5 Series E39 for 4k possible?

Nothing much to add after Fox's rampage across this thread except to say my old man has a 528i, 230+k miles and its in superb condition (one of the exceptional cars out there Fox referred to)

Somebody will get an absolute bargain when he eventually sells it (I doubt he'd get any more than £1800) given that, I'd have thought £4k will more than do for a nice & useable e39.

You only live once Tom, live in style!
 
lolism said:
Just on the subject of E39's.

How is the 535i V8? Realiable?
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The V8's are heavier engines than the 6 cylinders. This puts a lot of weight over the front of the car which has two main effects - it wears the front suspension quicker than a 6 cylinder and it also makes the car a touch nose heavy. The V8 is also a physically bigger block, so much so that BMW were unable to fit the Rack and Pinnion steering from the 6 cylinder model, instead it has old fashioned recirculating ball steering which robs the car of steering feel.

So they are not as sharp to drive as the 6 pots. The 535i also develops just 14bhp more than the 530i, and as a result, is not noticeably quicker making it a largely pointless car.
 
[TW]Fox;11154669 said:
The V8's are heavier engines than the 6 cylinders. This puts a lot of weight over the front of the car which has two main effects - it wears the front suspension quicker than a 6 cylinder and it also makes the car a touch nose heavy. The V8 is also a physically bigger block, so much so that BMW were unable to fit the Rack and Pinnion steering from the 6 cylinder model, instead it has old fashioned recirculating ball steering which robs the car of steering feel.

So they are not as sharp to drive as the 6 pots. The 535i also develops just 14bhp more than the 530i, and as a result, is not noticeably quicker making it a largely pointless car.
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Thanks Fox, I think i'll give that a miss- I seen a stunning example for £7900 all that needed done was remove the silly ACS Decals.

http://www.bmwacs5.com/

Think i'll just keep my eye out for a 530i then.
 
That car is absolutely stunning - but its been for sale for absolutely ages - perhaps since I was last looking. The owner replaced it with an X5. It's filled with SERIOUSLY expensive parts.

That ACS grille in the front bumper - they are something ridiculous like £300. Been trying to get one for mine for ages :(
 
mjt said:
£3657.32 ;)
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That's not TOO awful because I reckon most cars you end up spending about £1000 on them over 20,000 miles if you look after them rather than drive them in to the ground. So that's like £500 per 10k. So on a normal car maybe you would have spent £1500. You have spent £3500 ish so £1166 just over double. Ok that's quite a lot but 30k is a lot of mileage in 1 year. Fox appears to have spent much less then you but he perhaps only does 5k a year so you would hope that he spent less. Tbh if you run a BMW rather than a Ford/Citroen you kind of have to expect the running costs. Therefore if you want a BMW and do a high mileage it is necessary to consider more carefully whether you can afford it. This is not a criticism of anybody at all but an interesting factor that many of us fail to consider.
 
My figures are over a total of 20k miles matt. I do 5k a year now but ended up doing more in 06/07 - at one point I was working a 90 mile round trip from home.
 
not bad really because that's £875ish per 10k so yes more than a "normal car" but you've had everything done properly and it's a prestige car. A premium worth paying I would say.
 
R124/LA420 said:
Nothing much to add after Fox's rampage across this thread except to say my old man has a 528i, 230+k miles and its in superb condition (one of the exceptional cars out there Fox referred to)

Somebody will get an absolute bargain when he eventually sells it (I doubt he'd get any more than £1800) given that, I'd have thought £4k will more than do for a nice & useable e39.

You only live once Tom, live in style!
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I say live in style too! However, you have to get your priorities sorted because if you run a car that saps up a lot of your cash then you have less money to eat out, drink, holiday and generally do other "stylish" things. I feel my bangernomics are almost spot on and parts/spares costs are practically zero as I have a donor car to raid bits from but the fuel bills are proving expensive on my Honda. It costs almost twice as much to drive 20k per year in it than my Xantia HDI did. :eek: Could really do with that £1000 in my pocket right now. Flip side is I now have leather, cruise and 150bhp which I didn't have before. Plus the HDI had a clutch change and heater matrix change looming when I sold it for £200 less than I paid for it so the change was not all bad news I guess.:D

EDIT Psst this is rich coming from you who sold his 7 Series and bought a Mondeo TD :) Still your thinking is correct. Why drive around in a nasty eurobox when you can have a nice BMW? With you all the way on that one.
 
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Problem is, R124, for every car like your Dads there are 10 which are not. Finding the needle in a haystick is hard enough when looking at 4-5 year old ones, with 8-12 year old cars its even harder.
 
Back to some posts on the first page to clear some things up:

howardcanning said:
No it doesn't.
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I agree with Mr Canning.........

Tom|Nbk said:
The 2.0 offers around 140BHP, where as the ST170 is just a tuned 2.0 engine and fails to make 170BHP a lot of the time. I saw one on an RR only make 154BHP standard..
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It's 130bhp for the 2.0. Some may make 135bhp but not all. If that ST170 was making 154bhp then it needs to get dropped off to Ford to get sorted. The early ECU programs were terrible as Ford took their time in getting the engine to behave correctly. It's a lot more than simply a tuned 2.0.

And thats before we get to the brakes, suspension...........
 
Arc said:
Back to some posts on the first page to clear some things up:



I agree with Mr Canning.........



It's 130bhp for the 2.0. Some may make 135bhp but not all. If that ST170 was making 154bhp then it needs to get dropped off to Ford to get sorted. The early ECU programs were terrible as Ford took their time in getting the engine to behave correctly. It's a lot more than simply a tuned 2.0.

And thats before we get to the brakes, suspension...........
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The engine is a tuned 2.0 with uprated cams etc. No getting away from that.
 
st170 is a 6 speed aswell its a totally different block and everything else i think from the normal zetec blacktop
 
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