Other than wearing a set of unfortunate wheels that looked like they came from Pep Boys, the car looked surprisingly good. The Polaris silver paint was in great condition for a car with k miles on it. And I could tell that it was a sport package car due to the black shadow-line trim around the windows.
When I opened up the door, the black leather sport interior looked like a car with 80K on it, not K. I yanked out the old battery, dropped in the freshly-charged one, cleaned the terminals, twisted the key, and the car started almost immediately. The owner was stunned. He dug around in the garage and found a compressor.
We shoveled the car out of the snow drift, inflated the tires, and took it for a test drive. And, as with any car, the check engine light being on could be nearly anything. I pulled the codes and they reported an evaporative leak. I have one of those inexpensive smoke testers basically a paint can that heats up mineral oil that I use to look for vacuum leaks. I replaced the rotted hose, reset the check engine light, and it never came back on.
The car, obviously, needed the rotors and pads replaced after having sat for two years. When that goes bad, it can and did drain the battery in a matter of hours. As I wrote about last month, I just did the front lower control arms. The horsepower M54 engine has just the right amount of power. I can pound out hundreds of miles in it without batting an eyelash. I even fit the front subframe of a in there to bring it to get welded. Most BMWs built since the early s use a lot of plastic in the cooling system.
After a certain number of years, miles, and heat cycles of the engine, the plastic becomes brittle, and one day you hit a bump, the plastic cracks, the car catastrophically loses all its coolant, the engine overheats, and you weep openly in the breakdown lane. However, when I bought this car, I still had my short commute on local roads. Initially I was afraid to drive it further than cheap-towing-distance away, but eventually I said what the hell.
Access was pretty easy once I dropped the sunroof button panel. This has worked out quite well, with good GPS reception even in the middle of nowhere. A lot of people mount the GPS antenna inside the dashboard, but that makes for much worse reception.
After some initial setup, everything worked perfectly. It all worked with my car's stock sound system and the steering wheel controls work just like they always did. Not bad for a 17 year old car! With the audio handled, I started investigating the crashy ride in the rear. Every bump in the road was jarring, and on the highway the rear end felt like it was disconnected. After doing some research, I found that the subframe bushings were to blame, as they are a common wear item with these E39 wagons.
The only way to swap them out without removing the whole rear end was by using a specialized E39 subframe bushing tool. Thankfully I knew an E39 wagon enthusiast that lived a little north of me, so I went over to his house one afternoon and we replaced the subframe bushings with brand new Meyle HD solid bushings. These should last the life of the car, unlike the fluid-filled stock bushings.
With two i tourings, two i sedans, and an ci in the garage, I knew I was in good company. All four bushings looked like this, with date stamps indicating that they were the originals from The wagon rode much better after the subframe bushing replacement. At this point it actually started to feel kinda sporty, now that the rear suspension was securely fastened to the body of the car.
For a while after I retrofitted the facelifted headlights, I was a little annoyed at how dim and yellow the angel eyes were, so I swapped in a set of LED angel eye bulbs. Much better. At some point I also had a wheel specialist come and look at my wheels to check them for straightness since my tire shop said that the front wheels had a bit of a wobble on the balancing machine.
He found that the front wheels were indeed quite bent, but he fixed them up and made them super straight which improved the ride in the front considerably. That's the nice thing about aluminum wheels— it's quite easy to straighten out bends without cracking the wheels. This is how the car looked at this point.
Shinier than ever thanks to some new detailing products from AmmoNYC products. Shortly after that, I took a nice trip up north to a town called Prescott.
The company that I work for owns a really nice cabin up on top of a mountain there, so it made for a great weekend getaway. Having the V8 wagon made going up and down those steep mountain roads a breeze. Torque is lovely. The best part about Prescott is how different it feels from Phoenix, despite only being 1.
It's all foresty and feels like a whole different state. The bright red of the wagon contrasted really nicely against all the green, which made for some great pictures, like this one. On the way home from Prescott the odometer rolled past , miles. I also picked up a Range Rover that same day. Work on the wagon slowed down for a bit while I worked on the Range Rover, and garage space was pretty tight. Eventually I decided to address the suspension on the wagon, which was all sorts of awful.
The steering had an obvious shake past 50mph, braking made the front feel loose, and the ride quality just wasn't good at all. I replaced all of the bushings, ball joints, and control arms in the front suspension, using Lemforder parts.
They cost a small fortune but I wasn't about to cheap out on vital suspension components. As expected, the control arms were original with a date code, and the bushings were cracked and starting to separate— not good.
After torquing down all the new control arms with the car at ride height on ramps, I took it for a test drive. To say that it was a huge improvement was an understatement! No more steering wheel shake, no more shimmying in the front, and the car went in a straight line upon braking. I felt stupid for not doing the suspension job sooner. After I got the new tires mounted, I realized what an idiot I had been for driving around with those nasty old Michelins.
They were good tires when they were new, but mine were 6 years old and rock hard, even at lower tire pressures. My tire shop actually had a lot of trouble removing them because of how stiff they were. So the moral of the story is don't buy super old tires on Craigslist.
The new rear tires made the wagon ride a lot better, it actually started to feel like the luxury car that it once was. Great read so far! So many things to love, the wagon body lines, the wheels, the color I will be following. Pretty awesome that is it 1 in 7! You have me looking at these again.
I had written them off for no manual and bad gas mileage but that's so sharp Great looking car though. I'm just glad somebody out there cares to read my rambling. My girlfriend says I talk too much about my car so I'm redirecting some of that to here, if y'all don't mind. I've always loved the way the E39 wagon looked, the designers did an incredible job of making the lines work with the wagon body style. Funnily enough, BMW never offered these wheels on the wagon, despite them being available on other E38's and E39's at the time.
The engineers claimed that there wasn't enough room in the back to fit staggered wheels, but that's a load of crap because I have 's in the back with zero rubbing.
The rarity is kinda cool but otherwise pretty meaningless. With the mileage that's on it, it's not worth very much anymore in terms of money, haha. I wasn't sure how people would react because it's not a typical racecar build, but I figured it was worth sharing anyways, especially since you don't see too many of these E39 wagons out there.
Hey, if I can influence somebody to make a good bad decision, then my job here is done! The gas mileage isn't great, but it really depends on how you drive it. I will contact the dealer directly to provide reasonable notice if I no longer wish to receive automated calls or texts. Term: 12 months 24 months 36 months 48 months 60 months 72 months 84 months. Monthly Payment:. Your Purchasing Power:. Vehicle Information: BMW i. Your Friend's Information: Name:. Send me a copy. I also wish to be contacted by the dealer about this vehicle.
First Name. Last Name. I do almost exactly 20k miles per year, but it is a matter of what is the better drive. That article, and EVO have credibility, describes the i as acknowledging the big petrol engined BMW's of the past, but not actually being that impressive after the noisy start up, and flags up the d as the one to have. It isn't easy to get a i out on a test drive, they don't tend to have demonstrators.
The question then is whether to have XDrive. My experience with highly 'managed' suspension, both with BMW and Jaguar, is that it goes through tyres like a full English breakfast. What appeals to me about the 5, and I currently run a d day to day, is the wonderful natural balance of the thing. If its snowing, I will use a 4x4. Edited by cardigankid on Thursday 11th July JakeT 4, posts 93 months.
Were it me I'd get a i. The refinement levels are up massively, and it will feel really special. I do 25k per year, and bought myself a d. I thought it would be a good balance of 'old school BMW' after years and years in Petrol ones, and I hated it.
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