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+1 regarding the sentiments of a neglected car vs a poorly repaired car. I've had both, and as long as the neglect hasn't festered into a bigger problem it's simply maintenance. Poorly repaired? Good luck with the can of worms you'll discover.
Good to see it running right. Keep it safe on the public roads.
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Quick update— got the car aligned and it drives soooo much better! The front toe was off by nearly a whole degree, jeez. I'm glad I didn't keep driving it like that, I would have burned through those new tires in a heartbeat.
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Got the car registered today, nothing out of the ordinary other than the fact that Arizona no longer issues real plates upon registration... so now I've got to wait a few weeks for the actual plates to show up in the mail and run with a paper tag in the meantime. I know plenty of other states do that but it was so nice to walk into a MVD office and walk out with real plates back in the day.
Also got my AC recharged, turns out one of the valves at the fill ports was loose and leaking some refrigerant out, hence why the AC wasn't 100%. It's excellent now, makes me uncomfortably cold and I'm loving it.
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Nice! Nothing like having cold AC.
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:thumbsup
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While I wait on more parts to show up, I've been keeping myself busy by tackling some small things.
First was swapping in a good used clutch fan from my friend's 330i (he converted to an electric fan). My fan clutch was completely dead, it spun freely no matter what and didn't seem to move much air, regardless of whether the engine was hot or cold. Looking at the date codes on it, it was original from 2002, nice. I eventually plan to convert to the manual electric fan, hence why I didn't buy a brand new fan clutch.
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Next up was replacing the radio bracket with a better condition bracket I scored at the junkyard. The original bracket had all of the mounting points broken off, so the radio and HVAC panel were free to pop up during aggressive driving. Everything fits so much better with an intact bracket, who would've known?!
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(Wood trim grommets are on their way now)
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To round out the activities for the day, I gave the car a wash and spray wax to make it look a little nicer. As much as I hate the chrome wheels, they do clean up quite nicely, especially when paired with some tire shine.
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At my friend's house, catching the last glimpses of daylight.
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There's more in store soon! I've got an AutohausAZ order coming with cooling system parts and other ends, and am about to place an order for the front brakes which have gotten to be quite dreadful.
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With the coolant exiting the car in a slightly excessive manner, I figured it was time to tackle the cooling system. I pulled everything apart and found a mix of old stuff and newer stuff— the water pump was from the last decade, the thermostat was from 2016, and the rest seemed to be original. Lots of cruddy plastic that fell apart when I touched it... good thing I planned on replacing everything.
Here's the pile of old parts. If you look closely you can see the transmission thermostat completely fell apart when I removed it.
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Here's the much shinier pile of new parts:
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During the job, I noticed that the thermostat mating area had some surface corrosion, so I put on a little bit of RTV to help things seal better.
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Oh and I threw in some new hood struts, because new ones were cheap on Amazon and I was getting tired of using a stick to prop up the hood.
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All of the new cooling system components went in rather easily, it was super anti-climactic actually. In the case of a cooling system refresh, that's a good thing. After pressure testing the system to make sure it sealed up properly, I filled it, bled it, and it's been great. The first few times I drove the car I monitored the coolant temps on the super-secret cluster display to make sure the thermostat worked properly, no problems there.
With the Achilles heel of this engine sorted out, I moved onto some minor but oh-so-satisfying repairs. The first one was replacing the grommets that hold the wood trim into the dashboard— nobody ever seems to replace these, for some reason! With the new grommets in place, the wood trim sits very securely and makes my car look significantly less like a hooptie.
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The second minor repair was replacing the inner part of the tail light on the driver's side. The turn signal kept not working intermittently and the amount of duct tape + glue on the assembly hinted at some previous hackery, so I just replaced the assembly. Surprisingly, you can still find these new from BMW for an almost-reasonable $40. Coming from the E34 land of deeply NLA parts and price gouging, it's a pleasant surprise to be able to buy so many things new for an E46.
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No more turn signal issues, woo. Rolled over 136,000 miles the other day, hopefully many more to go. I leave you all with this picture my friend took a week ago on a nighttime mountain road run:
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Good progress here, glad to hear the cooling system is fresh now. Did you replace the headlamp lenses ? They look very nice on recent pics.
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That before/after pic of the cooling system parts is surprisingly sexual
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Wow, good stuff. Love shiny new parts!
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