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So this happened a few weeks ago and I figured I’d write it up since it was a pretty frustrating afternoon.

I was heading to Tysons Corner Mall on a Saturday. Nothing special, just needed to pick up a few things. I don’t go to the mall that often but my wife had asked me to grab something from one of the stores out there so I figured I’d make the trip. I took the E36 M3 because it was a nice day and I hadn’t driven it much lately.

I should have known something was off before I even left the house. The temperature gauge was sitting a little higher than I like but I told myself it was probably fine. That was a mistake. About two miles from the mall the gauge started climbing and I pulled into a parking lot off Route 7 before it got any worse. Good thing I did because by the time I got the car stopped there was steam coming from under the hood. Water pump had given out.

Now here’s the embarrassing part. I’m a mechanic. I work on cars for a living and I work on BMWs specifically in my spare time. I know that the cooling system on the E36 is something you have to stay on top of. Water pumps, thermostats, hoses, all of it has a lifespan and all of it will let you down eventually if you ignore it long enough. I had been meaning to do a full cooling system refresh on that car for a while and I kept putting it off. That caught up with me on a Saturday afternoon in a parking lot near Tysons Corner.

I wasn’t going to try to drive it anywhere. Running an overheated BMW even a short distance can damage the head gasket and that turns a few hundred dollar repair into a much more expensive one. So I called a tow.

I ended up using Tysons Towing and honestly they were fine. The driver showed up in a reasonable amount of time, maybe thirty or forty minutes, which isn’t bad for a Saturday when a lot of people are out. He was straightforward, loaded the car up without any issues, and got it back to my shop without any problems. Nothing fancy, just a tow, which is all I needed.

Got the car in the shop the next morning and replaced the water pump, thermostat, and a couple of hoses that were looking worn while I was in there. It wasn’t a complicated job, just one I should have done months ago before it became an emergency on the side of the road.

The E36 is running fine now. Cooling system is fresh and the temperature gauge is sitting right where it should be.

Anyway. Don’t ignore your cooling system. I know better and I still let it go too long. Learn from that if you can.

People at the shop ask me sometimes why I spend my weekends on old BMWs when I already work on cars all week. It’s a fair question and I don’t have a complicated answer.

I just like them. The older ones, E30s and E36s especially, were built in a way that made sense to me. The engineering was straightforward enough that you could actually understand what was going on. The steering felt connected. The car communicated with you when you were driving it. A lot of newer vehicles don’t really do that. They’re comfortable and they’re reliable but there’s a layer of electronics between you and what the car is actually doing.

From a mechanical standpoint they’re satisfying to work on too. Not because they’re simple, they’re not, but because things are where you’d expect them to be. You can get your hands in there without having to remove half the car first. That’s not always the case with newer stuff.

The most common thing I deal with on older BMWs is oil leaks. Valve cover gaskets, oil pan gaskets, oil filter housing gaskets, the seals get old and start going. It’s not complicated work but it needs to get done. Cooling systems are the other thing that comes up a lot. Water pumps and thermostats on these engines need to be kept up with because if you let the cooling system go and the engine overheats you’re looking at a much bigger repair.

I’ve got a couple of them in my garage at home right now in various stages of getting sorted out. No deadlines, no customer waiting, just something to do on a Saturday. That’s really what it comes down to for me. It’s a hobby as much as it’s an extension of the job.

They’re not perfect cars. They have their problems like anything else. But I know them well enough at this point that I don’t mind dealing with it.