SBeckman7's Official 535i Vehicle Log

[Leonator134]

West, normally. I live in the SF Bay Area, but study in Indianapolis.

Gotcha. Car's looking great!

[sbeckman7]

Thanks man! Yours does too

[sbeckman7]

Time for an update!

I've abandoned the idea of posting everything in the original post, so here are some pictures of today's work: valve adjustment and plastidipped front trim. I had the oil sprayer bar sneak out of the hole, found it sitting happily inside the head. Torqued it down nicely in the hole and will order replacement bolts in the newer style soon. I'd like to clean my engine bay as well but that sounds like a time consuming task for another day.. Hoping to get some big things done tomorrow!

This is when I decided something was wrong


And then found it here


Surprised at how well this picture came out!


And finally after PlastiDip:


Not entirely sure I'm sold yet on the black vs. chrome debate.. but I will have to get new Kidney trim anyways as these are missing like half the plastic tabs... I figured why not try it.

[JesterMX6]

nice

[BleedsBlue]

It's awesome to see young enthusiasts interested in these cars, and even better when they wrench on them. I'm a few years ahead of you (25 currently) in age, but I had an E36 M3 from age 17-22 that I gradually built up in my (parent's) garage into an OEM+ high mileage minter, similar to yours.

Keep up the progress, though you may find as you get older and priorities change, that the mod list begins to shrink over time. The less modifications a car needs to satisfy you, the better an inherent fit the car is for your personal taste.

[93FIM5]

Looking good man! Oil bar bolts are a normal issue on the M30, I definitely prefer the black over chrome.

It's awesome to see young enthusiasts interested in these cars, and even better when they wrench on them. I'm a few years ahead of you (25 currently) in age, but I had an E36 M3 from age 17-22 that I gradually built up in my (parent's) garage into an OEM+ high mileage minter, similar to yours.

Keep up the progress, though you may find as you get older and priorities change, that the mod list begins to shrink over time. The less modifications a car needs to satisfy you, the better an inherent fit the car is for your personal taste.

Where in Colorado are you, would love to meet another M5 owner.

-Greg

[sbeckman7]

Looking good man! Oil bar bolts are a normal issue on the M30, I definitely prefer the black over chrome.

Thanks Greg! Your work is definitely an inspiration.

[BleedsBlue]

Where in Colorado are you, would love to meet another M5 owner.

-Greg

You have PM, Greg

[S61Dan]

Seeing the red car and the first pic of you getting rid of the tint, I knew you were the Vehicle Virgins guy! lol

[skunka]

love your car man.

[sbeckman7]

Seeing the red car and the first pic of you getting rid of the tint, I knew you were the Vehicle Virgins guy! lol

Ahaha yep that's me! The YouTube channel recently broke 1 million views

love your car man.

Thanks man!


Car felt great today until I just drove it back from the mall, seemed to be stuttering a little under acceleration. Popped the hood and found the #5 spark plug flopping around

[S61Dan]

Car felt great today until I just drove it back from the mall, seemed to be stuttering a little under acceleration. Popped the hood and found the #5 spark plug flopping around

The spark plug was flopping around? I would be crying! Was it the coil pack you mean?

[PorscheH6]

M30 doesn't have coil packs.

[sbeckman7]

The spark plug was flopping around? I would be crying! Was it the coil pack you mean?

Oops sorry, what I meant was the lead attaching to the plug. If the actual plug itself was flopping around I probably would have been crying too haha.

[S61Dan]

M30 doesn't have coil packs.

Whoops! Thinking in terms of my engine (M50)

[E38740iMD]

Zinno love

[sbeckman7]

Update! Being home from summer now, I've come back to a sad and neglected E34 I put the cover on it before I left a few months ago and also added fuel stabilizer to the full tank of gas and removed the battery to set it on a trickle charger. So those items are all good, but I resumed tackling my no-idle issue. After looking at various causes (ICV, TPS, evil gnomes) I was surprised to find that some smallish tears in the rubber boot running from the AFM to the throttle body were enough to cause my car to not idle! A few new hoses later and the big six now ticks over happily... well almost happily. Running on 5 out of 6 cylinders. Some new spark plugs later, I quickly found that the #3 cylinder is not getting any fuel as the plug still looks brand new even after running the engine for several minutes (all the others have burnt fuel). I will be examining the fuel injector this afternoon and hopefully installing one of the spares I have laying around, should I manage to find it.

[stoney85]

Throw a set of Bosch Design3 19lb injectors in it, cheaper than refreshing your current set, bolt right in, and have a 4 hole spray pattern compared to the stock one hole, and are also a lot quieter in operation.

My first 535i I thought it was my valves being noisy, it was in fact a very old dirty set of stock injectors rattling/clicking away

[sbeckman7]

Throw a set of Bosch Design3 19lb injectors in it, cheaper than refreshing your current set, bolt right in, and have a 4 hole spray pattern compared to the stock one hole, and are also a lot quieter in operation.

My first 535i I thought it was my valves being noisy, it was in fact a very old dirty set of stock injectors rattling/clicking away

That's actually what I've already got in it (see sig), and it turns out one of them went bad! #3 injector replaced and the car runs on all six cylinders again! The next job is the cooling flush/ tstat replacement. This job was going well until I got to the last screw on the thermostat housing cover... It's seized up. I soaked it in WD-40 tonight and have had the torch on it for a bit. Tomorrow I will continue to torch it and hopefully it will break free without snapping in the housing. Fingers crossed, I'm a bit uneasy about how stuck it is :/

[E38740iMD]

That's actually what I've already got in it (see sig), and it turns out one of them went bad! #3 injector replaced and the car runs on all six cylinders again! The next job is the cooling flush/ tstat replacement. This job was going well until I got to the last screw on the thermostat housing cover... It's seized up. I soaked it in WD-40 tonight and have had the torch on it for a bit. Tomorrow I will continue to torch it and hopefully it will break free without snapping in the housing. Fingers crossed, I'm a bit uneasy about how stuck it is :/

You have the 24 pounder on yours. I wonder if it helps performance. But you would need more air to find out

[stoney85]

Any gain from running the wrong size injectors on a standard fuel map would be questionable and not recommended, if the chip has been tuned to suit, then fair enough, but on a stock car, going to the next size up injectors is pointless.

Good luck with the bolt, also give it a tap on the head of it with a hammer, this can help break up any corrosion it may have from dissimilar metal contact, I always give this a shot before resorting to heat and it works pretty well usually. Obviously don't use a 10lb hammer

[sbeckman7]

Finally got my tstat bolt unstuck with the help of a torch and some out-of-car wrenching. I removed the entire housing instead of just the t-stat cover and this proved to be a much easier way to work on everything. The old thermostat was visibly bent.. no idea how that could have happened. Of course now I've got to replace the hoses as they are all gross near the ends and leaking around the seams (then again maybe I just need to man up and tighten them down more). Still, the car doesn't overheat now and I can drive it like I want... All in all some good progress!

[stoney85]

Remove all the hoses and clean any corrosion or gunk from the hoses and fittings, wire brush the aluminium clean, I had a similar problem on my M30 a while back, while its all apart, now is the time to do it.

[sbeckman7]

Ordered a buttload of parts from Pelican tonight to continue putting an end to my coolant/fuel leaks. I have unfortunately stripped one of the bolts holding the fuel rail to the manifold (near cylinder 6) and now will be ordering a helicoil to fix it up. Other ordered parts include regular maintenance i.e. fuel filter, new hoses to replace cracked ones (and new hose clamps too), and some other rubber odds and ends that were broken.

Remove all the hoses and clean any corrosion or gunk from the hoses and fittings, wire brush the aluminium clean, I had a similar problem on my M30 a while back, while its all apart, now is the time to do it.

I will be doing this with the housing as well. Also regarding your previous post on the 24lb fuel injectors, I believe the ECU has compensated by shortening the injector pulse timing. I believe this because while my indicated MPG increased by 4-5 after I installed the injectors, real-world MPG gains were closer to 1-2. Therefore the computer thinks the car uses less fuel than it actually does, although the new injectors definitely still helped

[stoney85]

The computers in these aren't that adaptable, they're 25 years old in technology remember, they will try to lessen the fuel amount, but have set parameters to work with, and when the car is in open loop (not relying on the O2 sensor for input) it will be running off a fuel map designed for injectors 25% less in capacity.

If the chip in the car has been changed to incorporate the larger injector size then it's fine.

Running a wideband O2 sensor is a great bit of equipment, and so cheap! and I don't know why every car enthusiast doesn't have one mounted constantly, real time feedback on how efficiently your engine is running, can show if there is any issues or tuning errors at certain times, ie full load, idling around, partial throttle maps etc

One of them along with some understanding of air/fuel ratios and stoichiometric values and their meanings really can be beneficial.