I was driving to pick my daughter up from dance yesterday and I realized that I had to snag one of her friends as well, which necessitated getting all of the crap out of the backseat of my E39 BMW.
I can’t remember the last time it rained in New York, but it was so long ago that Yankees fans still had a reason to live. Because of this, I’ve got chammies and quick detailer in the back seat to keep my car from looking awful.
As I was blindly fumbling for crap back there I found something I didn’t expect. When I thought I was pulling out a spray bottle instead I found this:
There was a whole-ass door handle for my car back there. I assumed immediately that my daughter, at some point, had removed the door handle and rather than tell me just tossed it back there. Then I looked around. 1… 2… 3… 4…
They were all there.
Curiously, I had not changed any of the door handles. Nor do I need to change any of the door handles as they are all functional (which can’t be said of the rear window regulator), so it’s not like I ordered the part and forgot about it. To make matters even more confusing I’d just thoroughly cleaned out the car earlier this year and vacuumed under the seats and there was no door handle.
Where did it come from? Did someone break into my car and give me an extra door handle?
I do sometimes park next to this guy:
What about you? What’s your biggest car-related mystery?
The only mystery I was ever concerned about was this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argonaut_(automobile)
What ever happened to the supposed one or two that were built and why do no photos exist? Only the original sketches and apparently a photo of the chassis prototype exist. Not even a partially-built prototype exists anywhere anymore.
It’s the mystery car I’ve been searching for now for 30+ years.
Pics in the links below:
https://live.staticflickr.com/8011/7154998123_0709276b17_b.jpg
https://www.periodpaper.com/cdn/shop/products/PSC3_358_95fd2762-bca8-4a74-bc28-789e34517bc1.jpg?v=1571711790
https://64.media.tumblr.com/9053630ed6262550207611c1c4a5a59c/tumblr_oqtmdpTT7C1rkxyk6o1_640.jpg
Have fun in this rabbit hole, my friends.
SETUP: So, I had cat errors on a 2006 BMW e46. It only has 90K miles, so this was wild failure. Not an issue until it comes to smog testing. HOWEVER, I replaced the battery – which was 14 years old. It still worked well, and was on a trickle charger during the winters.
Here’s the mystery…after replacing the battery, I no longer have the codes. The CEL light is finally having a rest. I had cleared the codes before, replace an O2 sensor, all the other things we could come up with to avoid buying new cats. It’s a mystery.
Electronic gremlins in Stellantis, nee FCA, vehicles.
Random screws and bolts that I throw in my center console and forget where they came from (or never knew in the first place). Just threw a few away when I cleaned out my truck because I had no idea where they went anyway. If I find a missing bolt I can always run down to the hardware store and get another.
One solved mystery: I got in my Corvette one night to take it somewhere and almost all of the dash lights were out. One time when I had it parked with the roof off someone must have reached in and turned the dimmer all the way down. Spent more time than I care to admit figuring that one out, but at least I didn’t get to the point of taking it to the dealer.
Had a 1989 Mustang LX Sport. When I would get off work to go home, occasionally, my right rear tire would be obviously low. Nothing obviously wrong. Would air up and be fine for anywhere from couple of days to week or two. Not a steady leak. Seem to only notice at work. Was someone letting air out of my tire at random times? I finally took to tire shop and they found an 4″ nail through the tread poking into the sidewall. Somehow didn’t spot this.
Evidently, it would only leak out air when I made real hard left turns, such as at the end of the interstate ramp near work, otherwise held air fine.
Three months previous, we had been in Washington DC and they had the roads tore up and some places we were driving over wood timbers. This is where the large nail came from. DC is over 8hrs from home. Probably had driven over a thousand miles before fixing.
Our 2018 Mazda 6 often triggers a “hands on wheel” warning for my wife even when her hands are totally on the wheel. This happens ONLY to my wife not me (or the kids back when they were still around and using it). I chalk it up to the car loving her more than the rest of us. It’s hyper concerned for her safety. Me? Not so much.
How does paint on the door handle inset seem to scratch itself (behind handles) over years of driving. My assumption was wind and dirt or sand but that seems as if it would result in a sandblasted appearance not scratches.
Womens fingernails and rings is what I always assumed, if I’m thinking if the same thing you are.
But, what if no woman uses that door handle? On almost 100% of the time, I drive my car, still, from times to times I notice that it seems to be a bit more scratched than before. For sure isn`t fingernails nor rings.
May be my eyes playing tricks on me, or nature as Martian said.
Thieves grabbing the door handle to see if it’s locked is how I explain scratches on a passenger door handle that is literally never used.
My biggest mystery was our 1977 Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL.
We brought it to the United States from Germany in 1982 and ticked the ‘personal exempt’ box on the customs form, meaning we didn’t need to modify the car to comply with the US regulations. Thus, the European headlamps and thin bumpers still attaching to our 450 SEL in the US.
Some of our American friends teased us about its ‘cross-eyed headlamps’. The W116 headlamps are positioned next to the cooling grille while the fog lamps next to the turn signal indicators, giving it a cross-eyed look. The question of why Mercedes-Benz chose to position the headlamps and fog lamps like this on W116 but not on W123, W126, and so forth stuck to my mind for years.
I had asked this question for a long time. Nobody could offered the explanation.
Until recently.
A commentator on MB Passion website explained about the quirky ECE regulations on positions of lighting system in relations to the vehicle’s width. ECE regulations stipulated a certain distance from the outermost edge for the fog lamp placement. The W116 had wider bumper wraparound so the ‘distance’ was greater than what the regulations allowed. Thus, positioning the fog lamps next to the turn signal indicators.
This regulation is the reason why 500 E/E 500 (W124) with wider fender flares had different headlamp units with separate low and high beam reflectors. The fog lamps were moved to the air dam below the bumpers. The plain vanilla W124 had the headlamp units with fog lamps next to the low-and-high beam reflectors.
My ’64 F100 crewcab is a coach-built vehicle. I have identified most of the oddities in it, like the Buick Electra power-assist brake master cylinder and a Chevy carrier bearing for the driveshaft since the grafted-on rear cab got in the way of the original drive shaft path.
What I have NOT identified is the mechanical gizmo that sits where the brake pedal lever enters the engine bay. It angles the brake pedal mechanism away from the manifold (to the left). Haven’t been able to identify what vehicle it came from.
The only really odd thing I can recall is on our 2016 Mazda CX-5 we replaced the stock Yokohama Geolanders with Michelin Defenders and when we drive on gravel roads the indirect TPMS wigs out. It was fine with Geolanders and Blizzaks but doesn’t like Michelins.
So I bought a 2004 rx8 as a pre-order and love the car. (The blue one) I also love racing lemons and making bad decisions. When we retired the subaru xt an rx8 was high up on our list of cars to buy. We found an 04 in Cleveland with a “broken timing chain”. (The gray one) Intrigued, we gave them a call and I couldn’t believe they misdiagnosed an ignition coil failure as a bad engine. We bought it, stripped it of the interior and even made a profit. It gets tboned twice by a miata both times during the race and the second time was fatal to the structure. A seam weld under the drivers seat broke completely across the car stopping a foot short of the passenger door, only structural component left locating the front wheels vs the rears was the roll cage.
We stripped this car of all usable parts, and found another deal on an 09 rx8 with a broken timing belt this time. (The black one) Bought it, realized there’s too many issues mating a series 1 drive train to a series 2 chassis, so then bought a 2005 with a “blown engine” again. (The red one) Problem was the variable length intake but the engine was better than our Grey one. Swapped engine, trans, diff, ecu, and cluster.
Whats baffling to me is when we had to panic move out of the shop we were renting for our projects, we somehow ended up with my car using the original ecu it came with, the red car has the gray ecu in it. The black ecu is sitting on a shelf in a basement. And now I have an ecu for an 04 rx8 I have no idea where it’s from, an extra diff, and most importantly we got to swap in a steering rack that came from :shrug: after a failure.
There’s at least 6 people I involved and none of us know where these parts came from so it’s not like had a rager and forgot.
“09 rx8 with a broken timing belt”
I have already shipped and installed a kit to upgrade that from a timing belt to a timing chain. I will send an invoice.
Mentions a timing chain on one RX-8 and a belt on another. *shrug*
My wife had a 2001(?) Chrysler Sebring Coupe. The good looking one made by Mitsubishi. While driving into a headwind at 70 mph it would whistle. It sounded like someone sitting in the car whistling one long tweeee note. It amused us to no end.
That door handle broke on my dad’s E39. The “metal” piece broke in half and that’s how we realized it was actually plastic. BMW did a good job with the coating because it felt cool to the touch and fooled us for 20+ years.
I had a 350Z. How did Nissan make a car that heavy with only two seats and no space inside? It weighed more than my 5-series. That’s the first mystery.
It also had headlight washer jets. One day, while it was parked up and locked the headlight washer jets came on.
Every 30 seconds.
For hours.
I had to disconnect the battery to stop it, then disconnect the washer jets. The garage couldn’t find anything wrong, and when I reconnected them for the MOT they worked as normal.
I’m always amazed it was a two-seater. The profile screams small but in-existence back seat, and from the ’00s through today, people expect some semblance of practicality in almost everything (hence the demise of my favorite the sport coupe).
While I still had the 350Z I bought a GT86, and parked next to each other the Nissan seems like such a packaging disaster. The Nissan is slightly longer, and the engine is only one cylinder longer, where did all the space go?
Then there’s the huge beam that cuts across the trunk to make what would be a reasonable storage space just two slots for golf bags.
Why is it always golf bags? I don’t play golf, but I do go on holidays and would like to be able to fit a suitcase in my car. It’s so stupid.
I had a Z4 coupe and while it only had two seats you could fit a bicycle in the hatch if you took the wheels off. Weirdly practical.
That’s what struck me about them – that most other two seaters take advantage of that lack of rear seating to provide more storage space. I remember first seeing that beam & thinking “cool – structural reinforcing like a track car!” but then “hey, these are supposed to be a sports car you drive around every day, not a specialized edition…”
I had a convertible that I never locked because the top was more expensive than anything I would leave in it, and often I just parked it with the top down.
Anyway, people would keep putting things into the car. Stereos, TV sets, an electric guitar. This only happened in LA. I never did get to the bottom of it.
153% on board with this. When I first moved to Chicago and had to leave my cars in a parking garage, I always left them unlocked, glove box open and empty, center console open, etc. And have not had a problem for many years despite showing up to my car and seeing shattered glass from the cars next to me.
Bought my 2nd diesel Mercedes 300SD cheap: $350. Had it on the road for less than $700…but it wouldn’t pull out of my steepish driveway unless it warmed up first. Like, it had no power. Changed fuel filters multiple times until no gunk was in the clear pre-filter. Checked compression, Asked for help on the Mercedes Shopforum—and followed reasonable advice. Never could figure it out, and sold it on to a friend’s kid (gave full disclosure) who drove it like that for another year or two. His place was in a flat neighborhood.
2003 VW Jetta GLS. Drivers front suspension would squeak like a worn-out mattress at the local motel during compression and rebound ONLY when the air conditioning was engaged. So strange.
My aunt bought a Mercury Topaz, and behind the climate vents I saw something blue. I got the vent out and pulled out… A full pack of branded playing cards from the dealership.
Like all air cooled VWs, my 72 Super Beetle has levers connected to cables that control the heat. One of those levers is connected to both heater boxes and controls the flow of air from them. As a lot of y’all know, air-cooled VWs use heat exchangers around the exhaust to generate heat, which is blown into the car by the same fan that cools the engine. Leaks can cause carbon monoxide to enter the cabin.
On a cold, February day I was merging onto the highway when I heard a loud bang. The car was still running fine, but when I stopped there was a huge hole in the cheap aftermarket muffler I’d installed maybe a decade before. I still had to drive the car home, and by nightfall it was fucking cold. I turned on the heat…only for the lever between the seats to fall right back down. I started driving with one hand holding up the lever…when I started feeling a little lightheaded. I quickly let the lever fall back down and opened a window. Freezing is a lot better than dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
But what are the chances, that a bolt that had been tight for 45 years (at the time), would come loose on the very night my exhaust blew out and caused a carbon monoxide leak into the car? The little lever wasn’t even loose earlier that day. Anyway, now I keep a carbon monoxide detector in the car at all times, just in case.
I had a Miata that used to occasionally drop cigarettes from the center stack.
One day I came out to my car to find a cigarette laying on the passenger side floor. I did smoke at the time but the cig I found wasn’t my brand and I hadn’t given anyone a ride lately who could have dropped it either. I threw it away, moved on with my life until a few days later I found another one on the passenger floor again. That got me investigating further and I noticed a third one half sticking out of the plastic center stack trim where it meets the carpet. I ended up finding two or three more cigarettes in the under the radio but above the transmission tunnel void. No clue how they got there, it’s not exactly an easy place to accidentally get something, let alone several cigarettes fully intact and un-crushed.
Pretty sure this is how horror movies begin.
Did you buy it new? Its no mystery if it had a previous owner. (same with Matt’s mysterious door handle)
In high school I had a 1993 Ford Probe GT with a factory digital equalizer to supplement the standard Ford radio. The radio worked fine. The equalizer, which was supposed to function with the radio, came on maybe five times during my three year ownership. I’m usually pretty good at finding patterns or reasons why something works/doesn’t work and can fix it. This thing was completely baffling. No difference in how I drove, the pattern to start the car, maintenance, radio settings, hitting it, or anything else correlated with when it worked.
—–
If The Autopian runs this post again some years into the future and my Giulia has a second owner who comes on this site, I have created a mystery for them to discuss. The trim level I have does not include the option for an illuminated door sill, but other trim levels do. However I learned that all Giulias come with the wiring for an illuminated door sill and it’s easy to plug one in. So I bought the OEM illuminated door sills from a parts site and installed them.
love your profile name. 🙂
I did something similar with my 2006 Magnum SRT8. I swapped in door panels from a Chrysler 300C that were all black (all Magnum SRT8s had a two-tone black/gray door panel). It has the button on the door panels for the memory function that wasn’t available on the Magnums but it was on the 300s. The new owner knows about it… but if it gets sold again it may remain a mystery.
Though unlikely it’ll be around b/c Mustang buyers, my GT has the year-correct, OEM rocker panel striping that was offered only on the V6 models.
The stripes were historically available on GTs only (hell, Ford even called them “GT stripes” back then) and I love ’em, so I added them soon after I got her.
I’d love to see the future debate about what kind of possible special edition she could be. Sorry, kid, nope.
The sound isolating fabric that covers the underside of the hood in my R50 Pathfinder developed holes from one day to another. I don’t know if it’s rotting or a rat was trying to find a new home, as there are no signs of rat activity anywhere else in the engine bay.
Oh, I forgot:
Number 3
My custom-ordered 2022 BMW X5 xDrive45e was built in November 2021, during a three or four-week period in which BMW shipped cars without touchscreen functionality. The cars had what looked like the same screen as usual, but it lacked the touch hardware. This affected the X5, X6 and X7 built in Spartanburg, SC, but also the 3 Series and 4 Series built in Germany, and the Z4 built by Magna Steyr. All of these models had the trapezoidal-shaped display bezel running iDrive 7, and probably were all supplied from Visteon. Other models either had a different display or were running iDrive 6.
Cars with the touchscreen delete had option code ZUX. For some reason, this also involved deleting the Backup Assistant, which was option code ZUY.
My car completed assembly on November 1, 2021 and arrived at the dealership on November 6, 2021. I wasn’t allowed to take delivery of it until November 13, 2021, because BMW put a stop-sale on the touchscreen delivered cars until a software update was ready. My suspicion was that the software update would add a binary option flag to the iDrive 7 software that would allow for a non-touchscreen provision…so that cars thus equipped wouldn’t listen for touch events, throw hardware errors, or mention touch gestures anywhere in the UI.
I ordered a new OE touchscreen from some warehouse in China that had a bunch of them, and swapped it in shortly after I got the car. The screen worked, but did nothing. I suspected I’d have to code the car to get rid of options ZUX and ZUY to make it work, and–sure enough–that did it.
What I want to know is why it happened. Was it really a parts shortage, or was it a corporate screw-up? Because it happened very suddenly. I found out about it on the forums, while my car was in the production queue. I know a few people who work at the Spartanburg, SC plant, and one person who is about to be hired there, so I’d love to see if they could find out.