Convertiblau! My 1996 BMW 328iC

[Jake]

If it can keep up the trend of costing me near nothing to drive, it'll stay around.

I shouldn't have been so chipper.

The drive to the Outer Banks was fantastic on Tuesday evening. Top down, perfect weather, great playlist cranked up. Easy drive to Corolla with no traffic. I took an S2000 exhaust to Richmond which definitely didn't get me any weird looks on 95 South:



The weather at OBX was perfect on Wednesday and Thursday, I got some great sunrises and managed to avoid getting sunburnt. We took the 'vert to Duck Donuts and otherwise she sat in front of our kickass rental house lookin' pretty.





Weather took a turn on Friday morning. We knew rain was coming and planned to spend the afternoon at Tortugas' Lie in Kitty Hawk, which we did. Cool bar. Beyond that, we came back to the house to pack up as we wanted to get out early on Saturday morning to avoid the typical holiday weekend traffic leaving OBX, as well as any delays caused by weather.

I tried leaving a few minutes before all of my friends around 5:15 AM on Saturday. I crept up NC-12 toward 158 and when I got to Duck, I ended up "following" a Suburban (maybe a quarter mile behind him) which was great, as I could see where the deep water was and avoid it. There were a few spots where it was deeper than it looked and I slowed down greatly for them.

Water never got more than oh, halfway up the wheels as I splashed my way through these spots of standing water. I was doing ~20 mph or so. There were three "puddles" I drove through. I took the first one in 4th gear and, obviously, had no power beyond cruising because 20 mph in 4th is just like that. So, I took the next one in 3rd. It felt fine, although I added a bit more throttle partway through and the motor pulled, but not very hard. It felt like wheelspin, but the ASC light never flashed.

The third "puddle" saw me use the same approach. No big deal, right? Well, halfway through it, I lost a lot of power. Nothing seemed amiss, similar wheelspin-y feeling. I put it in 2nd and gently applied more throttle - maybe 10% more. The revs held at a steady 2k and about 10 feet later, the motor quietly, calmly shut itself down.

Thankfully, there was a battered Silverado coming my way, so I flagged him down in the driving, sideways rain. He stopped and I asked to be pushed bumper-to-bumper out of the water, which he did. We tried two push-starts using his truck. Both times, when I dumped the clutch, the back wheels locked up. I tried a few more restarts with the key/starter and it wouldn't go more than a slight "bump".

So, the guy in the Silverado pushed me onto a neighborhood road and I waited for my friends, who were 15 minutes behind me. I called Geico from inside the car as I continued to get wet, because the convertible top is entirely useless in such heavy rain.

I rode home from the Outer Banks in my friends' Excursion. Geico towed the BMW to Delta V in Richmond (200 miles of tow coverage, they are 171 miles away) where my friend Zack is going to look at it today. He plans to pull the plugs and try to burp the water out of the plug holes, but given the attempted push starts and such, we are fearing the worst.

Geico is covering everything as part of comprehensive "flood damage" insurance. I'm driving the truck in the meantime. This isn't how I wanted the tale of Blau to end, but I do fear that she may be totaled based on this damage. We'll see what Zack says and what the insurance adjuster comes back with.