Post by Tim on Oct 16, 2019 12:58:19 GMT
As I mentioned elsewhere my brother in law has moved out to the Czech Republic.
If he wants to have his car across there he says he'll need to import it as its only allowed in the country for 90 days without that.
In addition from 1st November winter tyres are mandatory.
Given that the car only cost £1,200 all of the above seems a tad pointless so Mrs Tim and I have become the, er, proud custodians of his 190k mile 2003 530d estate
As I speak it is currently slowly dripping oil onto my driveway, Mrs Tim having driven it back from Czech in convoy with me at the weekend.
All the toys, including massage seats, work fine, the bodywork is ok for the age & mileage, it has a full history of sorts (there are about 25 stickers on the underside of the bonnet detailing maintenance work done in recent years), 4 recent tyres, some suspension work and a nice 5 or 6 speed autobox.
Negatives?
Having followed it for a few hundred miles on the way across to Czech I can confirm it may not be achieving factory levels of combustion (it stank, especially on a trailing throttle down long hills) and since he has 2 large slobbery Boerboel dogs the interior is also somewhat whiffy.
It has one or two suspect electrical issues and the engine management light came on about 100 miles into our journey home whereupon we took the decision to ignore it. However the performance wasn't affected over the subsequent 1,100 miles. I have his code reader and will have a look at the weekend.
He also thinks it has a leaky fuel injector and that it is somehow letting a little diesel into the oil so that'll need investigation/ignoring!
Here it is in its full glory.
If he wants to have his car across there he says he'll need to import it as its only allowed in the country for 90 days without that.
In addition from 1st November winter tyres are mandatory.
Given that the car only cost £1,200 all of the above seems a tad pointless so Mrs Tim and I have become the, er, proud custodians of his 190k mile 2003 530d estate
As I speak it is currently slowly dripping oil onto my driveway, Mrs Tim having driven it back from Czech in convoy with me at the weekend.
All the toys, including massage seats, work fine, the bodywork is ok for the age & mileage, it has a full history of sorts (there are about 25 stickers on the underside of the bonnet detailing maintenance work done in recent years), 4 recent tyres, some suspension work and a nice 5 or 6 speed autobox.
Negatives?
Having followed it for a few hundred miles on the way across to Czech I can confirm it may not be achieving factory levels of combustion (it stank, especially on a trailing throttle down long hills) and since he has 2 large slobbery Boerboel dogs the interior is also somewhat whiffy.
It has one or two suspect electrical issues and the engine management light came on about 100 miles into our journey home whereupon we took the decision to ignore it. However the performance wasn't affected over the subsequent 1,100 miles. I have his code reader and will have a look at the weekend.
He also thinks it has a leaky fuel injector and that it is somehow letting a little diesel into the oil so that'll need investigation/ignoring!
Here it is in its full glory.
