"CaptDale - is secretly British" (captdale)
03/18/2015 at 06:30 • Filed to: E30, BMW, failure, terrible, fun, omg
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"CaptDale - is secretly British" (captdale)
03/18/2015 at 06:30 • Filed to: E30, BMW, failure, terrible, fun, omg | 0
| 0 |
The worst car I owned was a 1984 BMW 318i. Now before you rage about me hating on an E30, let me explain. I was shifting through the SF Bay Area CL ads one night while going to school one night and saw an add for a white '84 BMW 318i $500. I was happy. It could be a fun car that I could turn into a lemons racer or clean up and do some light auto-x. Day 1: My friend drives me to find this guy's house way out in the boonies, we take a wrong turn and a back road and end up not finding his place and then on the road we hit a deer. Thankfully his diesel Mercedes was a tank and the only evidence we hit a deer was the blood and some cracked headlight trim. In case you are wondering, we saw the deer fly through the air down the hill bouncing off trees, it was a sight to behold. Day 2: We found out the road split with the same name and took the correct turn. We get there and the car is parked out front. The ivy covered gate is locked and we yell towards the house (the only contact I had was via email, since I found no cell signal out there). The lady inside said the man went to buy dinner he should be back in 30min. That was frustrating since he knew I was coming. Well my friend and I look over the vehicle. Its dirty, the hood paint is cracked and there is moss growing on the rear and trunk. He shows up with his dinner about an hour later, which gave us time to comb over the car's exterior. Then he brings the keys and fires her up, runs fine, but the tires are too low to drive and he doesn't have a compressor. So I tell him I would like to buy it and his asking price is $500. I tell him I have $425 in cash in my pocket. He accepts and I call AAA to come take me to the nearest gas station 10miles away. My tow limit is 7miles and $60 a mile after that... FUCK! He gives the other three to me for free after he sees why we needed gas and air, and his jack to change the one tire that was fast, thank goodness for the full sized spare in the trunk and the jumper cables that were much needed. Though all for tires were very hard and just about slicks.
After fitting the good tire on, filling the tank and jumping her, we headed off back to school. By now me and my friend had been out for many hours and its around 9:30-10:00pm. We have an hour drive back to campus if we hurried. She ran like a champ for at least 20 miles. Then the battery decided it didn't want to deliver power to the headlamps. I pull over and we decide since my tails are working I'd turn off my headlights and follow his car very closely. About ten miles from my school, the dash light get very bright, and viola, the headlights are working again. Fucking 80's electronics, "Ultimate Driving Machine" my ass. Anyway we get off the freeway and my friend in his supped up 80's Corolla starts taking off, and I won't allow that to happen. So we are doing... some MPH down city streets... and I am catching. Probably because he was sorry for the car or scared I'd blow it up. Well we are coming up on a slight curve (now when I say slight curve, you almost don't see it) so I drop a gear, hit 70 and start to pass him. Then it all goes wrong! The tail goes out from under me and I don't correct enough and now I am spinning. The front goes up on the median of rocks and bushes just missing some very sturdy wood posts, then the rear goes up on the median, then the front again. The whole this was a blur, I only remember 3 spins, but my friend says there were more. After that the car grips and I flay in reverse across the street and up over the curb and onto the side walk and a dirt lot that the street ran along. I get out, my hands shaking from adrenaline and excitement. I look around at my car and my friend jumps out of his car and runs over to me to make sure I am all right. "Of course I am, that was a fucking blast!! Holy fucking shit..." I rambled on like that for a while until my adrenaline went down. The whole time I am pulling twigs out of the bottle cap rims. After a minute I get back in and nothing, the car won't crank. Not even turning over, but we were sure that whole ordeal killed the battery. We tried jumping it, but his car battery was smaller than mine. So now its midnight and we have to wake up another friend with a bigger car to try and jump it. While waiting, the cops roll by and stop. They ask us whats going on and suck. We massaged the truth to make it seem more innocent ending up like that. They were just making sure we weren't doing donuts in the dirt, then proceeded to talk about our school and my car an left with a friendly, "Be safe." Finally out other friend showed up in his PJs using at us for being so stupid because after telling him all this he asked, "Why haven't you pushed the car back in the street?" We shrugged, laughed, and help up the jumpers. Though of course the car still would not start and now it was close to 1am. I called AAA again and my friends left to go to bed. I will say, 80's cars lend themselves well to be smoked in. It just makes the right smell with old leather and tobacco. After another half hour the tow truck appears and tows me to my school and we drop the car off in the auto shop parking lot and I walk to my dorm and pass or for my class now in in 4 hours.... yeah.
Well that was part 1 of my series on the most unreliable E30.