I Bought The Cheapest Supercharged Alpina B7 In The World - Project Chicago: Part 1

coming up i touched funky stuff oh bird poop perfect cyclist in the wild where is he pedaling this early the troubles start why are you doing this to me i just bought you and the evil twin is back bonjour g'day and welcome to the smartest day of my talk to myself a career i only went ahead and bought the most reliable and totally not broken vehicle except i didn't i bought that well not that that sight unseen halfway across the world from the good old usa bonjour again with the hiding what are you wearing didn't you learn anything with the e60 m5 i did v10 is awesome how about your bank account is that a woman's code right doesn't this one eat eleven thousand dollars in repairs it might sherlock can you go away now you're ruining my moment here i'll be back ignore rodney over there now let me tell you what kind of a deal i got here [Music] oh delicious i paid just four thousand dollars for this giant check engine light me 2008 e65 alpina b7 finished in jet black 2.1 tons of supercharged luxury pumping out 500 horsepower i wasn't in the market for one of these but then suddenly i was when a nice subscriber emailed me and told me the price you'll be shocked to hear this but it's broken 128 000 miles clean title with a minor front-end accident noted on carfax three or four owners and it's been a texas car all its life the previous owner antonio moved not long ago from houston to chicago which is where i bought the car he started having some issues with it and a local shop quoted him a whopping eleven thousand four hundred dollars to fix it enter me as luck would have it i have a really good friend ivan who lives in chicago and works just seven minutes away from antonio he saw the car in person bought it and stored it with him until it was picked up and shipped to me in germany a big thank you to ivan for doing the legwork and helping us secure this thing and also a big thank you to antonio who's been one of those sellers you wish every seller is honest super easy to deal with and all around helpful with the export process several months and lots of paperwork later project chicago is finally landing in frankfurt cyclist where is he pedaling this early 7 15 a.m as you can probably tell by my face i'm ecstatic getting up early my favorite thing in the world why does it always have to be early o'clock why can't it ever be two o'clock in the afternoon yeah whatever i don't even know what i'm talking about anymore it's just when i get up this early i can't my brain it's not it doesn't work it's getting cold people who wants to do some exercises i don't i want my alpina i want it now and a cookie i could go for a cookie right now should have bought a croissant i'm hungry now i'm officially bored and then there's air oh oh car transporter let's ditch the umbrella now i'm excited must be it see it hello hello good morning you can turn on the gas station over there all right thank you penis here and the wheel caps haven't been stolen there she is boys traveled a long way my friend welcome back to germany it looks mighty doesn't it oh look at that rear end ah the battery is dead yes of course it is how was your drive okay i'll go get the jumper that jeep is kind of cute let's see if we can jump this thing good inside do we have soft clothes hot struts good the battery's on all right give it a whirl ah nearly there there it is it's alive no no no don't drive the car the hell is wrong with you easy don't rev the car when it's cold please that's perfect sorry for yelling i just can't stand people who start the car cold and then rub it it's you can't do that i just realized that the camera was blurry all this time sorry about that but it is raining look at that so far smooth driving i hate this shifter what is this how do i put you in park what's with the doors it's very quiet i can't even hear that engine running how do we fix the door ah okay so now it works tell me what this thing is cozy oh i could drive this home right now ah we do have soft clothes vinnie the third is here the mighty alpina oh smell burning oil oh i see this handle it's it's a bit stuck oh no the bumper is coming apart oh the fuel is low okay so i'm gonna run to the gas station get some gogo juice so we're gonna give it some european gasoline drink up okay it's 10 layers in for our u.s viewers that's 57 gallons got a lot of smell of fresh burnt oil in the morning starts engine malfunction reduced power no why are you doing this to me i just bought you i'm gonna park it for now and then we're gonna pick this up once the weather improves time to do tour to chicago here starting in the front kidney grills they're not looking very hot the chrome is starting to peel off so these need to be replaced mind you they're very big grills the hood doesn't look too bad even the emblem is good there's a small scratch here headlights they're yellow and they need to be replaced because they're uspec headlights and we need european ones in order to pass the inspection and the bumper this is where craftsmanship took place this car was according to carfax in minor front-end accident not sure what happened but from the looks of it the headlights appeared to be original at least and the bumper was professionally repainted now you might look at this and think oh man but this is actually done on purpose because you take that and then you taste it it's like crispy chips anyway whoever did this beautiful job beautiful job i just hope we can save this bumper because brand new they're stupid money the windshield looks good it's not cracked thankfully small chip over there but nothing too big even the seal is good then coming to the side we have 21 inch alpina rims and these used go for sealing money as well they're in rough shape as you can see but as long as they're not bent or cracked just have them refinished and we're good to go the tires this is unbelievable the thread is brand new and where's the dot these are 2018 nice these are relatively brand new tires i mean the thread is very deep alpina is not just a pretty package they went to town on this car and now as we walk around i'm going to tell you a little bit more about it but this b7 is based on 745i and let's start with the brakes these are not standard 745i brakes these are actually of a 760 12 cylinder version of this car that's what alpina did so bigger brakes to handle more power and these appear to be good at least the discs slotted and with bullet holes as well if that doesn't rip your face off i don't know what will that blinker is low on fluid there's a scratch there pretty big one don't think you can polish that this one is pretty curved up as well oh in the back we have michelin in the front it was continental these are also good 2018 as well nice the rear brakes good as well taillights they look pretty poor that needs to be replaced anyway because eurospec texas plates that looks really cool that's gonna look lovely on the wall thank you for leaving those antonio the body of the car actually looks pretty good i gotta say this side what is that oh bird poop perfect the roof looks good we have a sunroof which i love this door handle it's sticky a bit of wd-40 maybe it comes around the door panel is in really nice shape the seats we have the same seats as in my e60 m5 which are the best seats ever super comfortable so i'm loving that we have alpena steering wheel which is pretty worn and i gotta say i don't like the steering wheel one bit one of my least favorite bmw steering wheels because the center section it just looks really ugly that being said i am going to keep it and i'm going to have to figure out a way to refresh this letter i'm not sure if anyone can do it because of this stitching here here here so might be a bit tricky we have alpena cluster which is in miles of course i would very much like to go back to kilometers but i'm not sure if i'm gonna be able to source one of those oh no we have electric parking brake hate that just some random mats these are not alpena mats and this is how you change gears in the e65 you have this pickup style gear lever which is falling apart as you can see so oh i fixed it no i didn't anyway got to fix that and that's really ugly i don't know why they thought that was a good idea could have put it just here but instead they went for two big cup holders a piece of something excellent smoker's car a little bit does that work it does what do we have there that's quick oh that one is yep that one is nice we have i drive which is brilliant locks buttons climb oh we have compact disc changer guess who's gonna rock puff diddly on the way to work oh i think i already broke it anyway we might be able to fix that there's a crack in the wood trim here that's a bummer we have beautiful suede or alcantara headliner and this is the alpena badge i love the fact that back in the day they used to label like one of whatever i don't know how many of these produced i mean they're still pretty rare but i think around thousand yards or something the headliner is just in beautiful shape the tint that needs to go because one you're not allowed to have any sort of tint on the front windows in germany you can have it in the back but you also need some sort of approvals a b stuff whatever i don't have that plus i generally don't like the tint because i prefer the clean look of the car without it if i lived in texas or dubai then definitely you need tint but in germany don't need one the rear seat looks nearly brand new are these electric they must be some buttons and stuff the dome light what's that well how is the coked up businessman supposed to get to the mirror there doesn't make sense i mean overall the interior is in really really good shape not much to do here rather than just clean it and do something about the steering wheel and the compact disc changer look at that stitching on the headliner that's beautiful this side here equally awesome and this is again sticking what's with the door handles on this car weird by the way i don't have any experience with e65 so this is all new to me oh do we have owner's manual yes please look how beautiful that looks oh original window sticker thank you antonio for including this 117 thousand dollars this car cost brand new in the day and i paid 4 000 bucks for it got a lot of depreciation and it looks to be fully loaded jet black is the name of the color this is pretty much my first black car and i don't like black cars because you can never keep them clean well the e32 is sort of black that's diamond schwarz which is just a fancy name for dark gray i would have preferred if this thing was in blue color but what can you do nascar letter i thought it was not but whatever supplementary owner's manual that looks beautiful ah this is how to open the cap in the rims so here we have engine type h1 that's designated by alpena 4.4 liter 500 horsepower and nearly 700 newton meters of torque which is just insane so alpina also put a rear end from 745 diesel to handle all of the torque we have a six-speed switch tronic transmission and alpena software in it and then we'll get to the engine in a bit top speed of this car is actually around 300 kilometers per hour that's what delpina said but it's actually more around 311 and don't worry we're going to test that as soon as it's fixed if we can fix it that is two tons this thing pretty heavy and this is the owners manager for the regular e65 i love the fact that this wasn't stolen or lost because whenever you ship these cars overseas there's always going to be someone who knows what it is and they're going to steal stuff from it but luckily they didn't here what do we have in the glove box how do you even open the glove box is that yep what is that quick quack wipe what did i do to deserve this i'm gonna go wipe some stuff with that by the way how do you like the look of this car the pre-facelift e65 i gotta admit i never liked because of the melted headlights but the facelift one and especially in the alpena kit i think it's a handsome car i like the look of it it's a big boat big fat boat but overall i think it's a good looking car yes presents that's for sure and from the back with those huge rear wheels the exhaust it looks really good i like it i just noticed something that's not the original mirror because if you come to the other side the base it's glossy which is lovely it matches the window trim but here it's not and this cover here is not painted so this is a replacement mirror probably a replica of something so i'm going to have to source one of these because i definitely want to have high gloss window trim here as well once we do paint correction and fix the bumper it's going to look really good the important thing is that there's no major body damage and i don't have to paint any big panels just the bumper which is awesome let's check out the trunk and the battery i wonder if wind diesel is going to jump out and beat me with the 12 speed shift knob no we're good no windy petrol in here stays oh we have a what do you call that you push the button and close the trunk is the toolkit complete though nope they didn't think so what is that that's a ski passage i believe i don't know how that is more plastic fantastic this corner looks good accident free anyway where's the battery in this thing we have original penis pair which is great the trunk floor over there everything looks good the battery is hiding right over there no idea how to get to it [Music] that's a heavy one there it is interstate batteries so now we're going to test if this battery is any good i have this nifty tool from au tool for testing batteries huh you won't even power up this thing it's not dead voltage 2.4 so normally when the battery goes this flat it's never going to be good again could be damaged that being said i'm still going to try and boil it maybe it comes around and then i can use it as something else this is the one that i just pulled out of my pocket don't worry i have big pockets let's test that one now it's up and running 850 testing really nifty tool you got a printout here 12.6 volts the battery is good i'll leave amazon link in the description if you want to have a look [Music] it's nice that it has a full-size spare wheel feeling lazy let's see if the self-closing trunk works yep it does how nice is that i'm gonna put this battery in boiling mode but i love the soft close brilliant starts easily lone coolant let's look at the glorious engine that hood is very light ah the n62 engine how's the man with two penises would say where would you like to start so what we have here is bw's n62 4.4 liter v8 engine commonly regarded as one of the most reliable engines nope and alpina did stuff to it we have alpena specific block we have male high strength pistons we have a forged crankshaft we have alpena specific dme and i'm probably forgetting something here the obvious thing the supercharger and just all cools bits and bobs here and there and this thing is making 500 horsepower it is an absolute monster anyway it looks really pretty in here the cover is here the supercharger looks just glorious and i have no experience with superchargers i don't even know how that thing works but we'll figure it out anyway hopefully we can fix it because there's no such thing as cheap on this car everything is just crazy money and the chassis leg actually looks good that doesn't have any signs of repairs it says that the coolant is low and it sure is so i believe that alpina actually did put the oil dipstick on this thing thank you very much alpina and the oil level it's near to the maximum so that's perfect and it looks clean as well anyway let's start it and see how it sounds so i have no idea what a healthy n62 is supposed to sound so you can hear some noise from the supercharger something might be messed up in there but otherwise the engine sounds good that looks pretty dry so i'm gonna add some coolant took roughly around three liters but right out of the bat i don't think there's anything majorly wrong with the engine actually i'm i i take that back take it back it sounds good it sounds good that's what i want to say just listen sounds good doesn't it if you know the n62 engine then you know that the common issue with them is the valve stem seals among other things they go bad daily coil and you end up having blue smoke out of the exhaust antonio the seller told me that i didn't have any and i also had my friend check when he picked up the car and he didn't have any but now we're going to warm it up rev it and see what comes out of the exhaust you can definitely smell something burning either coolant or or oil but let's drive it now how do you operate the seats well whatever i don't what does that do yeah that mirror is working because it's the original one it has the self-folding function the one on the left doesn't how about the sunroof yep that's working nicely windows indeed all of it working nicely you can hear the slight rumble from the exhaust and it's very exciting yeah i don't feel anything wrong with the car here you really need to take this thing on the road and then see what's wrong with the engine my god this thing is going to go like crazy on the autobahn that being said i really cannot feel anything wrong with this engine and that's because i can't drive it the art is too small let's hear that exhaust that's just kind of condensation that's normal when the car is not driven you travel the whole world and it was only like start and stop to load it unloaded now i want to see whether the valve stem seals on this engine are any good and we're going to check that by letting the car idle for 10 to 15 minutes then give it one nice rev and if loads of blue smoke comes out of the exhaust then we know that they are bad i do know that when i started this morning completely cold no smoke came out of the exhaust whatsoever condensation yes but no blue smoke now when i rev it if we see blue smoke that means trouble nah no smoke that's just condensation i'm actually impressed by that 125 000 miles i don't know if they were ever replaced but it's definitely not blowing blue smoke it's been another 10 or so minutes let's see nothing so we don't have issues with valve stem seals on this engine that's a surprise the engine still sounds excellent all right let's take it inside okay so the climate control doesn't work the blower motor is not working add that to the list and also the parking brake sensors are not working beep beep beep beep no actually the sensors are working but it's not beeping at me by the way how cool are these window shades i can sit in here drink my juice and then i want some privacy on the back as well beautiful and now i'm cocooned in here it really is a nice interior the hood is so swirled up and from the looks of it very poorly repainted as well so he needs paint correction badly anyway you know that song i need a dollar dollar dollar is what i need well according to independent shop who inspected this car a dollar ain't gonna cut it here let's see what they found this is the invoice and estimate from the shop in chicago where the previous owner took this car it was done in june 2021 i believe i bought the car in july june i don't really remember took forever to get it you can see the mileage over there they pulled the codes and this is what they found this is what they recommended replace volley cooling pipe replace complete timing set oil and filter brake fluid and the total comes to eleven thousand four hundred dollars and change that's a lot of money to fix this thing now we're gonna first look underneath then pull the codes and just verify everything that they found and start troubleshooting from there so on my paint measuring device here and i'm curious to see what's been repainted and what's original color so around 120 140 microns that's original paint 200 220 that's repainted 210 repainted 128 that's original paint 130 original paint 122 original paint so mostly original paint on this car the hood has been definitely painted and the rear door on the left side everything else appears to be original did not expect that obviously the bumper has been done but that's plastic so we'll start in the rear we have alpena stock exhaust you can see there and we have a valve over there maybe we can get rid of that or do something about it so that this thing is singing all the time alpena diff or just the cooling fins not sure the rim here looks good and let's look at the tire brand new that control arm ball joint is shot typical probably that one over there as well the shock it's not leaking that's great i mean this is a texas car so i don't expect any rust on it that ball joint is shot as well the strut looks good not leaking these are the cats also different than the standard 745i we have cooling fins on the transmission also marked alpina there they really did a lot of stuff to this car the caps are missing on the guide pins the ball joints everything looks indecent-ish that's where the oil filter lives a bit oily that bushing is properly shot twisted actually all the way yep sway barling the boot is torn oh yeah you can definitely see it's leaking coolant that soil and then you can see the green stuff here here here that's all coolant that thrust arm bushing looks good almost brand new same on that side as well overall not too bad so let's scan for codes voltronic position and new start plausibility what's that supposed to mean a lot of this is just stuff because the battery was disconnected and low so we're gonna have to clear all of this so the only area that we have in dme is the electronic position and new start possibility so i'm gonna delete all of this start the car maybe even drive it in the yard and see what comes back now we're gonna start it again and let's see what it takes to get the check engine light to pop up again oh immediately so it doesn't take much i fire up impa it's faster than ista okay it's something german on bank 2. knocking villain that's camshaft so the kodi's camshaft control exhaust bank 2 adaptation value early position implausible or performance problem yeah it starts pretty rough yeah and the check engine light is back immediately all right so now we have two new errors voltronic something so ista is giving us voltronic power limitation code 2a6b so we definitely have some issues with voltronic which can mean 15 million different things so let's put a pin on that and continue with inspection i want to see how much play we have in suspension if any and then we're going to dig under the hood no side side play no play whatsoever in this wheel nice the strut actually looks good not leaking spring looks brand new as well not a speck of rust anywhere oh yeah pads have plenty of meat left as well what is happening here i somehow bought a car that doesn't need brakes or tires let's look at the other side it's the same deal the shock looks awesome spotless actually not leaking not rusty the discs don't have a lip and the pads have plenty of life left no play and no play so we have an active coolant leak that's dripping rather vigorously and it's making a mess on the floor anyway now i'm going to remove this boot on the steering rack and if fluid comes out that means that the stingrack is bad but i can't see there's an active leak dripping from above on the steering rack but let's just make sure that the steering rack is good because that looks like a big job to replace if it's bad moment of truth right beautiful dry as well just greasy as it should be that means in the front we only need the lower control arms nothing else let's see oh that's a ton of playing the wheel so watch that ball joint completely shot so let's see this side yep so same issue on this side as well so in the rear we need both control arms both guide links which is really easy to replace should be inexpensive as well so not bad at all now we're going to remove a bunch of this stuff so we can get to the valve cover see the voltronic motor the air filter actually looks pretty decent yeah nice and clean this car keeps releasing some sort of noises all the time it's hissing and clapping at me actually looks very clean inside so this here is the voltronic motor for bank one bank two even the cabin air filters look good recently replaced just like that the valve cover is definitely leaking it's wet all around well cover and this side is dry that one is leaking okay i just found on google that you can actually test these actuators so set to measure resistance and if we put one probe to the pin and then the other one to the body if it doesn't change that means it's good and if the resistance starts spiking up that means it's bad and this one it's good also appears to be good so i'm going to put all of this stuff back because i want to start the car and check if the alternator is charging i don't know anything about this engine so i'm just doing lots of research now and testing stuff on the go 13.75 and climbing 13.8 so the alternator is definitely working next thing we're going to check is in this box the valve control module lives there and also integrated power supply there's some fuses on it and if they're bad they can cause this code but i don't think we're gonna get that lucky anyway we need to make sure those are good there we are i believe that's the control module for the valvetronic and this is the integrated supply power so i'm going to pull that out and check all of those fuses good okay all of the fuses are good of course it's not going to be that easy 7.8 volts on this connector here this one here is not getting any power did a bit more research last night and it turns out it can be loads of stuff causing these codes now i'm getting codes for both bank one and bank two and i found one service bulletin that says if you're getting one of those codes you should replace all four camshaft sensors plus the crankshaft sensor and reset adaptations so i have those on the way but it can also be that these voltronic motors are indeed bad can also be that the voltronic module is bad integrated power supply eccentric shaft sensors on the back i even found one post on forum that says he had these issues because the ccv was bad and another guy that had some connectors flipped around so i have no idea but if nothing yields results here from troubleshooting then i'm gonna have to remove the valve covers and look inside now i have ista running again and i'm gonna try and activate these guys to relearn the adaptations or whatever just to see if they are working i think i could hear both of them working got new sensors here let's quickly swap them plugged in let's start it and see if there's any difference yep same error is back okay the same mirror is back so it's not the camshaft position sensors i'm going to put this one over here because right now i have a code on bank two which is here so if i move this thing on bank one and if we get the same code on bank one that thing is definitely bad and now i think we need to rotate it and it's out screw it in we're going to reset the adaptations for the voltronic motor learn voltronic limit positions hit continue and we should hear the motors working limit position successfully learned and service function now we can start the car and see if they're removed size restart check engine light is back error bank two the code didn't change size it stayed on the same bank which most likely means that our voltronic motors are good you can see how bad the ccb system is i guess all of this broke and then they decided to use million clamps and just general hoses and stuff and it's leaking there there there and everywhere that's ruined as well so this will definitely cause some running issues unfortunately i can't replace it because i can't get the part so i'm gonna do more research see what i can do about this but this definitely needs to be sorted as well we're gonna end the troubleshooting session here right now getting two codes constantly the one that's related to cam timing that's the one that pops up immediately and then the voltronic power limitation follows so i'm going to focus on the first one and i'm suspecting three things bad vanos solenoids worn eccentric shaft or bad cam timing so in the next episode we're going to dig deeper into this engine remove valve covers check the timing check the eccentric samuel jackson replace the vanos solenoids and hopefully that solves our issue if yes then great and we're going to proceed fixing up this car entirely the coolant leak that it has that's the coolant pipe that runs in the middle of the engine and it is a nightmare to replace it the book time for that is i believe 60 hours and you have to take apart the entire engine which is brilliant design thankfully the aftermarket section came up with the solution and you can buy a collapsible coolant pipe which makes that job easier and then we'll fix whatever else needs fixing get it to pass room and tooth inspection and i cannot wait to drive this thing on the autobahn two ton luxury boat supercharged 500 horsepower super comfortable inside i'm going to love this thing i want to say thanks to antonio one more time for reaching out i love the car it is a clean car broken but i love that as well and uh i'm really excited about it so thanks again antonio for honesty and being really easy to deal with as always thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video perhaps consider subscribing it helps out the channel a lot and i'll see you very soon ciao you

Channel: M539 Restorations

Views: 691,531

Rating: 4.9459896 out of 5

Keywords: e31, bmw, 850i, 850ci, restoration, revival, barn find, e39, e38, m5, 740i, 840i, 840ci, 850csi, csi, 8er, 8 series, classic cars, bimmer, 540i, v12, 535i, 750il, 750, e46, m3, m70, road trip, m73, budget, cheap, first start, car project, b7, b8, alpina, restore it, e34, e32, e24, hoovie's garage, hoovie, tavarish, doug demuro, vin wiki, vice grip garage, car throttle, samcrac, e60, s85, v10, challenge, m54, 3er, 325i, chrisfix, detailing, disaster interior, detailing geek, top gear, edd china, cartrek

Id: SVM3xeCWuY8

Length: 35min 42sec (2142 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/LostWinds]

See it has Texas plates- this one come out of San Antonio? I remember it up on FB marketplace for 3k.

[u/dannyphoto]

This is probably the “easiest” project Sreten has done yet lol except for maybe project skovde

[u/didabsdraggle]

Oh….oh no.

[u/Separate_Doughnut764]

Lmao, it’s in better shape than most of his builds

[u/crispychicken49]

I want him to remove the rear seat covers.

Watched someone do that once because the OEM ones were completely ruined and the nervous system of connections was absolutely insane.

[u/FENICH]

Can’t wait to see video with it running on autobahn

[u/saadidas]

My favorite youtube channel for about a year now.

[u/scottwax]

Got a customer who has two Alpina's. I absolutely hate cleaning those wheels.

But still interested how this all turns out.