aharper

People talk about these cars being expensive to own. I expected it to be a little expensive but woa...

Bought the car in April... rims all bent, pre-buy inspection, new rims, tires, aux port, couple decals, side markers, alignment, after market warranty ($1995), blower motor, brake line replacement, oil change, thermostat, y pipe... my OUT OF POCKET cost since April NOT including my car payment = $7,045!!!! Granted, I bought an aftermarket warranty but I may consider cutting my losses and letting the car go. The warranty has covered well over $1000 already so it has nearly paid for itself. I love driving the car and am somehow justifying keeping it but when I look at the black and white (green) I'm thinking it's not worth it. If I had put that $7k toward my principal I'd have a loan for all of $5k left. Seems silly to throw this kind of money away. Half of the reason I'm holding on to it, though, is because I just don't know what else I'd rather drive. Blah.

Ricapar

Yikes man! That's a whole lot of repairs... Did you know about all of those going into the purchase, or did you discover them as you went along?

How many miles are on the car?

pjinca

These cars become a lot cheaper to own when you
1) Know or can be recommended to a good indy mechanic
2) are a DIY'er (like ma and many others here)

Personally, I wouldn't have bought the car with bent rims in the first place, or at least negotiated the dollars down to where it made sense. The rest of the $7k seems to be for maintenance items and mods. I would have spent much, much more on my car if it weren't for the extended maintenance warranty, plus doing repairs and "between interval" maintenance myself, plus knowing a good honest indy mechanic.

jaycal3

I am not sure how many miles you have on the car, but lets face it, much of what you have spent money on was either elective (by choice) such as sidemarkers, decals, aux port, and most of the other stuff is maintenance on a 2005 with some miles on it. The rim issue is one I would have had the "dealer" address provided the pre-buy inspection identified the rims were bent... all 4??? Really?? Hopefully you saved some money due to the rims and tires...I am assuming you has 124's on the car since I have an 04 545... I had to replace one wheel recently.

You need to find a BMW Certified mechanic on the side... one who works out of his home or has an independent shop to help you save a bit on the labor costs...

EDIT: PJINCA we are on the same page... you just hit submit a couple seconds before me!

pjinca

HAHAHA yeah I noticed, my wrenches and my garage have saved me quite a bit of cash

aharper

The car has 92k miles on it now. And yeah... all 4 rims were bent. When I bought the car I knew one of the tires needed to be replaced. I took the car to Classic BMW in Dallas for the pre-buy inspection. They apparently don't check the rims as part of the inspection... kind of a load of crap in my mind. I got the car back to Indianapolis and took it to discount tire to replace the one bad tire. While they were looking at the rim they saw the bend, then went to balance the other tires and they were all bent too. They said 3 were beyond repair but I dunno... it felt like the car just needed balanced but wasn't super terrible.

Everything else just happened over time.

Much of my out of pocket cost was also spent on the warranty. I just found a good mechanic away from the dealer last week that I'm going to use in the future if needed. Hopefully that will help for items that aren't covered under warranty. I'm still on the fence about keeping the car. I think I'm just worried that it will continue to suck money out of me at a super high rate.

Allen

This should have been your first clue as to how the car had been taken care of. There are WAY too many cars for sale to buy one that's not been well taken care of.

pcy

At that mileage, you will have to replace the spark plugs, you may have to replace suspension components (control arms/thrust arms/wish bones or at least the bushings in those), fuel pump/filter, cooling system (radiator, thermostat, associated hoses, water pump, ...) You may want to change the transmission fluid+filter and differential fluid.

I am not trying to scare you... just making you aware what you'll need to plan for.

aharper

I had no way to know about this ahead of time. The car passed the inspection from the BMW dealer. I didn't take the wheels off and inspect them on my own, that's part of what I was paying for.

Allen

agreed...