740i 1998 blown head gasket???

And the work will have a pan-European warranty.

Edited by eta.

a dealer repair is warrantied across the network, whereas, an indie repair is only warrantied by them - not much good if you had a repair done in Southampton and then it goes wrong in Huddersfield, Paris or somewhere far afield.

sevenforty wrote: got car back last night, £505 all in, which included new antifreeze, thermostat, cam sensor, all sorts of checks, wiring checks and tests and check of the actual block for head gasket leak, all done and dusted and im now £1500 better off as i had the £2k ready to pay! one happy bunny! thing is i havent really drove it properly yet but didnt seem as powerfull when i drove it back last night, so ill go out today and see for myself!

Hmmmm sounds to me like you have blown your headgasket on the way back

andrewthompson wrote: Head gasket problems do not make the car less powerfull unless it misfires!!. I now think the dealer was right. One has to remember that these cars run very very hot due to Computer controlled thermostat. (mine runs up to 113 degrees with new thermostat). This means traditional tests (eg rev engine with rad cap off) can falsly show up as either/both bad thermostat or/and bad headgasket. As for power they probably reset the computer adaption. Or maybe the computer has to adapt to the new thermostat and cam sensor.

As Scotty in Star Trek Once said "....Och the more they complecate the plumbing, the easyier it is to stuff up the works..."

I bet that £300 E23 is looking better by the minute

andrewthompson wrote: As for the £300 E23, I also have an E23 which i have owned for many years

Very sorry to hear that. I had mine removed on the
NHS.
E23 was an averagely okay car 27 years ago, today
it's a nightmare of rust, electrical problems, corroded
heads, knackered suspension, poor fuel economy
and generally dogginess. I cannot for the life of me
think why anybody would want one when you can buy
a decent E32 for £500.

Sorry, but give me an E38 anyday.

Drew540i wrote: E23 was an averagely okay car 27 years ago, today it's a nightmare of rust, electrical problems, corroded heads, knackered suspension, poor fuel economy and generally dogginess...

E23 bashing again? Dont you get bored?

Oh, and I've got an E24 that's Really old - go on, have a pop, you know you want to.

Sorry, an E23 is the four wheeled equivalent of a
black and white telly. Spending £1000 a year on an
E23 is flushing good money down the toilet.

Why would you scrap an E38 when the gearbox
fails? A good used one is around £500. Comments
like that don't stack up after advocating wasting
£1000 every year keeping some hopeless relic on
the roads. Of course E38's go wrong - what car
doesn't? But the E38 is still one of the best cars on
the roads which, with some careful maintenance
(changing the auto trans oil every 30k for example),
will always be a nice car - great to drive, great to look
at.

Jim Bob - the difference between an E23 and an E24
is that when new, the 6 Series was an object of lust.
The E23 was just a big ugly saloon. Go figure!

BTW I ran four of five E23's as daily hacks when they
were worthless old bangers.......hang on a minute......

Drew540i wrote: I should add that I bought a 1986 735iSE Auto (last E23) a couple of weeks ago for £50 because it had a set of BBS split rims. Took it to a local scrapyard and dumped it off then posted up about all the good bits it had - the bumpers, doors and wings were perfect for example. It's just rubbish to me but I had hoped someone would go up and strip all the good bits off. Needless to say it got crushed last week (complete) so where are these '£1000 a year' owners?

The trouble is that all E23 spares always seem to be miles away. I was offered a E23 with full leather but i had to transport it from South coast to north Midlands. too much money.

However if anyone has two ABS sensors for the rear of a E23 I'd be interested.

Christ..................

the inference here was 'don't buy an E38 when you
can have an E23 instead'.

Yeah, righto - and 'no thanks'.

As for people spending £4000 on an Allegro - well,
some folks are born to be poor and stay that way by
wasting money on rubbish and never moving up the
ladder.

I believe Pete has sold about £800 worth of bits from
the £150 325i..............now THAT'S being smart, and
I'm exactly the same. That's why I don't own an E23.


With good high mileage E38's now down to £2000,
pumping money into an E23* is just a fool's game.




*with the exception of an Alpina B10 or a 745i.

Edited by Drew540i

Well I suppose so - it's just that an E23 isn't old
enough to be an 'old car' in my eyes. It's just a
secondhand car to me I'm afraid.

This year a mate and I rescued a 1966 Morris 1100
(Hiabboy will have a fit). Restored 7 years ago with
all new wings and things it was passed down to the
owner's son's family who ruined it - the wife reversed
it into a post damaging the rear wing and one of
them ran it out of oil, ruining the crank. So another
£50 car later, and engine swap was done, the rear
wings repaired and some paintwork done. Total cost
about £350 (and a lot of hours).

Not content with that, another one was bought for
£100 but this, like so many 1100's was absolutely
rotten - shame because it was a genuine 30'000
mile car. The answer to this came in the form of a
blue 1300 Automatic the same year and colour with
a very good shell but a slight engine problem
(number 3 conrod had let go, smashing the block
and the gearbox - the gearbox actually fell off when it
was all lifted out )
So over the period of 3 months the 30'000 miler was
'reshelled' into the good body, given a £30 lick of
paint down one side and roof and it's about ready to
go.

The thing is though, the 1100/1300, whilst hardly in
the Pebble Beach league looks and feels and
smells like an old car - bounding along at 55 with
Hydrolastic bouncy castle suspension, geartrain
whining away and all to the whiff of sixties BMC vinyl.
Whilst it was as badly made and rustprone as all the
other British scrap around back then it does
represent a real effort to advance the motor car like
Citroen did. People are genuinely glad/amused to
see it on the road. You get people interviewing you.
Hell, I even got a wave from a cracking bit of stuff in a
Minor 1000 :-)

Now THAT's what owning an old car is about!