As with any “new to me” car, I changed the oil right away and it got all new pads and rotors on all corners. So as we were preparing to move, we had a short heat wave come through and without my prior knowledge of these cars very well, I did not realize that the auxiliary fan had not been working. As luck would have it, my wife was sitting in the car with it idling and the AC on, and the car began to overheat, and it burst the expansion tank. This was the beginning of what would be several issues of e53 ownership thus far. Since we were so busy with preparing for the move and I had bought the trailer with the intent of towing her car to Manitoba anyways, I just put it on the trailer and strapped it down and was going to deal with it once we go to our new house.
So began the journey from BC to Manitoba to our new house. Thankfully mostly uneventful with the trusty help of the old cummins truck. We just had some minor issues with the trailer brakes not working but once we were out of the mountains and into the prairies it wasn’t as much of a concern and we got to our destination safely with a broken beemer in need of some love!
The move from BC to Manitoba allowed us to purchase a house that had a detached garage big enough to fit my truck as well as my wife’s car. This was a huge win for me because when I lived in BC I used to work outside under a pine tree and I was just about over that, so this was a game changer to have a roof over my head when wrenching.
This maintenance session was a bit larger. I had replaced the auxiliary fan, put in an upgraded water pump, changed the thermostat, CCV, belts, expansion tank, upper/lower rad hoses. I wanted to make her car reliable again. After this work things were mostly uneventful until the winter came along in Winnipeg. If you haven’t been to Winnipeg, it can get quite cold in the winter time sometimes down to -40C and it can be relentless to vehicles! Luckily I was in the process of finishing the garage which included running good power and natural gas for a heater so I could wrench through the cold season.
