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Thread: Danny's Japan Rot 540i Touring Thread

  1. #676
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    Quote Originally Posted by XAlt View Post
    Hey guys my name is Tavarish, I told everybody to get E39 540s and then called all BMW engines garbage.
    Lol. That dude is a huge douchemaster no question.

    I'd have every sympathy for a guy stumbling on a crap car and even then being screwed by a bad shop, but he then uses his blog platform to incorrectly ridiculously trash all BMW'S and 540 E39's in particular. And when you back it up to his prior campaign that E39's awesome it just reveals what a knucklehead he is. He fell in love with a car he knew nothing about, dove in and bought stupidly making huge mistakes before throwing cash down, then got screwed and blamed all BMW's.

    An intelligent insightful auto-blogger would be all over reflecting on the mistakes he made and the difference between platform flaws and his personal fork ups, but he proved incapable of all of that. Makes anything else he writes completely un-credible.
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    Quote Originally Posted by geargrinder View Post
    Lol. That dude is a huge douchemaster no question.

    I'd have every sympathy for a guy stumbling on a crap car and even then being screwed by a bad shop, but he then uses his blog platform to incorrectly ridiculously trash all BMW'S and 540 E39's in particular. And when you back it up to his prior campaign that E39's awesome it just reveals what a knucklehead he is. He fell in love with a car he knew nothing about, dove in and bought stupidly making huge mistakes before throwing cash down, then got screwed and blamed all BMW's.

    An intelligent insightful auto-blogger would be all over reflecting on the mistakes he made and the difference between platform flaws and his personal fork ups, but he proved incapable of all of that. Makes anything else he writes completely un-credible.
    Whoa, easy there. He's a car guy, too. You don't have to like him, agree with him, or even talk to him, but he's still a car guy. It's like, I don't care for donks, but they are still car enthusiast's cars. We as car enthusiasts need to look forward; if we're not careful, we won't be able to drive anywhere. We'll have to work together to save our hobby.

    Also, it seems like BMWs suffer from more than their fair share of odd issues; rod bearings in all sorts of motors, oil pump nuts, timing chain guides, etc. I guess that's what you get when they're pushing the edges of efficiency and performance.
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  3. #678
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    Quote Originally Posted by computiNATEor View Post
    Whoa, easy there. He's a car guy, too. You don't have to like him, agree with him, or even talk to him, but he's still a car guy. It's like, I don't care for donks, but they are still car enthusiast's cars. We as car enthusiasts need to look forward; if we're not careful, we won't be able to drive anywhere. We'll have to work together to save our hobby.

    Also, it seems like BMWs suffer from more than their fair share of odd issues; rod bearings in all sorts of motors, oil pump nuts, timing chain guides, etc. I guess that's what you get when they're pushing the edges of efficiency and performance.
    This. It's fine to have opinions that differ, variety is the spice of life as they say. Plus Freddy's got a whole bunch of cool cars like an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, a 944 Turbo, an SL55, a daily driver S500, a Ford F-350 dually, and more, so he's definitely a car guy at heart. He was actually the one that got me into working on cars because I read his articles and figured I should give the whole luxury car DIY thing a try. If I hadn't read his article about how rad the 540i was, who knows what I would have purchased instead?

    And BMW engines were definitely pushing the envelope on what was possible in the late 90's and early 2000's. My 1996 Mustang GT has 215hp out of a 4.6L engine, meanwhile a 1997 540i makes close to 300hp out of a smaller 4.4L engine, and the 2003 X5 4.6 makes 340hp out of a 4.6L engine. The S54 was pushing out 333hp from a 3.2L engine in a time when 3L V6's were barely wheezing out 200hp. The S62 was downright monstrous for its time, getting an amazing 400hp out of a 5L engine, meanwhile the Corvette was only making 345hp out of a 5.7L engine. For what it's worth, the BMW M62/S62 were engineering marvels, being DOHC with variable valve timing, drive-by-wire, and individual throttle bodies (S62) in a time when most V8's on the market were cable-operated pushrods or primitive SOHC.
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    Uh, not really. The 300hp 4V modular from 93' would go along to destroy everybody, and then there was the LT5 from the early 90's.

    BMW has never led in the horsepower war, it's just the SN95 you have just had its balls cut off.
    Last edited by XAlt; 04-25-2017 at 08:54 AM.

  5. #680
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    No. Sorry.

    Being "car guy" because you buy lots of them doesn't excuse everything. This isn't a case of having different taste in cars or whatever. This is the case of having a public platform and having zero self knowledge or reflection or objectivity. Having cars doesn't make a jerk or a loser magically not a jerk or a loser, sorry. Just makes them a loser douche car guy. What, if I buy an overpriced Ferrari with a million dollars of lapsed repairs due tomorrow I'm allowed to say all kind of incorrect things about it and then rant about how stupid all Ferraris are just because "I'm a car guy?" Sorry guys but that's WAY bad logic. Columnist/commentators are not excused from crappy writing and lack of perspective or context or self-reflection or objectivity just "hey but he owns like, a lot of cars dude!".

    He was all of that in the case of those series of articles as well as his "drive by" trashing of BMW ever since (I don't read his posts much but enough to have caught a bunch of those as he found every opportunity possible to wedge in a little crappy line about BMW just because he screwed up). And he's also (again from what I've seen) brushed off criticism as more or less 'ha ha getting hate from the stupid BMW fanboiz'. Well I'm the first guy to trash the weaknesses of the M62 motor for sure, and I strive to always be objective about pros/cons about any car and BMW's, but there's a lot of good to be said about their motors and cars as well as the bad.

    And honestly - car guy"? He's NOT much of a car guy if he doesn't understand this was all his fault and partially the shops fault but also his fault for not recognizing that he has been using a crap moron shop. Again, a lot of dopes buy cars. Doesn't make them 'real car guys' in my book. BTW if he wrote this up with ANY level of humility and perspective, like "man did I make a mistake and get a bad one!" and "maybe I was over the top on my 540 enthusiasm before I owned one, but after all this, here's a balanced perspective now that I've come out the other side". But he didn't. He was stupidly over in love w/ the 540 beforehand, convinced it was an easy budget M5, then when he turned out to have made big mistakes, AND, have set too high expectations for himself, he decided all BMW's suck. A good writer should recognize the difference between objective reality and his anecdotal specific experience.

    He's not a "Car Guy". At least not a good one.
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  6. #681
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    I like jalopnik. In internet writing the trend is to go extreme black or white. Everything is the best thing ever, or the worst thing ever. It's done on purpose, and the guys at jolopnik do a good job of making fun of themselves for being a part of that nonsense. Now, what I would like for content is to get back to Danny's build


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    Quote Originally Posted by geargrinder View Post
    No. Sorry.

    Being "car guy" because you buy lots of them doesn't excuse everything. This isn't a case of having different taste in cars or whatever. This is the case of having a public platform and having zero self knowledge or reflection or objectivity. Having cars doesn't make a jerk or a loser magically not a jerk or a loser, sorry. Just makes them a loser douche car guy. What, if I buy an overpriced Ferrari with a million dollars of lapsed repairs due tomorrow I'm allowed to say all kind of incorrect things about it and then rant about how stupid all Ferraris are just because "I'm a car guy?" Sorry guys but that's WAY bad logic. Columnist/commentators are not excused from crappy writing and lack of perspective or context or self-reflection or objectivity just "hey but he owns like, a lot of cars dude!".

    He was all of that in the case of those series of articles as well as his "drive by" trashing of BMW ever since (I don't read his posts much but enough to have caught a bunch of those as he found every opportunity possible to wedge in a little crappy line about BMW just because he screwed up). And he's also (again from what I've seen) brushed off criticism as more or less 'ha ha getting hate from the stupid BMW fanboiz'. Well I'm the first guy to trash the weaknesses of the M62 motor for sure, and I strive to always be objective about pros/cons about any car and BMW's, but there's a lot of good to be said about their motors and cars as well as the bad.

    And honestly - car guy"? He's NOT much of a car guy if he doesn't understand this was all his fault and partially the shops fault but also his fault for not recognizing that he has been using a crap moron shop. Again, a lot of dopes buy cars. Doesn't make them 'real car guys' in my book. BTW if he wrote this up with ANY level of humility and perspective, like "man did I make a mistake and get a bad one!" and "maybe I was over the top on my 540 enthusiasm before I owned one, but after all this, here's a balanced perspective now that I've come out the other side". But he didn't. He was stupidly over in love w/ the 540 beforehand, convinced it was an easy budget M5, then when he turned out to have made big mistakes, AND, have set too high expectations for himself, he decided all BMW's suck. A good writer should recognize the difference between objective reality and his anecdotal specific experience.

    He's not a "Car Guy". At least not a good one.
    Thank you for this.... I hate how anything an author posts on that site is considered gold, some of his stuff can't be further from the truth. I remember originally reading about the 540i endeavors and being like wow that truly is a cool car. It did lead me to buy the car. I spent my asking price in the first year and not once did I blame it on BMW, we buy used depreciated luxury cars and it's our fault if we screw them up. You could run through every dang brand and find an issue with each motor and chassis. Audi - timing chain, VW - timing chain, Subaru headgasket/timing belt, BMW rodbearing/VANOS, Land Rover everything, the list is endless....

    A little humility goes a long way, Tavarish could learn a thing or three from David Tracy about that. Not once do you see him blaming the car brand he bought for his mistakes or troubles. Sheesh....

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    WHY BUY A NEW CAMRY WHEN YOU CAN GET THIS USED AMG BENZ WITH A SALVAGE TITLE AND FLOOD DAMAGE



    reee






    Last edited by XAlt; 04-25-2017 at 11:35 AM.

  9. #684
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    I would agree we should stop jackin Danny's thread cuz he's OK people and feels differently about the situation and I agree to disagree w/ him cuz he's indeed a stand up car people.
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    No worries, we're all friendly here. I'm glad we can keep it civil, unlike YouTube commenters.

    The last thing I'm gonna say about all of this is that Jalopnik is still very much a for-profit business that relies heavily on views/clicks. Sensationalized clickbait titles are the name of the game at this point, which is why articles like "BUY THIS USED AMG FOR THE PRICE OF A CAMRY" have done so well in terms of views. So it's in their best interest to stir controversy, since controversy leads to views which leads to more ad revenue.

    Now on the forums we can keep it real since we have our own community and don't need to attract randos from all over the internet.

    -------------

    Anyways, back to wagon talk. It's funny how luxurious my touring feels after driving the Mustang for the past couple days. I also find it hilarious that my mom-wagon has more bolstered seats than a car that's supposedly a sports car. Seriously, the Mustang seats are like squishy pillows with zero bolstering whatsoever.

    I'm also wondering how to make my wagon's exhaust louder and lower. I want it to rumble and burble more, it's still way too civilized for a V8.
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  11. #686
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    Pretty easy to make a 540 louder! Trick is to make it sound good louder not bad louder.
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    Quote Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny View Post

    I'm also wondering how to make my wagon's exhaust louder and lower. I want it to rumble and burble more, it's still way too civilized for a V8.
    Welcome to the club on this one....I went from Remus, so far big mistake, to 3" and Hamburg mod mufflers to 2 1/2" and Gibson chambered mufflers and not happy with any of them. I lost an auction yesterday on some e60 M5 Dinan mufflers so I am now on the look for my next set up.....

    I was also told the type of crossovers that I was using was the worse type. Need to use the "kissing" type rather than the forced type that cause a true crossover of exhaust. The kissing will supposedly just cause scavenging of exhaust and keep the "rasping" to a minimum... my next type of crossover I will use on the next version.
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    What there is click batting going on here? There goes my retirement plans.....
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  14. #689
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    Quote Originally Posted by geargrinder View Post
    Pretty easy to make a 540 louder! Trick is to make it sound good louder not bad louder.
    You have a point there. I removed the whole back half of the exhaust on the Mustang, leaving only the cats. It's incredibly loud, to the point of needing earplugs on long highway drives. It also pops like crazy every time you let off the throttle. Maybe I should install a valve on my touring's exhaust system right after the cats so I can have crazy stupid loud for tunnels and pissing off neighbors, and a quieter sound for long drives.
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    How to make 540 sound great.

    Step 1: Cut off everything
    Step 2: Realize it sounds like crap
    Step 3: Start over

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    I have a resonator delete on mine and a manga flow muffler. It sounds great, but I'd like to add high flow resonators to get a little more refinement out of it and decrease the drone. Accelerating and decelerating sound awesome. I'd start with high flow resonators


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    Quote Originally Posted by cnsorial View Post
    I have a resonator delete on mine and a manga flow muffler. It sounds great, but I'd like to add high flow resonators to get a little more refinement out of it and decrease the drone. Accelerating and decelerating sound awesome. I'd start with high flow resonators
    Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I already got the mufflers deleted, maybe a high-flow resonator will give me a little more volume. I'm trying to avoid any extra drone, my Mustang already drones from 0 to redline haha.
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    Mine will drone in 6th at 70-80. Kind of annoying but I can drown it out without the radio being too loud.


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  19. #694
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    Quote Originally Posted by cnsorial View Post
    manga flow muffler.
    Is that a device that silences the sound of Japanese cartoon porn?

    Quote Originally Posted by cnsorial View Post
    Mine will drone in 6th at 70-80. Kind of annoying but I can drown it out without the radio being too loud.


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    Totally. What you'll find if you pay attention is that it's rpm based but you just aren't cruising locked in at that rpm as often. It's for sure what they do. It's livable but depends on your age and taste and threshold for drone.

    Loads of n00btards put muffler deletes on and scream "IT DOESN'T DRONE!!! I SWEAR!!!"

    For like 3-4 months.

    Then they inevitably come back and say "yeah I LOVE my tone... But it's just got this drone...."
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    Quote Originally Posted by geargrinder View Post
    Is that a device that silences the sound of Japanese cartoon porn?



    Totally. What you'll find if you pay attention is that it's rpm based but you just aren't cruising locked in at that rpm as often. It's for sure what they do. It's livable but depends on your age and taste and threshold for drone.

    Loads of n00btards put muffler deletes on and scream "IT DOESN'T DRONE!!! I SWEAR!!!"

    For like 3-4 months.

    Then they inevitably come back and say "yeah I LOVE my tone... But it's just got this drone...."
    Yep, exactly. Drones at 2000-2200 rpm or so. Don't notice it cruising around town in 4th because it's my nice weather car and usually have windows and sunroof open.

    I'm 21 and don't like drone and rasp and farty exhausts. This summer I'm planning to get some resonators welded in.

    Do you have any recommendations for mufflers that are better than magnaflow?


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    Lots of stuff happening to the car lately, let's recap.

    First, a friend and I decided to recharge the AC system to prepare for the blazing-hot summer here in Phoenix. We plugged in the HVAC gauges and saw the system was a little low, so we evacuated the refrigerant out, performed a leak test (no leaks!), and filled it with fresh R134. We also made sure to inject the proper PAG 100 oil along with the refrigerant. Then, using a special test probe in the AC vent, we dialed in the pressures just right until we got 39ºF at the vents. Pretty impressive for a 17 year old car with an original AC system. The system definitely got a good test when it was 110ºF the next day, it blew cold to the point where I actually got a little chilly.

    Secondly, we prepped and painted my busted OEM M5 bumper. I bought it from eBay sight unseen— it's a 2003 bumper that was originally finished in Sterling Gray. It had some pretty major cracks on it, as you can see here:



    We went to the paint supply store and got a properly matching paint color, bumper repair epoxy, primer, clear coat, hardener, reducer, mixing cups, stirrers, dust mask filters, sandpaper, etc. Pretty much everything we would need to repair, prep, and spray the bumper. My friend also let me borrow his 33-gallon compressor and paint guns. Everything fit nicely in the back of my wagon, without even needing to fold down the seats.



    The first order of business was repairing the giant, structural cracks in the bumper. We started with the smaller of the two cracks first.



    Then we wrangled the big crack shut and used a C-clamp to hold it in place while the epoxy cured. We used SEM Bumper Repair epoxy, which is specifically made for flexible applications like a bumper. You don't want to use any kind of glue that gets stiff when cured.



    After that, we used a fiberglass-reinforced filler called Evercoat Kitty Hair. It's extremely strong, flexible, and has little strands in it to reinforce the bond. It's also super easy to sand when it's dry. We used a sanding pad on my DA polisher to do most of the work with 120 grit— that saved us so much time. After the whole bumper was smooth and repaired, we went up to 240 grit and then 500 grit. Once the bumper was all prepped, we washed it and dried it carefully before laying down some adhesion promoter.





    The repairs came out quite great considering how damaged the bumper was. Most people wouldn't want to touch a bumper as messed up as this one, but I have plenty of time and not much money so I went for it anyways. With my friend and I working on the bumper, it took us about 5 hours one day and like 6 hours the next day to repair and prep it properly.

    With the prep done, we turned my garage into a ghetto paint booth by covering everything with tarps and plastic. With the window and big door opening sealed up, we had a decently clean, mostly bug-free place to lay down paint. My friend did the actual painting, since he was a lot more experienced and I didn't want to mess it up. I learned a lot by watching though, so perhaps the next time we paint I'll give it a shot.

    The primer laid down super nicely, with good coverage after just one coat. We let the first coat dry and applied a second coat to ensure complete coverage. The bumper was starting to look really good at this point.





    After the primer was fully dry, we laid down the base coat. What a beautiful color. It looks a little weird in this lighting since I was using my phone camera (didn't want my DSLR around all the overspray). We sprayed two coats of the color.





    Both the primer and the base coat laid down wonderfully, with no drips or runs. The texture was nice and smooth too. After that had dried, we started laying down the clear, and that's where we ran into some trouble. The brand of clear that we bought was a little too thick for the gun we were using. Using reducer wasn't recommended with that clear so we upped the pressure of the gun to 35psi, which still ended up spraying too much. The first coat of clear ended up being extremely thick and took forever to cure. It was like 2am at this point so we called it quits for the night to let the clear fully cure before proceeding. I'm so happy to live in a non-HOA neighborhood where I can get away with commercial-grade painting at 2am. It smelled pretty vile, especially the clear coat. Good thing we both wore some pretty serious respirators, that certainly minimized the amount of brain cells lost from huffing paint chemicals.

    You can't quite see it in the pictures, but the first coat of clear was not the greatest. A bug landed in one spot, there were serious runs everywhere, pretty big drips, and insane orange peel.









    After about two days we decided to fix the clear. We bought a different brand of clear coat that allows the use of reducer and wet-sanded the living daylights out of that disastrous first clear coat. After about 3 hours of wet-sanding with 1000 grit, we got the texture to an acceptable point. We removed 90% of the orange peel, got the bug out, and removed all of the drip marks. The first coat of clear was so thick that even after a ton of pretty intense wet-sanding we still hadn't gone through the clear. We then washed/dried the bumper and got it ready for another coat of clear. Thankfully this new brand of clear coat worked a lot better with my friend's gun, so he was able to lay down two very nice coats with minimal orange peel and almost no runs.





    We finished around midnight last night and while it was curing we went to the nearby 24-hour diner to celebrate a job well done. Tomorrow we're going to wet-sand any remaining orange peel out with 1500 grit, followed by a good buff and polish to get it looking perfect. This is what happens when two perfectionists try to paint a bumper. In retrospect it probably would have been a lot easier to just have a shop do the paint, but at least now I know that everything was done correctly.

    I also bought all the ancillary trims and pieces that I'll need for the bumper: black side trim pieces, lower grille, fog lights, fog light trims, headlight washers, and tow hook cover (that got painted as well). Once the bumper's ready I'll be able install it— I'm pretty excited to give my 540it that much-needed cosmetic facelift. I also plan to install a new auxiliary fan while the bumper is off, since I've had that laying around for a few months.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  22. #697
    Join Date
    Mar 2017
    Location
    Lynchburg, VA
    Posts
    360
    My Cars
    2001 540i
    Very nice. I am completely terrified of paint and body work. Good job


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    2001 Salvage Title 540i
    My build thread: https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...toive-decision

  23. #698
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    Tempe, AZ
    Posts
    7,658
    My Cars
    1995 525i/5
    Quote Originally Posted by douglawrence42 View Post
    Very nice. I am completely terrified of paint and body work. Good job
    I was too. Thankfully my friend was happy to teach me the ins and outs of it all while doing this bumper job. I learned so much in the past few days, it's crazy! I'd say the biggest challenge with body work is finding a place to do it. HOAs almost universally prohibit it, and even if it's not explicitly prohibited, the smells will drive everybody crazy. Thankfully my garage is at the far corner of my backyard and is completely detached from the house, so even after last night's spray session I didn't smell a single thing in my house.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  24. #699
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Posts
    17,072
    My Cars
    SR-71 Blackbird
    LaFerrari red!



  25. #700
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Location
    Destin, FL
    Posts
    641
    My Cars
    W220 S55 AMG, E39 540i6
    Looks great Danny. Nice work. Mind if I ask how much you have in the whole project?


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Chris
    -------------------------------------
    04 Mercedes S55 AMG
    97 BMW 540i6

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