The new driving season got off to a very good start this past weekend. I participated in the Spring driver’s school with the NCC Chapter BMW CCA at Summit Point, WV. It was my first time in the fastest run group (Group A) and first weekend in the instructor training program. By the end of …
What is that goo that comes out of an electric motor that has seized? We took a brief trip to CA to escape winter and while we were gone, we had some friends watching our house. Because we had some snow and sub-freezing days, we had them run the BMW every couple of days. They …
One thing that drives me nuts about the “bottle cap” rims is that they’re impossible to clean. If you leave the brake dust on the wheels it eats into the surface and you cannot really get your fingers in the slots to keep them clean when you wash the car. Since I had a little …
I talked to the experts at Paint World and upon their recommendation, added a third coat of clear to the hood. That made all the difference to get the repainted hood to match the shine of the fenders. I had some paint and clear coat left over so I also repainted the rear panel around …
It took a week longer than I planned, and many more cans of paint, but I finally finished the hood. I still need to polish it, but it looks pretty good.
The hood on the BMW has one of the worst paint jobs I’ve ever seen. It’s like the history of paint. I think there’s at least 4 layers, the top coat being a very cheap, very thick respray one of the previous owners had done after something fell on the hood. The paint was burned …
A common fault with older E30s is that the heater blower often only works on the highest setting. You should be happy that it works at all because it is much easier to repair/replace the resistor that controls the speed, than it is to replace the entire blower. This project isn’t very complicated. Give yourself …
Original Post: January 16, 2007. In what’s becoming an annual act of meteorological defiance, I’ve washed and waxed my MINI. In January. What price will I pay? Check back on Groundhog day. For those of you keeping track, yes that’s the fifth set of wheels you’ve seen on my car. Mark your scorecards: R85 “S-Lites”, …
The carpet replacement project proved a bit more complicated than I had anticipated. Once I got the seats out and pulled out the various console pieces, I pulled up the old carpet and found that the rear passenger-side footwell had started to rust. Thank goodness for POR and fiberglass repair kits. I was also amazed …
It has been a while since I’ve posted about progress being made to the BMW. I finally managed to repaint the right rear bumper cover that I repaired some weeks ago. (I still think the guy who did my MD state inspection scraped the right side of the car against a wall…) I managed to …