[jggonzalez]

I finally got a chance to have some work done on Trixie. I'm dropping her off at Motorspeed West, a BMW specialist here in , for some work.

First, I have a huge oil leak. It looks like the area around the oil filter housing and the entire bottom of the engine are covered in oil. I think its the oil filter housing, so they're going to change the gasket tomorrow.

Second, I'm going to have them change those plastic cooling connectors on the side of the block and the back of the head. She's at 176K miles and the original parts are still on her, so I'm getting those replaced ASAP.

Finally, she hasn't had a transmission or differential fluid change in about 140K miles. The previous owner was good about having the oil changed every 3-5K miles, but used dinosaur oil and didn't even realize that the transmission and differential fluid need to be changed. I plan on getting the differential rebuilt later this year, so they're just going to use plain Pennzoil synthetic in that, but the transmission is getting filled with Redline. When they rebuild the differential, I'll have them use Redline in that too.

This is going to clean out my mad money, but I figure its a good first step to getting Trixie back in shape. I've already started on the paint chips on the hood. I'm also ordering new fog lights - something was bouncing down the freeway the other night and took one of them out. No bumper damage, but the fog light was busted. I'm replacing them with projector units. I might upgrade to HID headlights next. I saw a conversion kit on eBay for about $50.

My two big repairs after these are done is a new clutch/guibo/center support bearing with a SSK, and a rebuild of the differential to take care of a bad pinion gear.

She's also making a ticking noise when warm that is driving me nuts. She's fine when cold, but after running for a few minutes you start hearing a tick-tick-tick noise from the driver side. I thought it was a bad lifter at first, but you barely hear it from the passenger side, which is where I'd expect to hear it since the valve cover is on that side. I'm going to try to post video clips so forum members can listen to it and give me their opinion. I'll probably do that this weekend.