Danny's 92 525it/5

[dannyzabolotny]

Now that the weather's cooled down a bit and my life has stabilized, I'm picking this project back up. For those who don't know, I opened up a BMW shop with a friend a little while back. Not gonna lie, the first few months were pretty rough financially, but we've been putting in hard work and it's starting to become pretty profitable.

It was under 100ºF the other day, so I ventured over to the junkyard near my shop to see what they had. This particular junkyard doesn't have an online inventory system, so it's always a gamble as to whether they'll have anything I want. That being said, I've consistently found E34's at this yard so my hopes were high. My risk was rewarded almost immediately, as I spotted a clean 93 525i and 95 525i almost instantly.

I grabbed the nose panel off the 93— now I'll finally have a proper nose panel that isn't dented, rusting (because it was never painted), and missing the grilles.



And then I spotted something crazy. The 95 525i had an LSG interior, and get this, the door panels were in good shape! That certainly seemed like a miracle, given that Arizona destroys interiors like nothing else. I came back early this morning to pick up all 4 door panels. The rear panels are practically mint!





The icing on the cake is that these are the 1995 style door panels with the gathered leather and they've got the stitched leather— awesome! The bonus on top of everything else was that I was able to scoop up a full BMW keyless entry system, the owner's manual with the leather book, injectors, stock airbox, DME cover, and a good condition gray sunroof control panel (which are almost impossible to find intact). I love a good junkyard run.



The keyless entry system still needs a fob to be complete, so I'm on the hunt for that.

Given that the junkyard is a few minutes from my shop, I couldn't resist installing some of the goodies on the ol' 525it. First up was installing the stock airbox to replace the ghetto-rigged hot air intake cone I had on there (better than no filter, right?)

Before:



After:



Who knows, it might run better now that the MAF isn't dangling around and sucking in hot air.

The other thing I installed was the DME cover. My car never came with one, and that always bothered me.



The engine bay still needs a few bits and pieces here and there, but it's looking a lot more proper now! I'm going to clean the door panels as much as I can before I put them on, and I'm going to order new door clips as well to make sure everything goes on nicely. There's a few bits and pieces that need to be glued on the door panels, what do y'all recommend for that?

[dannyzabolotny]

Paid the junkyard another visit today, to pick up some more bits that I missed yesterday. Got a set of original BMW amber corners to replace the nasty old corners, a minty LSG ashtray to replace the broken one, various clips, radiator clips, and a few miscellaneous engine bay trim pieces. I'm looking forward to installing all the goodies this week

I also talked to one of the previous owners of this car who owned it for a bit in 2016. He told me about how he bought it as a salvage vehicle when a tree fell on it, so he got most of the dent out and replaced the windshield. He says it was in really nice shape back then, so I'm guessing most of the cosmetic deterioration happened at the hands of the drug addict that owned the car between 2016-2018.

Here's how it looked in 2016:



Can't wait to get it back to its former glory!

[moroza]

Nice find! Grab the 1995's sideskirts too. Don't forget the doorbottom trims and the 10x clips that attach the skirts to the rocker lip.

What's going on with the trim under the rearmost port side window? It's raised above the carpeting and has a fairing as it approaches the C-pillar. Looks different from a normal E34T one. Looks like you have black trim around that same window? How'd you manage that?

[dannyzabolotny]

Nice find! Grab the 1995's sideskirts too. Don't forget the doorbottom trims and the 10x clips that attach the skirts to the rocker lip.

What's going on with the trim under the rearmost port side window? It's raised above the carpeting and has a fairing as it approaches the C-pillar. Looks different from a normal E34T one. Looks like you have black trim around that same window? How'd you manage that?

I'm not a fan of the 95 side skirts, or any of the 95 exterior bits, for that matter. I like my early 90's narrow grille 525it, it has that oldschool look that I've really grown to love. Not sure what you mean by the trim, that just might be the picture. It's a pretty standard 525it, window trims and all.

The 525it finally got moved today, it was stuck in my shop's side lot for the past few months, blocked by a few not-really-running cars. Once those cars were moved out of the way, we hooked up a jumper pack and the 525it fired right up, awesome! I drove it down the block to the culdesac and did a little celebratory donut— the old girl's still got it! Then I pulled it into the main shop area, next to a customer's 535i. Man, I've really grown to love E34's.



Speaking of looks, the 525it got a major improvement in that department today. My friend Graham and I replaced the nose panel, corners, and used brake cleaner + brake fluid to clean the nasty yellow tint off of the headlights. Here's a before and after:





The new nose panel doesn't match super well since it's white, but it's a huge improvement over the dented, rusty mess that was on there before. The clear headlights are an excellent improvement as well.

Moving on to mechanical stuff, we pressure tested the cooling system and it held pressure pretty well for the most part aside from some minor drips from the two main radiator hoses. So we'll be replacing both of those hoses along with the water pump at some point this week. Pretty sure that I want to remove the janky electric fan, it's never worked and it just looks kinda ghetto. I have nothing against a good old-fashioned clutch fan. Oh and we installed the radiator clips, so the radiator is now fully secured and not flopping around with a bunch of zip ties like it was before.

[TGreene]

I was reading through page two and saw all of the work you put into the interior - always one of the most satisfying things you can do to a neglected car!

Also was going to comment on finding some '95 panels, but on this page I see you got lucky. Very nice.

Can't disagree more about the '95 skirts. Like sports seats and a LSD, a must have on any E34.

[moroza]

Oh now I get it. That red wagon isn't an E34 at all. E39?

Sideskirts are worth some money and they aren't getting any more common...

[BimmerBreaker]

skrrt skrrt, boom

Sweet E34 bro

[dannyzabolotny]

I was reading through page two and saw all of the work you put into the interior - always one of the most satisfying things you can do to a neglected car!

Also was going to comment on finding some '95 panels, but on this page I see you got lucky. Very nice.

Can't disagree more about the '95 skirts. Like sports seats and a LSD, a must have on any E34.

What makes the 95 skirts so special, are those the body-colored ones? I'm not a fan of that look, I like the oldschool black bottom bits. I agree, it definitely needs the sport seats and an LSD, but that's all in due time. This is a budget build, after all!

I can't wait to put the 95 door panels on, they just need a little bit of glue to get some of the mounts back on, and after that they'll be ready to go. I plan on servicing the window regulators at the same time— they're all rather creaky and slow, and the front passenger window regulator doesn't work at all, much to Graham's annoyance.

Oh now I get it. That red wagon isn't an E34 at all. E39?

Sideskirts are worth some money and they aren't getting any more common...

Yeah, the red wagon is an E39 2000 540it. It's my daily driver, with 215k miles. Sorry for the confusion!

skrrt skrrt, boom

Sweet E34 bro

Ha! What Graham is referring to is our little debacle earlier today. We finished up the shop a little early today so we decided to go to our local abandoned mall for some sideways stupidity. Let's just say the E34 did not do amazing, haha. The little 2.5L engine, 255 rear tires, and lack of LSD made it quite difficult to get sideways. We eventually got some tire smoke going though, until Graham noticed we were losing some kind of liquid (not pointing any fingers but Graham was driving at the time, lol). As soon as we popped the hood we saw that the upper radiator hose had blown off:



Not exactly sure how that happened, but I'm sure it's some combination of the radiator not being super secure (it's missing the rubber feet at the bottom) and maybe bad engine mounts. There was probably quite a bit of movement while we were bouncing the engine off the rev limiter during our donut attempts. In any case, we limped it to an In N Out on the other side of the parking lot and filled up a bunch of water bottles with tap water. I think we dumped a total of 8 bottles worth of water into the expansion tank. Graham fabricated a flathead screwdriver out of some random bracket he found in the trunk, and that worked well enough to re-seat the hose and re-tighten the clamp, and open/close the bleed screw for a hasty parking lot bleed process. We then got the coolant stable enough to drive back to the shop, where we fixed it much more properly.

Aside from destruction, we also did some fun bits of cosmetic work to freshen the E34 up on the inside. We installed the sunroof control panel after gluing some of the tabs to secure them, man it makes a HUGE difference:



The ashtray finally got a proper LSG cover, so that's yet another eyesore crossed off the list. I still need to mess with the ashtray a little to get it sitting just right, but it's already a huge improvement.

[dannyzabolotny]

At the end of the day I drove the E34 home for the first time in months, it felt pretty good. The battery's charged up after a bit of driving so now I no longer need the jumper pack every time. It did 75mph no problem, no overheating either. As it turns out, the electric clutch fan replacement actually works pretty well, so I guess it'll stay for now. I still want to tidy up the wiring and replace the fan shroud though.

It's so weird to see it with clear headlights, I almost got used to the nasty yellow tint.

[moroza]

That looks great, especially the headlights. Clean headlights on an older car, especially round ones, remind me of something like before/after pics of a successful rehab patient.

I like the skirts not so much for being body-colored, but adding visual bulk to the lower part of the car. Combined with a roof rail delete, it's a subtle but big difference on the Tourings especially. From this...

...to this:

[dannyzabolotny]

Honestly, not a fan of that look. I'm not trying to make my 525it look any lower than it is... plus what happens with that side skirt is that the middle sits lower than the front and back bumpers, and that bothers me. Roof rack rails are a core part of a touring's identity so I would never delete them either. My E39 540it has em and so will the 525it.

[moroza]

Well, they do go better with brakeducts (what I had)...

...or an M5/MTech lip and rear bumper, but I hear ya. Still, maybe grab them to flip? Make a buck, save them from the crusher for a fellow enthusiast?

Cool, you embrace the "wagon is wagon" thing even more than I do. I guess that makes me more into the "sedan with giant convenient trunk". On a more pragmatic note, with my Touring I've run into weight limits more readily/often than cargo volume. Mine has the tallest/stiffest springs of any non-SLS E34, but the rear suspension design - all the weight per corner bearing down on one single-shear joint - just isn't suited to heavy loads. Beats me why wagons (not just the E34) with the same payload as, but far more cubes than their sedan equivalents typically have roof racks while the sedans don't. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

E34T's 880L/31ft^3 cargo room (with the seats up; 1450L/51cf down) is still competitive among much newer vehicles (CUV, mostly) that are significantly heavier, mostly no more comfortable or better-handling, and nowhere near as good-looking. As far as I can tell, fuel economy is the only real progress they've made since our near-antique Tourings

[dannyzabolotny]

My other car is a wagon as well, I absolutely love BMW wagons.



It's a red 540it with the 4.4L M62tu. 215k miles and it's been my daily for about two years now. Guzzles gas like nothing else but boy does it fit a lot of stuff. It's got the factory SLS as well, so it can carry very heavy payloads with no squatting at all.

And speaking of SLS, I'd love to restore the factory SLS on this E34 525it. It still has most of the system in place (the lines, the dual-vane power steering pump, the larger fluid housing), just needs the SLS shocks and a few bits in the rear. Somebody put it on coil springs but I want the utilitarian aspect of the SLS.

[moroza]

Hot! How do your two Tourings compare? The red car above is my former 544iTM. I swapped in an M62 and 6-speed came from a 98 540i that blew me away with how it rode on the highway, before it got wrecked. I've thought about switching to an E39 wagon for that reason, though I think the E34 does other things better. Guzzles gas? What's yours weigh? Mine with some weight reduction (sunroof delete, manual seats, LWFW) read 3860lb with me (-140) and half a tank of gas (-70 = 3650), got 15mpg in bad city driving, 22-25 highway, typical mixed tank 19-20. Before I got the ECU sorted out and learned how to drive it, it was more like 12...

[dannyzabolotny]

Hot! How do your two Tourings compare? The red car above is my former 544iTM. I swapped in an M62 and 6-speed came from a 98 540i that blew me away with how it rode on the highway, before it got wrecked. I've thought about switching to an E39 wagon for that reason, though I think the E34 does other things better. Guzzles gas? What's yours weigh? Mine with some weight reduction (sunroof delete, manual seats, LWFW) read 3860lb with me (-140) and half a tank of gas (-70 = 3650), got 15mpg in bad city driving, 22-25 highway, typical mixed tank 19-20. Before I got the ECU sorted out and learned how to drive it, it was more like 12...

The E39 feels a lot more like a luxury car— more sound deadening and far less road noise. The suspension is way more complicated, especially in the back. It’s certainly a lot faster, but that’s not really a fair comparison since the E34 is a 525it.

In terms of weight, it’s probably at 4000lbs or even heavier. Power everything, automatic transmission (540it’s only came with autos), sunroof, etc. It has a 3.15 open diff and a slushbox so it gets 14 city and barely 20 on the highway, 15-16 combined. Granted, I also drive it pretty aggressively so there’s that.

They’re very different cars— I always thought they’d be more similar than not since they’re so closely related.

[dannyzabolotny]

It's been a few months but now I'm back to working on the E34. With the impending sale of my daily driver (E46 330i/5) the E34 will take over daily duties pretty soon, and I want it to be ready for that. After sitting for many months, it started right up after a jump and I drove it to the shop uneventfully. Once it was at the shop, I threw it on a lift to see what it needed:



The front brakes looked particularly bad:



I had always wondered why the brake pad warning light was off considering the sorry state of the pads, but then I found the reason for that:



I guess the previous owner figured out how to get by without ever replacing the brakes— leave the brake pad sensor dangling in the air and it'll never throw an error. Brilliant!

I also noticed that the passenger side front sway bar link was super loose, and was likely the culprit for 90% of the clunking in the front. The control arms in the front were actually in good shape (to my surprise), with Powerflex bushings in the thrust arms. They didn't have excessive play so I'll leave those alone for now.

Once all the parts were ordered, it was time to start working. First up were the front brakes, which were super worn, especially on the passenger side.



While I was there, I straightened a few of the bent brackets with some pliers and routed all of the sensor wiring correctly. It's the little things.



Driver's side pad:



Only the finest in Autozone parts...



The passenger side pads were barely even pads anymore:



New ATE coated rotors were installed, with Jurid pads and anti-squeal compound where necessary. New Pex sensor as well. So much better:



Next were the sway bar links. I installed new Meyle HD sway bar links which are a nice upgrade that I've used on my other cars with great success.



After this, I tried to bed in the new brakes but found it really hard to do so, as the engine had recently decided it was a 5-cylinder. A used coil seemed to make it a reasonably happy straight-6 again— fun fact, a coil from a later year M52 does sorta fit, just not on both studs. The connector plugs right in and the coil seems to work fine, so it'll do until I get another proper M50 coil. With the engine running smoothly again, I was able to bed in the brakes properly, noticing a huge improvement in both feel and the complete lack of terrifying right pull with hard braking. It was so bad before that if I panic stopped on the highway I would end up in the next lane, yikes! The feel is still not quite where I want it, so perhaps a new set of brake lines and a thorough brake bleeding is in order. I still have to do the rear brakes as well, and will do that as the budget allows.

The next day I tackled the cooling system. It was not very fond of holding coolant, with both the water pump and the radiator hoses gleefully leaking coolant when given the chance. The old hoses were falling apart and the water pump was pretty gross. And also a Üro part, so I know it was of the highest quality!





A new Graf water pump and Rein hoses went in.



While I was there, I also replaced both of the aging belts with new Contitech belts. A nice thing I saw was that the tensioners had been upgraded to the later hydraulic style tensioners. Less nice were the pulleys, which were beyond shot all around. Those will need replacing soon.

To wrap up this round of work, I replaced the O2 sensor with a brand new Bosch unit that I got on Amazon (best prices on O2 sensors in my experience). The engine seems much happier with a new O2 sensor, but the cats are still rattling horrible so those will be replaced with a Magnaflow universal cat so that I can finally get it through emissions. The other interesting thing that happened after the new O2 sensor was installed was the check engine light for the MAF... I guess now that the O2 sensor is working correctly it's realized that the junkyard MAF I have is not working correctly. I'll try cleaning that MAF to see if I can bring it back to life first before replacing it.

To-Do List:

- Replace valve cover gaskets
- Replace brake lines + bleed system
- Replace catalytic converter
- Install new door panels
- Replace front seats
- Replace front passenger window regulator
- Replace belt tensioners + pulleys
- Replace rear brake rotors + pads
- Install BavAuto springs to decrease bottoming out and rubbing
- Replace hatch struts
- Repair hatch wiring
- Get both front headlights working and aimed correctly
- Repair/replace fog lights

[moroza]

Glad to see you taking care of it.

Üro reminds me of a cleaning cloth that I got as a product sample at some conference: "Euro Clean", made in China for a company based in Texas. But it's Uuuropeein', right? And that makes it better, right? For making garbage in a totalitarian dictatorship with a misleading label of European quality, this company has my boycott (Hamburg Technic too).

I think those Jurid pads are the same as OE Pagid: good function but horriffic dust.

[dannyzabolotny]

Glad to see you taking care of it.

Üro reminds me of a cleaning cloth that I got as a product sample at some conference: "Euro Clean", made in China for a company based in Texas. But it's Uuuropeein', right? And that makes it better, right? For making garbage in a totalitarian dictatorship with a misleading label of European quality, this company has my boycott (Hamburg Technic too).

I think those Jurid pads are the same as OE Pagid: good function but horriffic dust.

Thanks!

Yeah, I've always been disappointed with Üro stuff, and discourage customers from bringing those parts to the shop. If they do insist on using Üro I make it very clear that there is no warranty on anything, because that stuff will break in no time at all. Every time I've used Üro on a personal car I've had fitment issues or it's failed quickly, so no more of that.

Jurid, Pagid, and Textar are all OE compounds which means they dust like crazy. Since I don't have nice wheels on the E34, it doesn't bother me. Once I get some nice M-Pars I'll experiment with some less dusty pad compounds. For the record, I don't like the Akebonos either, even though they last forever and have zero dust— the pedal feel is just all sorts of wrong to me, even with fresh fluid and stainless steel brake lines (that's what I had on the E39 touring for ages).

[moroza]

I've had Akebono "Euro" (ugh) Ceramics on several vehicles and I think they stay that clean because they don't do anything. Weak-ass brakes until they get hot. FWIW I've had Wagner Quickstops on my car for some time, and they seem a great solution, at least for a car that isn't driven very hard: cheap, US-made, very little dust, work and feel fine, no noise.

[katit2]

I went through enough experiments to settle on “dust it is”

[dannyzabolotny]

Last month I went to Bimmerfest and found my car's twin— a 92 525it that was bought for $500 (versus $350 for mine), also with no title. Except this one had an S50 + 5-speed put in, which I thought was super rad. Makes me want to put an S52 into my 525it.



And I found a picture somewhere online of what I eventually want this 525it to look like— M-Pars and Hellrot red.



Always good to have some inspiration!

Anyways, with the impending sale of my E39 540i/6, I'm back to working on this 525it. Once the E39 sells I'll be able to dump some much-needed money into this car. In the meantime I've been working on the 525it, doing little stuff here and there.

The hatch no longer tries to murder me, thanks to some Amazon struts. They don't work quite as well as OEM struts for the initial opening, but once the hatch is up it's very secure, so I can live with that, especially for how cheap these struts were.



I also installed one of the 1995 door panels after using a bunch of hot glue to fix the broken bits on the back. The door panel mounted up quite nicely, but I will say that the eBay plastic clips are absolute garbage, so I'll have to reinstall the door in the future with proper OEM clips and the felt pads from Angry Ass Solutions. The window regulator in the front passenger door still needs replacing, since the motor in it is completely dead.



The door panels could use some touchup dye, but I don't intend to keep them around forever as I'd like to do a black interior swap in the future. Still better than the garbage door panel that was there before.

I also scored a set of mint black comfort seats from a junkyard— they're heated and have excellent leather. I only paid like $60 for the pair, which is a total score considering how much use I'll get out of these.





The only bummer is that they're both severely twisted, but that's fixable. I hate doing seat twist repairs but these seats are so nice that it's worth it. I got the driver's seat sitting nice and straight last night, all I need to do now is secure the cables and then install the seat into the car.



The next major thing the car will need is a proper AC service, since it doesn't blow cold at all. Any car that I own here in Phoenix has to have good AC, especially when it's 110º outside. I'll have a trusted indie shop handle that, since I don't have AC equipment at my shop.

[moroza]

You paid *how* much for that S50 car?! An S50 alone is $500 to start. Title schmitle... not sure how your state is for lien sales, but I'd just call in to make sure it isn't stolen and play the paperwork game. Or if it's a parts car/donor, not.

If you have a good AC connection, by all means use it; the $4000 machine really saves a lot of trouble. But it can be done properly with Autozone rental tools, it just takes a lot longer. I recently overhauled mine - all new O-rings and reciever, flushed the lines and evaporator (*very* glad I did that considering the radioactive Mutant Ninja Turtle spooge that came out), changed compressor oil, replaced condenser after finding a leak - for a grand total expense of $187. Took about two full days of work. Charging itself took about an hour and a half with five cans of R134a. Last time I had access to The Machine, I was done in about four hours (albeit that was a smaller job) and the charging itself was perhaps 10 minutes.

[bigsixe34]

I didn't read that he bought the car... just found the owner and shared stories.

$60 bucks for comfort seats though, great score!

[johnd15]

"Anyways, with the impending sale of my E39 540i/6..."

BRO! You just got back in! Why leave so soon?

Nice work on the wagon though! I'd say S52 swap all the way, I love those engines.

[dannyzabolotny]

You paid *how* much for that S50 car?! An S50 alone is $500 to start. Title schmitle... not sure how your state is for lien sales, but I'd just call in to make sure it isn't stolen and play the paperwork game. Or if it's a parts car/donor, not.

If you have a good AC connection, by all means use it; the $4000 machine really saves a lot of trouble. But it can be done properly with Autozone rental tools, it just takes a lot longer. I recently overhauled mine - all new O-rings and reciever, flushed the lines and evaporator (*very* glad I did that considering the radioactive Mutant Ninja Turtle spooge that came out), changed compressor oil, replaced condenser after finding a leak - for a grand total expense of $187. Took about two full days of work. Charging itself took about an hour and a half with five cans of R134a. Last time I had access to The Machine, I was done in about four hours (albeit that was a smaller job) and the charging itself was perhaps 10 minutes.

Not my wagon, haha. Wasn’t trying to imply that either, sorry for the confusion! The owner bought that car as a stock 525it auto for $500, then he did all the work to it with the S50 + 5-speed + LSD swap. He’s probably a few grand into it, he fully refreshed that S50 before putting it in.

I didn't read that he bought the car... just found the owner and shared stories.

$60 bucks for comfort seats though, great score!

Yep, just wanted to share something I found inspiring. The seats were an excellent score indeed, I love flat-rate junkyards where seats are $30 each no matter what car they come from.

"Anyways, with the impending sale of my E39 540i/6..."

BRO! You just got back in! Why leave so soon?

Nice work on the wagon though! I'd say S52 swap all the way, I love those engines.

I’ve got a few reasons for selling it— but the main reason is a financial one. I need to start paying down my massive 5-digit pile of debt, so selling the E39 will be a good start. Plus with the E39, I kept spending all my money on keeping it nice and maintaining it, which meant the E34 got neglected. I don’t have the income to support several needy cars, haha.

Plus I’ve always wanted to try living with an E34 for a while.