Well after being struck whilst the car was parked up (see here), it has now been confirmed that yes, it is the end of the E34.

:(

This could quite possibly be the end of the E34 :(

This happened on 2011-05-12T15:30BST. Time of day is approximate (+/- 15 mins)..

It was parked outside a house, I was inside the house. Heard the alarm go off, heard the gasps from others in the house and shouts of 'Someone just crashed into your car!'.

So I went out and the person who lived opposite had reversed out their drive, must have not looked to see if there was anything behind them (strange, when you're reversing) and collided with my car.

Impact front nearside wing/wheel.

The situation:

Got round to doing some work on the car. Finally fitted Lemforder upper control arms and bushes! After that went for tracking. Nearside ball joint was gone (had clunking from there) and bushes were easy to move by hand.

Ride is certainly a lot more smoother but still not as stiff and stable as I would like, but it's another improvement.

At the same time I replaced the front brake pads, oil and filter.

The other week the car finally ticked over 200,000 miles.

A successful day. The handling issues (described here) induced by what I now consider to have been mostly related to the rear subframe bushes have been seemingly eliminated.

Here is the culprit:

Knackered Bush

Handling issues are developing, as always. I have been of the impression that all my handling problems have been related to the front end bushes. But a new noise has drawn my attention to the rear end of the car.

I am getting a very audible 'clunk' from the rear end every time torque is applied. i.e. every time I abruptly (although it is now getting easier to invoke it) de-clutch or engage the clutch or even just apply power the back end clunks.

After discussing it with a friend and reading up on it a bit, I seem to have very classic symptoms of worn rear subframe bushes.

At the moment, pressing problems are the belt tensioner (have bought a new one) and the heater blower is having issues.

The belt just went slack again. I thought maybe the tensioner bracket bolt repair had failed or something but I would have been surprised as a helicoiled aluminium bracket is much stronger than just a thread in parent metal.

On closer inspection it just seems as the tensioner spring had passed over top dead centre again but nothing broken. So I levered the tensioner bracket back towards its correct position and it popped back into position easily. Too easily if anything so I think the spring is getting tired.

I'll get a replacement spring.

Had a bit of a problem with ancillary belt drive the other day (2010-10-01). I started the car to go home and there was a bit of a rattling, clunky noise coming from the engine sounding like something was loose. On closer inspection, the ancillary belt was flapping around quite a lot. I stopped the engine and had a closer look and there was an awful lot of slack in the belt. Just as well I decided to have a look as it wasn't driving the pulleys properly and I was about to go on the motorway. This belt drives the alternator, power steering pump and water pump (which in turn is connected to the radiator fan via a viscous coupling). So I would have either ran the battery flat, over heated the engine or most likely both.

Still handling crap, suspect big bushes on control arms as they are the cheap ones. But could still be something else.

Oil and filter change.
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