Bimmer Resurrection!

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It’s been 4 years since I made a truly new post on this blog, so quick BMW update:

I’ve been daily driving the BMW now for about the last year and change on and off. It’s been a rocky road getting the old girl back in good shape, but she’s finally to the point of being (mostly) reliable transportation again.  It was a long time coming though.  Back in early 2016 when she blew a head gasket and my attempts to repair it failed, I mothballed the car in our garage.  There she sat for almost 3 years until finally in late 2018 I took a chance on a junkyard engine from a newer model and prepared to breath life back into the old E39.  Thankfully my skills were up to the task and over the course of a few weekends I got the engine built back up and installed in the car.  Amazingly it worked flawlessly.  I’ve had several issues since then of course, but most of them (aside from a crazy electrical gremlin) have been regular maintenance.  These days, she’s running better than ever.  Hopefully for a long time to come!  I’ve put together a few random photos from the engine swap to some more recent upgrades and fixes.

Bimmer down

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After sorting out most of the problems with the BMW over the years, and finally getting it running well enough for a long trip, she’s gone and blown a gasket. (literally) I’d hoped it was an electronic problem since there were previously no signs of gasket failure, but on my most recent check, there was coolant in the oil. This car has been plagued by coolant pressure related issues since we got it and when I finally fixed it, the next weak link broke. Thankfully we haven’t driven it since, so hopefully the bearings, cams and journals haven’t been destroyed. Either way, it’s time to rebuild the engine. Since that will cost about what the car is worth, it’s going to get put on the back burner for a while. We’re going to get a new car for my wife to drive in the mean time and decide what to do with the 530i later.

CentOS + VirtualBox & kernel updates

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I’ve had issues with kernel updates for a while on my CentOS 6 home server. It’s a problem that would come and go and I never put much time into figuring out why it was happening. As it turns out, the VirtualBox kernel drivers were to blame. With the vboxdrv service running, often times the kernel update process breaks when dracut attempts to build a new version of initramfs. The simple solution I stumbled on was to stop the vboxdrv service, run the update, then rebuild the vbox drivers and restart the service. It’s a little clunky, but it works every time.