A year ago I had too much red wine and placed a $975 bid for a 2004 BMW 760
Primary Damage: TOP/ROOF Secondary Damage: MINOR DENT/SCRATCHES
Why 760? Well, I already own BMW M73 v12 engine but without the body. So N73 being the next iteration wrapped into a body seemed like an obvious addition!
Well, I won that action. $975 final bid plus three kinds of fees turned into $1800ish out of pocket.
October 2020 auction pickup day
N73 is a direct injected evolution of port injected M73. As many other early GDI vehicles that one had injector control module separately from main ECU. As many other v12 engines this one has two ECUs to begin with, so two ECUs and two injector control modules, and one shared valvetronic control module - we have 5 control units driving one 12 cylinder engine.
Here are pages 1-5 of the 10 page engine wiring diagram
NJ DMV has noted that car had two owners while Copart was happy to sell the car with power of attorney from only one of the owners. Well, maybe that works in some states - but that did not work in NJ.
15 phone calls to copart broker, 23 phone calls to Copart and 2 calls to insurance company and four months later I got the missing power of attorney, this piece of salvage is now registered to me with a fancy salvage title. Salvage and rebuild titles are often confused - you cannot get plates and driver the car with salvage title, my next step should be salvage inspection - once I fix the damage which has totaled this piece of German engineering
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Wow! Do you even need to fix the roof for inspection? Looks very nice.
You plan to keep the GDI and use the driver box?
I've called two of three state inspection locations and both were very clear that whatever is primary damage _has_ to be fixed. I will look for a shady tree repair a bit later, for now I need a bit of a break from logistics and want to start playing with actual electronics. Each inspection station visit is $200 so I have to make progress before I attempt.
Paul I am totally keeping GDI that's the whole point of this vehicle in my garage! To begin with I will run OEM driver boxes, later I might try rusEFI own GDI since we already have it idling the GDI Passat.
This is the kind of forgotten excess I enjoy seeing people DIY.
I'm glad you are doing this...so I don't ever have the urge to do it myself.
I don't know exactly what's going on here but I support it.
So pull the headliner and let a paint-less dent removal guy go at it?
The small deep dent between the trim and glass would probably be not reachable from the inside. Well, anyway. I assume that an expert guy would have done better, but where do I find a cheap expert for a car I cannot drive around between shops?
This is just an engine control test mule. I just need to give it a try with salvage inspection and move on, either with plates or without plates.
Do we know if paint code is mentioned anywhere on this BMW? Once I get the used headlight (ordered) we will invest another $50 into this glorious project to paint over the primer.
BMW's have a badge on one of the front strut towers with the paint name and code on it so you should find it there once you pop the hood.
Attacking it from the outside is probably the way to go, I can't imagine pulling the interior apart in one of these is an easy task.
Thank you!
Apprantly this car is in fact green just like the title says?! Slate Green Metallic SCHIEFERGRUEN METALLIC 449/6
Paid inspection fee, it's a six week wait for salvage inspection in New Jersey. Will post update on Nov 30th!
Wow it has passed inspection! I can now get plates for this POS :)
This should be interesting.
Got the plates! Another 760 owner was nice to help with ECU pinout in spreadsheet form https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W5Unmn0BxpyJrF7ygtsBidWyytZWV2f26zL1YWcE44c
And that's your $350 driveway roof repair job to make the Garden State MVC happy. Time to remove some fuses to reduce CAN bus talk and hack into the wiring!
Wow man. You are an ambitious dude. Admiration.
Teh E36 M3 said:Wow man. You are an ambitious dude. Admiration.
My mind trick is to look at this as a $975 Auction Final Bid vehicle, under that light what could possibly go wrong? :)
TL,DR: rusEFI has GDI alpha version!
This v12 E65 was state of the art technology back in the day. First direct injected v12 engine - in this specific case that means two high pressure fuel pumps, well, realistically this engine is two inline sixes. Interestingly this engine has solenoid injectors not piezo injectors like many direct injected gasoline BMW in the early 2000s. I am not a huge expert on the differences but looks like BMW is now going back to solenoid injectors across the boad? Anyway, that's good for me because solenoid is definitely the more popular kind.
Also this vehicle has fully eclectically controlled transmission. While many transmissions in early 2000s still had mechanical linkage to the shifter, this one is fully CAN bus actuated - shift level is fully electronic no cables no nothing.
For my to drive around the block with rusEFI would mean to send enough CAN messages for transmission to operate, ideally properly operate not just limping mode operate. That would be a sub-project.
Another sub-project is actual direct injection! For that subproject I have another cheaper/simpler test mule - a 2006 Volkswagen Passat. Just four cylinder and much easier access to stuff if/when I break stuff while developing. So far I've managed to fry injectors a year ago and now in Janury I've fried the starter, but, this was not all in vain!
Because we now have GDI working on that Passat! GDI engine control has two extra pieces comparing to port injected engine control: you need high voltage peak/hold electrnics for solenoid injectors which have to deal with higher fuel pressure, and you have to control fuel pump engagement solenoid in order to keep fuel pressure at target. We now have both working!
In reply to russian :
Outstanding!
I like these kinds of rebuilds but German V12s scare me!
It has all started with M73, a much simpler v12 I have just without the body wrapped around it.
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