| redsubdivisions |
04-18-2013 02:58 PM |
It took me some time because of finances and I wanted to take my time on it. Last time I rushed something and tried to cut corners, I ended up costing my self an engine rebuild.
To break it down, this is what everything cost me:
$500 - the whole vehicle as it sat. Oxford Green, non self-levelling suspension, regular headlamps. Just the basic X5 for that year.
$1100 - engine. That one was probably what took the most time because I wanted it to be out of a car with 134k or less miles (to match the chassis, of course) and one that I knew was guaranteed to run. After calling several salvage yards, the lowest I could find was $2000 and they were still questionable. A local scrapper here, Quarry Motors, specializes in parting out BMW and Minis...so I called him and eventually he had an E39 M54B30 that ran pretty well. Saw it run, even had him take another video of it and send it to me to re-verify it was the same car before he ripped it out. Because I deal with him on a daily basis (I work at a BMW dealer), he gave me a break on the engine price. The original price was $1200 but he knocked off $100 and kept the oil pan.
$100 - window regulators. I initially did the driver's window regulator as that's what was 100% needed. When I put a jump box on, I started playing with the switches. Not a smart move, especially for a vehicle that's been sitting. I got to the right rear window regulator and it broke. I went aftermarket on the regulators because of how often they fail, I might as well get the "cost-effective" ones. lol
Those were the major components needed to get it road ready. But as I dug deeper and deeper into it, there was a lot of "while you're in there" things I did. For instance, all new vacuum lines, filters, gaskets, CCV stuff, pretty much to prevent anything crazy from going down. Those were all OEM and cost me a pretty penny. Grand total was probably over $3k over the span of 4 months.
Now as far as time put into it, I stayed late and came into work on the weekends. One day I spent 18 hours on it, but I did a lot of it myself using the shop equipment. My original plan was to take the engine out from the front but as I started to look around, there was no way in hell that would happen in relation to the location of the TC and trans tunnel. So I dropped the subframe with the engine, trans, and TC attached. I was only able to work on it sparingly because of work and waiting for parts or just being lazy. haha
This was definitely a learning lesson for me, but had I known it was going to cost me this much....I probably wouldn't have done it. But with that said and I'm finished, it was definitely a learning experience.
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