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Almost ready to purchase - advice please

874 Views 6 Replies 6 Participants Last post by occhis, Aug 31, 2012

RFLundgren

Discussion Starter · Aug 30, 2012 (Edited)

Hi all

First time poster, although I have been reading for some time.

I am looking at purchasing a 97 - 99 528i, but even models of that age are quite expensive here in Australia and many have high kms.

There is however one I have been looking at, which I would like to seek your advice on if I may.

It is a 99 model, 229,000 kms. I took it for a drive and it did drive very nice, with everything feeling nice and tight. When we pulled up however and popped the hood, I noticed the expansion tank was leaking. I had said to the guy that this was a known issue with this model and I would need to think about it all.

His original asking price was $5700 AUD, but with the leaking expansion tank I can get him down to $4000 AUD.

This is very cheap compared to most 97 - 99 models here going for between $6500 - $10000.

So my question is, given the relatively high kms and the expansion tank issue, would I be stupid to buy this particular car? I have already priced the cooling components, but a BMW specialist here also said that once they have done this many kms, they tend to use more oil than fuel.

Any and all advice most gratefully accepted.

Regards

Richard

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RFLundgren

Discussion Starter · #6 · Aug 30, 2012

Although it does sound like a great deal (when you look at local prices here), and I would be likely to repplace cooling system in any case, I think it may be just a little risky.

Even though the car did not seem to overheat when taking it for a test drive, I cannot be sure as to what may have occurred prior to me driving it. May be best to walk away from this one, pay the additional $ for something that appears to have no immediate issues and then do what I need to do with cooling system etc.

The problem here is that most cars have very high kms usually 200 -250 +. Oh well the search goes on I guess. I would rather wait for the right car than take a chance on something that may or may not be good.

Thanks for the advice and I will continue to read in the meantime and keep looking depite people here telling me that I should not buy an old Bimmer

Cheers

Richard

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