Got the driver's door DHC replaced, re-glued the mount points for the door card last night, installed the miraculously-intact vapor barrier I got from the junkyard this past summer (and a rear one!) with some butyl rope and a heat gun. The old DHC was replaced in 2019 by prior owner; based on the $25 price in his spreadsheet it was either a junkyard part or Chinesium from amazon... and it broke where you'd expect it; see pic.

The ÜRO external door handle and gaskets I got from FCP are shit. I might put the old ones back on because the gaskets in the kit are so soft it's impossible to get the handle aligned with them and now it's not sitting flush with the lock cylinder cover. But at least I can open the door without dropping the windows with the key or crawling in from the other side.

By the way I officially dub that M5 allen screw that holds the lock cylinder the "bitch screw". Every BMW has at least one and this one took about 30min to get threaded into the cylinder, which being pot metal I didn't want to get all HULK SMASH on it. At least the new (OE BMW part) DHC came with new fasteners.

And now we wait for the next thing to break... but tonight driving back from the grocery store I was so happy with the way this tank drives once everything is working. I've spent about $2,675 on parts and labor in 2.5 years which is not bad, considering the average new car payment per Experian is $748 @ 6.5% interest for 70mos, that would have cost me almost $21,000 by now with a lot more left to owe on a badly-depreciating asset, so I'm quite OK with old stuff breaking as long as it doesn't leave me stranded again like when the water pump blew up in the middle of nowhere on a holiday.

The weather is gonna turn really cold tonight so I'm glad I finished this one, between work travel and unusually-cold weather I kept putting it off. Today was freakishly-warm for the end of December, about 21C/70F.

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