Most of my weekend has been consumed with working on Freya. The number of things that could be fixed seems to be endless, but we’re making progress.

On Friday, I finished resoldering the connections on the dash and put everything back in its place. Success! Everything on the dash works as it should now, and there’s even a few nifty features I didn’t know about that started working too. For instance, if I leave the lights on and open the door to leave, not only does it ding at me, but the dash politely asks, “Lights On?”

Also put in the new stereo (a Blaupukt Montreal CD34). I was originally going to for a higher end stereo and bypass the factory amp to drive the speakers directly. Unfortunately, the factory sound system is quite a bit more complicated than I thought it would be. It’s a 10 speaker system and the crossovers are in the factory amp. In order to do a decent job of replacing all that I’d have to spend more than I want to at this point, so I just decided to run the new stereo through the factory amp. The sound I got as a result is good, but could definitely be better. The high frequency response is superb because it’s got some great tweeters, midrange is good, but the bass is somewhat lacking. There’s also a constant low-level hiss from the amp, and because of the strange wiring (common ground is messed up!) I get some interference noise from the electronics in the stereo itself. That said, I really am overly picky about the quality of my sound, it will be good enough for now. Maybe next summer I’ll put in some new speakers, redo the wiring, and add a sub.

On Saturday, my dad finished up the replacement of the water pump, and we took it out for a test drive. We watched the temperature gauge very closely for the first mile or so and everything looked fine, so we relaxed a little. Thankfully the dash was paying better attention than we were when about a half mile later, the engine got extremely hot. “COOLENT TEMPERATURE,” the dash screamed at us! I immediately shut the engine off and pulled over to the side of the road. There was likely a bubble in the system or something, we forgot to check the levels after we took it off the stand it was on. My dad went off to our church (which luckily was only about a quarter mile away) and I stayed with the car. A little while after my dad left, a sheriff’s patrol came up behind me with its lights flashing. My first instinct was to pull over, but I already was, so I just sat there. Really, I expected him to want to help, you know, make sure everything was okay. But he was fairly gruff and questioned me about what was going on, had I sent for help, when was the help coming back. etc. Then he took my driver’s license and went back to his car and spent enough time there that I’m sure he ran my tags and license. After he came back, he was much nicer and told me he’d tell dispatch that everything was okay and to try and get it off the road soon. Later, I figured out why he acted the way he did at first. Imagine if you were the patrol officer and saw a scruffy looking college student with a grease stained shirt sitting alone in a very nice looking BMW that’s over on the side of the road with its hazard lights on. As you get closer, you can see that the shifter box has been torn apart (more on that later), the back seat has been ripped out (that’s how you get to the battery on bimmers), and there are parts strewn throughout the vehicle. I’m sure he thought that I tried to hotwire the car or something! It’s a good thing my name is on the title or else things could have gotten interesting very fast.

Here’s some of the other repairs I completed:

Redid the shifter indicators with a silver metallic sharpie. You’d be amazed how much better it looks now, just like it was brand new again.

Created a replacement shifter cover (bottom of the page) from a $2 Walmart notebook cover. Once again, looks fantastic. Even better than what they originally put on there.

Also put some sewing machine oil on the shifter shaft. The problems with it sticking occasionally seem to have gone away after doing that.

Fixed a broken doorlock bracket. This was a truly evil beast to work on. Trying to move things around inside a door is not fun. Unfortunately, during the process, I scraped up the door handle. :-( But, after we finished everything, the driver’s power lock works now! No more locking it by opening the rear door and reaching from behind! However, both rear power locks still do not work. Maybe some other day…

Right now, I’m prepping MusicBox, so that when the new mounting bracket my cousin is making for me is ready, I’ll be able to put it in. A/C is still not working, we’re thinking either a new clutch is needed or the compressor has burned out. Also, there’s an annoying Pentosin leak in the connection to the ABS accumulator that needs to get fixed.

I’m learning a lot more about the insides of a BMW than I ever thought I would.