The BMW E39 5 Series Buyers Guide

[Music] in this video I'm going to show you what to look for when buying an e39 5-series sedan in this video I'll be using my 2002 530i and this is the six-cylinder version most of what I talked about today related to the drive training engine will pertain to the six-cylinder 528i the 525i and the 530i but you could loosely apply the rest of this buying guide to the m5 and to the 540 as well the body is the same there's some suspension drivetrain and engine changes obviously on the v8 models but if you're searching for an EDP 39 this is a good place to start now before you even get out to meet anyone and look at a car in person 90% of the research happens at home behind the computer first so let's go back to my house and I'll show you guys what are the first steps that I do when looking at a car and evaluating some cars on the market before you even go to meet up with anyone and look at a car in person now I'm going to show you guys something that I'm an expert on which is sitting around wasting time searching from BMWs for sale on Craigslist now let's take a look at Craigslist here and I'm gonna take a look at some cars and see if we can find some a 39s for sale i have california here los angeles pulled up there always seems to be a lot of ether t9s for sale for some reason if I have thirty I 2001 to 2003 update search now we've narrowed it down to not that many maybe twelve listings this one looks interesting 530i one owner in Burbank for forty two hundred now this one looks interesting as has Sport Package premium this is a two thousand two white is an unusual color and the first thing I noticed when I look at this photo here is this looks like it is for sale at a small dealership which is not that bad usually I like to buy from a private owner but sometimes a small dealer is okay as well and the first thing they notice here is the style 5 2-piece BBS wheels you can see the nozzle sprayer here in the front bumper that indicates it has a cold weather package you can also notice the trim around the windows here is shadow line trim it's black if it was Chrome that would tell you that it's actually a base model and not the Sport Package although some people may have a base model that they changed out the trim or you know did a Plasti Dip or vinyl wrap that could happen - you can see all these other BMWs here there's another a39 there's an e30 four over here so this person looks like you know they've been in the business for a while and they're probably quite familiar with this BMW and also interesting option here you can see in the trim these circles told me that this car has Park distance control not too many cars have that this has the Leader sport seats with the adjustable thigh bolster you can see the sport steering wheel here with the round airbag I can even see in the top corner here this photo that there's a sunshade hanging down which is a nice option to have as well okay well this looks like it also has the fold down rear seats which is a must-have option in my opinion you can see the handles here in this photo looks like they have the VIN number here which is nice you don't always see that it's actually pretty common to not get a VIN number and that is something that I always like to ask for and what you can do is we'll just cut and paste the last seven digits of this VIN number so let's copy just a Google search BM to be vindicated decoders online which will tell you all of the options we'll paste this in [Music] no I'm not a robot okay now here's the full VIN it'll tell you all of the information you want to know here's the color alpine twice three automatic transmission shadow line trim em sport suspension and leather steering wheel I also like to see well here here you go here's roller Sun Visor rear lateral the through loading system that means the back seats fold down this has sports seat what else do we have here oh this has odd DSP sound which is great Park distance control as I predicted it has the rain-sensing windshield wipers which is awesome yeah that's definitely an option that you want xenon is also an option you always want to have I didn't see did I see heated seats in here yet all right well let's go back to the listing here there doesn't appear to be any proper photo of the driver's side controls so I can't really see here if there's a seat heating button so that's unfortunate if it didn't have heated seats that would be a no-go for me personally that's like a non-negotiable but hopefully this video just shows you you know how I look at a car quickly and evaluate them so let's do one more let's go back here's one for $2000 salvage title ok so I'm glad I saw this one when I see salvage title I'll immediately just go back I don't mess with that here's another one 2001 black now this looks interesting here's an example of a car that has sport package wheels those look like em parallels and it has the chrome trim around the window so you know this is not a true Sport Package car and as a result unfortunately the value will always be a bit lower also looks like they modified the exhaust over here it could be a good or bad thing another good indicator to look at is the brand of tire if you have a good quality name brand tire like like even a Yokohama or Continental or Michelin that sort of serves as an indicator of did the people the person who owned the car have enough money to properly maintain it and put quality parts and tires on the car if you see these kind of no-name Chinese tires on the car it's usually an indicator that they really didn't maintain the car as well as they could have and we're put we're compromising the car by putting really cheap after-market Chinese parts on the car so you've done all of your research you've narrowed down the field and you've decided to go look at some cars that's great so the next step you need to do is make sure that the number one rule is to me in a public space you don't want to go to someone's house you don't want to give your address to meet someone at your house or where you live the best thing you can do is to meet at a grocery store or somewhere public like a Home Depot home-improvement store where there's going to be lots of other people around just for your safety the next step you want to make sure that you're not looking at the car at night this one might seem obvious but even when I've sold cars in the past I've had people asking me hey when I get out of work can I come see the car and when they get out of work it's maybe six o'clock and in the wintertime now it gets dark and around 4:30 or 5:00 so it'd be impossible for them to properly assess the car and look at it when it's raining out you also don't want to look at the car those are just the ground rules to start now when you finally meet up with the seller of the car introduce yourself make some small talk sort of get to know the vibe of the person and see if that person's you know someone you're comfortable doing business with or even getting in the car with them and going on a test ride you don't want to just meet up and you know jump right in the car there has to be a little bit of getting to know each other first so take five minutes to walk around the car and check everything out talk to the seller about why they're selling the car that's a good question to ask in person I don't like to ask that one over email but I'll always ask it in person you know make some good eye contact and see what their response is and if they're going to be honest about the true reasons of why they might be selling their car after talking to the seller of the car for a few minutes the first thing I like to do is walk around the exterior and check everything out see if there's any dents if there's any rough spots the e30 9s are known for some spots like usually around here especially in New England and the ice Belt down in the lower rocker areas there will be some rust there's not really rust around the front fenders but those are the areas I also open up all of the doors and one of the things I like to do is get down low here and I'm going to look around that bottom edge of the door this is a very common spot for rust bubbles to form and what I'll do is just lift up this rubber trim piece here and rub my fingers underneath all along the entire run of the door and feel for rust bubbles and you can look in there and see if there's any rust forming you'll also check out the back we'll do the same exact thing look underneath here feel for rust bubbles under that bottom edge of the door this car has no rust under these doors which is really nice and yeah we'll generally just walk around the car first check everything out another common spot on these cars is right here sometimes rust forms along this edge previous cars I've had one had a rust hole right here that I repaired and another one had a bubble right here under this rubber seal and it seems to be pretty common on these cars again on this other side we'll check and see if there's any rust along here you can put your hand in along the arch here and check for rust and rot the next step here opened the gas door let's see if there's any rust bubbles right here almost every e39 I've ever owned had a rough spot right here so don't let that deter you it's not that big of a deal even if the rest of the car is really nice almost everyone I've had has had some small rust bubble right here and for some strange reason this car does not have one again when you open up the next door go ahead and what I like to do is run my hand along the door jamb here and feel for any paint lines sometimes if a car was painted and poorly refinished you'll be able to feel a tape line from where they taped off the jam right here and there will be a an edge that you can feel this car doesn't have it because it hasn't been painted but I hoped my brother-in-law look for a car once I think it was last year and the first door that I opened I was able to feel right here and I knew that the car had been painted once again move on to the next door and we'll lift up this rubber seal and feel under here for rust bubbles and finally check out this door here now that we've given the car a good walk around here now we can get into some of the finer details one of the things you can do is check the VIN number and right in here under the driver side of the car let's see if we can get this to focus behind the windshield there's a small window that will expose the VIN number so I would check the VIN number there and if i zoom out here you can see its location on the car it's right under here open up the door here and you can verify that the VIN number matches here on the sticker on the door jamb this also will tell you other information like the production date December 2001 and you can get the last seven digits here for your VIN decoding which hopefully you already did before you ever came out to see the car now the next thing I do on my list here is I lift up these formats and move these out of the way and I'll feel with my hand and check to see if the carpet is wet or sometimes if they've been wet for a while you'll see some mold and some other nasty stuff growing in the car so definitely feel put some pressure on here and see if there's any moisture that can be an indicator of one or two things either the sunroof drains are blocked or what's more common on the e39 as the vapor barrier behind the door has failed and is allowing water to leak into the car the other thing you can do while you're in here is if you have fold down seats or any other features go ahead and open them up make sure everything works you can check out the condition of the leather I also take a look at the headliner to see if there's any stains or rips another area you want to take a good look at is in the trunk we'll open up our CD changer area over here make sure there's nothing weird going on you can also check out the age of the battery here open that guy up and this battery does actually happen to be pretty old this one says 2010 and you can usually check the date code here on the battery and that will tell you just exactly when the last time that battery was replaced so this one's going on 10 years and it's probably gonna need a replacement soon so I'm not stranded in those winter months it will also open up the spare as you can see this one matches the other four wheels and it is a little dirty in here but I don't see any rust or any damage sometimes it'll be a huge you know gouge here or a crack might be an indicator that they hit something with the car in the past and then swapped the spare wheel on for the damaged wheel you know that's pretty common as these cars get up an age not a deal breaker but something to take note of now another thing to notice when buying one of these cars is I like to see a carpet back here that's really clean if there's all sorts of stains and tears and rips you can tell the car might have had a little bit of a hard life and it hasn't been you know taken care of as well as it should have been the cleaner the car and the interior is generally an indication that it was driven carefully and taken care of next you might want to open up the trunk tool kit here and see if anything is missing generally speaking everything here should look pretty good if anything is rusty this is not really a problem on the e39 but on other models sometimes if the tools are rusty here it's an indicator that there might have been a leak just kind of strange but make sure all of your tools are there once again let's come into the back here and we'll lift up this format took it under make sure you feel around here see if anything is wet and if there's any kind of issue that may indicate that the vapor barrier has failed or there might be a sunroof sunroof leak issue again on the passenger side let's lift up that floor mat you can even take the whole thing out and look and see just how cleaned it is under here and the cleaner it is underneath the format is usually an indicator that the car was taken someone took good care of it and if you see all sorts of stains and you know crayon and food and all sorts of nasty stuff in here usually tells you that the car was abused a little bit and it may not be as clean as you had hoped for now let's talk about seat twists seat twist is a common a39 issue and this car is no exception seat twist is when some of the cables that control the seat movement shrink over time and the housing of that cable causes the seats the mechanisms not to function properly and as a result only one side will adjust leaving the other not to adjust as much and the whole seat will twist in different ways and I'll demonstrate that now now as you can see here this has caused a twisting you can see all these ripples in the leather here and when I just did that seat the left side moved in more than the than the right side and that is a pain to fix it's not again not a deal-breaker if you're looking for one of these cars let's adjust it back no it's ok let's show you again one more time you can hear that twisting and the whole side of the headrest is is twisted too now what's interesting is after owning several different a 39 s over the past six years maybe going on seven years now you can see that the seat twist issue tends to be more common in the 2002 and 2003 model year I've had a few 2001 models and I've never seen the seat twist in those so maybe they changed suppliers for the cables at some point and that resulted in this sort of mass widespread problem with the seat twist but in order to resolve that issue you can either replace the cables which are about a hundred dollars or you can just remove the seat and trim those cab the housing on those cables and that will resolve the issue for for free and it will take you a couple hours per side it's kind of a pain but again if the car is really nice not a deal-breaker to have twisted seats it's very common in the e39 and let's not forget to check under the hood no inspection would be complete without doing that now taking a look under the hood and tell you a lot of different things one of the most interesting things I can come up with to share is that there's always a production date stamp on a lot of the plastic parts and right here you can see this round circle molded into this plastic hose and in the center it says 13 and that tells you that the last time the cooling system may have been replaced or at least this some of the hoses was 2013 now it's 2019 so that is getting on an age and it might be it may be an indicator for you to do some detective work just to show you you know when some maintenance was done another thing to look for on these cars is the ABS module right here on the passenger side of the car if you see a sticker here this one has been rebuilt that's a good indicator - that tells you someone took care of the car it's already had the issue with the ABS module failing and someone has taken care of that if there's no sticker I guess changing out that ABS module is likely in your future but again not a deal breaker to have that done is about a hundred dollars now if you're curious what color your car is you can always look under the hood here and see if I can get this under the hood should be the paint code this is Dunkel blue or toledo blue metallic which is known as toledo blue and there should be some stickers here if you don't have stickers or they're missing it may be an indicator that the hood has been replaced and painted and whatever body shop did the work maybe they're a little lazy and didn't replace those stickers so if you have stickers here that's always a good sign that you know the paint may be original some good body shops will replace those stickers so it's not foolproof but it is something to note again on the passenger side of the car here you can just look around to make sure nothing's broken everything is in place again here's where the VIN number is you can see that window in the windshield that's by the driver's side of the car and you want to check of course check that VIN number make sure it matches the information that you received before going to look at the car again with the production date code what's interesting is you should be able to find a production code on the headlight as well and here it is right here it's probably not going to show up on camera but this one says oh nine and obviously this car was made in 2002 so that tells you that maybe around 2009 or 2010 this headlight was replaced the fender does look to be repainted on this car so there was a minor fender bender in the past where this headlight was replaced this fender was repainted and again their production date codes is a way that you can do some detective work and find out what may be original to the car and what has been replaced on the e39 there's also a hidden function where you can use your remote to put all the windows down and the sunroof open at the same time by just holding the UP button on the key so let's hold this down and see if it works all right let's see if we can put all the windows back up there we go windows are up sunroof is closed and we did that just by putting the key into the driver's door a lock cylinder and turning it clockwise so that it locks and everything goes back up now the final thing you want to check before your test drive for safety is go ahead and feel the tires make sure that there's ample tread on there I'll also usually have a flashlight with me and I'll shine in through the wheel take a look and see the condition of the brake rotors and the brake pad make sure that there's enough meat left on there sometimes the brake rotor will have a huge lip on it or like an edge or some grooves in it that tells you the pads are really worn you're gonna have to assume it's going to need a brake job pretty soon but the brake rotors and pads look ok on this the front tires are new on this car and we'll also check them in the back so I'll go ahead and take a look at the rotors in the back here make sure there's some tread on the tires and yeah we're good to go all right now it's time for the test drive and what you want to do here is test out all the electronics test the heated seats make sure they work sometimes they don't you can turn the traction control on and off make sure make sure all the buttons are working try the radio this applies to you know all other types of models of BMW always check the radio because some of them have issues where the amplifier and the trunk will go bad and you won't have any sound this one does have sound it is working but if you're not getting any sound from the radio it could be an indicator of a larger problem so you know never take anything at face value you always have to check yourself make sure everything is working now on the dashboard this is also going to give you some information such as make sure you put gas in the car before making a YouTube video but you also see if there's a service engine soon light on just there isn't one doesn't mean that the seller didn't erase it before you came to see the car which is highly frowned upon but it does happen so what I like to do is I will always bring a scan tool with me and this is the Creator c310 you can bring whatever tool you have with you and even if there is no service engine soon illuminated if there is a problem sometimes it will be stored in the computer as a shadow code for a while so bring this with you scan the car thoroughly and see if there's any hidden problems or problems that the seller either didn't know about or intentionally didn't want to disclose to you so the more tools you have at your disposal the better off you'll be now one of the nice things about driving around a parking lot that is poorly paved or driving over speed bumps is you can really feel the clunk in either the ball joints or clunking or sometimes sometimes it's not a ball joint sometimes it's actually a sway bar link in the front I've had cars in the past that I could have sworn the ball joints were bad and it turned out to be a sway bar link causing clunking which would be much easier to change and on the e39 there's something like twenty four dollars each and yeah super easy to replace so I would recommend driving it around wherever their speed bumps or maybe a road that isn't perfect that will definitely shine some light on the suspension clunking and give you an indicator you know if any of the ball joints or sway bars need to be replaced [Music] that concludes my e39 buyer's guide if you have any questions please leave them for me in the comments below you can also send me an email which is in the description box below and if this video was helpful to you please click the like button subscribe and I'll see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: BIMMER ZEIT

Views: 45,015

Rating: 4.8707294 out of 5

Keywords: E39 Buyers Guide, BMW buyers guide, buying a used bmw, used bmw guide, 5 series buying guide, e39 buying guide, e39 guide, e39, bmw e39, how to buy a used bmw, e39 problems, e39 buy list, e39 525i, e39 528i, e39 530i, e39 540i, e39 m5, m5 buyers guide, 528i buyers guide, 525i buyers guide, 530i buyers guide, 540i buyers guide, bmw, bimmerzeit, used bmw good idea, used bmw bad idea

Id: 70zvnZdvEog

Length: 29min 50sec (1790 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/bigmphan]

Make sure it’s a stick..... I’ve made that mistake