Fixing a high mile German car?! Is this '04 BMW 760LI with a V12 worth it? CAR WIZARD breaks it down

It's time for some bracelet butt action, let's get started, that sounds a little strange doesn't it? Mrs. Wizard is talking about it, well there's a guy called Bangle and he designed

this

car and it has a weird shaped butt, so they call it a Bengal Butt Car. I've heard it called that many times. I don't know the whole story, but I know that's what it's called. This is a 2004 BMW 760Li. Yes, the V12. A similar V12 that you will find in Rolls Royces. It's a very smooth engine

this

one isn't in that good condition it's not that good it just needs a few little things sorted out and it will be back out the door otherwise we could have turned this job down because the price of these cars can go up so much so quickly that in this case the valve seals are leaking, which is not a complaint to the customer and we are not going to fix it here.

I know Johnny from German Motorworks has also decided that I don't think he will work on these valve seals again. 40 50 hour job, these cars really aren't

worth

it, let's go ahead and take a look at this and then we'll talk about why it's here, so here's the front of this, it's exactly the same as what you see on a 745 750 like this. One is that you can see that the headlights are a little bit faded, they have a little bit of yellowing, a little bit of haze and the customer is not interested in restoring this car, he wants some simple problems checked, nothing more if you go down for this.

On the side you can see that it is not sunken or dented or heavily rusted or anything like that. I think it's been sitting for a while. Let's take a look at the rotors. No, it's not that bad, so it may have been driven here recently. The car is definitely noticeable. sits outside, it has rained, there is dirt and dust and everything. I think it's kind of a project car for the customer, it's not meant to be a showroom piece or anything like that. Here you see the 760Li, here is the butt of the bracelet, it was nice. which they made fun of when it came out, it has a weird line like a

high

belt line on the back that sticks out a little bit, some people made fun of it and it was designed by a guy named Bengal and they called it the Bengal butt, like that The side is also just as pretty, let's go ahead and jump under the hood, here's our big V12.

I don't know the specs or all the things about this. I don't do many BMWs, that's Johnny's world, but this just happens. I think I'm local and they're asking us if we can take care of some things and we'll definitely help you with that in the engine bay, I was worried about coolant leaks and also oil leaks when we have this in the air and here in a minute you'll see which has tons of oil leaks. We pressure tested the cooling system right here at the reservoir with a pressure tester and it held pressure for a long time without a single drip on the ground, so we don't believe it.

It's leaking coolant at the moment this is a very similar engine to what you would see in a Rolls-Royce Phantom they use the BMW V12 it's not fun to work on these if you have to make the valve covers you have to take them off a bunch of other things and , as you can see here, we all know that with BMWs, I called Achy Breaky Plastics, someone in the past who is not in the shop already broke plastic parts and used hoses to patch them with worm clamps, same thing. same thing here here same thing there you can find stuff like that everywhere the final complaint they had was that it was actually running very poorly and we're going to go back to the trunk area and show you what we found. something easy always check the simple things first it's easy to think oh this is going to be a big takedown it's going to be expensive it doesn't always have to be let's go to the trunk area so here we are in the trunk and right away you can see that you can tell that the client has oil leaks and things that are happening because they have this in the back, but it went wrong and Daniel's son is actually diagnosing this and got to the bottom of it pretty quickly.

I opened the trunk, the battery was so dead that the customer brought it to us at this store using this little booster pack to keep the engine running and it had very little power. The standby power voltages were probably not very good. Battery is low. There was most likely a trip, we're going to charge it and load test it to see how well it works, but Danielson connected a booster that he has, which is a very

high

quality lithium booster, to the battery and when he did that, the engine smoothed out instantly. It shut down and idled smooth as glass, went through and cleared all codes, none of the codes came back.

I'm totally happy, the battery in this car is most likely junk, causing it to malfunction and malfunction when you give it the voltage it needs. The rest of the system, the modules are happy and start working as they should immediately, when the booster pack is removed the engine starts to rough and runs rough again, so it was a very easy diagnosis. Fortunately, it's not a big deal, let's move on. and jump inside and let Mrs. Wizard show you around. It is really nice. These 760s have a really nice interior, especially the long Li version. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

Got some Mouse here 145 497. Got some good

mile

s here. and this being a German car that's when things start to happen, even though we know it's been stored outside because we can tell from all the rain debris and everything that the dashboard actually looks in very good condition, no cracks, no deep gouges , nor Grand. Canyons, the wood is in very good condition, look at that nice inlay, it is also in very good condition, very good, presents quite well, has a very interesting infotainment system, obviously it looks like it needs to be accepted and connected some things and all that. but it's still all pixel, everything looks good there, so we scroll down, we have simple HVAC system controls, a very simple radio system because I imagine most of those controls and screens are up there on that front screen , let's check out our little It looks like we have a power amplifier and a lot of nothing, but it's great.

One thing that's interesting is that it has side controls on the side of our center console so we can control a lot of those Creature Comforts. Here, along with the seeds, the pat, you know all those adjustments, we also open up our center console, we can see that it has a takeaway movie system and in a second when we look at the roof, you'll see where it's actually placed. all those good little movies until we go to dry seeds nice leather seats with no cracks or tears looking great and let me tell you, if the

wizard

was sitting here with me, he would tell you that the smell in here smells very, very good. like a leather factory leather goods store, it smells great, the door cards look great, they have more wood trim details and all the plastic parts are in good condition.

We often talk about not having space in the back seat. but not in the LI version. Look at all that space, huge amounts of space back there, much more than you imagine, some people have in the front seat of the car, such big places back there to relax and unwind, and it seems like they've relaxed a little bit. here already, with some nice water bottles left, we have more wood trim on the center console and on the rear lid, we also have sunshades that cover all the windows in the rear and they all look in good condition, no holes, No.

Tears, just as you go to that main sign, there we go, up there, under one of those little slots, will be our little video system, well, you can be watching, well, someone else is driving you through the sunroof is covered and he is a person. It is operated, not controlled by a button or anything, but you can see that the Alcantara-like type of material is in very good condition, it is a nice dove gray color and, again, there are no rips, no dips, nothing that ends in the steering wheel as we always do, we return to where.

We start simple controls on that steering wheel to make sure we keep that focus on the road in front of us and not try to figure out how to change that radio station and what not to answer those phone calls and whatever, but that's an inside fold anyway. of Evidence. Even though the seat is nice and comfortable, we have to lift this thing up in the air and see what exactly is going on with the BMWs. Actually, any German car over 100, especially like this one, has 145,000

mile

s on it, you can expect oil leaks and lots of them.

Danielson has I went to work and cleaned under here and cleaned up all the oil leaks. Now we have to run it and drive it and see where it's coming from and it could be coming from a number of places, but let's go ahead and take a look down here. our radiator support is nice and dry, we don't really have coolant leaks like we mentioned, we pressure tested it and it didn't leak at all, nothing happened with that, here's our ac compressor, there's a little bit of leaking everywhere , there's our liquid cooled alternator, that's it guys, you don't see fins or air cooling on that alternator, it's cooled by your engine's antifreeze, it's not cheap to replace the brakes are good, the struts are good, the link sway bar is good, nothing loose there, our little ride height sensor. okay and go this way the brakes look good nothing is loose the sway bar link is okay the strut is dry we see some leaks here I don't think it's coming from the rack no I can feel the inside of the rack is dry that comes from the engine, you see the oil pan here and there is our oil filter in the center of the oil pan, that's something very strange about this engine, it's kind of cold but maybe not so cold at the same time, it was covered in oil.

It's going to be difficult to find the oil leak because the entire engine was covered in oil. We have cleaned everything. Now we have to start isolating where it's coming from. You can see that there is a little bit of dirt all over the engine. It's really hard to say and pinpoint exactly where it comes from because it's like I said, it's really all over. Here's our big beefy transmission and it's leaking a little bit, but it was from the engine that's literally blowing on these. In the end, the transmission itself doesn't really leak or anything like that.

There is a large catalytic converter that goes to our resonators. Everything looks good here. You return to the differential. Here are our CD boots. They look good. Here is our fuel tank. There are no leaks. There it is okay, check that the CD boot of this wheel is okay. Here is our little stabilizer bar link. Alright. The brakes are probably half worn out, maybe a little more at the rear. There are no leaks coming from the rear suspension. Here's our little ride height sensor. That trunk is good. it's a good strut it's a good sway bar link it's good it

breaks

again half was lost maybe 60 percent nothing was lost loose this has a valved exhaust it has two big pipes that go to the center chamber but it comes out like a big tube that splits in two here and you I can see there's a little valve that actuates the exhaust and makes it sound better when you're under full load so let's check the tires real quick before we leave them in week 21 2017 , so these things are probably about five years old.

They've got a little bit of life left in them, it's not time for the tires yet, let's go ahead and get this thing on the ground, so hopefully we can find the leak and it's not too expensive, but since it's the V12, it can be very, very expensive if there are some oil leaks that require a lot of disassembly, just as you saw all the Achy Breaky plastics that have been repaired by someone else in the past, every time you tear down one of these engines it will add a lot to the bill for an Oops Crack!

You can be the most careful person in the world with careful hands like a neurosurgeon. Still, things will crack and break when you take them apart. Another thing that really makes it difficult to work on these cars is that people can buy them so cheap let me show you an example this is a 750 Li a 760 is

worth

maybe a thousand or two more this is an 09 4 thousand and you can see that in They've actually marked it down from 5,500 because it's not sold at That price now, this is a 760, it might be worth a little more, but usually between four and six, maybe seven thousand dollars, makes eight for a perfect model, but you can buy this kind of cars all day long, four, five, six grand, so you bring this one. car in the shop and yeah I want this and this and this repair and the mechanic shop says okay it'll be nine thousand dollars and you say I didn't even pay that much for the car brother, I hear that a lot at BMW I think people who have a certain income level probably shouldn't mess with BMWs they want to show off, maybe they're up here in your income level, they don't realize the car is cheap, but the repairs are still for a 90,100,150 car 000 in the last few years I can count probably at least 50 BMWs that customers said oh no no no no don't park it outside I hadn't anticipated anything more than500 dollars maybe a thousand dollars and you're talking five Great, no I didn't even pay that for the car bro, park it outside.

I won't do it. That happens so often in these cars. It's one of the reasons I don't like working at BMW because it can get out of control. really fast in a car that isn't really worth it and they aren't worth it for a reason because they are very expensive to repair, there is a reason they say if you can't afford a new BMW you probably can't afford it. a used one the prices to repair them are the same they do not change when the value of the car goes down the repair prices do not go down with him they stay here fortunately this customer only has a few items hopefully we can fix all of them quickly and it will not be so expensive and as I mentioned otherwise, I probably wouldn't have taken this car because it's just not worth it and if someone has sentimental value and says well I have value in this car, I have it good, you know that doesn't add to the insurance payment if there is a accident, then they don't count the sentimental value, we will solve these things, we will see what happens with the oil leak, we will see what we find there.

I think we have solved the idling problem. We have proven that it does not have a coolant leak. It all comes down to the oil leak and whether we can fix it or not the car will get out of here, but before it goes I want to show you a video and show you this 760Li if you're curious what kind of tools we're going to use to work on this, check my amazon affiliate sync in the description below, we get a little snip, we really appreciate it, make sure to hit that subscribe button because there are many more interesting videos to come, thanks for watching.