When you are visiting Munich, it's highly recommended to pay a visit to the local BMW museum.
What can you expect? Well, don't expect a very large museum. On a spiral ramp you walk from the bottom floor to the upper floor, seeing a couple of plane engines, some vintage cars, some information on monitors..etc. Nice to know: the M30 engine is also used as an marine engine with a heck drive. Sounds allright, but why a must to visit it? Because on the upper floor they molested an E32 750iL. But they did it nice, and it turned out to be a beautiful breath taking cutaway view of the 750iL.
I spend almost an hour staring at this car and I took some pictures (with many thanks to Harald Reichert who gently borrowed his camera and sending the scanned pictures to me). They are best-viewed in 1024x768:
The picture
underneath shows the 750iL from above. It's a full optioned '87
750iL, the year the production of the v12 started (round
september '87). The color is Royalblue with a full buffalo
leather Havanna interior. A rare combination:
And a closer
look. You'll see the standard disc shaped wheels (ufo's) of the
early production years. They cut even the wheel in half. The
infopanels at the left are explaining numerous systems of the car
like motronic, servotronic, ABS and strangely enough, also ASC+T.
But this particular car isn't equipped with ASC+T! In fact,
ASC(+T) wasn't an available option at all on the early 750's
(also not listed in the option code list of '87)...
Here we'll see
the engine bay seen from the right. The idiot yellow-orange-red
lights are not standard 750 equipment but are part of the
infosystem panels, they are indicating the various systems on the
car.:
I added an
explanation of all parts of this picture:
And a beautiful
picture of the interior with parts of the transmission, exhaust
with cats and driveshaft. Notice the full leather interior (not
only the seats have leather but also doorpanels, parts of the
dash and center console), the airbag steering wheel and the total
absence of the ASC switch. When you look carefully, you'll see
the right lambda sensor and now you know that its almost
impossible to change the sensors without dropping the exhaust:
BTW, when they
scrap it, I signed up for the exhaust system, so don't even
bother. Again, I added an explanation of the parts:
Same picture,
taken slightly to the back. You have a very good look at the
driveshaft and exhaust. At the right some components of the rear
suspension. Of course this car has LAD (no EDC) but if you look
carefull the right accumulator is mounted in a vertical position.
This is actually wrong, the accumulator must be lying horizontal
and parallel to the rear axle. The velcro of the rear arm support
has the same problem as every other e32:
Unfortunately, I don't have more pictures. The next time I will bring my own digital camera and probably shoot about two thousand pictures of it...
The BMW museum in Munich is located at the Petualring 130, right next to the Olympia Stadium/village. It's open daily from 9am-5pm. Munich has a very good subway system, I suggest you use it. The museum is about 100m from the nearest subway station (subway U3, station Olympia Zentrum). The museum is shaped like a giant mushroom, can't miss it.
In the museum,
there is a possibility for a factory plant tour. Again highly
recommended, but unfortunately no 7 series are assembled in
Munich (I thought the 3 series is assembled in Munich, but not
sure about that) so that wasn't a real option for me.
Story by Sean750
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