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octothorpeBack in the long, long ago; in the before time, I had a black BMW 325e, dubbed "The Goth Mobile" by my mates at the time. I'm sure you can probably suss out the approximate years of ownership ;-). I loved that car. It had great handling, good HP/torque, and a sunroof (novel at the time). It also had an amazing little trip computer that showed me my average speed, and MPG. It also warned me if the temps went below 36°F, as well when I went above a driver-set speed limit. I loved that car, until things went wrong.
BMW doesn't seem to make anything with a standard part. Even their emergency jacks are proprietary, and woefully difficult to use. They also have horrible electrical systems. That lovely ahead-of-its time trip computer? Yeah, if you didn't drive the car for a couple of weeks, you had a 50/50 chance of the battery being dead when you went to start it up. They're also *awful* in the snow. Germany has snow! How can they fuck this up?!
Fast forward to today. Bill's aging-but-very-low-milage (well under 30k) white BMW 328i convertible can't keep a battery for more than a year without needing to be replaced. Because of this, he doesn't drive it often. He purchased a trickle charger, but that doesn't seem to help too much. Sometimes the car will start, other times, not so much. Consequently, the air pressure in his tyres is low. I thought, OK, well, I'll jack up the car (I've got a shop jack that makes this super easy), remove the tyre, then get it filled at the station about a mile away — except that I can't get the damned wheel off the axle. Yes, I've removed the bolts ;-) It's been on there so long, the wheel is seised to the axle. I don't want to put WD40 on it, as that's a bad idea for MANY reasons (near the brakes, bolt threads, etc). Fuck it. We'll drive it to the station with low air pressure and hope for the best.
Grrr.
More later.
BMW doesn't seem to make anything with a standard part. Even their emergency jacks are proprietary, and woefully difficult to use. They also have horrible electrical systems. That lovely ahead-of-its time trip computer? Yeah, if you didn't drive the car for a couple of weeks, you had a 50/50 chance of the battery being dead when you went to start it up. They're also *awful* in the snow. Germany has snow! How can they fuck this up?!
Fast forward to today. Bill's aging-but-very-low-milage (well under 30k) white BMW 328i convertible can't keep a battery for more than a year without needing to be replaced. Because of this, he doesn't drive it often. He purchased a trickle charger, but that doesn't seem to help too much. Sometimes the car will start, other times, not so much. Consequently, the air pressure in his tyres is low. I thought, OK, well, I'll jack up the car (I've got a shop jack that makes this super easy), remove the tyre, then get it filled at the station about a mile away — except that I can't get the damned wheel off the axle. Yes, I've removed the bolts ;-) It's been on there so long, the wheel is seised to the axle. I don't want to put WD40 on it, as that's a bad idea for MANY reasons (near the brakes, bolt threads, etc). Fuck it. We'll drive it to the station with low air pressure and hope for the best.
Grrr.
More later.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-07 07:35 pm (UTC)