Last week, I wrote about the final set of repairs to the FrankenThirty before departing for The Vintage. Last Wednesday, it was go time. I met my frequent road trip companion Jose Rosario at the Charlton Service Plaza on I-90 in central Massachusetts, and off we went.
Years back, when The Vintage was held in Winston-Salem, we used to knock the drive out in a day, but when the event was moved to Asheville, that increased the driving distance to 900 miles and we began breaking it up into a two-day trip. We generally try to get more than halfway on the first day, stopping somewhere in Virginia. As it happened, the drive down was hampered by near-biblical quantities of rain. In addition to the usual driving challenges (and making me glad I didn’t indulge a last-minute desire to drive the E9), this had the wholly unanticipated consequence of soaking the fresh-air path inside the cowl with water, which caused the smell of the residual mouse contamination to absolutely explode. Hitting the recirculation button knocked the smell back somewhat, but this was a problem I thought I’d solved, and I was not at all happy having it roar back in such a visceral way.
Photo is of foreboding clouds because it was too dangerous to try to snap a shot during the torrential episodes.
But other than that (and a surprisingly high level of oil consumption, like a quart every 500-ish miles), the FrankenThirty completely exceeded my expectations. It was dead-nuts reliable, it was quick (the combination of the Eta engine and the 3.73 rear end made it so that mashing the gas at just about any speed made the car move along quite smartly), and it was far quieter and more comfortable than my 2002s. When I arrived at the Clarion host hotel and was chatting with my friend Paul Wegweiser and was gushing about impressed I was with the car, he said “You’ve owned other E30s, right?” True—I had four of them back in the day as 12-year-old 140,000-mile daily drivers, and owned a very nice very original ’87 325is ten years ago—but I realized that I’d never actually road-tripped one before. I don’t think I’ll abandon my beloved 1970s-era BMWs and become a raving E30 fanboy, but I now get it in a way I didn’t when I was just driving around town. I’m solidly on Team FrankenThirty.
Two happy campers arrive at the Clarion hotel.
In addition to my surprisingly positive reaction to how the FrankenThirty handled the drive, there was another surprise . I usually drive cars to The Vintage that are, well, cool. My red E9 that’s been down there four times is drop-dead gorgeous. My ’79 Euro 635CSi is sleek and menacing. Hampton my Chamonix survivor 2002 is cute as a button. The Bavaria exudes early 70s German industrial design inside and out. In contrast, the red FrankenThirty with its gold BBS basketweaves might as well have been a Chrysler K-Car. It didn’t stand a chance next to Jose’s beautiful Pastell Blau ’76 2002. Everywhere we went (including stopping at Waffle House for breakfast), people asked “Is that 2002 yours?” I had to say “No, it’s Jose’s,” and bite my tongue and not say “But, really, I’ve owned 40 of these cars and currently have three DAMN IT WHAT IS MY E30, CHOPPED LIVER?” It happened so often that it became a running joke.
One of the de-facto games that gets played at The Vintage is “Let’s see how long it takes someone to ask Rob to fix something.” One year I literally didn’t even get to the reception desk at the hotel. This year, it was about 30 minutes. I was talking with Jeff Caplan at his Odometer Gears tent when Anita Patton walked up to us and said “Just the gentlemen I’m looking for.” Anita is well-known in The Vintage and SharkFest worlds, as she has a gorgeous Alpina B9. She’d driven this car down from Winchester VA, and as it neared Asheville, a variety of strange electrical things began happening—dash lights came on, the tach got jumpy, the power windows wouldn’t work. Once she got to the Clarion hotel, the car wouldn’t start. I said “I’d wager that the root cause is that the alternator isn’t charging the battery.” Jeff Caplan and I checked the car with a voltmeter, and sure enough, the resting battery voltage was quite low, around 11.7 volts. We jump-started the car, and with it running, the voltage was still low, clearly indicating that no charging was taking place.
Me in my happy place, except that I had to rewire my brain on the fly not to put any tools down on any surface in that gorgeous engine compartment.
I had a spare voltage regulator with me, so I unscrewed the one from the back of her alternator and installed mine, but it made no difference. I noticed that the alternator was a relatively new Bosch rebuild, and commented on what a poor reputation these have. “I think you need to look for a replacement alternator,” I said. Anita and some other folks who began clustering around (this was all happening under the overhang directly in front of the entrance to the hotel) made some calls, but none of the big-box shops in Asheville had a replacement alternator. Anita had a spare one at her house and called her husband to Fedex it, but her car needed to be down at the BMW CCA Foundation in the morning.
At this point, Jeff Caplan said “We can pull the one out of my race car. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow.” You need to understand that Anita’s Alpina B9 looks like this:
The beauty.
And Jeff’s race car looks like this:
The beast.
So, in a beautiful bit of symmetry, the rattiest 635CSi at The Vintage loaned its alternator to the prettiest 635CSi at The Vintage.
When the swap was almost complete, my New England friend Stan Chamallas arrived in his gorgeous white E9 and said “What are folks doing?”
“Swapping out a bad alternator,” I said.
“Do you need a good one?” he asked. “I have a never-used rebuild in my trunk.
“WHERE WERE YOU EIGHTEEN MINUTES AGO?” I mock-complained.
But with Jeff’s alternator installed, Anita got her car to the Foundation the next morning. I’m in the photo below with Anita, but the point in all of this is that this isn’t about me, or her. Any number of people at The Vintage would’ve done this for any number of people at The Vintage. This is what I love about the vintage BMW community as a whole, and about this event in particular.
Odometer Gears’ Jeff Caplan isn’t in this photo, and he really should be—he did as much as I did to get Anita’s Alpina where it needed to be. More, considering it was his alternator that went into her car.
On Friday morning, it was off to the BMW CCA Foundation for the Alpina exhibit. Even before stepping foot inside the building, you’d think that Maximum Alpina had been achieved by the display of cars outside the building, including—count ’em—three E39 B10 V8S Alpina wagons, and the recently-rediscovered original Alpina 2002 (more correctly, a car that began as a 1967 1600 but with a 2-liter engine) that Glen Dye purchased and was written about by Car and Driver. The car is now owned by Barrett Nicholas. You can read the backstory here and here, and I believe that Mike Self will be writing a detailed article about the car.
Totally not kidding about the three E39 B10 V8S cars.
The original 2002 Alpina (an Alpina-treated 1967 1600 with a 2-liter engine) was the belle of the ball at the Foundation, and the next day at The Vintage.
The curated exhibit of the 25 Alpina cars inside the Foundation museum was tasteful, beautiful, amazing, like the cars themselves. In addition to the E9 and E24, the two cars that lit my fire were the E3 and the Z1.
What’s even cooler than a Z1? A Z1 Alpina.
Tasteful is really Alpina’s middle name.
An Alpina E3? Oh yes please!
And another interior that is Alpina perfection.
While at the Alpina exhibit, I had an absolutely surreal moment. An elegant-looking man approached me and asked me, in a wonderfully thick German accent, “Are you Rob Siegel?” I looked at his nametag and gulped when I saw that it said “Erik Ploss, Alpina Head of Sales.” “Um, yes,” I stammered. What could this man possibly want from me? Imagine my shock when he said “I have your book. I recommended it to people all the time. I have my copy here. Would you sign it?” Mr. Ploss had his daughter take a photo of the two of us. Hey, that’s my story, and it’s the truth. Honest. I hope it’s not like that photo The Geek had his friends take of him in the Rolls Royce convertible in Sixteen Candles.
(I’ll write about The Vintage itself next week. I’m currently in a hotel room in West Virginia, so neither The FrankenThirty nor I have made it home yet.)
—Rob Siegel
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Rob’s newest book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic, is available here on Amazon, as are his seven other books. Signed copies can be ordered directly from Rob here.
Tags: ALPINA the vintage
