Safety Inspection: For everyone's sake!

[Tiger]

I actually had this happened too... Oldsmobile... we changed just the outer tie rod... took it out and whoa... really worn and the darn thing just popped out right in front of us.

[Tiger]

Don't hijack this thread for topic on bad drivers or incompetent one.

I posted this topic out of concern for fellow E34 owners. Reminds all of us to check our car out before anything that can cause problems later. If I see three or more cases of E34 being in accident that seems more out of ordinary... it is a concern that we might have missed something... that we should have replaced.

Having one person to distract from this is not conducive to other E34 owners. There are alot of things we can't check accurately for the condition of parts... especially shocks... these are impossible to check on modern cars. It used to be so easy to tell but not anymore.

[Tiger]

Dogbone or offical name is rear pittman arm is located at the rear wheel... in front of rear wheel. Someone actually post a real cool video on the location and how bad his was... complete loss of bushing.

If you look at your sway bar link at the rear wheel, it looks just like that but much larger and are mounted horizontally... 22mm bolts holding that thing.

[Tiger]

Eyeballing a bad shock? Okay so you catch only one bad shock out of 100 shocks. Bounce test? You will catch zero on modern cars. So tell me, if I show you 10 cars out there... 5 I know has bad shocks on all 4 corners because I have personnally took them apart and put back on... You will find nothing wrong with 10 cars on parking lot. Oh... you want to look for tire cuppings? Nope, won't find any either.

When you drive it, you probably might catch 3 of them. Why? Because you would know from your personal experience. Now what about the other 99 drivers? Maybe some might catch 1 or 2.... but majority of them wouldn't know.

You sound like I demands everyone to spend money to replace all unnecessary parts per your opinion... No... I am saying to check them... or have someone check them.... Cost them nothing to check... a little time... a little time getting to know your car a bit better. So why do you object to a simple check? Yes, it is your time involved... but then again, that is your choice.

Wife tells you something is wrong and yet you choose to ignore her car? Even 30 years... doesn't matter... you are doing a calculated risk assessment on probabilty that your wife might lose control of her car... You speculated that since she beat you in racing that she would have the best chances to avert such problem. That's your choice... You thought of that the car is well maintained by your trusted mechanic or you yourself that zero chance of anything goes wrong with it... at least major problem.

[billy]

i'm sorry but that's complete horseshit.

and what the hell is your second point supposed to mean? "take a good driver and pit him against a poor driver and see how much better the good driver is, and by the way, this somehow proves my point that poor vehicle maintenance is rarely a culprit in accidents.'


ridiculous.

i drove a 525 id took out of storage for a few days, the back springs were cracked in 3 places and the shocks had water in them, car drove perfectly

and the brake system works on a figure x fashion, if you did have brake corrosion you would have to have fairly bad luck for them both to go at the same moment, ie should one line fail and you loose fluid, you would get a warning on your dash but the other 2 wheels would still have full braking force

[skr]

that's not horseshit, he's got a point... don't blame the car if u can't drive. i see lots of people being overly paranoid about how their car is going to get them killed if they don't change stuff in time. but it's just part of a trend, just like being paranoid of not having esp, or other stuff. in my opinion it comes down to this : HOW THE HELL DID PEOPLE DRIVE IN THE 80's ???? no abs, they must have been ... shocks won't kill u, tie-rods won't kill u, etc.
flooring it on a wet while cornering will, driving on snow like on dry road thinking "hey, i got winter tires" , yanking the wheel to not hit a dog at 120 mph, etc, etc will. so it comes down to the driver. not shocks and tie-rods.

[repenttokyo]

i drove a 525 id took out of storage for a few days, the back springs were cracked in 3 places and the shocks had water in them, car drove perfectly

and the brake system works on a figure x fashion, if you did have brake corrosion you would have to have fairly bad luck for them both to go at the same moment, ie should one line fail and you loose fluid, you would get a warning on your dash but the other 2 wheels would still have full braking force

the danger doesn't lie in everyday driving, the danger lies in an unexpected situation where you have to swerve out of the way to avoid something or brake very hard to stop suddenly. In both of those situations you put a much greater, more extreme demand on your suspension and brakes, and that is when component failure causes an accident.

[repenttokyo]

that's not horseshit, he's got a point... don't blame the car if u can't drive. i see lots of people being overly paranoid about how their car is going to get them killed if they don't change stuff in time. but it's just part of a trend, just like being paranoid of not having esp, or other stuff. in my opinion it comes down to this : HOW THE HELL DID PEOPLE DRIVE IN THE 80's ???? no abs, they must have been ... shocks won't kill u, tie-rods won't kill u, etc.
flooring it on a wet while cornering will, driving on snow like on dry road thinking "hey, i got winter tires" , yanking the wheel to not hit a dog at 120 mph, etc, etc will. so it comes down to the driver. not shocks and tie-rods.

oh hey, great argument, you've certainly convinced me.

[healtoeit]

Also remember to check your throttle cables. It's a good idea to make or buy a set of safety clips to keep the cable sheath from riding out and then hanging up and preventing the throttle from closing. This happened to my son's 535i just last week. Fortunately he had the quickness of mind to shut the key off & coast to a stop & check it out & found the cause. Needless to say I quickly bent up a pair of clips & installed them that same night.

That happened to my car on the track. The cable would pop out of the "female" end and move to the side, the cable would then get stuck on the a lip. I used zip ties to hold the cable in place when i hit the throttle and its worked fine for 10k miles!

[vince]

Beautifully put, Phil.

It's pathetically easy for an inexperienced or more likely careless or inattentive driver to place the blame on the car they've chosen not to maintain properly. Today I witnessed a GMC Tahoe zipping through traffic at 40+ with the left rear tire nearly deflated. I could see where the edges of the tir were already bald from being driven while underinflated. And he/she was cutting through traffic as if on a race track, unaware of how poorly those SUVs actualy do handle.

I've had the "pleasure" of driving rental cars on business and pleasure through some of the great roads in the west. Natch, many of those cars were new or very low mileage. Boy, did they handle like crap! And that's compared to a recent acquisition, a certain silver 525i touring you've seen at a few Oktoberfests with 250,000 plus miles on the suspension. Yes, it's not as tight as it could be, but it's still plenty stable, and obviously not likely to cause any accidents on it's own unless I do something really stupid.

Many times on TV I see something about some terrible accident, where people died, etc. The cars are always torn apart, yet the speed limit wasn't that high. Weather wasn't a factor. But why were they going 2, 3 times the speed limit? Like you said, the nut behind the wheel.....

Years ago, I had a local guy give me grief for going too fast in my E30M3. He was behind me. He had no way to judge my speed, which was at the speed limit, no need to get caught being stupid. His car was a tired '80s Ford Escort on skinny tires. I wonder how his car felt at 40 mph on a few curves compared to an E30M3? I made it clear he needed to do something about his own ignorance before he worries about other people.

I got rear ended in my '90 525im a year ago by a 22 year old girl in an older Blazer. I was stopped at an intersection. Surprisingly little damage though she was going about 30 mph and hit the bumper squarely and shattered the cover. I suffed a herniated disc and 3 bulging discs a few days later; we're still discussing the settlement. After the accident, she kept crying about how she didn't know what happened, though the cell phone never left her hand. DUH! She wasn't paying attention and hit a stopped car! DUH!

Why do these ????? insist on trying to find excuses for their careless, reckless driving?

vince