WOW MAN! Just wow! Great work there. I so WANT to learn to do chain guides. I will be brave and try it one of these days. I have an engine candidate in the garage. Would it be something that can be done with the engine out of the car?
Nice work here, good job
Isn't the crank something crazy like 300 ft/lbs?
1969 GTO Warwick Blue/Parchment
2000 740i Sport 6 speed
You can definitely do the TC job! It's not really that technically difficult, just a journey of discovery if you have never taken all the stuff off the front of these engines before. From what I have seen you must have done this before. Impact gun should work for the crank bolt, but you can also just use a holder and a 3/4" breaker bar. You saw the tool that I made from $20 worth of steel. It took a lot of brute force to loosen the bolt, but all the worry I had about that part of the job was for naught. It was not that bad.
When reinstalling the bolt it is initially set at a specific torque (can't recall how much), then turned 60 degrees twice, and 30 degrees once. That last 30 degrees is not that easy. That thing is TIGHT.
I ended up really enjoying the project and would do it again if I had to. Hopefully not on this car though.
Thanks man! I'm trying hard to keep up with you and your silver car...
Your engine is freaking clean inside, that's why oil changes have to be all done in time, I don't trust lights on the dash
in my silver one is dirty, previous owner/s was not nice with the car
Yeah those lights on the dash are crazy. Way too long of an interval.
I was pleasantly surprised how clean this motor was inside. A little gunk was baked on to the inside of the upper oil pan, but that's about it. I cleaned that out the best I could. Oil still looks clean after a few hundred miles. The oil in my old E39 530 would get black again after just a few hundred miles. Hoping this one burns less oil too.
With the synthetic I try go change the oil every 5-7k miles. Seems pretty reasonable.
Yup, that's truth, better the oil you use for, the longer the engine life plus "on-time" oil changes
Been doing some suspension work to try to resolve some vibration issues. Seems like I solve one thing and another rears its ugly head.
When I bought the car I drove it 3 or 4 hours home, 80+mph, and the car drove fine. No weird clunks or vibrations. Put on the 16" winter set (tires have been balanced twice), and the car began vibrating on the highway, with a real bad shimmy when braking. Found bad ball joints in the rear, and bad LCA in the front. Replaced those and while better, was still getting the vibration while braking and sort of a light oscillating vibration that would come and go at a consistent harmonic low frequency.
Next step, naturally, was the thrust arms. Replaced those yesterday, and while the ones I removed didn't seem all that bad, the vibration at braking is completely gone, so they must have needed replacement.
Now, however, the car drives perfectly fine up to almost exactly 60 mph where a pretty bad vibration starts. Not sure what happens above 60, didn't get far enough out of town to test it. It is a pretty strong shimmy seemingly from the front end.
I plan to check:
1. For a stuck caliper.
2. Wheel bearing play (I believe the LF bearing is making a little noise)
3. Center steering link.
Seem like fixing one bad part exposes the weakness in another, or I screwed something up doing the thrust arms.
If if anyone has some advice I'd love to hear it. Yeah maybe replacing the entire suspension will be in the cards but I was hoping to crawl up to that point only if necessary. Getting close.
I once had a similar issue. My vibration seemed to have a constant frequency only altered by car speed. As it turned out, I had a bad tire which to the eye seemed but it was out of round - that's the way the tire shop described the malady. Wheel and tired balanced fine at the shop, but once on the car all hell broke loose at speeds above 50 MPH.
It's possible I suppose. Current vibration starts at 60. Up to that point it's perfectly smooth. Smooths out a lot around 70, and up to 90 was not terrible. I may have to get these tires balanced again. I don't believe the prior balancing was road force balancing.
It is little dead feeling on center, so am still thinking I need to change the center link. Would the center link cause a vibration, or just the dead on center and maybe a slight wander?
I can live with a slight wander until spring. It's not crazy loose and it's too #@$%-ing cold in the garage for crawling around underneath.
Turned over a buck-eighty today! Hard to tell because of the missing pixels, but that's what it says. Missed it by a couple miles.
Car is running great. No more smoke on start up since I replaced the CCV and OSV during the guides job. Averaging 18 mpg all around driving, most of which is in town 2 miles or less at a shot. I get it out on the road for 1 1/2 hours once a week. Nowhere near the mileage my E39 530i, but not the end of the world.
Still need to address the highway vibration though. Wheel bearing is definitely shot. Will be replacing that when I have time. New rear brake rotors and bad cured the back end vibration. Will lube up the caliper slides when I do the WB up front.
I've had the car for 4 months or so and have yet to do a proper hand wash and interior detail once (if it ever) it warms up. Looking to do a Leatherique treatment. Anyone have experience with that?
Also have a parts wish list that I'd like to start gathering parts for spring when I change over the tires.
Red door jamb light (need one)
Trunk light
Rubber strips for rear rain channel that I waited to long to order from GMCPaul
Jack pads (2)
Front inner fender liners
Left and right under coverings
Cupholders F & R
Floor mats
Fan shroud
Widescreen nav book
Front and rear wheels (1 ea)
Lower windshield cowl cover 51718125477
Last edited by clarkitect; 05-21-2020 at 09:54 AM. Reason: Update image from photopucket
Good day of work today!
Replaced the LF wheel bearing that had been getting louder and louder. Easiest wheel bearing job ever. Way easier than the E39 PITA bearing.
Also cleaned and lubricated the caliper slides to prevent any brake shimmy from balky pads. Found the center link is totally shot- gotta be the source of the highway vibrations and high speed braking wheel wobble. Will order those parts from Bavauto who seems to have a good price on the Meyle center link and Lemforder ends. With free shipping parts will arrive the next day.
Replaced both rear window regulators. First one took a while, second one was a piece of cake. Lubed everything up really good, including the fuzzy tracks hoping that would help extend the life of the pullies. They shoot up and down super fast and quiet now. Soooo psyched with that. Now all we need is window down weather.
Repaired the LR door ashtray. The plastic holding the spring had broken, so I drilled a hole and put in a tiny screw to hold the pus end to the ashtray cup. Works perfectly now. Should have taken a picture of this little repair. Dang.
Fixed the cloudy clear section of the tail lights. Simple sanding and buffing did wonders.
Before:
After:
Also mounted up the summer set up. New Sumitomo tires on refinished mpars. Refinishing came out decent. Wish I took a before picture because these were really scraped up and pitted.
The Sumi's were the cheapest new tire option from Tire Rack. They also had lots of positive reviews from BMW owners on their site. We'll see how they go.
Next up is reattaching these on each side of the car:
Last edited by clarkitect; 05-21-2020 at 09:56 AM. Reason: Update images from photobucket
Thought I'd throw an update here. Car is going strong, Been picking away at the to do list.
Trunk would open then close on itself again when I hit the open button. Noticed I was missing one of these plunger dealios. Problem solved.
Works great now!
Bought a batch of other stuff from FCP.
Jack pads, fan shroud, fuel filter, fan clutch to replace the one I bought from Amazon for $40. I thought it was loud and worried about buying a cheap one. Honestly I should have kept the Amazon one. This one is just as loud and was a lot more money. Some day I'll go electric. I drove all winter without a fan at all, not sure I could do that successfully in the summer.
Old fan shroud was cracked and zip ties look bad. Been on there since I bought the car, and I replaced old zip ties with new zip tie when I did the guides. The fan shroud was a Behr and had all the same markings, except the BMW logo was ground off.
Back to looking good under the hood. A little blurry. If it'd decent out I want to do a good cleaning under the hood. I had cleaned up the engine when I did the engine work, but still need to clean the sheetmetal and miscellaneous engine bay things.
Instrument cluster is now fully pixellated thanks to Concrete Donkey. Boy it sure is nice to look and see all the info. Almost like a real car! Wish it didn't say "BMW Assist Inactive" when I started the car though. Someone cut the phone out, not that I could use it anyway. I heard if I remove the phone module this might go away?
Yeah, 54 degrees mid day on June 6th. I love Vermont
Honestly, this is a great car. I love it. Especially since I fixed the floppy rocker plastics. Still need to get the front fender plastics and also the passenger side plastic thing that opens the air vent when you close the hood. Searched Realoem for a part number on that but couldn't find it. Maybe if I knew of a good junk yard nearby with E38's my life would be complete.
Last edited by clarkitect; 03-30-2021 at 08:13 AM.
Looks great!
Just read through your entire thread.
Awesome work you've done and the cars looking great.
Nice to see another one saved.
95 740i 99 750i
Hey thanks Purp and Kulgan! I try to keep up with all the good work I see others doing on the forum. This car would surely be in the junkyard now if I hadn't bought it and nursed it back. I hope it rewards me with some trouble free miles for a little while anyway!
Take the phone module out of the trunk and your BMW Assist Inactive message will go away. I had the same issue after I had my cluster repaired. Nice work on restoring the car to a thing of beauty.
i have done done most of the same repairs you have completed (did both WB's while I was at it). I started with a car that was a 9/10 both exteriorly and interiorly, so that was definitely a plus. Searched for a year, then happened to see it out of the corner of my eye on the lot at Germain BMW of Naples. Bought it and drove it 1,100 miles to Indy.
Last edited by clarkitect; 06-14-2015 at 08:58 AM.
It was cool to find it like that. I was looking for a Stratus or Anthracite 740i sport and had missed out on a Texas car a few months earlier. Everything worked on the car I bought, it appeared to have been well maintained, but the guide went at 112K.
My phone module was silver. I will get a picture of it and the empty slot in the trunk tomorrow.
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