How she looks today:

PAGE 8: New Wheels and Tires!

Page One

Here's the car, a 1997 740iL, basically just the way I received it from its previous owner in May of 2003, including the chrome 16-inch "basketweave" wheels. "Baby" has a "Sorrent Blue" exterior with tan leather interior.

Initially, I had the car detailed, including some brush touchups, buffing and a handful of paintless-dent-repair applications to fix a few very minor door dings, which are now totally gone!.

The PDR process is amazing...every BMW owner should get to know his/her local PDR experts, and get a PDR "fix up" every year or two, as needed. It's inexpensive, and yields amazing results!

I also quickly ordered missing BMW manuals, extra ignition keys and an OEM first-aid kit, to bring the car back to full complement of accessories.

When I acquired her, Baby had 91,600 miles on her, but they apparently were well-cared-for miles as you wouldn't guess the car had that much use, other than the moderate to severe rock pitting in the H/L lenses, fog lamps and paint around the hood and front grille area. In the past, I've always been very conservative with the German cars I've owned (3 Mercedes-Benz before this bimmer) and thus always kept the cars totally stock. However, I've now started doing simple upgrades to Baby and currently considering others, encouraged by the advice, experiences and excellent results shared by others whom I meet on this and other BMW E38 forums. See what you think of my list of mods...

1. First, I installed large after-market cupholders for the front seat area (required for safety and sanity). See Page 2.

2. Next, I replaced the old pitted glass headlight lenses with new ones, using the instructions found on a fellow owner's pages here. Great results! See Page 3.

3. I purchased and installed a new set of fully-chrome grilles for the front end, as the chrome rings around the old ones were very pitted (probably from the same road "sandblasting" that doomed my original H/L lenses. So, I get them nice and shiny again, and get the added benefit of chrome slats at the same time. See page 4.

4. I ordered the chrome trunk strip from Crevier BMW using my BMWCCA discount...but when it arrived UPS had folded the box in half (!) snapping the part clean in two, Thus it had to be reordered and was finally installed a few weeks later. It looks great! Certainly worth the $27 or whatever I paid. (See Page 6 for photos.)

5. I may try to "remote" and/or reconfigure the unlock button so I can operate it when I've already climbed out of the car and key is still in the ignition (e.g. when I want to unlock other doors). As-is, the unlock configuration is the only really awkward thing I've discovered thus far about my new car.

6. I might consider changing headlamps to xenon or HID, although I don't know if I can justify the cost for this one.

7. I most recently performed the "chromelining" procedure on the black plastic lens holders mounted inside the H/L assemblies...seemed like a very inexpensive way to get a nicer look up-front. See page 3.

8. I also replaced the fog lamps (front end), as the ones that came with the car were even more pitted than the headlight lenses. They weren't as visible (or as often used) as the headlights, so I initially put this one on low-priority. However, I finally ordered the parts, and changed them out. See page 5 for details on how to swap the foglamp assemblies and before/after photos.

9. Finally, I upgraded the wheels and tires on Baby, moving from OE 16-inch wheels to 18's. See all the details including photos on page #8.

Since doing all of the above, Baby participated as a contestant in two Concour shows, in which she was entered in the Super-Clean category (judged on exterior, interior, trunk and engine compartment). In both shows she won 2nd place trophies! Not bad for a daily driver with over 160,000 miles!