Getting the car started was a little too easy. We knew at some point things would go south and figured it would be restoring the brakes. Then a master cylinder was gifted to us from Al and it looked again like everything was going to be downhill from there.
The master cylinder arrived in the mail and Craig feeling ambitious Sat. morning started taking things apart. Only to find that we had a 528 master cylinder not a 535. Whats the difference? Well the ‘new’ one we had wouldn’t fit, even in a MacGyver it only has to work for a few hours type of way.
So we brought in the big guns and had our resident pro mechnanic B.Digel take a look. “Nope ain’t gonna work”, was the prognosis. That meant a trip to the junkyard.
As junkyards go “Pull A Part” is like an upscale mall whereas most junkyards are like a flea market. Even so, the clientele are the same folks you’d see at a county fair but it is a little more grim and desperate. I’ll wager that we were in the minority looking for obscure parts for a car that we intended to demolish. I’d say most junkyard customers are driven by necessity. It isn’t what you would call a happy place. Lets face it you probably aren’t looking for spare tires or a battery at a junkyard because you’re ‘thrifty’. Thankfully for the junkyard set, Obama should be in office soon and looking to redistribute my wealth so that they can maybe grab a new seat or something nice for their ride instead of just looking to get it back on the road.
Now when we started our little adventure, it was figured to be a long shot at best. There were several things working against us finding the actual part we needed and only a few in our favor. First, junkyards in the US are populated mostly by.. US cars. Second the part we were looking for is pretty rare even among German cars, most braking systems (universally) are vacuum assisted vs. hydraulically assisted. Third, even if we found the car we were after, and it was the right model, a master cylinder is a pretty common part to fail and pretty easy to remove, and pretty expensive to buy – all of which means it probably would already have been taken by someone else. And lastly, its a junkyard, so even if we managed to get lucky there was still the large probability that the part wouldn’t work, remember cars don’t end up in junkyards because they’re well maintained and in perfect working order.
In our favor, we had two things going for us, Craig is an old junkyard hand and BMW did use this system on 3 different models of cars – none of which are very popular among the junkyard crowd. We hit Pull A Part South, passed on the taco truck in the parking lot, and immediately started looking through the rows of cars. Mistakenly, as part of my ‘no tool left behind policy’, every tool box I own weighs approximately 30 -70 lbs. lugging it around a junkyard sucks. We divide to conquer and find a few BMWs, and even two 5 series of the right era, but being 528′s they only yield the wrong part that was already mailed to us.
No surprise that we’re out of luck. Team meeting puts a 2nd junk yard trip to a vote and its off to Pull A Part Norcross. We see a boyfriend / girlfriend in the parking lot, which always shocks me. Any parents reading this – tell your daughters – IF any boy you’re dating takes you to the junkyard to buy parts for the car he drives you to the junkyard in – FIND a new boyfriend. The Norcross PAP is a little better organized but we quickly walk through the “German Import” rows and roll snake eyes again. The “Japanese Import” section is a little bit of a hike, but since we left the tools in the truck while we went scouting this time (lessons learned). I suggest we push on, citing the dedication to sorting accuracy I feel the average junkyard employee probably has, without the 30 lbs tool box dragging us down everyone agrees.
We’re encouraged early on seeing a BMW, proof of my junkyard hypothesis. We find an 87 325i and a 1985 7 series right next to each other. We open the hood on the 7, which looks to be in really good shape (all things considered) and SHAZAM, there it is, the part we need. Craig draws the short straw and has to hike the 1/2 mile back to the truck for tools and lug them back. Brendino and I go over the 325 and pick out some gravy parts that we’ll snatch to ice the cake once we’re done with the democross business.
As usual nothing is ever easy and it takes us about 30 min. to get everything we need off the cars. This is due mostly to the fact that the 30lbs of tools I have in my box aren’t really the ones you’d need for any job. Which, in my defense, is why they’re in the Junior Varsity tool box to begin with. Keep in mind 30 min. to remove something in a junkyard is a lot of time. When you work on a car you care about you’re not allowed to use tools like a 5 lb hammer, a pry bar, aviator snips, etc. In a junkyard those are the first tools you grab.
We get back around 5pm and call it a day. Craig takes the installation on himself and Sunday morning reports that everything has been installed and that the car has functioning brakes. He even gets ambitious and takes it for a maiden voyage through the hippie compound he calls home. Driving a democross car where he lives is kind of like me putting an Obama sign in my front yard in terms of how the neighbors react. You can see from the picture above – I thought the “Tag Applied For” was a nice touch. I’m sure the police officer would pass right by that, given the huge metal death bumpers, the no registration, emissions, or insurance,and the windows that don’t roll down. But at least it could stop now if he got pulled over, which is more than it could do a week ago when we brought it to the garage.
