My Cirrus 535i/5 Project thread-

[richinvan]

You know, it's funny - I never thought Cirrus was all that great of a colour - until I saw one the other day in the flesh. Man, does it look good.

[Christoffer]

cirrus owners unite!

And not so great work area? That appears to be a two car garage... I would kill for that.

Edit: Just noticed how steam cleaned cyl #6 is.

#6 on mine was the same way!

[Jcbe34]

are you gonna figure out a way to throw the ITBs on there?

Not on this car, megasquirt is too quirky to DD. They are going on the e30 whenever I am "done" with this car

[Jcbe34]

You know, it's funny - I never thought Cirrus was all that great of a colour - until I saw one the other day in the flesh. Man, does it look good.

Yeah it looks a lot better when its clean.. Mine will be eventually, starting on the re-already after I get the motor back in and coilovers finished.

#6 on mine was the same way!

that's odd, I wonder why it tends to happen in cyl 6

[Steve547i]

I saw three blues in the same yard yesterday. glacier, cirrus and orient and I really like all three. Cirrus doesn't look bad at all.

[beeemdubyah]

hey man i was wondering what the part number was for your coil sleeves?

[Jcbe34]

Ill get them to you when I get home. They don't fit perfectly though, im having a piece made to center them

[87shark]

Got your bumper and skirts up here man. Do you think you could have 2 sets of pieces made to make them fit ? I will pay for them.

[Jcbe34]

Awesome, I'll definitely pick them up this weekend then. I'm supposed to be picking up the perch things tomorrow so I'll let you know how they look. If they aren't great my friend is going to try to make some out of tubing, these are machined from a solid. I'm using e28 housings on my car, so mine might be a little different. I think the e34 housing is wider, can anyone verify this? Mine are 2.05" in at the perch



To update, I got some stuff done on the car, still waiting on a few parts before I can get the engine back in. I spent my off day today cleaning-

[sse34]

looking good

[87shark]

Im going out of town sat-tuesday morning. so maybe pick them up tuesday afternoon ish?

[Jcbe34]

That'll work

[janders211]

that's odd, I wonder why it tends to happen in cyl 6

Overheating or anything else that warps the head tends to distort more on cyl's 1 and 6....think banana-ing of the head...so HG leaks caused by this tend to occur at the ends. Cooling also is different at the ends of the block...b/c of surface area, and not being surrounded by other hot cylinders.

[Jcbe34]

Well I finally got the car running and driving.. but the shocks are so blown that it's not really driveable, so I decided to go ahead and do the suspension.




Strut comparison.. I welded my perches pretty far down to leave room in case I need to shorten the housings, which I probably will do when I find some short Bilsteins I can re-valve. I'm probably going to have to adjust the perches pretty far up to have enough travel, but that way I'll be able to see exactly how low I can go before I run out. Springs are 6" 525 lb



Here is a shot of the strut mounting plates for the e34 and e28.. They are basically identical except the e28 uses smaller bolts and the e34 plate 1/4" taller.


I also ran into a snag with a busted clutch line, I ended up using a UUC e30 rear brake line as a temporary fix..



And lastly.. I picked this up, along with some sideskirts from Josh (87shark). Pretty excited about it, not sure if I'm going to paint it completely cirrus or do a different color on the lower lip and skirts similar to the m5




More updates soon... Should be done with the coilovers early this week

[ClarkWGriswold]

What products did you use to clean the engine bay?

[Jcbe34]

Lots of different brushes, simple green, another locally mixed degreaser and some diluted wheel acid with a wire brush for the metal bits.

[ShapeShifter]

Nice. Your making some very quick progress.

[richinvan]

Go 2 tone on the skirt/lip.

[Binjammin]

I think silver for lowers would look pretty good on a lighter car like cirrus or glacier. Shadowline too, but primarily get rid of the dark lowers.

[Jcbe34]

I was thinking that, the only thing stopping me is the fact that I'm stuck with the stock rear bumper.. It would be much easier to pull off two tone with an mtech rear. I also saw a light blue m-sport with body color lowers and it looked amazing

[87shark]

[zubbie]

Nice work..

Wheels are 18" style 5's?

[richinvan]

Paint the lower of the stock bumper to match until you can find a matching rear!
Only people like us would know it's not "proper" :P

[beeemdubyah]

super clean man!

*insert coilover build*

[Jcbe34]

That cirrus car might look better with some different wheels, but I'm definitely not loving the body colored look in that case. We'll see

In other news, did some test fitting with the suspension today and I'm not too happy with the results. This is just the housings, with no springs but both perches and strut mounts installed.

This is the static ride height, with 2" travel, which is probably not enough for a car this weight with 525lb springs


This is about where I want to be, unfortunately in this picture the upper perch is touching the strut insert nut. So, zero travel.


You could gain some travel with camber plates, GC and Vorshlag both have a much shorter stack height. I'm not sure exactly how much travel you would gain but I would guess around an inch. A-1's upper perches are also pretty tall, so there is a little space to be gained there as well but if camber plates come with flatter upper spring perches anyways. But yeah, I'm not too happy. Time to buy some short shocks and chop housings