I thought you had a miata too?
I thought you had a miata too?
In reply to docwyte :
I did. We decided to downsize not too long ago. I sold my Miata and my wife sold her Challenger. Not counting my work car, we're now down to just three cars- 128i, Mazda 3 Turbo and my wife's Mazda 6 (at one point a year or two ago, we were up to 6). Honestly, it was one of the best things I've done in a long time. After selling them, all I felt was relief.
My wife hardly ever drove her Challenger. She would literally just leave it parked in the garage for months without even starting it. She'll likely end up taking some of the money she recouped from selling the Challenger, sell her Mazda and pick up a new Jeep of some kind- she's been eye-balling a new Jeep Gladiator pretty hard these days.
I've been tired of maintaining and modifying so many cars after the last few years. I considered selling the 128i and keeping the ND Miata, but I gave it a lot of thought:
-I was shocked to find out that in the mountains/canyons, the BMW was the more confidence inspiring, fun to drive car.
-I drive the BMW year round, even in light snow (it's actually a good time in light snow, I'm curious to see the improvements with a LSD!). I don't think I would drive a Miata year round- my history shows that roadsters of mine stay parked in the winter.
-Being an older car, I'm more likely to take the BMW anywhere due to having no fears of scratches, blemishes, etc.
-The ND, while somewhat big for it's size, is still a very small car. I fit better in the BMW.
-I don't want two project cars. I've done that in the past and all it did was add stress and drain my wallet.
-If I ever want to go back to tracking a car, the BMW just makes more sense- it's got an oil cooler, baffled oil pan, upgraded cooling system, track pads, wider wheels and sticky tires, I don't need to figure out how to pass a broomstick test, etc.
Overall, if I was just going to keep one "sports car", the BMW just made a lot more sense. Even though I've been complaining about modding cars for the past couple of years, I figured I would give it one last hurrah and give the BMW just a bit more of the sports car treatment. Hence the LSD and shorter gears, along with the reduction in body roll that I'll likely address in the future. Although I'm not sure if I'll bother to invest in real coilovers. We'll see how I feel after the sway bars and solid rear subframe bushings go in. At that point, I might just leave the performance aspect alone and just do some occasional work on the aesthetics... although the A/C just went out recently... and the battery is on it's way out... so, just basic repairs in the near future. The good news about having less cars is plenty of money to blow on BMW maintenance. I think I'm just learning to accept it at this point.
Makes sense, I'm much the same. One project car is enough for me and even with only one I don't drive it as much as I want to.
My first car "rebadging":
It's the 128 they shoulda' made!
EDIT: I'm not sure what the future holds, but I know one thing: no matter how well they drive, this will be the last old German car I ever own. Never again.
So in retrospect, would you have kept the ND over the 128?
In reply to tyronejk :
No, the ND is a wonderful car, but it's a bit on the tight side for my frame.
What I probably should have done is just kept my S2000 and drove it more often. Although I tried that for the last couple years I owned it, I was only driving it 500-700 miles a year. Probably didn't help that I commute in my work car and was jugging 3-4 other cars into the rotation... and my S2000 was a collector grade laguna blue car. One of these years, I might get another one, but if that ever happens, it would likely be a higher mileage version that I wouldn't be afraid of actually using like a car.
Went to have the new Michelin tires mounted today:
So far, initial impressions: MUCH improved. I'll hold off until I get some more seat time, but as of right now, well, going forward, I'll just spend the extra money and get Michelins. Continentals are just too soft for my tastes. I'll drive them around for a bit and give further feedback over the next month or two.
So, I told the gentlemen at the tire shop to make sure to stagger them correctly. Then it hit me: did I ever check to make sure the wheels were staggered correctly? Or did I just assume the former owner had it right? You know where this is headed...
I got home and broke out the tape measure... the tape measure suggested three of the wheels are 7" wide and only one of them is 7.5" wide... ut-oh... at this point, I could literally punch the previous owner in the face for all the things I've fixed that he screwed up.
I pulled all four wheels to double check, which is something I'm ashamed to admit, I should have done 2.5 years ago:
^^^Sure enough, the car has three 7.0" wheels and one 7.5" wheel. I can bet dimes to dollars that I know exactly what happened: when the car got into the accident (right rear side), I bet you he just grabbed the first matching wheel he could find and completely ignored the width. So, the whole time the car has been on the OEM wheel setup, one of the rear wheels was the wrong size. *sigh*
It looks like it's back to eBay for me. This car is literally draining any love for cars I had left. If I could have only gone back 2.5 years ago... and looking at OHSCrifle's thread, it seems it doesn't matter if the car was clean to begin with. These car just weren't made to last, intentionally.
I've found that after cursing about any of my BMW's if I go out and drive them hard, it all fades away.
Did I mention my wife's N55 powered X3 is probably going to get its 3rd engine? I had a belt failure years ago and after getting low oil pressure warnings(only when I drove it...hard) I pulled the pan looking for scraps. No scraps, they had already been pulled into the oil pickup and were acting as a pre-filter! That was over a year ago but it looks like the oil is a little too sparkly and I'm having Vanos and valvetronic problems.
In reply to jgrewe :
Yeah, that seems to be the pattern. I drove the car back and forth to the tire shop today and was thoroughly enjoying it. I came back, found out about the mismatched wheels and went straight back to being pissed off. It's a shame that the 128i is better to drive on the street than the last BRZ I drove, otherwise, I think the BRZ/GR86 is likely the better option, long-term. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of cars in this segment: RWD, similar sized, available manual transmission and relatively modern-ish. I had considered a Cayman, but the last time I drove a 987.2 base, I wasn't terribly impressed and it had a few issues that made me think I would be back in the same boat again, except this time with a car that was mid-engined and harder to work on.
3rd engine?!? Brother, you may want to consider letting that one go. Too many design flaws. Are you planning on selling it once the motor is replaced? Or are you going to soldier on?
In reply to roninsoldier83 :
I'll decide after I drive it,lol. My wife is actually enjoying driving our E39 Touring that was my son's first car. It has been the "Life Boat" when we need an extra car and I'd take the thing on any length road trip over any of my other cars.
That's honestly pretty funny about the wheel that it took you so long to realize. I'd be more annoyed at BMW for sending a car out with a measly 1/2" width stagger, what a PITA to deal with over so little.
Even my old E28 will cause me enough grief some days I have just had it, those are usually the day somebody will walk up excited to see the car and ask a bunch of questions and I just want to watch it burn to the ground lol.
But most days are good, and when it is on a track it is glorious.
In reply to jgrewe :
I suppose that's fair. I'm curious, how long have you had the E39 and how has the maintenance/reliability been on it?
In reply to adam525i :
I felt like an idiot for not checking the wheel stagger for so long! I guess I figured that I've taken the car to have tires mounted a couple of times and knowing they're staggered, I assumed someone would have at least mentioned something to me. You know what they say about assuming!
I think part of the frustration is that every time I want to do anything on this car it requires searching through a plethora of BMW-specific tasks that I'm not familiar with. It also doesn't help that I've been working on something related to this car every week since the end of August when I pulled that diff out of the junkyard. It's burning me out. And when I replace the wrong-sized wheel, I still have to figure out why the A/C stopped working. I suspect it might be the evaporator, which would mean either a very long job, or forking over a large sum of cash.
To try and be fair and figure out the car's actual running costs, I went through a list of everything I've purchased over the past 2.5 years and removed all performance modifications and everything related to the accident that the previous owner decided to ignore.
I've had the 528iTouring for 4 years. The only major job that I've had to do was the cooling pipes under the intake manifold. The car has 177K miles on it, I've replaced a couple coils and the AFM recently. I put some Koni Special Active shocks on it last year thinking that was the problem that was causing some rear end vibrations. It turns out the Tourings eat the stock rear subframe bushings, they are different than the sedan. I have a set of those to install in the next week or so. The Meyle units solve the low life span problem of the stock ones.
Wow, a 1/2" stagger, wtf was BMW thinking? I mean, why would they even bother? Just make all the wheels 7.5 or 7" wide. Sorry man, what a PITA for you to deal with. You've gotta be fair to yourself, there's no way you can see a 1/2" difference in wheel width.
roninsoldier83 said:
It looks like it's back to eBay for me. This car is literally draining any love for cars I had left. If I could have only gone back 2.5 years ago... and looking at OHSCrifle's thread, it seems it doesn't matter if the car was clean to begin with. These car just weren't made to last, intentionally.
Another day, another thousand dollars. It's like a boat.
I always look at RockAuto for recon wheels but they only seem to sell the 7" version of yours 🫠....
So what size tires did you buy?
In reply to docwyte :
I agree about the whopping 1/2" stagger. The only thing I can think of:
-The base cars have square wheels if I'm not mistaken. They also don't have a rear sway bar.
-The sport package cars (like mine) come with a fairly small rear sway bar (12mm) and staggered wheels. My only guess is the slight stagger was meant to keep the balance of the base car by adding slightly more rear mechanical grip.
I ordered a 7.5" wheel off of eBay for a couple hundred bucks. I don't know why I didn't check this years ago. I suppose I just assumed that since the car appeared to be stock, with stock wheels and OEM-sized staggered tires, that surely the wheels must be stock? I really only checked the other day because the kids working at the tire shop looked pretty young and I wanted to make sure the correct tires were put on the correct wheels. I agree, there's no way to see the difference of a 1/2" in width with the naked eye. But knowing all the things the previous owner half-assed, I probably should have check this a while back. I'm now curious to see if the car feels any different with the correct sized wheels lol.
In reply to OHSCrifle :
You know, when I put together that list of maintenance items, looking back, the only things that have gone wrong since I bought the car has been the recent battery issue (which, I only drive the car on the weekend, I'm sure that doesn't help) and the A/C recently dying again. Most everything else was just deferred maintenance from the previous owner. Don't get me wrong, I've spent a small fortune on this car, but most of it was in deferred maintenance, fixing things from the accident, replacing missing items and of course, modifications.
I unfortunately purchased OEM-sized staggered tires: 205/50R17 & 225/45R17. Otherwise, I would have just purchased another set of [lighter than stock] square wheels.
roninsoldier83 said:In reply to OHSCrifle :
You know, when I put together that list of maintenance items, looking back, the only things that have gone wrong since I bought the car has been the recent battery issue (which, I only drive the car on the weekend, I'm sure that doesn't help) and the A/C recently dying again. Most everything else was just deferred maintenance from the previous owner. Don't get me wrong, I've spent a small fortune on this car, but most of it was in deferred maintenance, fixing things from the accident, replacing missing items and of course, modifications.
I unfortunately purchased OEM-sized staggered tires: 205/50R17 & 225/45R17. Otherwise, I would have just purchased another set of [lighter than stock] square wheels.
Mine has been really really good since I got the baseline/deferred stuff taken care of. Was I annoyed that the VCG and OFHG were leaky when the car was advertised "leak fee"? Yes, definitely. But I'm the fool who elected to do a fly and drive without a PPI - basically hoping for a terrific outcome and an epic story - instead of behaving rationally. Stupid tax defined.
The upgrades were voluntary and costly, not in the least because I paid Alex to do several things that I elected to have completed correctly the first time and with a warranty.. or items that just needed a lift to perform. Somebody should definitely buy it.
In reply to OHSCrifle :
Honestly, while I don't think the OFHG was that bad (technically, I didn't have a leak, but I did upgrade the housing when I swapped over to the oil cooler), the VCG looks like an absolute pain in the neck.
I expect engine-related gaskets to leak. BMW isn't alone in that regard. Although what annoys me with this generation of BMW is that the engine leaks - at least two of them (the valve cover and oil pan) - are such an involved, complicated process! If you're not doing the work yourself, these cars will bankrupt you. And if you are doing the work yourself, it's enough to make you want to throw wrenches across the garage!
Completely unrelated to anything involving my 128i... a good friend talked me into going to drifting school yesterday... I've never been terribly interested in drifting as a motorsport, but man, it was a blast!
Replacement 17x7.5" rear wheel acquired via eBay.
Tire shop offered to swap over the tire onto the correct wheel for free. I didn't ask them to- it's my fault, I really should have checked this myself, years ago. Probably just a nice gesture of good faith based on them not checking the stagger of the wheels to begin with. Either way, it's appreciated.
My thoughts on the new Michelin tires:
I spent a couple hours driving the 128iS around today, including on several back roads. Dammit. This car is very good to drive.
It was slightly damp and rainy out today. No need for A/C. It's really just a barrel of monkeys fun to pitch around with reckless abandon. Not fast, but just quick enough to put a smile on your face. It feels more like a hot-hatch, but in RWD form... which, technically in Europe, that's exactly what it is.
Every time I'm agitated and ready to sell this POS, I take it out for a spin and all is forgiven. It's just one of the best cars I've ever owned. It's really too bad I bought a previously wrecked version with high miles lol. Despite how much it's cost me and how much I know it's going to continue to cost me, it's hard to think of getting rid of it. Dammit.
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