Schaefft's Bargain Barge Extravaganza - Alfa Attention

[Schaefft]

On 12/13/2022 at 12:22 AM, Jerzy Woking said:

Really pleased to see you have got the Lexus looking so good. It was in a bit of a state when I bought it, in that it was dirty inside and out, but it seemed perfect mechanically, and except the TPMS light, was fault free.

I spent a while cleaning it, but not to the depth you have, and it looked so much better then. The coffee holder lid bugged me, as I knew something was stuck in there, but couldn't see it. 

It was the shortest time I have ever owned a car, but one I miss the most!

Thanks for posting it on here in the first place! It really is a good car, I've just ordered the front brakes, bonnet struts and a few filters for it, hopefully with those sorted the tpms light is the last thing this car needs for a long time.

On 12/13/2022 at 10:37 PM, Spottedlaurel said:

Good to see things progressing on several fronts, and I'm amused by how similar the interior of my 2014 RX looks compared to your GS.

Yeah, for a 17 year old car the interior is holding up really well visually. I think this is quite a step ahead of what BMW had in the E60 or Audi in the C6 A6: Much higher quality while also looking more modern and upscale. Its really only the satnav that dates it.

Anyway, Im now back in Germany. The A6 has done over 1500km over the last week (incl. a trip to Glasgow before) and hasn't skipped a beat. I've picked up a shift rod linkage for the Caprice taxi from a local US car breaker yard (which I was completely unaware of), its actually from a Chevy Van so it hopefully fits with a little modifying. For the horrendous money I paid for it it better does...

I'm also currently ordering everything needed to completely rebuild the front suspension and brakes on the W140 S-Class. Considering the age of everything I might as well while in there...

 

[Schaefft]

Might be a strange question but has anyone ever ordered from the German autodoc website? I wanna order there as prices are generally a bit cheaper. I'm worried that things might arrive after I need to leave here though. I can send them to a UK address but might have to pay UK vat on everything again because it's not officially their UK page...

[DVee8]

43 minutes ago, Schaefft said:

Might be a strange question but has anyone ever ordered from the German autodoc website? I wanna order there as prices are generally a bit cheaper. I'm worried that things might arrive after I need to leave here though. I can send them to a UK address but might have to pay UK vat on everything again because it's not officially their UK page...

I'm sure MrsV8 used G-Adoc when she ordered a new mirror cap for her Bini.

[Schaefft]

1 hour ago, DVee8 said:

I'm sure MrsV8 used G-Adoc when she ordered a new mirror cap for her Bini.

Did it result in extra fees? The bill would be in euros.

[DVee8]

On 24/12/2022 at 18:58, Schaefft said:

Did it result in extra fees? The bill would be in euros.

I don't think it did, and yeah it was in euros. I think it took around 2 weeks to be delivered.

[Schaefft]

The new year is here and I'm back from the holidays. The A6 has done 1900km over the last two weeks without a hitch and has once again been extremely useful as comfortable long distance hauler as it was filled to the brim with parts and luggage both ways.

It has now fulfilled its final mission bringing my spare gearbox for the ivory Lincoln Mark VIII back to Newcastle, as mentioned before the old one is pretty much toast after the trip to Radwood. Its somewhere under the pile of other random spares:

Also in the car was the replacement front bumper for the Senator (the original has been cracked since the day I bought the car) and service and brake bits for the Lexus. Hopefully I'll find the time on the weekend to sort the Lexus out. Unfortunately not included is a replacement steering column for the Senator, the seller didn't manage to send it in time. That means the car won't be driveable for another few months...

It'll be a few months before I'm back in Germany to sell the Audi. It's a bit of a shame as it has proven to be trouble free and more practical than any other car I own, the previous owner has clearly taken good care of it. At the same time I don't have the space to keep it, the S8 was originally supposed to be my winter car and either the Corona or Senator might be able to take over as load lugger as both have foldable rear seats. It'll stick around for a bit longer hauling junk to the recycling center, aside from that no further plans other than putting it back on its summer wheels.

I'll make a start on removing the Caprice's steering column tomorrow. With that sorted it there shouldn't be too many other hurdles left getting it back on the road.

Bonus ferry:

[Schaefft]

Some more progress over the last few days. I managed to remove the steering column from the Caprice to replace the ignition switch linkage I picked up in Germany. Pretty staight forward job once you know what you need to do:

I'll try to disambled it all over the next few evenings hopefully.

The Lexus finally received its long anticipated brake job. Contrary to everything I've done on an 18 year old car before this was a very straight forward job. Not only did everything come apart with zero hassle, everything beyond the brakes still looked excellent as well. Not a single torn boot or crumbling piece of plastic, everything still looked like on day 1, impressive considering everything seems to be original. The only thing someone screwed with before was a missing wheel lock replaced with a random lug nut.

Once again, this is contrary to my E39 or Mark VIII (for example) which were both 18 years old when I bought them, and needed literally everything. Granted, the car being in Spain regularly probably helped but if the Car Wizard hasn't drilled it into everyone's head yet, this is what you get when buying a Toyota or Lexus, and why a 3rd gen GS is such an underrated, criminally undervalued daily driver in this country. Every E60 at this age is probably an absolute wreck.

Shiny new parts. As usual, no garbage, only OEM or OEM equivalent quality wise:

The brakes really did need sorting though. The discs might have lasted for a few thousand miles longer but they did have noticeable grooves and a lip.

Interestingly there's nothing holding them to the hub, only the pads and wheel hold it in place. These vented discs are side-specific as well, the vent slots need to point in a specific direction for improved cooling. Whoever installed these before had them the wrong way around...

The brake pads definitely needed replacing badly however:

I've cleaned everything and applied some copper grease so whoever is doing these brakes again in a decade isn't going to struggle with seized-on discs. All done and torqued to spec:

All the pistons of the massive 4 pot calipers compressed relatively easily by hand btw, all boots looked decent.

After a trip around the estate to carefully remove any coating. Another 300km of normal driving and everything should have bedded in nicely. Shame about the curbed to fuck wheels.

Replaced the air and cabin filter as well. Access through the glove box couldnt be easier for the cabin filter, I don't think that one had ever been replaced either...

Cleaned the removable shelf while in there, something must have leaked on it over time. The airfilter still looked alright but why not. Replaced all the plastic clips with the proper ones this time.

Also replaced the hood struts. I ordered Stabilus ones as these are generally a well regarded brand for these. Turns out Toyota thought the same as the original ones were Stabilus, too.

The aftermath:

Its great that Lexus has a maintenance screen that allows you to track what needs to be done. The problem is that Lexus decided that 2022 must be the last year someone would ever consider owning a Lexus with this generation infotainment, so it now defaults to 2003 and won't let me track things properly anymore... Not sure if a firmware update is availabe.

On a side note: the updated satnav software seems to work well and the Nokia was a perfect fit:

Only an oil change and cosmetics left. I'll see what I do about the TPMS light. The tires and wheels ideally need replacing towards the end of the year, I might sort them out then.

[hairnet]

caddy splumph

[Schaefft]

Update time! The 400 mile roundtrip to the lake district last weekend was a good chance to test the new brakes, they feel fantastic now. The 1/2 mile greenlane to and from our Airbnb was also a great chance to test the offroadability of the Lexus. Aside from both headlights suddenly failing at the end of the track on our way to dinner it actually did well. Fortunately they came back on again after turning the car off... The driver side headlight still seems to have issues when in auto lights mode though. Im not sure why manually turning them on would make any difference (need to see if I can replicate the problem more often) but it still turns off in auto mode randomly and is perfectly fine when manually turned off and on again. Not sure if its as simple as a loose connection on that side.

Another thing diagnosed and sorted was louder-than-expected wind noise coming from the upper driver b-pillar. Turns out someone must have locked the keys in the car at some point. Whoever got them out bent the door frame slightly out of shape, enough for the seals to not do their job 100% anymore. Nobody ever seemed to notice or be bothered as it only needing a few pulls on the frame's corner to get it back into shape. The car is as quiet as a Lexus should be at motorway speeds now.

I finally did an oil change today. No clue when it was done the last time but it definitely was time. 7L of Motul 8100 will do.

The filter was brittle and almost falling apart pulling it out...

Lexus doesn't like people changing their own oil so you need a special tool to open the oil filter housing.

 Fortunately its easy to reach. Naturally all but two bolts for the access panel were missing. And its not even like the hardware they fasten into was gone, it was all there. Which means whatever idiot did the filter change before just somehow managed to lose them in the 10 minutes it takes to do the filter change and didn't bother to replace them.🤦‍♂️ In general its odd how many random covers, bump stops and clips are missing for no apparent reason. Just another sign for how neglected the car was.

All done.

In other news, I took the Caprice's steering column apart and it quickly became clear that GM never intended anyone to fix anything on the thing. I was able to get the lockplate off (after ordering another special tool), as it turns out it was just the ignition cylinder (20 quid OEM from Rockauto) that somehow jammed up, not the linkage between it and the ignition switch that broke before.

The easy to disassemble upper part, needed to reach the ignition cylinder:

Unfortunately replacing the linkage is near impossible without complete taking the column apart, nothing you can really do without a machine shop from what I can tell. Guess this car wont have a shift interlock then, or an ignition switch that isn't operated by a screwdriver😂

With most things on the Lexus now sorted my focus will shift back to the W140. I'll see if I can get most of the front suspension apart tomorrow so I know exactly what to order.

[Schaefft]

Work on the W140 has begun and disassembly of the front suspension started two weeks ago. I'll try to make some progress on that this weekend (without snapping off rusty bolts left and right) while also attempting to reinstall the steering column in the Caprice, hopefully the last puzzle piece for it to pass the MOT.

Naturally having several projects going on at the some time wasn't enough though...

I received a strange message on Ebay (where Im still advertising the silver E38 as breaker) about a week ago asking me whether I was buying BMW 728i... I replied yes, although Im only really interested in these cars for under a bag depending on equipment levels. While theres always money to be made theres usually not enough to justify the effort for me, the breaker was a huge exception last year. I asked for more info and got the worst photos of a car I've ever seen (below is by far the best). They were just about good enough to tell that it was not a complete rot box and the seller confirmed the original exhaust (and hopefully 700 quid worth of cats) to be present:

850 quid later and I now own my 4th BMW E38 728i in less than two years...

Its dark so I haven't seen the car in daylight yet. However, underneath the layer of filth there actually seems to be a fairly solid car!

Interior looks much cleaner in the photos than it is. Nothing seems trashed though, not that there isn't any trash around:

Recouping some of my expenses already:

Complete BMW toolkit, too:

I'm currently seeing all kinds of electrical issues, from ABS to engine failsafe messages, central locking to brake lights. Look closely and the engine is still running with the key removed from the ignition...

It's likely for most of them to be down to a failing battery though. I have the LKQ/ECP receipt here, its only 2 years old but probably drained when the car was off the road for months (can I claim warranty without my name on the receipt?). Leaving the venting plugs in despite the huge warning label on top should give you an idea what type of owner this car has had before:

A short test drive revealed a fairly soft brake pedal and clunking coming from the suspension. I'll see if I can get a better picture by the weekend. The intent with this one is actually cleaning it up, fixing what needs to be fixed and returning it back to the road for a new owner to enjoy for years to come. We'll see if it has the potential for that to happen!

Bonus Cadillac/Senator photo. Definitely don't see these two together very often:

[hairnet]

'hello is that the council - theres two barges taking up the street like......'

[fatharris]

I honestly thought the days of sub-£1k E38s was long, long gone. Well bought, hopefully it cleans up nicely!

[Schaefft]

Just now, fatharris said:

I honestly thought the days of sub-£1k E38s was long, long gone. Well bought, hopefully it cleans up nicely!

So did I, this one hasn't had an mot in 11 months and will need money spending. If you know what you are doing this can be a great entry into E38 ownership for someone though. Remains to be seen if it is making sense financially for me, I already have my 60k ulez refugee. The comparison between the two helps diagnosing with the less obvious issues at least.

1 hour ago, hairnet said:

'hello is that the council - theres two barges taking up the street like......'

If it was only 2😂

[Schaefft]

I've had a chance to have a closer look at the new arrival BMW E38 over the last few days. Looking at the service history its always been a Swindon car, at least until 2013 when the last owner bought it, brining it closer to Newport in Wales. The back window still displays a sticker from the Haskins garage the car was serviced at for a few years:

The replacement battery didn't cure the electrical gremlins but it was clear that a central electric component must have been the cause for the large variety of issues I was seeing. Turns out the connectors to the chassis control module had water in them!

Letting them dry out and some contact cleaner should sort those issues. All electric gizmos inside the car are actually working perfectly fine aside from an ABS light coming on above 20mph, most likely a sensor as usual, and the PDC, also most likely a sensor (which I should still have plenty of lying around) and a very easy fix.

The exterior needs a clean pretty badly, the clearcoat of the bonnet has suffered from what was most likely bird shit sitting on it for ages. It should polish up nicely however, I think especially the facelift 7-Series are a smart looking car:

All tires are shot, I might put the wheels of my ULEZ refugee on this as Im planning to put the M-Parallels of the silver breaker on mine.

The interior looks much cleaner in the photos than it is. Its hard to tell but carpets and dashtops are actually a very dark green (appropriately named Englischgrün) matching the Oxford green exterior, and oyster (Pearlbeige) for seats, headliner and lower dash, a little brighter and more special than the typical sand beige. Its a very classy color combo, I really like it. There's been coins all over, no clue why people can't even be bothered to remove their money from cars they are selling. 

That means that my investment has slightly decreased to 1247.72GBP, only for me to notice that original rad has sprung a hairpin leak, and somehow one of the boot struts broke off when I tried to close the lid... So those will need replacing as well now. I wish I still had my breaker... It will need some suspension work as well, however, the engine and gearbox function flawlessly which is always good news.

In other news, the Caprice now has a steering column again! In hindsight I have to say that removal and install couldn't have been much easier, its literally 5 bolts inside the car, one in the engine bay holding it to the lower column. Everything else was just removed to gain accessibility. With the steering lock sorted this only leaves one fail item on the MOT sheet, which was a non-functional rear foglight. Fingers crossed that and the dusty brakes are a straight forward fix.

Update on the Mercedes tomorrow, the last parts order arrived today.

[Schaefft]

As mentioned the Merc has received more attention today. The original reason for changing the front suspension was one of the bushes on the passenger lower control arm literally melting due to the excessive power steering leak the car had when I bought it years ago. While the powersteering pump has long since been rebuilt the control arm was definitely making itself known over bumps.

So up it goes:

Since many of the components in the wheel wells really needed some going over anyway (actually not because they were worn out, most of the stuff actually still felt excellent at 112k miles) the 30 years of age haven't gone past unnoticed as especially the driver side showed quite a bit of corrosion on everything:

I also wanted to replace the sticky front caliper so things quickly escalated and literally the entire front suspension and brakes (minus one caliper) are getting replaced now...

Surprisingly most things came apart relatively easily thanks to the torch and balljoint remover I bought just for this job. The balljoints were actually replaced only last year yet the boots are already completely shredded (opened a warranty claim but didnt have a chance to get them off for months now). If anyone knows why a set of Lemförder balljoints would deteriorate this quickly please let me know, its not like they can get installed incorrectly?

Since there was no chance of the brakehose coming off the to-be replaced caliper I just cut it off. Unfortunatly Mercedes also decided to completely overengineer the bracket holding the hose to the hardline, and everything was corroded into place. Turns out this section of hardline must have gotten replaced before, it didn't help with getting the hose off however so the GOAT tool that the Dremel is had to safe the day yet again:

I will remove the bushes from the lower control arms over the next few days (still have the bushing removal tool from the rear arms, without it the whole ordeal was one of the worst jobs I've ever done on a car) and will start to paint them and the knuckles. The swaybar and brackets will receive some paint as well. I'll take a page from Mr. @juular extensive research done here to hopefully come up with a long lasting solution (not that this car will ever see any salt again).

The subframe actually is the biggest job waiting. Its not in as bad shape as it might look, interestingly enough the surface rust is heavily concentrated in the completely exposed areas, yet barely existent at all where covers or dirt protected it. I will probably take it out and sandblast the hell out of it one day when I have a lift, for now I just try to do the best I can with a drill wirebrush though.

A crumbling drive naturally is the perfect spot to do a project like this.

Thats it for now. Have a nice Asda sunset pic of the Lexus:

[Schaefft]

Quick update before the next post gets too long again...

Ordered everything for the E38 rescue car, already replaced cam and rear pdc sensors and replaced the rear boot strut (turns out it was a cheap replacement that just broke off when I tried to close the bootlid, what a surprise). I'll hopefully be able to drop the replacement radiator (badly needed as you can see below) and power steering reservoir back into the car this weekend, then it'll just need an oil change and the precharge DSC pump to pass an MOT. Proper photos of the progress end of the week.

I'll be in Germany again in about two weeks time. That means the A6 will be prepared to be sold as it's hard to justify keeping it around despite being an excellent allround practical car. Its a little sad but it's just not quite special enough to take up space compared to everything else I own atm. That also means the black Lincoln Mark VIII will return to the UK, it'll be my ride back.

On top of that I just viewed the '87 Cadillac DeVille I posted in the ebay tat thread before. The pictures below are absolutely flattering it, it's a straight car but it's filthy and needs almost everything to be in somewhat decent shape again. A friend in Germany is interested in it, not sure if that's still the case after seeing those photos.It would easily cost over a grand just to get it shipped over to him. Great parts car for someone who owns one though. And you gotta love a blue interior.

[Schaefft]

I've mentioned work having started on the E38 earlier.

Before that it was finally time to have a proper look inside the car though. I think half of the fun buying cars on the rougher side is the automotive archaeology that usually happens right after they arrive. Not only is it fun to find random goodies, removing the trash and vacuuming the car is also one of those stages where improvements are the most visible and satisfying for me (and millions of other people if you believe youtube).

This E38 was no different as you can tell:

The balance of change found inside the car has now risen to £2.80 and Im sure there's more to be found once I remove the back seat. The amount of random trash and receipts from the last decade etc. could be worse but yeah, just clean after youtself at least once in a while...

The interior has held up very well aside from the typical E38 headliner sag, it needs a good clean but compared to the previous Oxford green 728i this one needs pretty much no repairs at all. A few pics of the state after removing the large bits of junk, as always the photos make things look cleaner than they are:

The floor mats definitely needed a decent vacuum, the wet vac once again came in extremely handy getting what must have been 3 tons of dirt out of them. I'll do the carpet in the car when the rest of the interior receives some attention eventually:

After. Stains are completely gone, any discoloration is really just the camera picking up the fibres pointing one way or another.

Quick clean underneath the boot floor:

Removing fan clutches is always a joyful experience, an adjustable wrench ground down to fit inside the handle bar of my halfords jack did the trick in the end:

Also cleaned the engine bay. The powersteering reservoir which leaks in pretty much every single BMW on Earth was left to do its thing for decades considering how black the alternator was (literally pure black, worse than in the photo below). Also flushed out tons of garbage that sat between radiator and AC condenser after removing the former.

Much better:

The C-pillar trim someone ripped off in the most idiotic fashion possible is cleaned and back in its place, had to glue a snapped plastic mount. These are usually not hard to remove at all...

Unfortunately the rear seat has stains from something that actually affected the dye of the leather. Im hoping to be able to use my beige leather dye I still have left from years ago to sort these, nothing else seems to work so far:

As mentioned earlier, I'll try to reassemble everything in the engine bay this Saturday. That should conclude the first round of repairs. Financially I should be about 150 quid into it so far, fingers crossed there wont be any big surprises and I can actually get a little bit of money out of this in the end. If anything, any time I've spent on this car so far has proven that its a completely unmolested example, that alone is worth quite a bit already. But it also means that I've now gotta work through all the typical E38 issues, not that I haven't had much experience with this yet...

[Schaefft]

So somehow a friend of mine is still interested in the Cadillac I viewed above despite the transport to Germany being several times the purchase price.

The seller says the car was never registered here despite a GB sticker on the back. No plates either. Is there a way to check whether a car had been imported and registered in the UK based on the VIN alone? The lack of registration documents would be a much bigger issue there than here.

[LightBulbFun]

7 hours ago, Schaefft said:

So somehow a friend of mine is still interested in the Cadillac I viewed above despite the transport to Germany being several times the purchase price.

The seller says the car was never registered here despite a GB sticker on the back. No plates either. Is there a way to check whether a car had been imported and registered in the UK based on the VIN alone? The lack of registration documents would be a much bigger issue there than here.

*walks past whistling nonchalantly to oneself*

[Rocket88]

On 12/24/2022 at 5:08 PM, Schaefft said:

Might be a strange question but has anyone ever ordered from the German autodoc website? I wanna order there as prices are generally a bit cheaper. I'm worried that things might arrive after I need to leave here though. I can send them to a UK address but might have to pay UK vat on everything again because it's not officially their UK page...

I have… bits for a Peugeot 205 and a Rover 75. Good prices, no dramas

[Schaefft]

2 hours ago, Rocket88 said:

I have… bits for a Peugeot 205 and a Rover 75. Good prices, no dramas

I actually order from them regularly. In many cases ordering on the German site is quite a bit cheaper (while having greater selection), the question is whether this would result in VAT payable once the parcel arrives. Obviously that's not the case when you order via the UK site.

[Schaefft]

The A6 is now up for sale in Germany. After doing a bit of browsing it appears that it has now increased in value so much that I have most likely had the car entirely for free, even considering the cost of insurance and tax of the past 15 months. Best of all it meant that it kept all my other cars (ignoring the GS300) off the salty roads, preventing hundreds (if not thousands...) of pounds worth of corrosion damage long-term. It'll make the 1250km journey home this weekend, but not before it once again proved to be an extremely useful workhorse that I will certainly miss:

The gearbox in the back wasn't scrap, it just didnt leave the car since New Year when I brought it over. That changed last weekend, due to no suitable engine crane I had to get a little creative (it all worked out in the end)...

Hopefully I can pull the ivory Mark VIII into the drive once the W140 suspension rebuild has been dealt with so the gearbox can go in. This was removed from my very first Mark VIII all the way back in 2012.

Naturally the car was a mess so it was returned to a presentable state before taking photos for the ad. Most people already fail at that basic step when selling a car...

Sick stripe action:

Work on the flip E38 has continued, the new radiator and powersteering reservoir went in just fine so it is leak free now. The new DSC precharge pump also go rid of the ABS light which means the car is now error free and actually drives really well.

It seems like my 60k mile ULEZ refugee E38 quickly got jealous and destroyed its intake temp sensor. Fortunately the sensor is cheap from BMW and relatively easy to replace, the air intake and thottle body will need to come off:

Not sure how much oil inside the intake is normal, since Im planning to replace the CCV system relatively soon anyway Im not too worried about it. I'm hoping that it was also the cause for the car running fairly rich, it was severely overreading the intake temp though, you'd normally expect to run too lean, wouldn't you?

Replacing the temp sensor was too easy so the crank position sensor also decided to die. Turns out the aftermarket Delphi sensor someone threw on it didnt like the heat of the engine anymore, causing it to fail once warmed up. Crank and cam position sensors are extremely common failure points on these engines (and always recommended to be bought straight at the dealer, no matter what, including original suppliers selling for cheaper on ebay). Now I at least know that these failures are mostly age related and have little to do with how many miles a car has done as I would have expected the sensor to last at least twice as long based on mileage alone.

The delphi sensor above probably only lasted a few thousand miles. Unfortunately the sensor from BMW just cost me 158 quid, discount included, and I'll still have to replace it myself...

[Schaefft]

Well, it took about 30 minutes after arriving at home before the first viewer of the A6 showed up and bought the car. Not before doing almost 1500 trouble free km (Newcastle to Harwich, then ferry, then hook of Holland to home). Unfortunately the future of the car doesn't look too bright as the buyer was not only a loud and proud tattooed Neonazi, he also downed 2 flask-sized bottles of Schnaps just in the time it took to do the test drive and sales contract. You certainly meet some interesting people dealing with these types of cars... Made a healthy profit in the end, I guess I can thank inflation for that one. Farewell A6, you've been everything a shiter could have wished for😂

[Schaefft]

Well, with the A6 gone the black Lincoln Mark VIII is back in daily use for a little while, at least until I pick up the GS300 again. The car runs well despite having stood for the entirety of winter, a few minor things to sort however and it badly needs a clean inside and out.

In other news, the ULEZ refugee E38 passed its MOT on Thursday and finally received it's M Paras with brand new Michelins. Still one of the best BMW wheel designs full stop.

In other other news, there has been a new purchase... A car I have regularly announced to own someday, in exactly the spec I always wanted but never expected to find, hence very much a curiously timed impulse buy (chatted to another owner about them at the NEC only hours before).

I'm starting to get the feeling the ebay seller actually does not want to sell it however as I haven't received any response to my messages since pressing that buy now button a day ago. This better not be a repeat of my ebay Cadillac purchase a while ago that never happened in the end because sellers apparently can just do whatever they want on ebay anyway...

[mercedade]

Just wanted to give more than a passing like for a cracking thread. Nothing to add, I've just loved reading it.

[Missy Charm]

Have also enjoyed reading about your various exploits!  Did you ever get to the bottom of the problem with the Lexus headlights?  I had a similar issue with my car which was caused by the bulbs, of all things.  Replacing them fixed it entirely.

[Schaefft]

Thanks everyone, glad the thread provides some entertainment to others as well.😄

2 hours ago, Missy Charm said:

Have also enjoyed reading about your various exploits!  Did you ever get to the bottom of the problem with the Lexus headlights?  I had a similar issue with my car which was caused by the bulbs, of all things.  Replacing them fixed it entirely.

Not yet, I'll probably just order a set of bulbs to see if they make any difference. So far I've ruled them out since swapping sides didn't result in the problem moving with the bulb. The Lexus dealer tech mentioned that the behavior indicates a failing bulb, at the same time xenon ballast are known to fail at age as well. I might just switch around the bulbs again to confirm my first suspicions.

Still no response from the ebay seller btw...

[jmsguzzi]

7 looks great with the M Parras, they look better on the E38 than E39 imo. Is it a V8 or S6?

[Schaefft]

6 hours ago, jmsguzzi said:

7 looks great with the M Parras, they look better on the E38 than E39 imo. Is it a V8 or S6?

I have them on both my E39 and the E38 now. Both of them are the 2.8 single vanos, the E39 has a manual, the E38 the usual auto. I still think the M60 4.0 V8 is the best engine you can get in the 7-Series, no chance I'll find one with 60k miles for even close to what I paid for mine though, especially not rust free.

[Schaefft]

Great news! The seller of my latest purchase has finally replied to my messages... Turns out he somehow didn't realize that I bought the car... Apparently he had so many messages from people that mine must have gotten lost in his inbox. This is only natural for the fine example of an automobile that I have purchased...

Of course the car doesn't have an MOT, or would make it far in its current condition so no collection caper for this one unfortunately. Just getting a few quotes for transport now, it should hopefully be here by mid next week. Feel free to go ahead and have a guess!

That doesn't mean that I'll be bored until then. The blue E38 received its replacement wheel locks today which means that the green flip E38 got the wheel bolts back that I had to borrow. I've also replaced the side trim for both front seats on the former, these are pretty much always broken, I think I've only seen a single E38/E39 so far where they weren't.

Hardly the most exciting progress (especially as the difference isn't as obvious in the pictures) but another piece in the puzzle towards having a car that looks its low mileage. I've cleaned everything I wouldn't normally be able to reach while at it. It will need a detail inside and out as well, I've ordered a steam cleaner today that should speed things up considerably hopefully.

The green E38 is booked in for its MOT on Saturday now, fingers crossed things go smoothly and its finally back on the road (and ready to be sold soon).