Convertiblau! My 1996 BMW 328iC

[Jake]

Mileage: 113,500

So the 'vert made it through winter with no real issues to report. I did an oil change about 1k miles ago and otherwise it's been largely "drive it and ignore it" lately. Cool.

Went out in DC on Saturday evening and as I approached the car to drive home, saw what first appeared to be a parking ticket under the wiper blade. Turns out, it was a note left by a nice passerby who watched as the dickbag in this orange Eclipse parallel parked it by feel and crunched into the bumper:



Thanks for the note and the photos, Sara.

Fortunately (?) it was hit in the same spot as before, and only knocked the bumper off the side clip and cracked more of the paint on it. I have two good friends moving up this way (to Fort Meade) next week, and he's got a pretty clean M3 bumper for me (for free). So, my reaction on Saturday was essentially to laugh it off. Matthew gave me some good bumper shocks so I'll replace those while I have it all pulled off, as I think the driver's side shock is bent from the first impact.

Other things I want to get done on this... hmm. It needs pulleys soon, one of them is starting to get more chirpy. So, I'll do pulleys and drive belts, that's a quick/cheap/easy thing. It's kind of wandery on the highway so I'm wondering if the RTABs are shot (probably so). I may wait to do the RTABs until I have the time and money to do those, the front control arms, and tie rods - that way I only do one alignment.

It's a creaky rattletrap of a car with the roof up, but with the roof down, goddamn it's just perfect.