[Charlie D.]

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I would like to introduce myself and my car. I am 66 years old and never dreamed I’d ever own a BMW. Circumstances resulted in my trading an older 4-door Impala to my granddaughter for this car. My son had bought it for her a couple years ago. I was going to sell it because I did not think I would fit in it. I am 5’9” and 270 lbs. It has the manual sport seats and I love the front extension. Anyway, much to my surprise, I am able to sit in it quite comfortably. It has a little over 200k miles and has the M Sports Package and AC.

I have had it for a month but have not driven it yet. It was across Tulsa from my house and I have not driven a stick shift for 30 years or so. I did not want to relearn on a freeway so my son drove it over for me. He said it was pulling to the left. I strung a string between the rear tires and the front and ball parked the toe in/out. The right tire was toed in a little less than an 1/8 inch. The left one was toed out a little over ½ inch. The tie rod was frozen up and could not be adjusted. After I took it off and put it in a vice grip I got after it with a 14” pipe wrench and it still would not turn. I have gotten a couple of new ones to put on it.

Both of the front windows were out of the regulators and would not roll up or down. Using the excellent information on this forum I was able to get them fixed. Over 1/3 of the posts that had been glued to the panels broke off when I removed them to get to the regulators. I glued them back on. I got a very quick chance to see how the glue worked by having to take one of them back off because I had forgotten to hook the speaker wires up.

The wheels had a wheel lock on each of them. Of course I would not even be mentioning this if a key had been in the car. I ordered a couple of those left hand threaded sockets but they could not get a start on the locks. After researching this site as well as some others I went and bought a cheap 13/16 12-point socket. With the use of a 4-lb sledge I was able to drive the socket unto the locks enough to get a bite and impact wrenched them out.

I had heard the car running and had started it up a couple of times myself. It had quite a bit of noise coming from the engine compartment. A few people listened to it and we decided it must be one or both of the tension pulleys. I took the serpentine belts off and the two pulleys seamed to be OK. For the heck of it I spun the AC and accessory pulleys. The alternator had a pretty loud grinding noise which may the bearing? I took the Valeo alternator to a local shop and they are seeing if it can be rebuilt. I am thinking it could have been the largest contributor to the under-hood noise. The exhaust is pretty noisy also. A friend who owns a BMW said it could be the baffles in the muffler?

The car sat the better part of this past summer because the fan would not work. It has an electric fan. We had loaned my granddaughter the Impala to drive. While under the car tinkering with the serpentine belts I saw a three wire harness hanging loose. It plugged into the wiring going to the fan so I feel that is why the fan did not work.

Just the past few days I experienced a knowledge growth with the brakes on the car. I had ordered up some brake rotors from Amazon to do a brake job. I had filtered the search to a 1998 BMW 318ti and several vented rotors showed up that were supposed to fit it. Since it has solid rotors on it I decided that I wanted to upgrade to the vented ones. When I got them in they were too wide for the calipers. I referred to RealOEM.com and they showed a parts blow-up of two different type rotors. The narrow ones were for 318ti’s up to 4/98. Per the information that someone on this site had provided me based upon the VIN number, this car was manufactured in 2/98. It ends up that Amazon was not wrong with the application if the car had been built later. I have reordered solid rotors.

My granddaughter’s boyfriend had a wreck in the car and damaged the right rear quarter panel. The plan is to take another semester at Tulsa Tech to do body work on the car and paint the repaired area. I have taken several semesters out there and have been working on painting my ’55 Studebaker.

And finally the last known problem area is the amplified antenna base has been broken. The 6-disk CD player works but the am/fm just buzzes.

I certainly wish that I could have come on the forum and said I had just purchased a perfect BMW 318ti. I have been very impressed with this forum site and have used the search button several times. I will definitely need to be the question asker and not the answer giver for a long time. My wife and I plan to use the car as a backup to our main vehicle. I desire to get it up to the point of being a reliable set of wheels.

Charlie D.