Monday, November 14, 2011

1997 BMW 328iS

Vehicle number two, the bimmer. I sold the Jeep during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college. Since I wasn't allowed a car as a freshman, it didn't bother me that I couldn't drive long distances in the Jeep, but since I would now have to drive to school and back often, around 100 miles one way, I needed something a little more reliable. So I bought a BMW.

I found it in the Auto-RV, it was a salvage car and only cost $3700…..for a BMW! That wasn't that bad a price for a 9 year old car! So I bought it, had to replace the hood, front fender, grill, radiator support, headlights, front corner lights, fog lights, and a bunch of other small things, and it was good to go! I ended up selling my Jeep for around $7300, so I made out pretty good on it!

Man I loved that car. It was sooo fast! And surprisingly economic, it usually got between 25-30mpg, depending on how I drove it. But it did have its fair share of problems over the years, everything from replacing the same rear wheel bearing twice, to the water pump exploding and shredding the fan and belt, leaving me stranded in the middle of nowhere during the middle of a very cold night. Actually, it has left me stranded more times than all of the other vehicles combined that I have owned……but I still loved it! I remember shortly after I got it fixed, I drove down King road out in the country and thought "lets see what shes made of"…..before I knew it, I was doing 130mph. I know that these cars have a limiter of 155mph, I bet it would have done every bit of that, but I got too scared and had to slow down. It was night afterall…..

Oh and the sound that it made! Sounded like a Ferrari or something. I loved the sound of that engine, it sounded so clean and in tune. Most other engines sound clumsy and unbalanced. It was so torquey too. It had a lot of low rpm power, you could go from 60 to 80 in no time without even downshifting. What a great little car!

Specs: It had a 2.8L straight 6, around 190hp(new), automatic trans, leather, 6 disc cd player (that didn't work), AC (that wasn't very cold), I didn't do too many modifications, most of the money I spent on it went to repairs like drilled/slotted brakes, shocks, engine parts, suspension parts, ect. I did make an intake for it out of PVC pipe and an Autozone cone filter with a custom heat shield and air scoop coming from one of the brake ducts…..but other than that I didn't really do any modifications to the car. I bought a few different types of wheels for it over the years though…..I like wheels haha. And this was another car that I loved to keep clean! I was in the car wash what seemed like once a week, and waxed it regularly.

Anyway, I had it for a few years, from 2006 to 2010, I ended up trading it on another Jeep Wrangler, which turned out to be a huge mistake because the bimmer was right where I liked it, (almost) everything was fixed on it, and I really liked how it looked and drove. Oh well, you live and you learn.


Here it is shortly after I got it fixed and road ready!
 After the first set of wheels.



 This was a regular occurance…..underneath it fixing something. Actually I think I was putting the air scoop on that ran up to the air filter.
 Shortly before I sold it :(

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