outrageous bodges on used BMWs

Philip wrote: anyone bought a used a Beemer only to find out its suffered some appalling bodgered repairs? don't be shy guys,

never bought one ...but sold shed loads of them .

Shame isnt it, how people get hold of lovely cars and abuse them.

No excuse with the old 5 series, must be one of the cheapest "expensive" cars to own.

hearts choose 3 s

real peaple choose 5s

strange but true

[/QUOTE] 3 series for those in the know

               5 series for those who REALLY know

 I have seen some dreadful, dreadful, dreadful things. On all kinds of car, including BMWs. Perpetrated by people with various shortfalls in the brain and scruple departments.

Bodywork repairs that just make you want to weep when you look closely.

Tools left under the bonnet.

Cars with intergalactic mileages that people are trying to pass off as something else.

Cars with simple faults that the vendor has spent as much time trying to hide as it would have taken to fix. For example I once went to look at a car where the oil pressure warning light never came on. The sender wire had been unplugged. This was clearly deliberate, as the wire had been taped back afterwards. Judging from the oil weeping out, the sender was faulty, and probably showed low pressure at tickover. When inspected carefully, the car had almost certainly travelled about three times further than claimed. The vendor was just a stupid unscrupulous lying thieving git, and sadly there are lots of them about.

I've walked away from more used cars than I care to recall, simply because the vendor couldn't be trusted, although the car concerned might have looked OK. Even so I've made some mistakes.

In many ways I would far rather buy an honest to goodness shed than I would someone else's lash-up. 

And yes, five series mechanicals (especially those with the M30 engine) are very strong and reliable- they really can take a lot of use, and a good E34 is about as cheap now as it is ever likely to be.

cheers

dm328sport wrote: Enough of my ramblings. I don't  trust a single garage out there that's all I have left to say...

i agree to certian extent ....and yes ive seen so many many bad techs out there .but theres a short few that go that extra mile to perform there job correctly and thus allowing some motoring public the fact that they "do" care so pass on the benifits of taking care of the customers car .....but how many abuse the cars as they are in for a service????????

answer ========== an exterme many iam afraid

My very first BM I bought 12 years ago-an E30 325i-had a cute bodge. The head must have been taken off previously and, when refitted, had somehow managed to have the small heater water elbow bolted to the rear of the head fitted the wrong way round.

Having just refitted the head, they must have noticed that a) the water elbow was now pointing to the other side of the engine bay and wouldn't mate with the heater inlet hose and, b) to refit the elbow correctly would entail removing the head again.

So they improvised by fitting an additional small hose to the water elbow that doubled back to the heater inlet hose, and joined them up with a nice shiny chrome socket from a socket set and some jubilee clips which were not done up properly.

Of course, when I 'made progress' at 6500rpm, the pressure in the cooling system increased and popped the loose hose off the baby-bottom smooth socket and started spewing coolant everywhere in a cloud of steam.

At the time I was coming home from work with my boss at night and overtaking a Ford Sierra (when did you last see one?) at maximum smoke-literally in the next instant, when flashing dash lights came on and a huge fog bank appeared behind me. Luckily, we were near a Little Chef car park and I did a bodge repair and scrounged some water from a local good samaritan and fortunately there was no damage to either head or gasket.

Laugh? My boss did, as did the Sierra driver-I did gain a spare socket for my toolkit though!