave me some money for my birthday, most of which I used on responsible, adult things, but then I did something irresponsible. For years, I’ve wanted one of those Toyan scale working engines. You know the ones. They’re nitro-powered or gasoline-powered RC engines that look like scale versions of your favorite engines from the Ford 300 straight-six to a Harley-Davidson panhead V-twin. Well, I found one that looked like a BMW R90S boxer engine. I thought what the heck, I’ll do a one-time splurge.
This little engine is freaking sweet. It puts out 3.2cc of displacement and is made of brass and stainless steel. The exhaust note? It’s exactly like my R60/7, but on a much smaller scale. The level of detail is impressive. There’s even a tiny oil cap to get oil in the engine!
The setup for this engine was also pretty easy. It takes premixed gasoline like a dirtbike, and needs some oil in its sump. Unfortunately, the folks in Hong Kong don’t specify how much oil the engine needed. I took a wild guess and put in two syringes of Rotella T4.
The engine ran gloriously at first. I didn’t have the carb tuning down just right, but it sounded beautiful and I’ll be dipped, it was indeed an actual running engine.
Then I made a big mistake. The guide that came with the engine said that cold starts sometimes require you to cover the intake with your finger. Now, I should have figured out something was iffy about this advice. I mean, it was definitely originally written in a different language and poorly translated to English. However, I was already having a bad day and was properly unhappy that three full-sized vehicles had failed me. Dang it, I just wanted to have some fun! I followed the instructions to the letter and covered the hole with my finger before letting my power drill rip.
The engine responded chaotically. I felt lots of pressure on my finger, signaling that an oopsie definitely occurred. The engine spat fuel out of both the carburetor and a spark plug well, straight into my face. The cylinders also filled with Rotella, presumably through the high pressures. So, the thing is oil fouled and flooded all over the place. I can still hear the teeny spark plugs trying to pop the thing into life, but it’s a mess.
As of this morning, I have it fixed. Turns out, the builder in Hong Kong didn’t do a great job putting things together tightly, and the spark plug gaps were GAPS. But that’s today. Last night I felt like I had been kicked, repeatedly.
Everything’s Fine
Last night, I pegged my failure count at four. I decided not to drive Sheryl’s car because knowing my luck, the CVT would grenade or something.
The motorcycle refused to charge, the BMW spat out all of its coolant, the Smart killed its exhaust, and the baby BMW boxer vomited out its fluids. So, you know what? I said I was done for the day. Clearly, everything I touched broke. Heck, I couldn’t even find my 10mm socket and its associated ratchet.
I thought bad days like this happened only in movies! Where did it even go?
From here, I need to figure out how I’m going to fix all of this. First up will be the BMW. I’ll buy the new Y-pipe and have that fixed as soon as possible. For the Smart, I’ll have to drag that to my local muffler shop and have them weld on a new flex pipe. The Zero is going back to its home. Hopefully, Zero will tell me what on Earth happened to the bike.
This better be the last day of catastrophes in a long time. I’m actually laughing about all of this. It sort of feels a bit like a cartoon where everything that can happen bad to the protagonist does happen. Thankfully, nothing here is permanently broken. I little wrenching here and a little money there and I’ll be back on the road in a jiffy. Next up, getting that Plymouth running!
I used to keep old bangers going for years on hard delivery use, but I used them every day. Seeing the Autopians with fleets of cars that are mostly broken I wonder if it’s the lack of day to day attention that allows gremlins to get to work?
I mean this with no judgement, just thinking about how the broken car disease seems to befall the most passionate.
Must be the positions of stars and planets that are wreaking havoc on your vehicles. For your information, Mercury is retrograding from 25 November to 15 December so things bound to break down…
Mercedes, where did you get this model engine? I must have it! I seem to be too dumb to find it on the web.
I just followed the link in the article and wow, they are shockingly expensive.
Found it:
https://www.enginediy.com/en-de/products/r69-3-2cc-mini-horizontal-opposed-twin-cylinder-4-stroke-gasoline-engine-motorcycle-engine-model-internal-combustion-engine
“When life gives you lemons… say fuck the lemons and bail.” -Kunu, Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Oh the weather outside is weather!
Also, forgot:
Attached pdf in this thread:
https://www.bimmerfest.com/threads/new-here-read-this-first.1253416/?post_id=12391786#post-12391786
Has it pretty much all
In order:
Bimmerfest is a useful forum. People tend to help.RealOEM dot com is your place for part numbers. bmwfans dot info/parts-catalog are good too.Your best friend for parts is FCPEuro. Their free shipping starts past $49. Pelican parts is good too but FCP usually beats them by a little bit. Also, Pelican’s free shipping starts past $99.BMWpartsdeal dot com is for original BMW parts. Both FCPEuro and Pelican will sell original parts as well as OE and aftermarket ones, but bmwpartsdeal sometimes beats them. I have heard a few horror stories with them about parts availability and delivery times, but for non-urgent stuff it’s maybe worth a try. I haven’t tried them, but I have tried toyotapartdeal and the hyundai one and they were decent.Rockauto is the place to check first (hence it’s listed here last :)), as they will usually have old stocks that can go at insane prices. Always use them as price reference. They do, however, sell parts that might end up being junk.A gallon of Zerex G48 50/50 Prediluted Antifreeze Coolant 1 GA at Walmart is 20 bucks. Get as much as needed. FCPEuro sells Zerex, usually they don’t sell obvious crapAbsolutely replace the Mickey Mouse flange with an aluminum one (google it), it is often sold under the Rein brand with its matching hose. You can also buy the flange alone. You have to break the original plastic one to get it out of the hose, has to be pointing downards so it doesnt desintegrate inside the hose. It’s easy.At some point it will make sense to replace the electric coolant pump and the thermostat. The exercise is apparently quite fun.Absolutely DO replace the fluids in the front and rear diffs, as well as in the transfer case. For the fronts the official procedure is to drop plenty of stuff to access the fill plugs on the top. The established standard is to fill through the drain hole (cork plug with a hole drilled and a tube through it, then quick pull out and put drain plug back in). Saves you hours. Do it if you haven’t yet. A used transfer case is not expensive, but is a B to replace.
Now, the main reason (above the fact that it’s BMW and it’s crap) for everything plastic under the hood to become brittle is that in normal conditions the engines are set to run hot as hell, so they pollute less. This is also why there are almost never coolant temp gauges on these. When you drive at moderate loads and rpms, the engine is kept at the brink of overheating. Once you start hitting into it, the temperature is kept lower to give you a better buffer.
For some insane reason (probably for the one in a million case where one would fill their coolant system with clear water), the cooling system is also overpressured. Most E60/61s from these years have a expansion tank cap set at 2 bars. Many, myself included, use a Stant 10246 coolant tank cap, which is 1.4 bars.
2 bars puts a tremendous stress on the whole system, and with an ageing cap, the expansion tank becomes the fuse, rather than the cap. They simply explode, and dump all the coolant in seconds. A cap that pops is still not fun, but gives you time to react.
Here’s the temperature chart logic for my n54 engine (different from yours, it is true). Per this chart, the only case where a 2 bar pressure would be needed would be if you had clear water in the system. The rest of the time, it’s useless and harmful:
https://www.bimmerfest.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.bimmerfest.com/attachments/1727826931751-png.1127321/
Can someone explain to me why my carefully arranged carriage returns and paragraphs merge into a melted mass of a paragraph-long sentence ?
I wouldn’t read myself 🙂
The above was all organized, and is now melted into a brick of molten word slag.
I believe the term is “kinja-ed.”
Oh no, it’s followed us here!!
If you edit a comment this happens. It’s been a bug forever but no idea what causes it
BMW person here. Sorry to hear about your horrible day!
Yes, that’s an extremely easy fix. However, it’s time to do a cooling system refresh so stuff like this doesn’t happen again. That includes all hoses, the Mickey Mouse flange (replace with an aluminum one), electric water pump, and thermostat.
Yep, you need to replace it all. Something will keep breaking every 500 miles otherwise, and most likely you will overheat the engine.
Agreed – I even replaced the radiator and heater hoses in my N52-equipped E83 when I got the car. These cars are approaching two decades old, so it’s just time to replace everything at this point for peace of mind.
exact same. Hard E46 lessons, even though N52 is more stable (and way easier to bleed), you don’t want to risk it!
BMW coolant is a buffer solution that turns acidic when it ages, making all the plastic bits brittle as a result. It is recommended to flush the coolant out every few years.
The plastic becomes brittle because the system is constantly kept at the brink of overheating, to marginally improve emissions, when the engine is ran at moderate loads. Which is most of the time.
This is not true at all, especially on the N52, which Mercedes car has. The electronic thermostat has several different modes, none of which are “brink of overheating.”
The N5X cooling systems are actually quite robust, especially compared to the earlier M54s, but after enough time and with enough mileage, all cooling systems will need maintenance.
* 112°C ECO mode (economy)
* 105°C Normal mode
* 95°C High mode
* 80°C High + mapped thermostat mode
This is for the n52. And pretty much any of their gas engines that came with an electric coolant pump, at least of those vintages. I heard newer models reverted to 1.4bar caps, which would rhyme with lower operating temperatures.
For my n54, this is the chart of temperatures and coolant system behavior, from my service manual:
https://www.bimmerfest.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.bimmerfest.com/attachments/1727826931751-png.1127321/
A temperature up to 115°C is considered normal. Minor component protection starts kicking in at 117°C.
This is absolutely insane.
The system is indeed extremely robust. However, it puts itself in a situation where there are implications long term. It’s like an athlete built with an amazingly strong heart, which is kept at 130bpm most of the time but goes down during heavy effort.
My Korean and Japanese econosuvs both stick to 90°C once warm, and that’s it. Monitored via Torque Pro. No fancy pantsy experiments.
Best way to check – compare with matching BMW Diesel engines. Those run at lower temperatures, and very probably have cooling components very similar to the gas engine ones – curious whether those crack and become brittle over time at the same rate.
Hey Mercedes, there’s a perfectly good Aztec WITH FACTORY TENT, AIR MATRESS, AND SEAT SPRING COVERS, sitting at Galpin. I’m thinking you should go get THAT, and enjoy it for at least a couple months! Y’all could take it camping, Gambling, and maybe Sheryl could use it on her legal travels!
Just gotta fix that one little runaway acceleration issue first.
I haven’t read David’s post yet. so I’ll assume that he actually did spend a week in it and didn’t make it all up. If so, he was outside the purview of Elise (not her real name), whose existence and affianced status he continues to claim, which means a healthy interior steam clean for the Aztek is strongly advised. Because, if his new life is not the fiction I’ve come to suspect, it’s pretty fucking likely (PFL, which I nominate as an acronym to join FAFO, WTF, etc, so if any of you know somebody at l’Académie mondiale des acronymes, pass it along) David reverted right back once he was outside of the scent zone of generally normal people.
And all this time I thought bad things were supposed to happen in 3’s.
The bike is someone else’s problem.
True. . .I guess that still holds then.
Oh Mercedes, I feel your pain. I had a day almost as bad last week trying to get all of my junk inside before the first real snowstorm hit. Whenever it happens, I pop a cold one afterward and watch this and it always makes me laugh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0
Kudos for your (relatively) positive attitude in the face of adversity.
If I had been in your shoes my 10mm (along with the rest of the socket set) would probably have been launch a few hundred feet across the parking lot in frustration…
BMW coolant isn’t horribly expensive. Genuine BMW is ~$28/gal for concentrate from the dealer or the usual suspects, and you should only need one gallon plus a gallon of distilled water. Generic Zerex is about $5 cheaper.
At this age, do yourself a favor and replace ALL of the plastic hose fittings. Or you will be repeating this one at a time until they have all failed.
It baffles me that charging EVs is such a debacle (other than Tesla seemingly pretty much having it right for their own cars most of the time). It really should not be so complex or difficult.
Whew, that’s good to know. I plan to put the legit stuff back in the BMW, but haven’t gotten that far yet. The hardest part thus far was just finding the part number for the hose. It looks like this is what I’m looking for, which is surprisingly reasonable!
https://www.pelicanparts.com/More_Info/17127546064.htm?pn=17-12-7-546-064-M36
I’d spend the $40 extra for genuine BMW – Febi can be a bit hit-or-miss these days in quality. Sometimes fine, sometimes not so fine. Rein is about the same as Febi. I find BMW parts to be pretty reasonable, with exceptions (the ?@#4/*^! radiator for my SULEV N51 128i is STUPID expensive for stupid reasons).
When you go to take the fittings apart, warm them up good with a hair dryer or heat gun (especially this time of year in IL), and BE GENTLE. And make sure the clips are fully released. They should come apart pretty easily. If you are having to use a lot of force, somethings wrong or it’s not warm enough yet.
Also, assuming the e61 radiator has the same plastic drain valve thing that my cars have, when you order the hoses, order a new insert for it (dirt cheap). Even if it doesn’t break when you open it, they love to leak after they have been in there for many years and are then opened and closed. If it breaks you can buy the whole thing and replace it.
Yeah, while I’m currently in a BMWless era of my life (as of 6 weeks ago, and I’ve already been tempted to rejoin!) I was amazed at how some hoses, seals, clips, and fluids were not much more, or any more, expensive from the dealer. But, there are lots of good non-BMW places on the inter webs to get parts from.
For some reason, the thought of a battery charger/design for a distinctly outdoor object being temperature-sensitive really grinds my gears, even if that isn’t the root of the problem here.
It’s like designing a toilet that is sensitive to liquids. Not great…
I find it hilarious that about the most reliable thing on the planet is a gas pump. A mechanical device with a credit card reader built into it, sitting out in all weather. They pretty much always work everywhere, very few exceptions unless the station is out of gas or it got damaged by an idiot. But EV chargers and related app nonsense? What a load of crap. Should be no more difficult than swiping a credit card and plugging your car/bike into a wall socket equivalent.
And yes, for the peanut gallery I realize they are high voltage/current devices so have a LOT of safety features built in – but gas pumps are potentially super dangerous too.
It gets easier as you age, doesn’t take nearly that much to call it quits for the day.
BMW cooling systems are a consumable.
If you don’t want to continually chase overheathing/ coolant issues in the BMW it’s good to just spend a bunch and replace everything coolant related. The radiator (if it the plastic parts of it look suspect), water pump, thermostat, any old hoses, the plastic overflow container. Otherwise, it will just be something else down the road
All car’s cooling systems are a consumable. BMW has just done a better job of having a consistent lifespan of all the parts.
Consistant in mediocrity, yes.
Mine have lasted 14 years and counting, for two cars. I find that entirely acceptable.
Nylon all the things!
Haven’t read the article yet, but I have to say — I saw the title without an author in my RSS list and I thought, “must be Mercedes, because David buys his already broken.”
For those who follow astrology, “Imagine yourself in a Mercury retrograde now…” Sounds like you’re living *that* large.
The problem with.that idea is Mercury is in retrograde for everyone so everyone should be having a similarly awful day.
Don’t confound us with logic, man!
“God damn you and your logic Spock.
Souless Vulcan bastard.”
OK Id.
https://psychoanalysis-tcp.blogspot.com/2014/05/thoughts-on-star-trek-into-darkness.html
Well now that’s some deep shit there, really.
The big question is how does Scotty’s personality compensate for the faults of the other three?
And can he keep the ship running long enough to receive his pension from Star Fleet before the Klingons blow their shit away in an attempt to gain political office?
“The big question is how does Scotty’s personality compensate for the faults of the other three?”
He fixes what’s broken so…
“And can he keep the ship running long enough to receive his pension from Star Fleet before the Klingons blow their shit away in an attempt to gain political office?”
You’ll have to tune in next week to find out.
I mean, among the last Mercurys the most retrograde one was the favorite.
The Ultimate Coolant Spilling Machine is undefeated in ability to dump all its coolant anywhere at anytime!
Like a dog marking a curb. For a BMW, that means it likes its new home.
I am so happy it happened at the entrance to my community and not miles from home. It even spat out the gallon of water in an instant. I guess I know it has a strong water pump, at least!
All it needs is a Jatco xTronic CVT to achieve perfection.
That advice was most likely on-point: the carburetor on this little guy was probably too simple and/or small to have a choke flap, let alone an enrichener circuit.
The amount of fuel going into the engine is controlled by the carb slide and jets, but the amount of air going into the engine is easy to modify. By putting your finger – partially, not fully – over the intake opening, you’re reducing the amount of air available for combustion. Same fuel + less air = roughly the same effect as a choke for cold starts, i.e. a richer mixture.
If your finger covered the intake completely, that may have created a low-pressure situation that pulled oil into the cylinders. 🙁 (It’s a two-stroke, so it relies on ports in the barrel and possibly in the piston to move the air-fuel mixture around.)
Funny enough, it’s actually a four-stroke, but it’s recommended to use premix. But yeah, I put my whole finger over the hole as the instructions noted. The engine very much didn’t like that.
I have fixed the little guy today. Thankfully, the left spark plug wasn’t even finger tight, so that was part of the problem. Starting it at WOT seems to do what the finger trick was trying to achieve. 🙂
D’oh! I assumed and made an ass out of – well, just me – but by golly there are indeed tiny little pushrod tubes under the barrels. Nifty!
Does this little guy have an oil pump? If not, that might be the reason for the premix. I’m thinking it might also have a paddle attached to the crankshaft to splash the oil around as it runs. Briggs & Stratton used to use such a thing; heck, maybe they still do.
WOT will definitely give you more fuel to go with the same amount of air (assuming an unrestricted intake). Glad you resolved the issues! 🙂
Trouble comes in threes, but you got 4. Good luck!
I’m not a BMW expert by any stretch, but I know Bangle Era BMWs are riddled with brittle cooling system components that are liable to disintegrate with age. Not sure of specifics for that year/engine E61, but I’d recommend doing some digging to see what else is at risk in the vicinity. Easier to buy once, cry once, and disassemble once than to do it all over again in 6 months.
Her era of BMW is actually MUCH improved over the previous generation. The plastic cooling system bits last about twice as long as they did in the e46/e39/e38 where they truly were “scheduled maintenance items”. In fact, on e8x/e9x cars failures of the actual hoses are quite rare even now, other than the skinny all-plastic one from the radiator to the overflow, and even those last 12-15+ years. The radiators fail at the same rate as every other aluminum and plastic radiator, and better than some – I just had the Denso radiator in my Mercedes fail (slow leak at the end seam, typical) after only 10 years, but my two 11 BMWs are just fine. Similarly, 12-15 year typical life. At that point, I figure the car owes me nothing. Not sure what year her e61 is, but I bet it’s at least a few years older than my e91 and probably has a LOT more than my 55K miles on it. Amusingly, it is all the Japanese parts on my German car that seem to be failing prematurely, the Denso A/C compressor crapped itself expensively last year, and so have a couple of Denso-made sensors. Go figure.
But for SURE, once one of these fittings fails, just replace it all – as you say, cry once rather than getting stranded again and again. Proper maintenance is not just changing the oil. And it is VERY important to use the correct formulation coolant in these cars, AND change it on schedule to keep the additives package doing it’s job.
To quote the movie Gung Ho: “Defect!”
I like you. You make me laugh.
You are a Roads Scholar of automotive catastrophe.
This is an unintentional comment, because I can’t flat out delete it,
Same thing you experienced on your BMW happened to me on my Mustang, except in my case, the broken plastic connection was molded into the intake manifold! That was an annoying replacement, hope yours is easier!
Also, seeing your Buell peeking out makes me kinda wish I still had mine…
That’s what I feared when I did my inspection this morning. What a sigh of relief that I don’t have to replace a ton of parts or go through a ton of parts. This pipe is almost un-German in its design. 🙂
Sadly, that Buell Blast (now my wife’s) has 23-year-old tires, or else that would have been yesterday’s backup bike!
Wow – you beat me! I replaced the 21yo tires on my Spitfire last year. Sneaks up on you when you own the car a long time and don’t drive it enough to ever wear out the tread (I’ve owned the little dude for 28 years). But zero dry rot, they looked perfect. But so much smoother on tires that haven’t devolved into something resembling cast iron. Ancient tires must be scary on a bike.
Most annoying is you really can’t really get GOOD tires in 165 or 175/70-13 anymore. I had to settle for some rather meh Hankook something-or-others as the best I could get. The best theoretically available option is probably General Altimax, but they were out of stock absolutely everywhere. Coker in theory has some reproduction Michelins for a price that will make you faint, but they didn’t actually have any either. Sigh.
I only have praise for Hankook tires. Ventus 2 IIRC on my Saab turbo were the best I tried in the price range.
NEVER neglect Motorcycle tires! It does happen often in the used market, past owners scared themselves, parked it, then years later decided to sell.
“In the price range” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Yes, they are perfectly fine cheap tires. I have Hankook snow tires on my Disco I that I rarely drive. But I am under no illusions that there are as good as other more expensive tires. But annoying that I did not have a choice in the size needed for the Spitfire. The only alternatives were the sundry no-name Chinesium Long Duck Dongs and whatnot. Somehow I doubt these will last as long as the Dunlops they replaced without disintegrating or wearing oddly.
Yeah, that was about 12-15 years ago when buying for my Saab, started around $90 to 120 each. Had more faith in South Korea than any China manufacturer. Hope you are pleasantly surprised with them, as I was.
“Chinesium Long Duck Dongs”
Ha ha ha that’s priceless!
So is that a new band in China?
Would have to be better than the cheap tires they crank out.