A few weeks ago, I wrote about how installing electric air conditioning my 1969 Lotus Elan +2 pushed out nearly all BMW-related work for much of the summer. Last week, I got the system running. It’s not completely finished—there’s one big task I’ll do over the winter, and a few tweaks I’ll have to wait for hot weather to make—but the garage floor is no longer covered with tools and parts for the job, and I can turn my sights to other things.
The one I chose to focus on was another attempt at selling Sharkie, my 1979 635CSi. As a small-bumpered Euro car, Sharkie is arrestingly attractive, but with the substantial demerits of not having its original M90 engine and dogleg close-ratio transmission, visible accident-repair damage on the inner fenders, and 220,000 miles, the car is never going to bring the money that, at first glance, it looks like it’s worth. I’ve been down this road with the car several times. Five years ago I posted this video to help me sell it, but each time I’ve brought the car home from the Monson warehouse, floated it for sale for $12,500 on my Facebook page, and received a hail of “it’s gorgeous, I want it, but I have no space,” “that’ll sell quickly,” and “why so cheap?” replies, no one seriously bellied up to the bar. So if I really wanted to sell it, the next task would be advertising it for real. I knew that the vultures on Bring a Trailer would tear the admittedly-flawed car apart, and that the sewer-dump of Facebook Marketplace messages of “Is it available?” and “Wld U tk 5k 4 it?” would drive me crazy. Plus, whenever I have the car at the house, look out the window from my office, and see it in the driveway, I think “Damn that’s a pretty car.” But I am trying to simplify my life a little, and it does weigh on me that if I’m not using the five cars I store in Monson, I should part with a couple of them (the Bavaria was the first). So with the seasons flipping the page to autumn, I thought I’d try again.
I bought Sharkie eleven years ago, just four months after I’d bought the Bavaria. I’d recently attended Southeast Sharkfest, seen an early E12-based Euro E24, and absolutely swooned at the combination of the small Euro bumpers, Polaris paint, black stripes, and black sport interior that seemed to set up endless visual reverberations of silver-and-black, and began looking for one. They’re not common, and if they’re intact, they’re pricey. I found this one in Connecticut that ticked off the visual boxes, but it was missing its original drivetrain, had clear evidence of repaired accident damage, a ton of miles, and no air conditioning.
The photo in the original ad for Sharkie that made me weak in the knees.
In addition, the owner had made an odd prioritization in springing for a pricey set of refurbished BBS RA wheels, an Alpina steering wheel, Optima battery, and xenon headlights while not repairing a leaky gas tank and a broken windshield wiper linkage, and wouldn’t budge on his high asking price. We parted amicably, and a few months later when he bought another project, he contacted me. He still was asking more than I thought the car was worth, but I came up with the idea of asking him if he’d keep his expensive bolt-on components and lower the price. We came to agreeable terms. I literally went down there with a set of wheels, a steering wheel, and battery, pulled his off, dropped mine in, and loaded the car on the trailer.
The car, now wearing some set of 15-inch basketweaves and tires I found cheaply on Craigslist.
Other than a new gas tank and wiper linkage, refreshing the brakes, and replaced a worn-out center support bearing, it didn’t need much to begin began road-tripping it. Its first trip was back to the source—Southeast Sharkfest in Chattanooga TN. This event is in late April. The fact that the car didn’t have air conditioning didn’t bother me until I was about 150 miles north of Chattanooga, and I began positively roasting. I vowed to retrofit air conditioning into it, which turned out to be a bigger job than I imagined, as there’s a climate control panel that governs both heat and a/c.
This got worse before it got better.
Driving-wise, the E24 is an exceptional touring car. It just inhales interstate. The factory air dam keeps the nose planted above 85mph where all my other vintage BMWs begin to get a bit light. And the fact that this one had its close-ratio gearbox replaced with a standard overdrive box but still had its 3.07 differential made it positively lazy on the highway; It spun only 2800 rpm at 80 mph. I eventually installed a 3.45 diff from a 2800CS I’d parted out 30 years ago to wake up the acceleration a bit, and found a set of 17-inch BBS RC090 wheels that completed the look of the car.
I drove Sharkie to The Vintage three times and thoroughly enjoyed it. And it’s always brought a lot of attention at local shows and cars-and-coffee events as well, as people are pulled in by its presence and its “Euro-ness” without even knowing the details of why. But I’m not doing as many long-distance driving events as I used to; it’s really just The Vintage once a year and that’s it. Plus, my strong preference these days really goes to smaller more nimble cars (hence the attraction to the vintage Lotuses). Thus, Sharkie has largely languished in the Monson warehouse.
So on September 21st—the first day of fall—back up on my Facebook page it went for yet another “float,” along with an exhaustive description of what an early Euro E12-based E24 is, what this car is, and over a hundred photos. Again I got all the ooohs and aaaahs, and the “I want it but I can’t-s.” Oh well, I thought; at least I’ll enjoy looking at it in the driveway for the next few months and will run it back out to Monson before the snow falls.
And a lovely view in my driveway it always is.
But then, two people messaged me—one in Washington state, the other in Virginia—and asked if they could speak with me. The fellow in Virginia began by asking a curious question: “I’m interested in buying something for my son that’s cool and special enough that he’ll treat it well, and not so much of a missile that he’ll get into trouble with it. Do you think this car fits the bill?” I said that it’s not my place to talk people into cars (though I frequently talk them out of them), but offered that I couldn’t find a flaw in his logic. He said he’d likely fly up and drive the car home and thus was interested in what I thought about doing so on its 2011-date-coded tires. I’m very careful not to say things like “I’d do it in a heartbeat.” People need to make these choices themselves. So we talked about the logistics of my changing the tires, as well as getting a bent wheel I referred to in the ad straightened. He said he’d get back to me before the evening with a firm yay or nay.
Perhaps an hour later, he texted me saying that he showed the photos of the car to his son, he was beyond excited, so… yes, he wanted it. He sent me a deposit, and asked me whether it would be possible to get the tires replaced in time to pick up the car in four days, as later in the week he was flying to Australia until mid-October. I said that it was a narrow needle to thread, but that it wasn’t impossible. I use a friend who has one of those mobile tire van for in-driveway mounting and balancing. My friend recommended replacing the car’s 205/50/R17 tires with 235/45R17s to fill the wheel wells out. I told the buyer that, although I saw references on BigCoupe.com to 235/45R17s being used without complications, I had no first-hand experience with them clearance-wise, and left the choice with him. He ordered a set of 235/45s Michelin Pilots from The Tire Rack for Tuesday arrival. I found a wheel-straightening shop in nearby Waltham. The needle-threading was on.
So, first thing on Monday, I drove out to Monson in the FrankenThirty and swapped it for Sharkie. As I hadn’t been out there for a while, I first emptied and refilled all the DampRid containers, and got inspection stickers for the FrankenThirty and my ’99 M Coupe.
In goes the FrankenThirty for its first stay in Monson. Whether it’s a quick nap or a longer slumber remains to be seen.
I then opened up Sharkie’s hood to reconnect the battery, and saw something funny. There was one of those gate-style hose block-off clamps that are used to lessen the amount of antifreeze that you dump while replacing a cooling system component. The E24, like the E9 and E3, has a heater core that’s plumbed always-on (unlike the 2002 that has an actual heater-core shut-off valve). Years ago, I’d installed a 2002 heater-block-off valve in Sharkie so the a/c wasn’t fighting against the always-on heater core. I was surprised to see the gated clamp and couldn’t imagine that it had been there for years, but I had things to do and places to go, so I removed it and threw it in the trunk.
These are useful for lessening coolant loss during repair, but keeping the hose squeezed isn’t a good solution for heater core block-off.
As I was driving home on the Mass Pike (I-90), the day warmed up enough for me to turn on the air conditioning, which I needed to test anyway. I was relieved that it worked without apology. But I began to notice that a fair amount of heat was pouring in from the passenger footwells. Ah, I thought; I must’ve left the heater valve in the “on” position. I stopped at the first rest area I encountered, popped open the hood, and was stunned to find… no heater block-off valve. What the…? Did I mis-remember the 2002 block-off valve? A memory of installing a block-off valve from a Toyota drifted into my head, but then I recalled that I’d done that this summer on the Bavariabefore I sold it.
It wasn’t until I got home and looked at photos and notes that I figured it out. I had installed a 2002 heater valve in Sharkie, apparently in 2023 (I was stunned that I didn’t do it as part of the a/c retrofit in 2017), but I discovered that it was leaking before my wife and I took it to visit friends in Vermont last year. That triggered a memory of bringing the gate-style hose clamp with us on the trip as a just-in-case thing, and installing it when the footwell temps did indeed become annoying.
A-HA!
Installing some kind of block-off valve suddenly became a priority. I planned to attack it as my next task, but as the day pressed on, I felt worse and worse. On Tuesday morning, I woke up feeling like hell. My wife recommended I take a Covid test.
“There’s no way I have Covid,” I reflexively snapped back.
Yup. Positive.
So, even though there’s now a stack of 235/45R17 Michelin Pilots sitting on my front porch, I didn’t thread the needle. The buyer went off to Australia for a few weeks. But Sharkie is spoken for, and I now have the time to find a block-off valve a bit more reliable than a 50-year-old one from a 2002.
—Rob Siegel
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Rob’s latest book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic, is available here on Amazon, as are his seven other books, including Just Needs a Recharge: The Hack Mechanic Guide to Vintage Air Conditioning. Signed copies can be ordered directly from Rob here.
