oil for one, and one…

although it was actually for two…

…and both were dramatically overdue.

the great wave

quin (all our vehicles have names, and because nik’s x1 has a white exterior, red interior, and black trim, so she named her after harlequin from the batman series) was leaking oil badly. really badly. not quite where it looked like her spy gear was malfunctioning and the oil slick button was stuck, but close. it was interesting – my buddy said the main leak, which i had figured out was the oil pan gasket, was something i could do at home, but due to pain levels of late i decided to drop the dough to have it professionally done, and i’m glad i did. turns out there were two more that needed attention (and got it) and her wheel is now misaligned because of something that “happened when they dropped the sub frame to do the oil pan”. how the hell was i supposed to do that at home? regardless, a few thousand dollars later and all is well except my bank balance!

the great unknown

M (so named because she’s a 435i with the “M Sport” package – current daily driver, also on the header of this bit) didn’t have any sign of an oil leak, but her “oil management system” had an odd issue. when i test drove her, it said she had 600 miles till her next oil change. when i got her away from the dealership i ran a diagnostic and found five check engine codes, one of which was a low battery (which can cause all kinds of electronic gremlins) so i didn’t really sweat all the codes. when i decided to buy her, however, i did insist they do an oil and filter change. when we were leaving dallas i noticed she still showed only 600 miles, and i just figured they didn’t reset the software, so we pulled over and i reset the check engine codes as well as the oil and it read 10,000 miles till next oil change so i thought all was well.

the next morning she said six hundred. she also had two codes (but no light) for the check engine, and both codes were the oil system. i reset them, it allowed me to check the oil (done electronically while she’s running) and it went back to 10,000. but by the time i got back home from work? back to 600.

and so we repeated until i did the first oil change a month or so later (much earlier than needed if they’d done one at the dealership, but i wanted to play it safe). i made note of the odometer, and regardless of what the system said, assuming there were no leaks, we should be good for the 10,000 miles. but resetting was getting annoying, chris (my bmw guru) said it was usually the wires or the sensor, and since it would do a reset and then measure the wiring must be good, just some kind of gremlin in the sensor, so i got a new one ($45) to swap on the next oil change. but when i went to swap it last week i got a major surprise – all three wires to it were obviously chewed thru by some kinda varmint, and so i don’t know where those readings were coming from, but they were nowhere reality based. i spliced all three wires multiple times (there wasn’t a lotta copper left on the harness so it kept coming undone and i finally had to install and then splice one last time) and now it is consistently doing measurements and reading 11,000 miles til the next change and full.

so, hopefully all is well. today we’re doing air filters and trying to finally get black betty (2011 535i i blacked out perfectly) on the mend. got the hood up for the first time since LAST OCTOBER which allowed me to top off her coolant so she can now be safely driven again and we can start to get her engine bay and body right. nobody will realize how big this is for me – i feel if she can finally start to heal, maybe i can, too…