[ssl-3]

A million years ago, I spent two cold nights standing on my head in the driver's side footwell of my E36 BMW, installing an inexpensive Wal-Mart-sourced CodeAlarm remote starter to make my then-wife happy.

It worked great. It could even operate the door locks and roll the windows up with the fob (none of which sounds very special for a modern vehicle, but my car was not equipped with remote-anything from the factory so all of this was very nice).

Over a decade later, the fob got destroyed in an unfortunate boating incident. I was bummed. Replacements were available to purchase and I hemmed and hawed about buying one, or maybe upgrading to a fancier system, or just getting over it and continuing to use the key in the lock cylinder (like some commoner!) to lock and unlock the doors.

And then I was walking down the street in Bexley, Ohio, and I saw a broken laundry basket full of discarded things ("illegally dumped" things) on the curb. It appeared to have all manner of random household trash.

But on the top of that basket of stuff was a plastic clamshell. And inside that clamshell was an identical remote starter kit -- exactly the same as the one I'd bought forever ago.

It was unopened.

A few careful slashes with my pocket knife later, and I had a new remote. Even the ancient tiny little 12V (A23) alkaline battery still worked -- and kept working for months. (I left the rest of the trash where it was.)

Sometimes the universe does provide for those who keep their eyes open.

(Pairing the new remote was interesting because it involved operating the brake pedal switch while the car was turned off, and the E36 turns off the brake light circuit completely when the car is turned off... But those are just BMW problems. I got it sorted.)

[rnewme]

I loved this because last year we spent days redoing electrical and wiring new engine (2.8) into friends E36, including radio code and remote install, some vintage god knows how old setup ge found in local Craigslist equivalent, perhaps even the same kit as you had. Love the simplicity of older cars like e36, but I still prefer my E34's - except for window raisers and few other details, surprisingly little electronics to maintain.

[r00fus]

> Over a decade later, the fob got destroyed in an unfortunate boating incident.

I kind of feel you dropped the lede here. Need to hear this story as well.

[tivert]

>> Over a decade later, the fob got destroyed in an unfortunate boating incident.

> Need to hear this story as well.

I bet it's "dropped her keys into the lake." Perhaps after awkwardly balancing them a place that, in hindsight, should not have been used.

[ssl-3]

Nyet, comrade.

She was at the front like some sort of living maidenhead while I leisurely rowed at the back with the entrenching tool that I kept in the car, one evening at an outdoor music festival somewhere in the Midwest. It was all very beautiful; the girl was beautiful, the sky was beautiful, the music was beautiful, and the place itself was beautiful; everything was approximately perfect. There was such a profound feeling of rightness as the sun set, and I wished it would never end.

Except: I had to pee.

So I stood up to take care of that and the stolen canoe simply went sideways. My entrenching tool disappeared (along with one of my sandals, and the boat itself), the girl went for a swim, and most importantly my key fob got drenched.

We swam to the nearest shore and hiked back through the dense young trees and brush using the flashlight on my Galaxy S5.

Once we got back to camp, the phone died for real.

It was all very much a bummer in a great number of ways.

The next day some kids there found and recovered the boat and my missing sandal.

We didn't make it, she and I. But several months later, that dead S5 came back to life like nothing had ever happened.

(Don't do drugs, kids. Maybe.)

[tuatoru]

* figurehead (A maidenhead is quite a different thing.)

[ssl-3]

Yeah, copy that. Things like that happen when writing stories using a pocket supercomputer while standing in the shower.

[twobitshifter]

I am more suprised that the BMW outlasted the remote starter!

[rnewme]

Old bimmers are surprisingly durable. Esp 30/34/36, although, they're getting a bit rare..

[ssl-3]

Yep. For all of the complexity they were popularly renowned for at the time, that era of bimmer is ridiculously easy to diagnose and fix, and generally all very well-documented. It has weak spots (like the entirety of the cooling system), but they're all well-known and understood. The rest is solid.

And because every part is indexed in the BMW ETK, it's simple (and actually usually very cheap) to find very high quality parts from the original source using BMW part numbers, and sidestep the usual quagmire of globalized aftermarket trash that AutoZone sells.

It's a whole different way of doing things compared to, say, a Chevy or Honda of similar vintage.