300,000+ miles and still going strong

Last month we were talking about my green 318Ti that has had some mild reconstructive surgery in the rear sill area – and what a marathon that was. At the end of the first session of cutting and prepping for new metal, I swept up and retrieved a few bits of the old sills and it shows just how rubbish 'MOT standard' welding can be and how the description ‘solid’ can mean very little. Yes, this was ‘solid’ until you really went at it with a hammer and screwdriver.

Day after day, the job of making up sections from 18 gauge steel, trying to use tin snips (forget it), running out of cutting discs, lying under the car fitting, measuring, shaping, trying again and again wore very thin. Even when the sills were zipped up, I had to spend ages getting the axle bush pin support bracket holes to line up. Only when that was done could I clean and degrease the area, mask up, prime with etch primer, seam seal the joins and paint it with textured stone guard paint, followed by Boston Green top coat and finally a coating of Waxoyl.

With the rear side trim cards out, I could remove the access panels and get a bird's eye view of the sills from the inside, and so a load of Waxoyl was sprayed in there as well. The final job is to fit some circular jacking pads, but I’m going to screw these on as opposed to the original design where it plugs into a square hole in the sill because the rot starts here when the plugs fall out and water gets in.

Turning to the 730i, this deserves a story of its own. I bought it for £500 from a car auction in June 2003, so I’ve now had it over 20 years. It had done 204,000 miles and is a rare five-speed manual. I bought it because it was super clean, straight and had a complete service history, something I have maintained to this day. It is now on 316,000 miles and on its second service book after the first one was filled. I didn’t trust old automatic gearboxes much, so the manual was a plus point.

Over the years I have added over 100,000 miles and been to Germany and back in it twice, the last time being April 2009 on its 20th birthday where the service garage at the Dingolfing factory did an oil and filter change, adding a BMW stamp to the new service book. Two years before that, I had some bodywork done, namely a new passenger side rear arch. It was rusting nicely

due to having had a new back wing fitted when it was a year or two old and not being properly sealed. That and having the side repainted cost £1000 in 2007, and a week later a neighbour drove his Toyota straight into the newly repaired wing. The car was written off, with me retaining the salvage and a nice cheque for £1800. A local bodyshop did a very good repair job for £350. The original 1989 exhaust was falling to bits that same year, and after trying some aftermarket rubbish, I sent both back and bought genuine BMW centre and rear boxes. Yes they were £700, but 17 years later they’re still fine.

By 2010 I had bought my garage workshop, parked the

E32 in it and started using something else. By then the mileage was an indicated 266,000 miles – actually 311,000 because around 2006 the speedo stopped working and I just fitted a used instrument cluster with 45,000 fewer miles indicated. I didn’t care about such details back then, but in 2016 I powered up the original cluster, got the last ‘real’ mileage and paid a mileage correction bloke £40 to add the required extra mileage to the replacement cluster. I bet that was the first time he’d been asked to ‘correct’ the mileage forwards!

Over those miles I’d replaced things like discs, pads, front dampers (twice) and rear dampers, changed the oil every 6000 miles, adjusted the valve clearances every year and replaced the banjo oil feed hollow bolt for the cam spray bar with the latest type that doesn’t unwind. I replaced the clutch in 2018 as it was becoming heavy, and was amazed to find it was the original, date-stamped 1988.

Bodywork? I cleaned and Waxoyled the jacking points and behind the removable plastic sill covers in 2003, 2007 and 2011 and they are still fine. I had the entire nearside repainted a couple of years ago because that 2007 rear wing repair paint had faded under the lacquer and it was annoying me.

As for the 118d. Hmm. These were launched 20 years ago this year, but I can’t view them as a classic. They are certainly in the banger phase right now, and for me they are too different to the older, traditional BMW and I don’t think they have aged well. Maybe you feel differently – write in if you disagree!

ABOVE: That used to be an E36 Compact outer sill. Solid enough for an MOT, but it didn’t take much prodding to reduce it to this. If Andrew hadn’t done it last year, he would probably never have done it until it was too late.

ABOVE: That’s better. It’s not ‘factory,’ but it’s properly solid and neat with the rotten metal chopped out and gone. The circular jacking pad has yet to be fitted, but Andrew never uses a jack on the sills anyway.

ABOVE: This picture of the 730i was taken in 2018, up on a ramp when the clutch was being replaced. Amazingly it still had all but one of its original brake pipes thanks to Andrew cleaning and greasing them on a yearly basis.

ABOVE: The splendid 730i that Andrew has had for over 20 years. He doubts he will sell it now after so long. He added a V12 wide grille bonnet in 2010, and these ultra-rare wheels from the 1987-88 750il.

ABOVE: The 118d at Sytner Sheffield undergoing a recall on the heater blower wiring plug. The free health check carried out at the same time was surprisingly positive! This is now a 20 year old design – how time flies.

ABOVE: The proof is in the date stamp – the car was built in 1989 and the clutch cover was stamped December 1988, so it was original. The dual mass flywheel is still good too.