I just bought a 1987 325i with close to a quarter million miles on it. For the mileage and age I am really pleased with the car. If I test drove it without looking at the odometer and was told it only had 60k miles I would believe it.
Sadly, the rest of the car doesn't hold up to the standard set by the drive train. I am a do-it-yourself kind of guy and happy to muck around figuring things out- but I already broke something when I got to gorilla on it so I thought I would call in the cavalry here.
At the moment I have two priority issues- the front windows and the sunroof. In both cases I think the first step for me is getting access and poking around but I don't want to break anything else.
The sunroof appears to be off track a little and does not operate fully in either direction. If you tilt it one side goes up to about (I am guessing) half way and the other only about one quarter. If you try to slide it back it goes to roughly a closed position- again with one side lower than the other- and then sticks. The furry strip boarder piece that seals the gap between the sunroof and the regular roof was bent down into the crevasse a bit on one side- I tried to pull it out and wound up ripping off the furry bit and bending the crap out of the metal. Oops. I am assuming the headliner needs to come out to get access up there? The liner is in really nice shape and I'd hate to mess it up too. Any suggestions?
Second, both front windows operate a bit wonky. The driver side is much worse- but when I assist it by hand it works okay. I'd like to open up the door and just try lubing/adjusting the mechanism and see what that does- but again the removal technique did not look straight forward and I don't want to damage the nice interior skin. I pulled the two screws out of the handle and realized I couldn't see any other fasteners and other than the handle wiggling nothing looked loose. Help!
I saw somebody get lambasted in another thread for not buying a Bentley manual so I went to amazon and I see two that seem to include my year. An 87-88 M20 book and a 84-87 325e m20 book. I don't know what m20 means but neither looked quite right.
Thanks guys,
T
Sadly, the rest of the car doesn't hold up to the standard set by the drive train. I am a do-it-yourself kind of guy and happy to muck around figuring things out- but I already broke something when I got to gorilla on it so I thought I would call in the cavalry here.
At the moment I have two priority issues- the front windows and the sunroof. In both cases I think the first step for me is getting access and poking around but I don't want to break anything else.
The sunroof appears to be off track a little and does not operate fully in either direction. If you tilt it one side goes up to about (I am guessing) half way and the other only about one quarter. If you try to slide it back it goes to roughly a closed position- again with one side lower than the other- and then sticks. The furry strip boarder piece that seals the gap between the sunroof and the regular roof was bent down into the crevasse a bit on one side- I tried to pull it out and wound up ripping off the furry bit and bending the crap out of the metal. Oops. I am assuming the headliner needs to come out to get access up there? The liner is in really nice shape and I'd hate to mess it up too. Any suggestions?
Second, both front windows operate a bit wonky. The driver side is much worse- but when I assist it by hand it works okay. I'd like to open up the door and just try lubing/adjusting the mechanism and see what that does- but again the removal technique did not look straight forward and I don't want to damage the nice interior skin. I pulled the two screws out of the handle and realized I couldn't see any other fasteners and other than the handle wiggling nothing looked loose. Help!
I saw somebody get lambasted in another thread for not buying a Bentley manual so I went to amazon and I see two that seem to include my year. An 87-88 M20 book and a 84-87 325e m20 book. I don't know what m20 means but neither looked quite right.
Thanks guys,
T