About 3 years ago my daily driver BMW rolled craps on me. I was driving home, and nearly there, headed east on I-70 exiting onto Post road, down shifting from 4th to 3rd gear the shift lever went limp in my hand. Still rolling up the exit ramp, the shifter, loose and disconnected in my hand I tried desperately, several times, to engage a gear that was obviously not there. Like trying to pick a lock with a limp spaghetti noodle the effort was futile. Still on an incline, ten yards from the top of the ramp and it's downhill grade to a service station the car came to a complete stop, all inertia gone. With no transmission gear to engage and no working parking brake to hold the car, I held the car in place with the foot brakes and called Jenni on my cell phone. I told her to bring the truck and stop and get a log chain at the Home Depot, across the street (at the moment for me, at least a million miles away) and come and rescue me. Holding the brake for twenty or thirty minutes while she drove and shopped and circled around on the Interstate my legs were trembling and weak when she arrived. Together (me still holding the car on an incline with my feet, her dragging the chain and hooking the vehicles together) we got the car up over the incline and eventually home, with only a few head snapping jerks and yanks.
Thus began my quest for an aluminum rod with two perpendicular shafts to connect the shift lever to the transmission of my 1986 BMW 535i. A quest over 2 years in the searching. The Blue Frankenstein was sidelined while I searched the internet, Dreyer and Rinebold and E-Bay stores for the necessary piece. Apparently very few 3.5 liter BMW engines were coupled with the manual transmissions of the 5 series automobile from 86 to 88 and imported to the United States.

Here I quote myself from a post from my Blog archives: Other than that Mrs. Lincoln..., 10/13/2006

At just before 8:00 I jumped into the Bimmer, for a ride to remember, as I got to the interstate I noticed the car would not go into 5th gear, so I drove home in 4th. At my exit at Post I down shifted, or at least tried to, that's when the shifter disengaged from any mechanical relationship to the transmission, and became a flippy floppy knob on an aluminum stick, Joy, Joy! I will take that frustration to the bowling alley tonight and try to smash some of the pins.

And again from another Blog Archive: Biting My Tongue, 11/02/2006:

I tore into the BMW on Sunday, when the weather was nice and the sun was out. The shifter and center console are are all in the back seat, the actual shift mechanism is still in the vehicle, but that is where my problems lie. The lever on the bottom of the shifter is snapped off, and I could not find the connection point to the tranny, but I wouldn't be able to do anything with it even if I had. I'm going to have to call Edwards and have them put on a new one, or a used one or something. Maybe I can find one at Brothers and put it on myself, maybe pigs can fly. Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday.

About a month and a half after the "shiftless" incident Jenni and I bought a newer BMW 5 series on E-Bay, and drove it for another year and some months before a tragic accident of my own doing had me rear-ending Jenni (in our own truck) and "totaling" the vehicle. The insured value of the Mädchen was not high enough to repair the damages, and I could not keep the vehicle and repair her both, therefore we accepted the insurance pay-out and a concentrated effort to rebuild the Blue Frankenstein was again underway.
Above: The Blue Frankenstein's nose after a tangle with a fence or something worse. Prior to my ownership. Chuck Pace ©2006

Stay tuned for part 3: Abby Somebody, finding unwanted parts.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
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