I Bought this Auction BMW for $4,200 on May 1, 2023.
It only has 88,600 miles and a Carfax full of dealer maintenance!
BMW M54 Engine
A reliable, slow, and extremely common engine across many BMW products. Many have seen upwards of 500K miles.
RWD
This generation of the X-drive on this low powered engine would just make it even slower. RWD has less parts, less weight, less complication, and more vroom vroom! Plus, you can’t go sideways with X-drive.
PRE-LCI vs LCI
This was the first production year of the BMW E60, so this one is actually made in Germany as many of the later years were made around the world (China, Brazil, Mexico).
Stock Auction Photos
These are the photos the auction listed for this car online.
The Auction is an experience…
The auction process is exciting, you spend the week reviewing inventory photos online all while making a short list of potential vehicles to inspect before the actual bidding starts.
Once the bidding starts, it can be a pretty exciting experience, so it’s important to go in knowing a cut off number for each car you plan on bidding on. Overpaying is easy, ask me how I know…
It’s all fun and games until the car shut’s down on you on your way home.
I remember seeing a check engine light on one of the auction photos, but it didn’t show when I saw the car. I scanned the codes with the generic OBDLink app, but forgot I had the BimmerLink app to get the BMW specific codes. Anyway, turns out the car has a vacuum leak, some type of DSC or ABS issue, and few of things i’ll get into below.
What’s Wrong with my Auction 2004 BMW 525i
Auction cars are dumped for a variety of reasons, your job is to find those reasons, fix them and hopefully have a good running car for cheaper than buying a good running version from a private seller/dealer.
Obviously, if the car ends up costing more money to fix, then you lost and hopefully this expensive lesson will help you not make the same mistake moving forward.
Here’s an overview of all of the issues with the car as I bought it so we can go through them individually.
List of Issues
Vacuum Leak P0171 / 28A2
This could be any of the many plastic vacuum hoses/gaskets, etc. This could be expensive to fix, or I could get lucky and be able to fix this with just changing one thing.
Fuel Issues 2882
unclear… Could be bad injectors, low flowing injectors, bad injector o-rings, a clogged fuel filter, or bad fuel pump…
Hard Steering / Pump Noise
The steering wheel is hard to turn and the pump is making noise.
A quick look at the Power steering fluid shows that it has probably never been changed, and is running low on fluid to boot.
Oil Level Sensor 27C3
This could be causing the car to go into limp mode. If the level sensor is bad, it may think the car is low on oil and shut off the engine to protect it. These are apparently common failures at around 50K. Easy to replace and a cheap $50 fix.
Siren 9D12
This is from the backup car alarm battery, they are easy and cheap to fix, the batteries are around $16, but you have to be comfortable removing the rear bumper.
Cylinder 4, Cylinder 5, Random Misfire P0304
Hard misfires are no fun, random misfires can be due to vacuum leaks (which we know this car has), but also this car is probably running original plugs and coils.
Limp Mode under High Load – P16A7
This could be related to a few different issues, some are cheap fixes and other’s are not. This could be a bad MAF (a $200 fix), bad O2 sensors (there are 4 of them), or bad/clogged catalytic converters (very expensive as there are 2 of them)
DSC 5F77 DME error
Typically related to the above engine issues (vaccuum leak, etc.) Basically the misfire, lean issue creates an error from the DME (engine computer) since the engine values/numbers are out of spec.
9C54 AUC Sensor
This sensor is for the automatic air conditioning system and will instruct the system to close or open the intake vents based on whether or not it senses pollution in the air. Not a huge issue, won’t trigger a check-engine light, and I don’t use auto a/c anyway.
Wheel/Suspension click/clunk noise when turning wheel
When turning the wheel left or right, there is a slight clicking noise that makes me think either some bolt is loose or the steering column needs a bushing.
An additional clunk seems evident on left side when going up a driveway.
Tires
This is always an issue. Most of these cars don’t come with minty fresh tires, that are all the same brand/style, with decent tread, and manufactured within the last 5 years.
Most have come with whatever mixed old tires fit just to get it to the auction.
I prefer to see a car with it’s original tires to be able to diagnose potential suspension wear issues.
Since this car was sold during the winter months, the previous owner fitted Michelin winter X-Ice tires.
This car came with a complete set of tires with good tread, they are all the same brand/style, but they are winter tires manufactures in 2016. Not great for driving during the summer, especially not great that they are so old, the potential for catastrophic failure increases.
Day 1: Working on my Cheap Auction BMW
I Changed the spark plugs, replaced the DISA valve (mine was indeed broken and the gasket worn). Checked around the valve cover for leaks, all good. Spark plugs were nasty!!! But the spark plug wells were dry.
Changed the Power steering reservoir/filter and flushed out all the old fluid, its a bright cherry red now and all of the power steering pump noises are gone! It’s funny how the previous owner was meticulous about coolant and brake fluid changes, but not the power steering? The fluid was so dark and cruddy dare it be the original fluid? The steering was horrendously stiff, but has not lightened up a ton!
Limp Mode Again! Back to the drawing board…
The DISA Valve was definitely broken and the spark plugs definitely woke up the engine, but we still have an air leak, a bad MAF sensor, bad oil level sensor, and a host of other issues putting this car into limp mode.
Dealing with the dead alarm battery…
If your car battery dies, or a thief disconnects it, you can rest assured that the car alarm has a separate battery.
However that battery only lasts 10 years and on a 20 year old car, who knows for how long it’s been dead…
BMW Code 9D12 isn’t something that a typical scanner can read. I was only able to see this code because I use the BimmerLink custom BMW scanning software to get the real BMW Codes.
Seafoam to the rescue!
The DISA Valve was definitely broken and the spark plugs definitely woke up the engine, but we still have an air leak, a bad MAF sensor, bad oil level sensor, and a host of other issues putting this car into limp mode.
Fixing the vacuum leak!
