and now i believe we might be finally done with this one

so, let’s do a tail of the tape here…

…back before halloween i did a slight evasive maneuver on the freeway and a light came on i’ve showed you before:

a $700 repair my warranty wouldn’t cover because it was ATTACHED to the turbo, but not PART of the turbo. said diagnostic to find out it WASN’T covered ran me $150, and the subsequent part i couldn’t figure out how to install over a several months ran me $70, so we were at $220 as of october.

(it should be noted that warm weather aggravated the problem, where as cold weather really subdued it, so i didn’t really sweat it as it was very erratic and uncommon until summer temperatures hit in texas and then, by god, it became a real problem)

so, as mentioned a few entries back i dropped $330 (most of which came from my lovely wife as birthday money) to get the part professionally installed, bringing our total to $550 but NOT bringing darkness to the warning light above, which went off less than a block from the garage. a subsequent “what the ever loving FUCK?!?!” call was placed, and more tests were done, resulting in a part it appeared i could take care of myself still needing to be replaced, so said part was ordered and SUPPOSED to get here thursday for friday but that turned into monday so it was installed by me yesterday. the part was $100, so now we’re at $650.

so yesterday i went to install the part. again, i could find ZERO diy’s on this so i just kinda freestyled it and step two in my makeshift mechanic work proved some simple math:

german plastic + texas heat + six figure odometer = flexi plastic that no longer flexes, it brittle

so while the part that had finally arrived was successfully installed, then THAT shit had to be ordered. the stealership DID have it in stock to the tune of $75. amazon had it for $37 and it could be here today.

guess who won.

so for $687 all appears to finally be well. my car has it’s remarkable pickup back, and it was nice to see the tach hitting 4-5K again. and while that might seem awful close to the original estimate, keep in mind that a lot of aftermarket parts came into play here, and they probably would have been a lot more expensive AND woulda been added to that total (for example, the part originally thought to be the lone problem cost me $70, but was over $150 in their estimate, and then there were the other two from the last couple weeks).

the only thing i’m not sure i trust is the vent hose i put on. yeah, it’s just a hose…but the other two parts were the folks that MAKE the bmw part just not with the bmw name on em (i’ve seen both parts that came off the car and can confirm they both say “pierberg” (the brand i bought) as well as “bmw”) but the hose today was purchased via amazon and feel flemsy by comparison, so i might just take the hickey and get the factory one next month and swap it to play it safe.

hopefully no speeding tickets are in my future!