Greetings from Kentucky, USA!
I've browsed through this forum on several occasions, but never took the time to join. Honestly I'm a bit fed up with the various Facebook groups and what not and needed a good old fashioned forum once again (I used to be very active on Bimmerforums.com back in the day). Seems like a great group of folks here!
Anyway ... the car: A 2003 (12/2002 build) 2.5i with a manual gearbox. Mostly standard apart from a set of aftermarket wheels (due to some bent ones it had), a Garagistic weighted gear knob, 3.0 sound generator and some small cosmetic bits.
Bought in the midst of the pandemic in very early 2021, with a completely shredded clutch. Dragged it home with my dad's Saab (Subaru) 9-2X after realizing what little clutch there was wouldn't actually make it up the incline from the seller's house and it was too late to wait on a tow with the car now in the road ... fun 6 or 7 mile adventure there!
From there it got a new clutch, and then once it was able to move many other things including a full cooling system refresh, entire front suspension, a set of low mileage factory struts and springs to replace the "maxpeedingrods" that it had, a pair of seats, new headlights, many gaskets, etc. It had a 151,000 miles on the clock then and it was ready for adventure ... and boy did we adventure.
It now sits at almost 186,000 miles, it has been from top to bottom of the eastern/midwest USA, taken me to work on countless occasion, and provided my now 9 year old daughter an opportunity to experience and fall in love with open top motoring!
Just this last week, it received a "new" gearbox since the old one never was happy to be downshifted to 2nd (thanks to the many careless owners before me who had seemingly no sense of mechanical sympathy as evidenced by the many broken things I inherited). The gearbox unfortunately was a 22-spline unit out of a 325Ci so the car once again received a new LuK clutch (The old one had so little wear that I can still read the part number on the face of the friction material, so that's a shame that it had to be replaced), an entire suite of shifter bushings, new guibo, etc.
It's a little leaky still (looks to be a front crankshaft seal again (maybe bad CVV is the cause), and all the plastics have perished inside it from being almost 22 years old and out in the sun more than it isn't, but it still puts a smile on my face every time I get in it.
I look forward to being here and sharing stories, tips and tricks and adventures with this group! Cheers!
I've browsed through this forum on several occasions, but never took the time to join. Honestly I'm a bit fed up with the various Facebook groups and what not and needed a good old fashioned forum once again (I used to be very active on Bimmerforums.com back in the day). Seems like a great group of folks here!
Anyway ... the car: A 2003 (12/2002 build) 2.5i with a manual gearbox. Mostly standard apart from a set of aftermarket wheels (due to some bent ones it had), a Garagistic weighted gear knob, 3.0 sound generator and some small cosmetic bits.
Bought in the midst of the pandemic in very early 2021, with a completely shredded clutch. Dragged it home with my dad's Saab (Subaru) 9-2X after realizing what little clutch there was wouldn't actually make it up the incline from the seller's house and it was too late to wait on a tow with the car now in the road ... fun 6 or 7 mile adventure there!
From there it got a new clutch, and then once it was able to move many other things including a full cooling system refresh, entire front suspension, a set of low mileage factory struts and springs to replace the "maxpeedingrods" that it had, a pair of seats, new headlights, many gaskets, etc. It had a 151,000 miles on the clock then and it was ready for adventure ... and boy did we adventure.
It now sits at almost 186,000 miles, it has been from top to bottom of the eastern/midwest USA, taken me to work on countless occasion, and provided my now 9 year old daughter an opportunity to experience and fall in love with open top motoring!
Just this last week, it received a "new" gearbox since the old one never was happy to be downshifted to 2nd (thanks to the many careless owners before me who had seemingly no sense of mechanical sympathy as evidenced by the many broken things I inherited). The gearbox unfortunately was a 22-spline unit out of a 325Ci so the car once again received a new LuK clutch (The old one had so little wear that I can still read the part number on the face of the friction material, so that's a shame that it had to be replaced), an entire suite of shifter bushings, new guibo, etc.
It's a little leaky still (looks to be a front crankshaft seal again (maybe bad CVV is the cause), and all the plastics have perished inside it from being almost 22 years old and out in the sun more than it isn't, but it still puts a smile on my face every time I get in it.
I look forward to being here and sharing stories, tips and tricks and adventures with this group! Cheers!
