When I saw this car I noticed it had a dent in the drivers footwell floor, a tiny whole in the driver-side rear floor, the hood didn't open (pretty scary), I was told it was eating batteries up and they didn't know why, and there were signs of neglect everywhere. But the deal was way too good to pass up, so Abigail, as I've named her, moved into the garage and man was I in for a journey!

My garage was being used for partial storage, and I wasn't expecting the seller to take my offer, but when he called I just made the room but it was tight at first. Please don't judge the garage, it could definitely use a makeover but the money tends to go to the projects haha.

Some of the issues I found were known already and I just wanted to document them, because I'll probably fix most of them in time. A main part of this step was to fianlly see under the hood.

The biggest suprise at first sight was that there wasn't an oil filler cap on the top of the block... The bay looked like a small family of rodents had taken up home in it at some point in the past year that it had been sitting. They were housed under the intake manifold, and appeared to enjoy going to the bathroom on the top of the block haha.

After that you start to notice the myriad (seriously way too many to count) air leaks in the intake system. Aside from the dry-rot, many of the hoses were haphasardly repaired with countless zip-ties and some sort of hard epoxy. This is hopefully the MAF issue. Once I removed the air box I found a wonderful "ram air" intake mod cut into the bottom of the box, and an entire upper tunnel missing that's intended to funnel cool air into the system. This was just foreshadowing as I end up finding a lot of these sorts of "solutions" throughout the car, and I honestly haven't ever seen some of these things ever attempted before.

The trunk had a frayed harness cover that I'm thinking could be part of the battery drain problem, but based on the other "fixes" I'm doubting it's just the one thing. At this point I haven't been able to get under the car to see fully assess the mess that I'm now suspecting is there and I missed during the purchase inspection.

This had to be it's own section because there were a lot. There weren't enough to prevent me testing to see if the engine would turn over however, but I knew based on some of them that it wouldn't idle well or have great throttle response.

• P0444 - EVAP System Purge Control Valve A Circuit Open

• P0335 - Crankshaft Position Sensor A Circuit (this is the reason I have to pull the engine...)

• P1447 (BMW) - DM-TL Pump Current Too High

• P0155 - 02 Sensor Heater Circuit Bank 2 Sensor 1

• P0102 - MAF Sensor Circuit Low

This was a BMW specific scanner, so it had some further diagnostic tools that I also ran, and took pictures of, before I turned off the battery. However, there are some more points I need to address here, but there are some clear issues that need addressed first so I didn't look into them as seriously.

Not much to say here... it started like it had only been sitting for a week rather than a year and a half, but she didn't want to idle (as was expected) and the throttle ended up running up a bit (much to the dismay of my father haha). The smoke is from oil I had dripped into the cylinders to "free them up", which in hindsight might have been a mistake...

It was phenomenal to hear the engine run, and it was really the go-ahead for me to tear into it and get her sorted out; there was still some life left in her!