A few weeks back there was a 560 on fleabay that had a 200$ opening bid. The seller works at a Hamptoms BMW dealership and the car was given to them in a trade-in. It arrived running he said, but after a year it was a no-start. He bought it from the dealership and tried to get it running. After giving up, he says, he sold it. Seems I was the only bidder. I offered to back out so that he could try again, but he said the 200$ was enough; he was done with this car. He suspected somebody at the dealership might have removed something.

I gave him another 200$ to have him and a friend deliver it (and save me the 100$ trailer rental, gas and the time). This is the 2nd thing I noticed when he dropped the car at my place yesterday...



Hmm. No ignition module. I pointed it out to him and he just repeated "oh, I guess somebody at the dealership must have messed with it". So, out of the pile of spares came an ignition module. Added a fresh battery shot in some starting fluid and turned the key. Engine turns and there was a very brief burp of life, which wasn't to be repeated.

OK, next step, pull a plug and see if the engine has flooded, since I now know there's ignition, but the starting fluid isn't getting any combustion. I wish I took a picture of that #1 plug. It wasn't fouled much, but the gap was huge. These were old plugs and the gap was just enormous. So, in went 5 new plugs (I got bored and wanted to try again; so I didn't yet do the last three).

While putting in the last plug on the driver's side, I happen to look in that little space between the firewall and the engine and I notice one more obvious problem...



The seller can't be that much of chowder-head. So he was trying very hard to not outright lie, but clearly he must have known. Can somebody be that thick? Once again into the pile of parts and I found a couple of good candidates for the socket in the middle (recall that I'm a vintage benz guy).



All three will fit in the socket, but the one in the middle has the pins in the right places. The little socket looked like an OVP socket (and now that I'm looking, I see that there's no OVP under the hood).



It looks about right. With those two in place and the 3rd socket empty, the bugger started right up and drove from the street where the guy dropped it right into the driveway.

OK, what goes in that 3rd socket?

Thx -CTH

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