@DUB6, I didn't really state things as well as I should've. My enthusiast cars are generally immune to this kind of calculation. I mean, I have a brown Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special with a highly-distressed original paint job that I just keep dumping money into, way in excess of what the car's worth, because I love the car. The vintage BMWs that I keep for years don't really see an upside calculation. But the E39 530i, as much as I like it, is just a commodity daily driver. The issue isn't dropping a new fuel pump into it. I'm perfectly willing to do that. The issue is more that, because of the complexities of modern cars, it's very difficult to parts-replace your way to erasing the 200k on the odometer and come out of it with a car that you feel is dependable enough to drive anywhere the way you do with a 50k to 100k car. For example, I could drop in the standard cooling system replacement parts of expansion tank, radiator, water pump, thermostat, and hoses, but then there are two hard plastic hoses that run beneath the intake manifold that are a bear to replace. I've replaced them on other E39s, only to have other parts break and strand me. Even if I prophylactically replaced the alternator, I'm still not sure I'd drive the car from Boston down to New Jersey and back instead of borrowing my wife's 40k-mile Honda Fit, as I did last weekend.
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