Thanks to reading many threads we were able to find a solid trouble free e83 for her, and just finished picking it up Wednesday.

It's not super loaded, just sport and premium package with heated seats, but it doesn't have xdrive or pano issues, and has a solid 2.5/steptronic driveline, and is amazing condition for an 04. Well maintained, well documented, even had all 6 or 7 manuals, original key fob color stickers, and the X3 CD-ROM (which we just watched together tonight)









Every night after work I've been taking care of the "niggles" for her.

Thursday night was cleaning all the greasy crap dealerships use to make used cars look "shiny" off. 3 hours and 1/3 roll of paper towel and a bit of simple green and elbow grease later, I was ready to apply actual protectants and condition the seats and steering wheel. Looked way better, felt better, smelled good too. The actual application of products we did together and It was fun to see the results.

Then fixing the ash tray lid (see other thread). And for now used a credit card to tuck the fabric on the a pillars back in.

Next up on the list was figuring out what was up with the sunroof, it worked fine but wouldn't "one-touch". Once I figured out I had to hold the button through the entire reset, problem resolved.

Then it was programming in the new key since it arrived; the gf kept the new one as #1. and I programmed the old key as #2 for convenience of keeping my seat settings.
I played around trying to figure out what was up with the (discovered to be non-existent in an 04 despite the original "passkey" paperwork) Bluetooth. Does have working BMW Assist though. Also purchased a cargo cover to replace the one some PO lost as a gift, and am waiting for that to arrive.

Last night was finishing off the remaining niggles:
We installed a new windscreen upper trim, disassembled the CD player to free some PO's stuck disc, and installed an aux input. She wanted it in the European location, aka rear ashtray, but the aux was about 6" too short. I cut it about 1/3 of the way from the end, and patched in about a foot of extra length just to be safe.

Got a few options I'd like to have coded in, and maybe change the TCU to a later model to add BT, but it's up to snuff now.

Been fun, kind of a let down to have nothing left to do!