Can the BMW E34 525iX Touring unlock the secrets of the Fenn Treasure?
today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Cars and Bids this 1992 BMW 525 EX Touring is the perfect car for Cars and Bids you can find out more about how to purchase it through the online auction at the end of the episode i was blind on today's episode we're going to uncover the secrets of the Fen Treasure a $2 million chest of gold hidden somewhere in the Rockies by an eccentric art dealer to do that we'll drive a 1995 BMW 525X Touring over 2,000 mi retracing the steps Forest Fen may have taken while deciding where to hide the gold back in 2010 along the way we'll dive into the origins of the controversial treasure hunt dissect its cryptic poem and decode the map published in his book our adventure will take us to obscure places just like the thousands of people who searched for it before it was finally discovered in 2020 we're going to put the 525 EX Touring to the ultimate test by proving that it's the perfect car to unlock the secrets of the Fen Treasure and his notable crusade to get people into the wilderness and off the beaten path this granite silver metallic Swiss market touring survived two and a half decades before it landed in the States and then I made one of the worst decisions I've ever made and I bought it and then after that I made an even worse decision to try to make it better and the one thing that we weren't able to do before we leave on our trip was repair the air conditioning but I have a plan for that so in the past in these episodes we've always had to go lean and mean well because we have a wagon we can live in style for the next 7 days we're going to bring all this stuff we've got the Gazelle T4 tent we've got two bed rolls for each of us cold weather sleeping bags and down blankets pillows go and hiking bag water bowser all my clothes dry food wet food power bank tool roll jump box buddy heater and then I pulled the cool suit system out of the E36 lightweight race car so now we're going to try to fit all of this in here which I think will fit with room to spare because it's a touring and we're going to get on the road to Santa Fe we're only about 2 hours behind schedule which is good for us we can make that up with a little bit of sleep deprivation but now we've got to hit the road and head for Santa Fe one of BMW's most reliable engines the M50 B25 non Vanos you're going to have to take us a long way fighting the late summer heat we blazed south from Denver to Santa Fe with the car appearing to be in good working order despite the lack of air conditioning we hoped it would hold up for the long journey ahead we wanted to start as close as possible to the artist square but since there were no downtown campsites we found the next best thing dude this is awesome this is a warehouse next to Meowolf in uh downtown Santa Fe that's built to resemble campsite which is great cuz we're going to be camping the next couple nights but what a fantastic and creative idea tomorrow we'd start our journey in the vibrant artistic city where Forest Fen was a staple for decades after serving in the Vietnam War as an F-100 pilot Fen returned to the States and became a successful art dealer in 1988 he was diagnosed with cancer and sold his gallery believing it was the end he committed to dying while clutching a chest of treasure in a special spot that would be his final resting place when he unexpectedly beat the illness the allure of an elaborate hunt endured and in 2010 he published his memoir containing clues to the treasure for the next 10 years he orchestrated the unsanctioned hunt until the treasure was discovered in 2020 just months before he passed away at the age of 90 the next morning we set out for a local coffee and breakfast tacos to start the day off strong then we dove into downtown to dig up any intel we could find on Fen and gather last minute treasure hunting essentials what better way to channel your inner treasure hunter than with this Indiana Jones hat or is it the guy from Jurassic Park i don't think either one of them was wearing a blip shift shirt that was interesting we gleaned a lot of insight just now from several people which I'll expand upon later we got a treasure hunting hat we got a few pieces of treasure so now we're going to find a quiet spot and plan our mission here we are in front of Ben Fen's gallery nadra Maduchi this is where he started so this is where we're going to start we've explored researched,worked uh if and I think the one thing we've kind of learned he was an extremely controversial figure the minute you bring up his name people kind of take a step back and like look over their shoulder the best advice we've got is to leave sleeping dogs lay let's lay some ground rules whenever I'm doing backcountry flying or any type of guiding my my basic operational principles are are just three things safe legal respectful obviously if we're placing ourselves in peril uh we're not doing a service to anyone around us and we're certainly not doing this to ourselves legal in aviation every single rule we have is written in blood pushing the boundary of that or normalizing devian or anything like that which leads us to the last principle which is respectful like leave no trace i think one of the controversial elements of this treasure hunt was it it brought a lot of people who weren't fluent who didn't have etiquette of how to operate in the back country into the back country and in the process they endangered themselves they lost their lives and on a much larger scale they weren't respectful to to these places so that's got to be an underlying tone so let's try to figure out what the first stop would be the poem begins with as I have gone alone in there and with my treasures bold I can keep my secret where and a hint of riches new and old at the time that he hit the treasure he was 80 it was roughly 40 to 50 lb based on other things we learned you could carry it and it's not buried things that I take away from this are there is an underlying theme of water we know from the search area that it's north of Santa Fe the closest river is the Rio Grand we'll hit the road we'll get out of town and we'll head north before hitting the road we mustered the courage to speak to the current owners of Finn's Gallery who were nothing but kind and gracious and happy to let us look around our experience here is completely opposite of what we expected we were kind of terrified to even make ourselves known but this used to be Finn's gallery and then it was sold to Nedra Maduchi and she could not have been more hospitable she was the nicest most welcoming person invited us in and gave us a tour and thankfully for them the treasure hunters have gone and life's resumed to normal but and it's only people like us that it's only idiots like us who show up but they did say like when a treasure hunter walked through the door they could pick them immediately some of the more extreme examples were one guy walked in with a geer counter and he was trying to conceal it so he was like doing that and then they caught another like father son duo where the sons were back here in the gallery and the father was going to throw the metal detector out and she said she thought like what lured people here was the fact that he was 80 and he maybe couldn't go very far and that there was water so everybody thought the treasure was hidden in the the pond here the koi pond so thankfully those days are gone what's so cool to me is like this is uh ground zero he was getting older and needed maybe a reason to keep going maybe it was walks in these gardens that is a really good idea definitely in line with the whole theme of like getting out into the wild and uh nature part of the reason I want to film this journey is I'm closing down the service side of my business and it's been the last month has been really excruciating when you have a dream and you didn't succeed how you wanted to in that and so part of getting out into the wild is to like catch my breath reset and just the whole calming nature and the the slice i mean dude you can it's like the garden of even you can pick plums out of the tree and eat them what a wonderful spot you see artwork like this and you see the time and energy and expertise somebody's put into that their vision and it it it is very humbling that seems to be a reoccurring theme that's emerging through this journey [Music] oh yes so to the fine folks at home what is a cool suit the cool suit is something you use in racing cuz the race car is just brutally hot inside cooler with an electric pump it circulates cool water through this one line goes in one goes out and that water circulates around you to these lines we've fished underneath so we plug it in here oh yeah yeah that's nice as we headed north we deliberated over some of the criticisms controversies and downsides of Fen's outlandish idea so we're just reading an article there was a gentleman who was very sure that he had found it at a place in Yellowstone and then called into question speculation that maybe Forest had moved it one of the broader criticisms of Fen has been that the whole point of the treasure was to self-promote his books narcissistic tinge i mean his whole career was built on he they say it was a maverick well we don't want to dive into the controversy but on the face of it his motive for hiding the treasure was to get people out interpreting it from that baseline there was also a Virginia woman seeking fence treasure prompted three rescue missions this summer in Wyoming on one occasion she and a boyfriend both poorly equipped spent four days lost in the forest in another expedition for the treasure she broke her ankle somebody's body body washed up near here in the Rio Grand uh and then people would just ask him to call it off so you have people out there who wouldn't normally be out there terrible that there was loss of life but also how could one guy be accountable for all the people that's not fair either i mean we all make mistakes that's what makes us human so I don't think we should should diminish that but at the same time at the end of the day I'm the pilot in command of my decisions and I need to be accountable for those decisions that said from somebody that makes a lot of bad decisions i mean we are sitting here right now chasing a treasure that's already been found it's the first real test of the all-wheel drive wagon being off-road i need to at all cost preserve the drivetrain and the oil pan and there's this crossmember that supports the exhaust that I don't want to bend so picking a surgical line is is definitely uh of importance but like it's amazing how great the suspension is even on the washboard like it's better than my truck it just soaks up the bumps and then you can totally feel the all-wheel drive like when you start out so we're off-roading on a very small scale and we have a long way to go so we certainly can't sacrifice the vehicle the treasure hunt didn't hit the mainstream until 2016 when the first death was recorded near TA along the Rio Grand a total of five people lost their lives during the decadel long hunt at one point the New Mexico State Police implored Finn to call it off his standard reply was "If someone drowns in a swimming pool we shouldn't drain the pool we should teach people to swim." So here we are on the bridge over the tal box you may know that bridge from the natural-born killers movie we're never more than an arms length away from controversy sadly the real grand claimed two separate lives over the years that people were hunting for the treasure one of them was just downstream of here at the Talis Junction Bridge a man from Grand Junction whose car was found in his body was recovered downstream the great equalizer that the outdoors are it's one thing to think about that in abstract terms it's different if you're experiencing it and for the family members of those people that's an experience that's going to stick i had that misfortune 20 years ago in the desert of Utah and it's an experience that I'll never forget at the end of the day I think it's better to seek and discover an adventure than to live your life in fear [Music] with daylight fading we had a quick meal in Talis and set out to find a campsite for the [Music] night deciphering the rules proved to be just as complicated as Fen's poem but after finding a tentonly site we had the entire bluff all to ourselves as I've gotten older and if you can bring it and you don't need to be kind of lean and mean there's no reason not to be comfortable the next morning we awoke to a blazing sunrise that revealed the true majesty of what had been hiding in the [Music] darkness the next stanza says "From there it's no place for the meek the end is ever drawing nigh there'll be no paddle up your creek just heavy loads and water high so depending on how we want to interpret that I think we should go upstream and find the headwaters of the Rio Grand a that's certainly no place for the meek the end is ever drawing nigh maybe that could be interpreted as flowing upstream there'll be no paddle up your creek which is where the Rio Grand turns from a river to a creek and a network of creeks and the most important thing just heavy loads and water high at first Reed that feels like I'm carrying a heavy load across high water but what if it literally means high water like high elevation water water's high we know from subsequent interviews that the treasure wasn't buried that he said it's above 5,000 feet which is pretty much anywhere north of Santa Fe but it was also below 10,200 ft why he picked 10,200 instead of 10,000 could also be a clue to these kind of headwaters of the Rio Grand so we'll go check out the view we'll pack up camp and I think we'll head north and high on the way out of the park we made friends with a weary traveler yeah he's relatively little tens of thousands of tarantulas migrate from New Mexico to Colorado every year so that like they swarm from like the San Louis Valley here up into Colorado so cool isn't it to see a tarantula out in the wild hypothesizing that it was unlikely Fen would hide the treasure so close to Santa Fe we crossed the border north into Colorado at breakfast we brainstormed about what it must have been like for an 80-year-old man to carry a 40 lb chest of treasure into the Rockies perhaps in a station wagon of his own man this car is just amazing it soaks up the miles just we've driven 1,300 kilometers so far since we started if I slide this somehow that still works individual rotary dials and then this Euro computer that can haul everything we've brought that has the all-wheel drive ability to go up the dirt roads yet we get that refinement without paying any of the cost of the driving experience so here we are outside of South Fork this is what I would describe as the upper Rio Grand where we're definitely in waters high our elevation here is probably around 7,500 ft and certainly looking around there's an old railroad bridge here that crosses the river just heavy loads and water high what would carry heavy loads this old branch of the Rio Grand crossing the river here so perhaps we should explore that area and also conduct refreshment in the process it seemed funny that we're looking under a random bridge but that's how people had to look i mean I've flown over the West for 20 years in the airliner and the small plane and look down but then you get on the ground and you're like "Oh I'm just going to drive i'll drive there no big deal." Oh it's 3 hours away and we have 2 hours of daylight like the scale of things out here is is fantastic but you definitely have to respect it pushing farther upstream towards Creed we decided to investigate a pair of waterfalls here is a tributary to the Rio Grand in Clear Creek and there's a series of waterfalls here as they cascade down if I were going to hide a treasure this would certainly be on my short list the pros are it's accessible by an 80year-old man carrying a 40 lb box but the cons are it might be a little too accessible but there's another waterfall up the way that's a little bit harder to get to i certainly don't think he went down in this canyon nor do I see any reason for us to go down in there but again it's just it's just not deep enough arriving at the headarters of the Rio Grand we stopped to discuss what river system to search next you think of the Rio Grand River that's probably not the image that comes to mind but that is the headarters of the Rio Grand and they go even further up into the San Juans and all of the summer crowds are gone and other than the occasional hunter there's just not a lot of people up here i probably would have spent some time here if I was searching in earnest but the beauty of this spot is there doesn't need to be a treasure to come here because here we are we literally walked out of the woods into a painting so if this is the end of the Rio Grand we kind of need a new body of water don't we we haven't deep dived into people's solves for this and their logic and where they went but it just doesn't seem like this is far enough from Santa Fe we could go over the pass here and then go northeast and pick up the Arkansas River and there was one person that actually lost their life in Browns Canyon in the Arkansas that's pretty heavily traveled like I don't think that I think it needs to be more remote than that dinosaur Dutch John Flaming Gorge that's not an insignificant distance from here this is one of the the best driving roads in Colorado and the beauty of the E34 wagon is like satisfy our driving enthusiast needs while also pursuing our quest deeper into the wilderness climbing into the eastern San Juan Mountains the 525 carved up the winding roads with poise being immersed in the golden leaves and warm sunlight felt like a moment Finn may have approved of fueled up and realizing the immense distance of our journey north we decided to push into the night all right so what's happening is Highway 50 is one of the main arteries and earlier this spring uh metal fatigue was revealed in one of those bridges and it was shut down and it's open during the day but that closes at 7:00 so then there's this Lake City Cutoff detour which is actually a pretty good dirt road see the degree of washboard that there is in this road and it's not insignificant like this car is so smooth it's probably the smoothest 30-year-old BMW I've ever driven arriving late in the northern Colorado town of Mer we decided to skip setting up the campsite and take one of the last rooms available the next morning the miles started to reveal themselves on our trusty wagon seal gas cap yeah the door is not latching and I kind of wonder with E36s it's often temperature related i'd call that crisis averted for now that's the only thing that happens to it well clearly we have a leaky gas tank seal taking a moment to explore a local antique store we hit the road for what would be our longest and perhaps most desolate day yet there's not a lot of roads I haven't been on but this road going west out of Mer Northwest has been absolutely amazing and there's no one out here we did go to Mer because right here it says from there it's no place for the meek maybe there was some pun intended or maybe that was a good anchoring point but yeah doors and windows seem to be a constant theme like my door striker I can see is uh has some stress fracturing but uh you know any BMW wagon is a dude magnet i'm surprised the dude hasn't just flushed himself out of these bushes right here to be like that's an awesome car but so we met a lot of nice dudes to talk to and and uh share our enthusiasm with and I think we're going to meet a lot more it almost goes without saying that there were infinite places Fen could have hidden the treasure within his map however the clues did point to a body of water that was not too far but too far to walk which by our interpretation could have meant anything within a short scramble of the road we also wondered if Ven explored and considered any of these places on his way to where the treasure was eventually discovered this is Vernal Falls it's definitely off the beaten path and this is a bit of an oasis in the middle of a desert you certainly can't just walk down here you have to crawl over stuff a little bit you know the problem is the water's really low right now and you can see the the natural path of the high water mark the next stanza which we'll talk about talks about finding a blaze and that's kind of the thing that's been missing is we haven't found a blaze what does that mean and I don't know hundreds of thousands of people interpreted the poem over the decade that the treasure remained hidden the majority of treasure seekers were casual using the hunt as an excuse to explore places off the beaten path they may have never gone otherwise as we ventured farther off the grid we were the only car on the road for hours in this desolate stretch of northwestern [Music] Colorado not too far but too far to walk what does that mean does it mean it's not an easy walk does it mean you have to bushwack a little bit what's interesting people would just go places randomly like their solve would lead them to some obscure spot that was chosen due to some personal connection or more frequently just somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and wasn't that the whole point of the treasure hunt right to discover new places to get out i think we've seen maybe six cars total and I did find a treasure i think Loki dog would love this piece of treasure whatever animal completed the circle of life there couldn't have picked a better place to do it we know that that was Fen's original intent was to find a place he could go that was peaceful that he could clutch his treasure box and eventually we'd find a skeleton holding a treasure box i can certainly relate to the feeling of knowing if I was terminally ill and the outcome wasn't looking good i certainly would want to have some say in how I completed my journey on this earth and if that was in a place like this treasure box or not what a fantastic way to to return to the earth some of the more serious treasure hunters would work on what they call solves a logical attempt to translate the riddle but whether you were serious or not about finding the treasure on this road hundreds of miles away from any major civilization we could see what Fen meant by getting out there in our own way just went through Pinedale Wyoming and as civilized as the E34 wagon is the days of driving are starting to have a cumulative effect on both of us would you agree with that yeah the seats just aren't as comfortable as they maybe once were it's funny like you sit in them for an hour and you're like "Oh man this is nice." But after like 6 it's like my hip hurts so we got about an hour of daylight left we still haven't found a place to stay yet so I don't know where we'll end up tonight spontaneity is always a big part of our adventures and although we were hoping to get a good campsite outside of Jackson it wasn't looking good as the light faded we stopped at a friend's house to pick up a last minute package to help tell our story so we got a few spots um just get like some last minute groceries and then we'll use that kind of resort with a tent spot as a backup and we had an item shipped last minute uh to Jackson because it was on the way so he was gracious enough to to ship it to his place so the problem is even though it's deep into October and well past peak season on a Friday night at at 8:30 I'm not very optimistic we're going to get a spot especially being that we don't have the capability to go that deep [Music] say high clearance or just four-wheel drive i'm not very optimistic nor do I think we should you know expose ourselves to damage andor rescue our friend James from Michigan has offered us a spot carefully four-wheeling our low slung wagon over the trail we doubled up at a site and quietly set up camp i wouldn't describe last night as restful with the winds walking up to this view this morning makes it all worth it as amazing as the beautiful Tetons were through the gift of intuition and hindsight we knew the treasure was found in another national park to the north packing up after a bit of coffee we headed into Jackson to plot our approach interestingly this car has the European all-wheel drive sport uh suspension which unless the springs were cut prior to it arriving to in my hands is lower than a stock rearwheel drive E34 and certainly lower than an E30X and not having that little bit of ground clearance means we've had to be very strategic with our line that we pick we don't want to side p we don't want to sidewall puncture a tire either and and then we're now we're stranded so we're going to head back into town we've got to print our permit so we can film in the park and then maybe we'll get a little bit more coffee enjoying the charm of Jackson we stopped at a breakfast spot to plan our search in one of the most heavily traffked national parks in the country yesterday we were talking about cognitive bias so I have a natural aversion to crowds so when I interpret the treasure where it would be my thought would be that it would be someplace under visited unpopulated off the beaten path which means I would probably want to go to some of these more remote places on some of the secondary roads here the other way to interpret that though is the where where warm waters halt line that would be here along the fire hole river where it intersects with the Madison and that's a a main thorough affair of the park i mean we know we all know where it was eventually found but that's not the place I would look heading north we quickly had to figure out our accommodations for the night and with lastminute reservations not being available in Yellowstone we needed a miracle to land anywhere near the park taking a minute to enjoy the view we quickly realized what a mistake it was not to reserve a campsite for the night but I mean that's shame on us we got here on a Saturday weren't sure when we were going to get here so we we didn't reserve a campsite uh but I think these are all just closed for the season we just head back into town and there's a couple like RV resorts we could go stay at with grandma in the in the trailers thankfully just outside of the park we found a spot that would take us and allow one last look at Fen's poem i was also thinking saying I think it's a great contrast like the wagon and the tank compared to the sprinter vans and the campers 20-minute drive and we found a slice of heaven the blaze marks the spot whatever the definition of that blaze is be it an actual trail blaze or an X marks the spot or a fire some people thought there's been quite a bit of controversy about Terry scant with marble gaze i think the metaphor behind that is don't spend a lot of time um take the chest and go in peace and then lastly this is interesting i give you title to the gold and we almost wonder if that's not a legal statement because technically speaking from a legality standpoint anything abandoned in the park actually becomes government property so maybe he put that in there to defend the fact that if someone found it they would legally own it we'll say the guy who found it one of the primary things that he he used in his hunt was to only use soul source information but we were able to get in touch with a treasure hunter who had us solve that he swears would have taken him to the treasure and I had read an article on an airplane it was in a magazine i was intrigued by Forest himself well there's a lot of stories in in all three of his books uh that he refers to Yellowstone you know he went there a lot as a kid you know he built he and his brother built the hotel there he used to go fishing and he talked about the Fire Hole River was one of the places he loved to go swim and that's got to be the starting spot now I had it narrowed down probably the size of a football field or so i had a wedding to go to on June 5th of 2020 i thought "Oh the treasure's been there 10 years it's it's still going to be there after that." And
basically uh the next day I get all these text messages was it you was it you we were like "Oh my god we we knew where it was." But it's all right because we we still had a lot of fun you know he it really really only became controversial when someone passed away right you get hundreds of thousands of people out in the woods uh and some you know mistakes or issues can happen the next morning we woke up to frost on the wagon which required heating the door latch again to make it close after that we stopped for a quick breakfast and readied for the final frontier of the journey fen was a Vietnam War fighter pilot who carried a maverick attitude throughout his life as a child in the 1930s and4s he spent countless seasons fishing here yellowstone is the world's oldest national park with an area larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined it's located on top of a super volcano called a caldera and houses more than 10,000 geothermal features accounting for half of the world's active [Music] geysers of course it's in Yellowstone it's one of the most magical places in the world take that a little bit further and everybody that was seriously hunting this treasure went way deeper than the poem people had to dig deeper they had to read his books they had to listen to his life story and the one thing I've thought about while we've been driving through the park here on this beautiful fall morning is what a what a magical time it must have been for Forest to come here as a child and then come here later after his tour in Vietnam in the 70s and 80s before the national parks had the level of traffic that they do now anymore we're at a crossroads where this window regulator has been slowly dying and making ominous noises we're in this geyser basin which feeds into the headarters of the Fire Hole River where warm waters halt certainly could be somewhere along either where this meets the river where the Firehole River confluences and becomes the Madison River so I think that's where we'll head to next aside from the geothermal activity Yellowstone is home to the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states including the iconic bison which have lived here since prehistoric times no trip to Yoseim no trip to Yellowstone would be complete without without seeing Old Faithful and we kind of got to keep our distance so we've gone the long way around but there it [Music] is what's crazy is just how big Yellowstone National Park is we've been driving for over an hour and we haven't even made it to the uh the far end of the southern loop it has been fantastic it's taken us along the northern shore of Yellowstone Lake and some people hypothesize that the treasure was hidden on one of these islands out in the lake i don't I I don't subscribe to that theory it doesn't jive with everything else we've heard so I think what we do from here is we go north we'll see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and then we intercept the Gibbon River which is the other river that the fire hole confluence forms the Madison River [Music] one of the more remarkable controversies surrounding it was in January of 2020 park rangers rescued a man who repelled off this viewpoint 850 ft searching for the treasure which is completely contrary to anything that Forest Fen would have done as an 80-year-old man hauling a box of treasure i don't think he's going to repel off of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and if I was going to do that I don't think I would do that in January but good on him for trying I guess i mean waterfalls are nice but a van like that only drives by so often and now we're at the headarters of the Gibbons River and the Gibbons River based on our conversation with Larry yesterday confluences with the Fire Hole River i think if we follow this river downstream we're going to get a lot warmer to the actual spot of the treasure we followed the river downstream and here we are along the banks of the Madison River this is as close as we're going to get to the spot and of course it was here if you read his books if you listen to him talk about where he fished as a child about a special place that he held dear this is that spot so let's go back to our mission the thing that we set out to do was to retrace his steps a man's got to live by a code our code was safe legal respectful we don't want to attract more people to this spot the other people have done that we don't need to do that but at the same time like we need something we can we can touch like something that's truly special to this place so let's see what we got gold nugget 48 g from Fen's treasure chest we got this from our friend Larry on eBay and in typical fashion I didn't search for this in due time we sent it FedEx first overnight that this 48 g gold nugget spent 10 years buried in an ancient treasure chest across that river and in those 10 years hundreds of thousands of people ventured out into the world into the west to try to find this how many of them were serious and how many just wanted to go for a walk in the woods the funny thing is you don't have to twist my arm to come out here and try to retrace this treasure when we thought up this idea we were like "Hell yeah let's go i'm ready to go tomorrow." But it's really cool to be able to hold this in my hand and to come full circle and to do so to complete that journey in a car that treated us wonderfully that completed the mission wonderfully in comfort and style while delivering that old school driving experience that defines the golden era of these vehicles and all of the dudes that came out of the weeds that crossed six lanes of highways that was a gift in and of itself but of course it was to get out and experience the wild and experience the west and experienced many sacred spots along the way and have our own adventure and that is the true treasure to be found all the conspiracy and everything else that surrounds Forest Finn on the face of it that's all he wanted people to do was to get out and explore to get off the couch to get out and take in the world and we've done that if we're only here for a minute if we're only here in a glimpse of space and time how do we come to a place like this and preserve it how do we leave no trace so I think that's part of the message too the story definitely has sticking power because here we are 4 years later after it was found our angle was just to have a cool road trip in a really cool old BMW that one guy found the treasure but another couple hundred thousand people got to have their own adventure and maybe some of those people wouldn't have had it otherwise so the fact that he did that the fact that yes some people lost their lives well it doesn't diminish the loss of those families but at the same time a much larger swath of people had a great adventure had a great story to tell the whole reason to do all of this is to tell a story to share an experience to offer that experience to someone that might not have it otherwise and if we've done that if we've done that for you then we've satisfied our mission and we've had a lot of fun in the [Music] process partner if you like this 1992 525X one of them torins you have the unique opportunity to buy it from our partners at Cars and Bids cars and Bids features a unique online enthusiast marketplace featuring vehicles from 1981 to the present 23,000 completed auctions with an 83% sale rate and an online community of 650,000 members and this here 1992 525 EIX Torin can be yours but before we do that we're going to take it home we're going to fix everything we broke we're going to clean it up and we'll make it nice and pretty for you you'll have the unique opportunity to purchase it yourself at auction and ride off into the sunset from our good friends and partners over at Cars and Bids good luck to you we're back in Colorado and now that we're here we're going to use our friends at FCP Euro to help us get this car ready for auction we did a lot of stuff to this car but the short list of things that we broke on the trip were the window regulator we wore off the last bit of blue on the roundell and we've already fixed the door striker let's see what we got i've opened thousands of these boxes and I still always get excited it's like Christmas came on Tuesday we got a Lem for window regulator we got a new round and grommet and we got a man oil filter the nice thing about FCP Euro is it gives you the option to choose between OEM BMW OEM supplier like Lemforter or aftermarket we'll start by replacing the roundell that's easy and there's two ways to do it the first way is to protect the hood and pry using a pry tool and hope that you don't scratch anything my preferred method is to take a drill drill through the center lightly till you break ground then once you do that take a pry tool and gently pull up until you extract the bad roundell these grommets actually look pretty good so what I'm going to do is gently push the new roundell in and I'm going to apply even pressure to each one of the nubs until it's seated perfectly and there you go now we're going to take a crack at the window regulator so I got the door apart i pulled the door panel and I got the old window regulator out which is clearly bent we got the new window regulator in but unfortunately this front window guide rail is bent which means I'm going to have to replace that too to get it to operate smoothly i'll give it one final test all we got to do now is clean it and it'll be ready for auction
2025-04-04 17:43
