JJ0063’s current steed - Life of an impulsive car owner [N47 CHAIN GANG]

[JJ0063]

3 minutes ago, Matty said:

Good luck. How long till you spend your winnings? And what on?

I honestly feel a bit done for the moment! 
 

I took a loan out for the initial BM purchase but it seems silly to have a monthly direct debit unnecessarily so I’ll probably pay that off and stick some cash back in my savings I think. I like to have a couple of grand sat there for emergencies/shit cars I find for sale - I’ll never pass up on something like an E39 if a cheap one comes up 😂

[Matty]

Loved mine. 530i manual. Shouldn't have sold it really. It went to Poland believe it or not.

[Coprolalia]

Seeing the chains being done is super reassuring for my 320d

The fact you paid less than half the price for a car that's the same(ish) model with an auto, but five years older and 100k leggier is galling. More fool me for paying £14k.

They do feel like all the car you would ever need.

[mercedade]

On 03/02/2024 at 17:24, Matty said:

And what on?

I'll take a stab in the dark.

[JJ0063]

So today didn’t go well

Flood under a railway bridge, only way to access where I needed to go… Passat in front of me went straight through so I followed… until my car stopped, right in the middle..

Tried to start again, clunk, hydrolock. Fuck.

RAC don’t come out to flooding apparently 

Told me to call the police, police said they can recover me at a cost as I’m blocking the road but better to contact my insurance if the cars knackered. Car is stuck in park so can’t be towed.

Friend happened to drive past in an old L200, stuck it in 4wd and dragged me backwards out of the water. 
 

Waited fucking ages for RAC who estimated 7:30 this eve as they would recover me now I’m out of the water so I took the airbox off and tried it again, it eventually spluttered into life but sounded awful and died when I revved it. Left it idling for 20 mins pouring steam out the exhaust - white clouds everywhere 😂 

Gave it a few revs and it cleared. Drove very slowly 5 miles home, left it idling on the driveway for half hour without the airbox… touch wood it seems fine somehow!

Been down the road and back, drives smoothly, starts fine, just ordered a new air filter so let’s hope to god it’s ok 😂

[yes oui si]

Faaaaaackin ell. 

[JJ0063]

It sounds absolutely fine, just still white clouds coming out the exhaust so hoping it’ll clear in time - spoke to the chap who did my chain and sent him a video, he reckons it sounds fine and the steam/smoke/white clouds will fingers crossed clear if I keep driving it….

[Arthur Foxhake]

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Was showing my partner's Dad the compilation video of Rufford Ford yesterday.  It's the one where the first fifteen or so vehicles are black BMWs.

Is this a rite of passage for BMW owners that I'm not familiar with?

Seems like you got lucky!

[Dick Cheeseburger]

11 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Was showing my partner's Dad the compilation video of Rufford Ford yesterday.  It's the one where the first fifteen or so vehicles are black BMWs.

Is this a rite of passage for BMW owners that I'm not familiar with?

Seems like you got lucky!

I was about to say the same. If there's no lasting damage to the F31, you've been bloody lucky. My brother hydrolocked his old 2.4d na Hilux years back and it was never quite right again. 

[RoverFolkUs]

Ah man, that would have been tragic but looks like a very lucky escape. 

Enter exhibit A when I wasn't quite so lucky...: 

Best of luck! If it runs ok then hopefully you've escaped it. The fear will be as to whether it's bent a rod ever so slightly, only time will tell on that. But hopefully a few careful drives and the white smoke will clear 

[RoverFolkUs]

1 hour ago, JJ0063 said:

clunk, hydrolock. Fuck.

 

On 03/02/2024 at 17:24, Matty said:

Good luck. How long till you spend your winnings? And what on?

Well that aged like fine wine 🤣🤣

[Matty]

3 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

 

Well that aged like fine wine 🤣🤣

Wait and see. Some folk are lucky mind.

[JJ0063]

4 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

The fear will be as to whether it's bent a rod ever so slightly, only time will tell on that. But hopefully a few careful drives and the white smoke will clear 

Without stating the obvious, apart from it starting to knock, anything else I should be looking out for / listening for?

At the moment like I say it starts as normal, idles fine, I’ve driven it up to 40ish mph and it felt like it did before but I’ve got no airbox on and the MAF disconnected so didn’t want to go hurtling down the road at 60 just yet, have ordered a new Bosch filter on Amazon so I can get that on tomorrow after work and take it on a proper drive.

Currently bar the exhaust, there’s no signs of there ever being an issue…

[RoverFolkUs]

2 minutes ago, JJ0063 said:

Without stating the obvious, apart from it starting to knock, anything else I should be looking out for / listening for?

At the moment like I say it starts as normal, idles fine, I’ve driven it up to 40ish mph and it felt like it did before but I’ve got no airbox on and the MAF disconnected so didn’t want to go hurtling down the road at 60 just yet, have ordered a new Bosch filter on Amazon so I can get that on tomorrow after work and take it on a proper drive.

Currently bar the exhaust, there’s no signs of there ever being an issue…

A bent rod would cause lower compression on the offending cylinder so you might get slightly lumpy running, misfire symptoms, etc. [I'm not trying to panic you here... but...] What sometimes happens is that an engine runs slightly erratically after a hydrolock, they think they just need to drive it a bit to clear everything, only for it to throw a rod a couple of hundred miles down the line due to the stresses on the bent rod

But if it's running smoothly, it's probably absolutely fine. I'd only worry if it seemed a bit lumpy. 

[RoverFolkUs]

On the subject of breakdown cover, police etc.. I completely share your frustration

Contacted the AA who arranged recovery, and then cancelled without saying anything. I phoned them to find out why, they said I didn't have a policy. I most certainly did, but after telling them this they then moved goalposts and said it's classed as an accident as it's not a mechanical fault... Ok... They said to contact the police to have the scene cleared

Called the police and they said it's a matter for my breakdown cover unless it's a high risk situation where they may need to close the road. It hardly was, so they weren't interested. 

Called up breakdown again who then told me to contact my insurance company (!) 

They said that they would arrange recovery from the scene of the "accident" within 24 hours, if it needs moving sooner then I need to contact the police... they would charge £360 to remove the car which I could then claim back from my insurance... Right.. £360 to move a car 2 miles down the road? They can fuck off 🤣 

I got pretty fed up of being chucked from pillar to post, by the time I had finished liaising with them all, the flood water had subsided so a kind bystander helped me push it out the way and my only choice was to walk up to a nearby garage who kindly lent me some tools so I could pull the plugs out and see if it would go. Obviously not, so I arranged private recovery for a much more reasonable £80

A bit of a ramble, but yes, I completely share your frustration!!

[Jazoli]

58 minutes ago, JJ0063 said:

Without stating the obvious, apart from it starting to knock, anything else I should be looking out for / listening for?

At the moment like I say it starts as normal, idles fine, I’ve driven it up to 40ish mph and it felt like it did before but I’ve got no airbox on and the MAF disconnected so didn’t want to go hurtling down the road at 60 just yet, have ordered a new Bosch filter on Amazon so I can get that on tomorrow after work and take it on a proper drive.

Currently bar the exhaust, there’s no signs of there ever being an issue…

Maybe time for WBAC, there's no way I'd want to keep it personally, have you seen how low the air intakes are on these? You have either been very lucky or not, I wouldn't have gone through that amount of water knowing how low the intake is on these myself though.

[JJ0063]

1 hour ago, RoverFolkUs said:

A bent rod would cause lower compression on the offending cylinder so you might get slightly lumpy running, misfire symptoms, etc. [I'm not trying to panic you here... but...] What sometimes happens is that an engine runs slightly erratically after a hydrolock, they think they just need to drive it a bit to clear everything, only for it to throw a rod a couple of hundred miles down the line due to the stresses on the bent rod

But if it's running smoothly, it's probably absolutely fine. I'd only worry if it seemed a bit lumpy. 

Only time will tell I guess! I’ve just driven 10 miles very carefully as no airbox fitted but again it drove absolutely fine so I’ll get the new filter on tomorrow and try and cover some decent ground to see if anything happens.

 

29 minutes ago, Jazoli said:

Maybe time for WBAC, there's no way I'd want to keep it personally, have you seen how low the air intakes are on these? You have either been very lucky or not, I wouldn't have gone through that amount of water knowing how low the intake is on these myself though.

Ah it doesn’t worry me that much. It’s still a cheap enough car that if I really had to go down the route of sticking another engine in, it’d just mean it’s no longer a cheap car if that makes sense. 
 

I had a lot of time sat in that water today to get my head round that if it was fucked, I’d struggle to get a replacement for what I’d get paid out by insurance, and this is a good enough car that meets my needs that I’d want to keep it so what will be will be 

[Tayne]

I also had an incident in some water in a black BMW touring.

Mine came to a halt (after other cars had gone through) and I gave it one shot at re-starting before bailing out A kind chap in a Land Rover pulled me out and an Autoaid contractor recovered me to the garage.

A drying out an oil change later...

It smoked and ran rough when cold.

Still put another 15k miles on it after that.

[JJ0063]

Just had a reassuring chat with a fella who works with a BMW nut, reckons these usually hold up well to water ingress. Apparently he’s bought a good few flood damaged ones from auctions and every one of them he’s taken the injectors out, intercooler hose off the inlet, airbox off, rocked it to free it off then whizzed over and they’ve all run and been fine

reckons they usually stop steaming after a few miles once the DPF has burnt any water off which has made its way through 

I feel a bit happier now, he was very confident when he said if it’s running and not knocking/missing that he’ll be fine.. we’ll soon find out I guess! 😂

[Matty]

24 minutes ago, JJ0063 said:

Just had a reassuring chat with a fella who works with a BMW nut, reckons these usually hold up well to water ingress. Apparently he’s bought a good few flood damaged ones from auctions and every one of them he’s taken the injectors out, intercooler hose off the inlet, airbox off, rocked it to free it off then whizzed over and they’ve all run and been fine

reckons they usually stop steaming after a few miles once the DPF has burnt any water off which has made its way through 

I feel a bit happier now, he was very confident when he said if it’s running and not knocking/missing that he’ll be fine.. we’ll soon find out I guess! 😂

Shit luck bud, and it's not going to stop the worrying, but it works as it stands. Just cart on and see what happens 

[Matty]

As an aside, why are modern cars so poorly designed? Why the need to place the cold air intake so low given what could happen? Obviously the design of the bodywork is going to limit  the area where an incoming flow of air is available, but to place it in such a vulnerable area in wet conditions seems like poor design to me.

[JJ0063]

New filter in, have driven 30 odd miles… steam has cleared and it drives/boosts fine, had it up to 70mph no drama.. hoping for the best!

[RoverFolkUs]

Yep I think if it's fine, it's fine! You've just had a lucky escape 

[mercedade]

Jesus Christ that's some lucky outcome. 

[loserone]

On 18/02/2024 at 22:44, Matty said:

As an aside, why are modern cars so poorly designed? Why the need to place the cold air intake so low given what could happen? Obviously the design of the bodywork is going to limit  the area where an incoming flow of air is available, but to place it in such a vulnerable area in wet conditions seems like poor design to me.

I think the idea is that BMWs are performance machines with efficient engine performance as a priority.  So a low down air intake to get cooler intake temperatures is important.  

 

You could reroute it / disconnect the flow before going through water 

[JJ0063]

6 minutes ago, loserone said:

You could reroute it / disconnect the flow before going through water 

Might just put a snorkel through the wing after this scare tbh

[Matty]

5 hours ago, JJ0063 said:

Might just put a snorkel through the wing after this scare tbh

Couple of inch lift as well? 3 series allroad!!

[EspenO]

Yes.

[JJ0063]

Had absolutely naff all interest in the van since I stuck it up for £9750

Knocked it down on Facebook to £9495 and within an hour had a woman from Blackpool message seeming genuinely interested, asked a few questions, offered £9k then another £400 for the number plate and apparently is going to come down on Sunday to collect it. 
 

I’ll believe it when I see it but hopefully that’ll be £9400 in the bank and down to one car again for a bit!