May 15, 2006

Foreign Object Damage

The military calls it Foreign Object Damage or FOD. I call it stupid morons in pickup trucks.

I decided to take the car to work for the first time so I could show a colleague and BMW enthusiast the new wheels. I normally take a stretch of highway called Route 18 to work because everyone hauls ass on it (well, at least this rural section of it) and it shaves about 5 minutes off the commute. Unfortunately, every rock chip I've experienced on the E36 has come from trucks that share the road with us, so taking Route 18 rather than some local roads really means rolling the dice. Get to work fast or contribute to the sandblasting of the paint and windows? Hard call sometimes...even for an anal-retentive BMW owner like me.

This morning I decided I'd avoid Route 18, but for some unworldly reason at the last second I dove toward the entrance ramp. I think it was the sight of the curve and the instant gratification I get from taking turns in this car. Once committed to it I thought "heh, what can happen". Will I EVER learn?

Sure enough, a minute or so down the road a raised pickup driven by someone with limited gray matter (is that being redundant?) flew past me doing about 90 and kicked up a stone. Like everything was in slow motion, I saw the rock launch from this moron's Mickey Thompson's and deal a glancing blow to my windshield...just below my field of vision. My girl was no longer a virgin. Now, I know what you're thinking -- I must have flipped out. But if it's one thing I've learned over the last several years of my life it's how to deal with stress, so I just cursed under my breath, entertained a fantasy of pulling out my 9mm and putting a slug in each of his tires and one or two in his head for good measure, and then just dealt with my elevated blood pressure for the remainder of the morning.

I wound up bringing the car to a local glass house for an evaluation. It turns out that the chip is only in the surface of the window and cannot be repaired. I suppose I should consider myself lucky -- after all, it was bound to happen eventually, and at least it wasn't so large as to require replacement of the window. I've been through the process enough times now that I know the aftermarket installations are as good if not better than the factory installs, but this was a matter of principle. A new window after only 300 miles? I don't think so.

Total Mileage: 355

May 31, 2006

Curbed Wheel

I took a lot of pictures of the car on the lift during delivery day thinking that it would be a while before it found itself 8 feet in the air again. I was wrong.

While I have made a habit of not using this car for commuting or other mundane tasks in order to extend its warranty period, it's so damn fun to drive that it takes a lot of effort not to reach for the keys every day. However, one evening after work I decided to run out and grab a few things at the food store under the guise of testing a MP3 CD I just burned.

Mission complete, I was exiting the parking lot when a couple of mammoth SUVs approached me from both sides and limited my ability to make as wide a turn as I normally would. The result was predictable. I felt the right rear tire contact the abnormally sharp curb and I cursed loudly enough to be heard in the next zip code because I knew I'd just spent $500. I quickly pulled over, got out, walked around the car and confirmed my fears. The damage wasn't as bad as I thought -- indeed the protective lip on the tire took the brunt of the impact with no visible damage, but sure enough -- I had curbed the rim. I'd hit curbs like this a total of three times in the E36 but the characteristics of its 16" rims resulted in no damage. The 330's 18" low profile setup, on the other hand, didn't fare as well. I've been leery of low-profile tires for this and other reasons, but as they say "you wanna play, you gotta pay".

Today I had that rim replaced with a new unit I ordered shortly after the incident. I walked into the maintenance shop to find my technican raising the car on the lift in prep for the swap. Glancing at my technician and then back at the car rising on the lift, I shook my head, half-heartedly smiled and said, "she's as bad as her older sister -- she obviously has a thing for you because she's already making excuses to see ya!"

Fortunately my technician made quick work of the rim swap (which is saying a lot if you've ever watched the process of mounting a low-profile tire -- what a royal PITA) and I was on my way in about a half hour. We managed to check the runout of the damaged rim and confirmed that it wasn't bent. That made me feel a bit better because I knew that I could get the rim repaired by a local specialty shop, but I was still irritated that this happened to the rear rim rather than the front. Why? Once repaired, I could have used the damaged front rim as a spare.

You see, the ZHP comes with a spacesaver spare and runflat tires. The car lacks a full size spare due to weight and cost concerns, primarily, but also because the rims are staggered -- 18x8 in the front and 18x8.5 in the rear. If I want to replace the spacesaver with a full size spare I could do it as long as I used the 18x8 rim because that fits on all four corners while the 8.5 only fits on the rear. Unfortunately, the damaged rim came from the rear so if I get it repaired it will only get used if I bend one of the rear rims. Pessimist that I am, however, I fully expect that to happen at some point, so I think this is a case of pay now or pay later.

While a bulk of the cost of owning a BMW is due to high parts and labor prices courtesy of BMW, sometimes it's all because of the driver. My bad.

Total Mileage: 430, Parts: $410, Labor: $90, Total Cost: $525.