Educate me please, Motors....

andyp said:
Another consideration is that it will be hardly doing any miles. For some perspective, I'll be struggling to get 2,000 miles on the Mondeo this year. I live five minutes from work so walk it there and back every day. If I go into town I'll catch the bus, it's ten minutes away, free for me and I'd rather use someone else's fuel sat idling in traffic than mine. I take the girlfriend to work a few times a week, a few shopping trips and that's all I do for 'necessary' miles. Every other mile I do except for those are miles for driving's sake. Be it a blast over the pennines or out up through the dales, they are the miles I own a car for. I won't be relying on it for anything but to put a smile on my face when I take it out for a drive. Most of the time it'll be sat on the drive, getting cleaned once or twice a week.

I realise it has the potential to, and will, throw up some big bills. If the one I've seen turns out to be as good as it could be, will the experience of owning and driving it offset the occasional dent in the wallet?
Click to expand...

Only you can answer the last point.

The only thing I'll add is that the price per mile, which many people average over tens of thousands of miles over years is really focussed in your case. If you're not driving it often or far, the cost of any repairs will seem so much more.
 
It has the Sport bodykit and the facelift lights :)

That's what initially caught my eye, it certainly doesn't look like an R plate E39.

One of the things I'll be looking for in the supposed mountain of history it has with it is the suspension, if the previous owner has been as fastidious and obsessive about it as the garage owner claims, it may have been done in the last few years.

Anything else in particular I should be keeping an eye out for?
 
Probably, I guess this is where one really has to rely on how thorough the testing of one's car has been. Low mile use vehicles like this always worry me, and it was one of the reasons I moved back away from diesel - the engine could never heat up properly on the commute I had.

2,000 miles a year makes me worry. That's less than 3 miles a day - can it ever warn up properly? Drive it every other day - 5 miles a day - can it warm up?

I made the move from diesel to petrol when my annual mileage dropped to around 15,000 a year.

At 2,000 miles a year, personally I'd be seriously considering whether I really needed a car or not.
 
I guess it depends on his usage. It doesnt sound like he does 3 miles a day, it sounds like do does no miles a day and then occasionally a proper trip?
 
The_Abyss said:
Only you can answer the last point.

The only thing I'll add is that the price per mile, which many people average over tens of thousands of miles over years is really focussed in your case. If you're not driving it often or far, the cost of any repairs will seem so much more.
Click to expand...

This is a fair point, and one I realised when my Mondeo threw up a couple of hundred quid's worth of work at MOT time earlier in the year.

However, I'm the kind of person who likes things to work, and be in correct working order, regardless of (reasonable) cost and effort. If something doesn't work, or works incorrectly, I want it sorting out and back to how it should be.

It strikes me that I'd be less worried spending money on a rather decent, if old BMW than a newer, but less 'special' Mondeo.

Price per mile can't really be applied in this case, for the reasons you state. It's more an acceptance that there will be bills, and being willing to take it for the ownership of a good car.
 
[TW]Fox;17834437 said:
Got a link to the advert?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately there isn't one. It's only just arrived on the forecourt of a small place just up the road from me. Not sure if he's even got a website. He tends to have mid- to large saloons/estates in stock, and occasionally gets something a bit different in.

A fair few guys at work have bought from there before and none have had any negative experiences, they've all been decent, solid cars and I really doubt the owner is your typical tat merchant.

I'll be asking if I can take a few pictures tomorrow when I go look at it.
 
Without a link its hard to be more specific but if its got genuine facelift lights and a genuine Sport bodykit its quite a find given you'd get a great deal of your money back just breaking it on Ebay! So check they are genuine - the lights should be genuine Hella ones, anything else is just cheap junk.

Plenty to go wrong with these that'll write a £1500 car off - Autobox is £1500+ to repair, DSC Hydro unit is over a grand, cooling system failure is common and £500 to replace the lot (If you dont you end up replacing it in bits, false economy) etc. Tyres for 17's are £450ish a set for non crap tyres, 18's are £550-£600 for non crap tyres.

When you drive it make sure there is no 'shimmy' through the wheel. If there is, it's either poor wheel balance or worn upper or lower thrust control arm bushings. Replacing all the arms will cost a fortune, so if the dealer insists its balance make him fix it before you buy it. Vibration under braking can be control arms as well if it isnt warped discs.

Make sure it idles smoothly and cleaning without problems. Worn VANOS oil seals can cause idling problems on the M52 engine. It will have an M52 not an M52TU on a 98-R plate. This means it could potentially have a NIKASIL affected engine. Engines with a NIKASIL bore lining were badly affected by UK fuel and eventually fail. Most were replaced by BMW under warranty but despite what people say some still exist and they can still fail at any time. Check it's had a replacement engine at some point in its life.

Check for rust - hot points are rear tailgate and inside the fuel filler cap.

Make sure the climate control works properly.
 
[TW]Fox;17834455 said:
I guess it depends on his usage. It doesnt sound like he does 3 miles a day, it sounds like do does no miles a day and then occasionally a proper trip?
Click to expand...

This ^^

It may sit there for days on end, then go out for a good long drive on a Sunday or if I have a day off in the week. Even when I do the mundane, necessary stuff, like taking the girlfriend to work I'll come back the long way round to make sure it gets time to warm up properly, and for the shopping trips I use a supermarket right across the other side of town for the same reasons, and take the longer way across the bypasses instead of stop-starting through town traffic.

People try to convince me regularly I don't need a car... and they're right, I don't.

I want a car, and one that will make me grin when I fire it up ready for a blast across the moors and respond how I like a car to respond when I want it to. I work hard to earn decent enough money and my car is my little bit of selfish fun that I can lose myself in, be it driving it or spending a few hours a week cleaning.
 
[TW]Fox;17834524 said:
Without a link its hard to be more specific but if its got genuine facelift lights and a genuine Sport bodykit its quite a find given you'd get a great deal of your money back just breaking it on Ebay! So check they are genuine - the lights should be genuine Hella ones, anything else is just cheap junk.

Plenty to go wrong with these that'll write a £1500 car off - Autobox is £1500+ to repair, DSC Hydro unit is over a grand, cooling system failure is common and £500 to replace the lot (If you dont you end up replacing it in bits, false economy) etc. Tyres for 17's are £450ish a set for non crap tyres, 18's are £550-£600 for non crap tyres.

When you drive it make sure there is no 'shimmy' through the wheel. If there is, it's either poor wheel balance or worn upper or lower thrust control arm bushings. Replacing all the arms will cost a fortune, so if the dealer insists its balance make him fix it before you buy it. Vibration under braking can be control arms as well if it isnt warped discs.

Make sure it idles smoothly and cleaning without problems. Worn VANOS oil seals can cause idling problems on the M52 engine. It will have an M52 not an M52TU on a 98-R plate. This means it could potentially have a NIKASIL affected engine. Engines with a NIKASIL bore lining were badly affected by UK fuel and eventually fail. Most were replaced by BMW under warranty but despite what people say some still exist and they can still fail at any time. Check it's had a replacement engine at some point in its life.

Check for rust - hot points are rear tailgate and inside the fuel filler cap.

Make sure the climate control works properly.
Click to expand...

Thank you, I'll get these on the list of things that I'll be looking for tomorrow apart from the usual stuff. Cooling system, VANOS issues and suspension bits are the main priority I think. It was fired up from cold when I had my quick look-see earlier today and it settled into what seemed to be a very smooth and linear idle straight away. I'll be looking for the receipts for the facelift stuff and the bodykit too.

The exterior seemed, in what little light I had earlier, to be pristine. Same for the interior. Hopefully we'll have some sun and proper daylight tomorrow so I can get a really good gander at it close up but either way I'll be borrowing one the high powered LED torches from work so I can see into all the spaces daylight won't show up and have a look underneath it too.
 
The_Abyss said:
I can't cope with that BMW interior without a proper separate nav / computer display.
Click to expand...

thats my thoughts on BMW dashboards on this era car.

I hate em. Lots of tiny little buttons, not much in the way of dials or knobs because its all done by little buttons, and all the screens are tiny.

That and i find the black / white instruments incredibly boring too.

The newer BMWs with i drive i find much more pleasant, but i'm not a fan of the old layouts.
 
That opinion suprises me given the size of the screen and the sheer number of buttons in the interior of the S60...

volvorinterior.jpg


I count similar amounts of buttons, if not even more, on the dashboard of that S60 as I do on the dashboard of my E39? Loving particularly the plastic radio knob style control for the climate :D

I've even been kind and found a top of the range R with nice leather for the photo, doubt yours is quite as appealing as that :p
 
heh, just found it odd you'd put up with the S60 if thats how you felt :D

It is a button fest but then so many cars in that price range are :) It's still a great place to be provided it's not super shabby.
 
Not for 1500 quid no!

The 528 was the equivalent of the 530 in the range. The 530 replaced it when the car was facelifted in October 2000.
 
In its day, the 528i was a blinding car.

Here is what Autocar had to say about it:

http://www.autocar.co.uk/CarReviews/RoadTestsHistory/BMW-5-Series-528i-SE/200076/

Experience of this engine in the 3-series led us to expect more from the 528i than these average outputs would intimate. In the end, even we were somewhat shocked when the numbers began tumbling from the timing gear. It is difficult to say which of the 528i’s blinding acceleration tests is the most impressive; they are all outstanding in an already talented class.

If it isn’t the 6.8sec 0-60mph sprint or the 6.5sec 30-70mph time, the fact that it requires just 18.0sec to reach the ton is perhaps the best illustration of how quick this car really is; an Escort Cosworth is but a single tenth faster, yet not even this icon of performance can match the 528i’s 142mph maximum. As for the Jaguar, Mercedes, Lexus GS 300 and Audi 2.8: they are just not in the same hunt.

German executive cars all too often fail to cope with the intricacies of British road surfaces, but the new Five is above such a narrow approach. More important, this is a car that remains in a league above its competitors for pure response and driver involvement: it possesses the most complete saloon chassis we’ve ever tested.
Click to expand...

This is a rare car indeed. Yet with hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised by the brilliance of the new 5-series. BMW has been doing things so right for so long it was almost inevitable that one day it would come up with a near-perfect car.
Click to expand...

<3 E39
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom