E34 540i V 2.0, The Clean Edition
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It was great spending a little time with you last weekend! Car looks good man!
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It was great spending a little time with you last weekend! Car looks good man!
Sorry I didn't end up meeting up with either of you guys. The weekends can be kind of whirlwind at the track.
I'll be there for fall vintage and World Challenge in September to close out the season(which I can't begin to describe how depressing that it's already over).
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Sorry I didn't end up meeting up with either of you guys. The weekends can be kind of whirlwind at the track.
I'll be there for fall vintage and World Challenge in September to close out the season(which I can't begin to describe how depressing that it's already over).
No problem! I'm trying to get up there for fall vintage but world challenge is on my wedding anniversary and for 5 years I've tried to get my wife to RA for Oktoberfast which falls around our anniversary and for 5 years I've failed lol.
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Thoroughly enjoyed this car yesterday! It took the beating with no issues. Noting a few things for when spring rolls around as this will be going into storage soon.
Maintenance List for spring
- R&R Lower Oil Pan, check oil pump bolts
- Replace Washer Fluid tank
- Wire in washer fluid level sender pigtail (missing)
- Replace Front Bumper
- Detail Interior/Exterior
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Thoroughly enjoyed this car yesterday! It took the beating with no issues. Noting a few things for when spring rolls around as this will be going into storage soon.
Maintenance List for spring
- R&R Lower Oil Pan, check oil pump bolts
- Replace Washer Fluid tank
- Wire in washer fluid level sender pigtail (missing)
- Replace Front Bumper
- Detail Interior/Exterior
Oh those pesky oil pump bolts. I checked them on an e32 and I think 3 were in the pan and the rest finger tight. Scary.
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+1 to finding bolts in the pan
its a super easy job on this motor though, only annoying bit was removal of the super baked-on paper gasket.'
car looked great lowered on the BCs this weekend!
Dan
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Checked off one item on Sunday, installed a new battery and fired up the car. I’m giving up on Farm & Fleet batteries, even on trickle charger they still eventually stop charging after long periods of sitting. I’ve had this problem on both e34’s in storage. It was ok to deal with when I was nearby a F&F store but there are none up near me.
Battery is tentatively installed as the battery tray needs a good cleaning. There wasn’t a vent tube on the battery when Ben bought the car.
Installing a good front bumper, figuring out / fixing the inop rear windows, raising ride height and tint removal/full detail is my to do list for this spring. “ItS NoT ThAT lOw”?? I have less than 2” of clearance into the storage unit, even less on the oil pan haha.
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Well good news and bad news
bad news is the car got backed into friday 🤬 Took it out of storage earlier last week to get a few miles on before heading up to Door County. Got a phone call from the guy who backed his flatbed into it around 11. What sucks is its not even the guy that parks next to me, but two spots over and he "thought he was backing into his spot". I even parked the car as close to the opposite side to allow more room. Working with a body shop and the insurance, we'll see what happens. Haven't gotten the full qoute yet but the door and fender are toast Luckily there is a black door/fender off another 95 540i in Cali I'm working on sourcing as well. That might be all that gets "repaired" since the whole car needs paint anyways.
That kinda killed the buzz on cleaning the car up for the Badger Bimmers Door County Rally. Finally threw the good bumper on and called it a day since I just wasn't happy. Saturday was a blast though. Put about 300 miles on the car which doubled what I've driven so far this year basically. Besides the few little maintenance items on the list the car performed great as always. Great day driving with the windows down, beautiful scenery and good company!
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aww that is a super bummer! hopefully it can be fixed up easily. be careful handling/removing those trim pieces just above the rockers, they are NLA as I recall.
Dan
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Bummer! Sadly, insurance will probably write that one off as a total loss.
Here's a same spec car for $11k with 30k more miles.
https://www.lapinmotorco.com/vehicle-details/133c5a5d93a445489c580feab08b3265
Brand new door and fender are $1200 from ECS, was gonna a be about the same shipped from cali for used. The pair I was looking into got scrapped though. There is a couple options on co-part as well
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Good news! Insurance payout came late last week, Not Totaled! They didn't even put up a fight after I denied their initial value and took my word on the current values, so glad this didn't turn into a nightmare battle like I've read about for others. The current auction price insanity on anything old and manual sure helps.
All the parts new were available from BMW to repair this, the fender was the only part that needed to come over from Germany but I still hunted around for used parts. It didnt make too much sense to just paint a new door/fender when the whole car needs paint. Car-Part was a joke and prices were premium as well. LKQ pick and pull has a great CURRENT website for listing inventory so I scoured that around the country. There were at least 2 black E34's and several other colors as well among the Los Angeles area yards so I took the gamble on the parts I wanted being there.
Luckily a side job gave me the opportunity to drive a 2020 F350 out west. I ended up going to 3 different LA LKQ yards and pulled the front doors off one and a fender off another, all perfectly rust free in Schwartz II. The fender does have a good dent towards the nose but paint isn't cracked and should be PDR'd easily. Bought a driver's door too since the door stay was ripped out when the car was bought. $150 total for all the parts was crazy cheap.
Gonna wait to install these come spring as it's cold and I still have remodeling projects to tend too. I also want to rust proof each fender while off and clean things up.
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Finally pulled this out of storage last thursday as I wanted to get some miles on it for the year and the A/C is out on the 530i which I wanted for a weekend trip to Madison. Swapped on the 16" Style 5's as I'm gonna take the 17" wheels down to the Alloy Wheel Repair Specialist in Sun Prairie to get the barrels straightened back out on at least 2 of them. I didn't see anybody local up in the fox valley if anybody happens to have suggestions.
Car ran great down to Madison but while I was down there sometime after sitting in belt line construction traffic for minute I went to go again and it wouldn't rev past 3100 rpm. Check engine light would flash along with a few other lights only when hitting that "limit". It was pinging bad as well. Changed the spark plugs as last time I had similar detonation on one of the M60's new plugs solved it. It ran better but ignition timing is still off and still can't rev. I was able to limp the car home though as it ran fine between 2500-3krpm's so just kept it in 5th till home. My best guess is the crank position sensor is faulty with a quick read through the Bentley but I haven't had time to diagnose yet.
@P_Roloff and I have also been playing a game of forget the parts. He ordered door stay reinforcement plates for each of us and once I have those I'll start the door and fender swap project. The car needs to be sorted before winter so I'll update the to-do list as well.
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Started working on things a month ago and have slowly been plugging away. Working on chasing the not revving past 3k issue along with coolant and oil leaks. Digging into the motor has shown its Texas roots though as I'm finding lots of dry rotted stuff. Water pump had a small leak at the bottom so that lasted 30-40k. Valley pan has never been done though so going through that whole ordeal. Also found the water pump pulley was missing a chunk
Just like every other M60 intake though I've managed to strip 2 of those shallow T30's, even on my "bench vise". There is enough clearance around the throttle body to get an angle grinder in there to square off the head just a little bit to give the vise grips a place to hold onto. All will be replaced with standard hex heads like I've done in past. Got the intake completely disassembled and power washed and I've been working on the fuel rail today. Replaced the FPR and found all the injector O-Rings are dry rotted so pulling those and working on a jerry-rigged injector cleaner/tester as I saw at least a couple nozzles looked clogged.
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Had a productive weekend despite the heat. Water Pump and Valley Pan done, new knock, crank and cam position sensors, billet throttle cable bushings, Intake w/ new PCV installed. I was going to do both the valve cover gaskets even though they didn't really need to be done but doing the right side turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. I think 4 of the studs backed out and 2 of them stripped going back in. The fun part is the studs are threaded into the CAM BEARING CAPS
Not happy about that and haven't had this issue before on other M60's. I cleaned up the threads with a tap & die and hand tightened things as tight as I felt comfortable, the spec is only 10Nm and thankfully the lower back corner held tight. The center stud is barely hanging on though, Hopefully no leaks otherwise it'll be quite the job to properly fix that. Gonna leave the other side until it absolutely needs it. 
Engine bay is all back together besides the fan and intake. Just need to replace the battery and battery negative cable before startup. If all goes well and running issues solved it'll be onto swapping out the front doors and fender.
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