At one time or another, most of us have experienced frustration,
embarassment or anger as a direct result of our cars' Lucas electrical
system. Knowing that, I thought you might enjoy my recent discovery that
Ultimate Driving Machines breed electrical gremlins of their own.
Last year I purchased a nine year old BMW 735i with 87k miles on it from my
sister who had maintenance records for the car since it was new. The only
known problem was that the onboard computer at times displayed incorrect
error messages suggesting that there was a tail and/or parking light out. I
had the car inspected by a BMW specialist who gave it a clean bill of health
and offered the opinion that I was getting it at a great price. Although no
faulty error messages were displayed while he had it, he suggested that a
new mother board for the computer would fix the problem at a cost of around
$900.
A quick check of the maintenance records disclosed that the mother board had
already been replaced twice for the same reason. I bought the car and
decided that bogus error messages are not really a big deal. I also
subscribed to an online forum (very much like this one) dedicated to 7
series BMWs. From their archives I learned that these cars have a number of
electrical components that are prone to malfunction including the
aforementioned mother board, various relays, transmission selector switches,
heater fans and sunroof motors. One posting sounded very similar to the
British car experience - a guy's power seats stopped working, but came back
to life after the battery was disconnected for an hour.
The point of this story? Just that this experience has given me renewed
appreciation (not only for my wife's trouble-free Taurus, but also) for my
TR6. At the moment, its electrical system works perfectly. OK, so I've
disconnected the interior light, the EGR warning light and the rheostat for
the dash lights. But if anything goes wrong, I can fix it without taking
out a second mortgage.
VIVA LUCAS!
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