Bored? you will be soon....
It all started in the usual manner, woke up, had a nice long stretch, got up, had a quick scrub and tootled off to the garage. When I arrive at the garage, they're throwing shabby old motorbikes out of the upstairs windows [1] , so I decide against parking the 540i directly outside. Of course, after 5-10 minutes standing round watching ancient bits of ancient motorcycles get launched towards the street, I decide it's probably a better idea to bugger off elsewhere and do something more interesting. Wander back to the car, start it up, and that f*ckin ABS/TC warning light comes on.. again...
This warning light is the bane of my life, if the weather is nice and I'm in the mood for just trundling about, no light. If I'm in a hurry and the road is damp, there it is, brightly gleaming away as if to say "Oi, k*****ad, nearly 300 bhp, auto box, you're on your own.". I decide to banish it into the silicon valley of death.
Plug in the diagnostic computer, and interrogate the ABS.
"Rear right wheel pulse generator kaput" it reckons. So off I go to the local BMW dealers. Sixty odd quid later I wander back out with the abs sender, and the coolant level sensor that's also been doing my head in, back to the garage.. they're still chucking the bits into the street. So off I go to my mates garage.
Shove the car on the ramp, have a quick peep at the abs sensor, looks easy enough, just one allen bolt, pull the sensor out, unclip the wiring, put new one in, 10 mins.
1 minute into job. "F*CKIN KRAUT PIECE OF **** ******* ***** ******* ***** *****"BMW, in their infinate wisdom, put aluminium suspension, hubs etc on the 5 series.
And they use a steel allen bolt to hold in the abs sensor.
Which snaps.
And you can't get a drill at it easily
and it's hard as Satans bell cheddar.
And my mate needs his ramp back for the 2 o'clock MOT. (which happens to be a Renault Espace I flogged about 9 months ago)
So I have to traipse to another mates garage to use his ramp. His garage is naturally way out of town..
Up goes the car, wheel, caliper, disc off, and the wheelarch liner out just to get some room to get the drill in. Still can't quite shift it, so try Mig welding a nut to the bit of the bolt that's still protruding. Which then snaps off when some pressure is applied. Try heating it up, nope, that ain't working either. A-ha, a smaller drill [2].. manage to get the remains out, clean it all out with a tap, put new sensor in (using alloy allen bolt smothered in grease), plug it all up, put the disc, caliper, liner and wheel back on.
Decide "might as well fit the coolant level sensor, because the motor should be quite cool now"..
proceed to burn f*ck out of wrist because big V8's take more than an hour to cool down. Pleasantly surprised to learn changing the coolant level sensor doesn't mean draining the coolant.
Things are looking up.
Decide to take it for a shakedown run, make sure everything's ok.
Get round the corner, everything's fine. Phone rings, it's worth money.... so the ABS light comes on... and check coolant level message pops up on OBC.
Decide to fix the abs now I've started, go back to the garage. Plug in the computer, "rear right wheel sensor wire kaput". Put the car back on the ramp, connect a meter to the wheel sensor.., can't... two bloody probes wont fit into the connector, it's a new sensor, and I don't want to start hacking into the wiring. Decide to trace the wiring into the boot. Surely there's another connector in the boot?
remove wheel, wheel arch liner again. Remove all the trim in the boot looking for the wiring. Remove back seat. Still can't find the wiring. Slowly going insane by now. Look under the battery.. beginning to get angry now, a 10 minute job has taken 4 hours. Mate wanders in, asks me what I'm up to. Explain, in a slightly garbled fashion. He shrugs and wanders off to the tool chests. He comes back with a two paperclips, somehow connects the meter to the sensor, spins the wheel, gets under the car, gives the sensor a clout with a drift, resets the management system and says "that'll be fine now".
Oh, he put 1/4 litre of antifreeze in the rad and the coolant level sender is happy now as well. The level was right before, but the 540i has a hypersensitive coolant sender it seems, and the lil' bit extra is enough to stop false warnings.
If there's a moral to this story it's probably "if it ain't broke, don't fix it.. if it is broke, get your smartarse mate to fix it."
[1] one of which was a Jawa 350 oilmaster complete with hooge fairing, wouldn't have done the car bodywork any favours if it'd landed on it. [2] this isn't always the first thing you think of.. well, I don't anyway.