Finally some movement

Been a while and busy with the move to Seattle. The car started to show signs of leaking coolant, and the best candidate was the water pump. Sure enough, I pulled the old one out and it was a complete POS. The impeller was stamped metal instead of cast, the bearings and seals were crap, and the housing even snapped while removing it. Replaced with a proper Meyle water pump, car runs just a hair cooler now and doesn't leak a drop.

Cost $60.

I was also just driving around in the rain and the rear end was just sliding all over the place, so I decided I couldn't stand living with the crap tires that came with the car any more and had to do something. Upgrading to 15" wheels and tires was going to cost $1k-$1.2k, and I really didn't want to do that yet. I want to get the other items sorted before doing that. So, I had a set of Falken 205/60R14 tires installed on the car. Huge improvement, but then that was expected as the old tires were mix and match POS tires. I'd held off doing the tires because there was so much slop in the steering that an alignment was pointless. However, I have a Z3 steering rack on the way and some other items to fix it up right. More on that later.

Cost: $375 installed.