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Thread: Danny's 92 525it/5

  1. #76
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    moroza is offline MORΩN ΛABIA BMW CCA Member
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    Reading comprehension > me.

    E34 seats that look that good in 2019 speak highly of the PO's maintenance habits. Your new seats are probably the nicest later-model ones I've seen. I think the earlier ones had more durable leather as I seem to find them less worn despite being older, but even those are rarely this clean.

  2. #77
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    Quote Originally Posted by moroza View Post
    Reading comprehension > me.

    E34 seats that look that good in 2019 speak highly of the PO's maintenance habits. Your new seats are probably the nicest later-model ones I've seen. I think the earlier ones had more durable leather as I seem to find them less worn despite being older, but even those are rarely this clean.
    Indeed. I was puzzled as to why that 95 525i/5 ended up in the junkyard in the first place. The black paint was excellent, it had very clean black carpets (that I wish I had grabbed), the backseat was immaculate, and it had service records in the glovebox. I guess somebody got tired of fixing it?

    I can't wait to clean and condition the seats, they're still a little dirty from the junkyard.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    Today I started off with a nice easy task— replacing the broken coolant temperature sensor. The old one's connector had broken off somehow, and caused a constant CEL. The new one was super easy to install, so it was a satisfying little job.



    Next came the job I was dreading— finishing up the seat twist repair. I cut the sheathing on all four cables and shortened them all up a bit so that with the metal collars reinstalled they had about 1/2" of cable sticking out as opposed to the 1/4" or less that they had before. I'm glad I did all four, even though it was a royal pain. The motors were reinstalled and all the wiring was put back together. That all sounds simple but in reality it took several hours of cursing and fiddling in 105ºF heat. Seat twist repairs are easily my least favorite job ever.

    With the seat fully reassembled, I installed it in the car. The driver's seat looks super nice now, and all of the adjustments work perfectly!



    I left the passenger seat alone for now, as it works well enough. Eventually I'll muster up the courage to fix the twist on it as well. For fun, here's a comparison of what the driver's seat looked like before:



    Compared to that, the interior looks downright respectable now! All I've got to do now is install the rest of the 1995 door panels and the first part of the interior restoration will be complete.

    I also discovered that the throttle pedal bushings have completely fallen apart— the spring is the only reason the whole assembly is still sorta staying in place. With new bushings I imagine the throttle will be a lot easier to work with, with a good bit more precision.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    Oof that original seat.... what an improvement. Despite all the great things you’ve done in resurrecting this thing, that’s gotta be the best 60 bucks spent so far.


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    Quote Originally Posted by bigsixe34 View Post
    Oof that original seat.... what an improvement. Despite all the great things you’ve done in resurrecting this thing, that’s gotta be the best 60 bucks spent so far.
    Agreed! When I found these seats in the junkyard, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was about to go drive two hours south to get a set of far more worn, non-heated black seats for $200, but then these popped up for only $60 and were heated too. Easily one of the best scores I've gotten, aside from the really nice set of 1995 door cards in LSG.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    I love restoration threads.
    Style 32 wheels rock!
    My wife wants to get back into another bmw wagon, she had a e61 for a while, but I am not doing a newer BMW ever again. One of these might float her boat...

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    Quote Originally Posted by summitp View Post
    I love restoration threads.
    Style 32 wheels rock!
    My wife wants to get back into another bmw wagon, she had a e61 for a while, but I am not doing a newer BMW ever again. One of these might float her boat...
    I love a good thread too, I just wish there were more build threads for E34 tourings, I can't seem to get enough of them!

    The style 32 wheels were a happy accident— I originally had them on a 2000 540i6 that I bought as a parts car, then when that car got parted out they made their way onto this E34, with some hub rings to adapt the 74.1mm bore to the more standard 72.56mm bore.

    E34 wagons are awesome, albeit a little slow in stock form, particularly with the slushbox. They did come with the 3L V8's in the 530it, but those are damn near impossible to find nowadays (I've been looking for one for a while now).
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    If your sunroof works, consider ditching the “factory” added on roof rails. The e34 touring was not originally designed to have them and they create all kinds of turbulence. They are an add on but we’re pnly “standard” in the US. EU cars don’t have them. Losing them means you can run 80 with the sunroof open and have nice quiet laminar airflow and still and pick up at least an extra mpg.

    Since you you are having such good luck in junkyards, keep your eyes open for a 92 5 speed with heated seats... that’s the cold weather package and it will have the 3.23 LSD you are looking for.
    I always wondered why they put a 3.23 in the 5 speeds when highway mpg was better on the auto due to the effectively taller gearing combo of OD and 4.10.

    Ive driven stock SLS and mine was converted when I got it. All sls gets you is a far far stiffer rear ride and the ability to lower the rear with the twist of a wrench. It is not worth converting back to. But if you do lower it, you need to mod the subframe like the e30 guys do, or you can use the KMAC adjustables and ditch the dogbones. And you need to fool the height sensor to get rid of the low suspension warning.

    The stock add on alarm is crap. Especially if you are having to spend real alarm money for a key fob. Don’t bother putting it in. Too easy to install a good alarm on these cars that can actually do something useful like pop the glass or trunk for you, or close the sunroof and windows.

    Enjoying the thread and seeing you bring one back to life.
    If I were to give my Touring a first name, I'd probably name it "Alan".
    Mostly because I like puns.
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  9. #84
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    Quote Originally Posted by Onizukachan View Post
    If your sunroof works, consider ditching the “factory” added on roof rails. The e34 touring was not originally designed to have them and they create all kinds of turbulence. They are an add on but we’re pnly “standard” in the US. EU cars don’t have them. Losing them means you can run 80 with the sunroof open and have nice quiet laminar airflow and still and pick up at least an extra mpg.

    Since you you are having such good luck in junkyards, keep your eyes open for a 92 5 speed with heated seats... that’s the cold weather package and it will have the 3.23 LSD you are looking for.
    I always wondered why they put a 3.23 in the 5 speeds when highway mpg was better on the auto due to the effectively taller gearing combo of OD and 4.10.

    Ive driven stock SLS and mine was converted when I got it. All sls gets you is a far far stiffer rear ride and the ability to lower the rear with the twist of a wrench. It is not worth converting back to. But if you do lower it, you need to mod the subframe like the e30 guys do, or you can use the KMAC adjustables and ditch the dogbones. And you need to fool the height sensor to get rid of the low suspension warning.

    The stock add on alarm is crap. Especially if you are having to spend real alarm money for a key fob. Don’t bother putting it in. Too easy to install a good alarm on these cars that can actually do something useful like pop the glass or trunk for you, or close the sunroof and windows.

    Enjoying the thread and seeing you bring one back to life.
    My sunroof doesn't work and I'm not much of a sunroof person so I don't intend to fix it. I like the roof rails, they make the wagon look more wagon-y so I'm gonna keep them.

    I'll keep an eye out for an LSD in junkyards. My car already has the SLS deleted so there aren't any warnings or anything... the only trace of it left is the power steering pump and the tall power steering fluid canister.

    I know there are better aftermarket alarm solutions, but I'm kind of a purist and like to keep things OEM, so I'll stick with the factory alarm setup.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    I can respect the choices. I did not see a picture of a siren in what you bought. The OEM one is NLA and used ones were all shot from water and dust intrusion even 10 years ago, but you can adapt a smaller diameter DEI siren (there are two sizes they make) to the OEM mount and connector to make it plug n play.
    Just make sure your car does have the prewiring before you go down that path, it should in 92... but be sure. Since those were not factory alarms but a dealer addon, in reality not all cars are actually prewired for them.
    Should be some relevant photos from threads either when I sold mine, or when I did the auto-page about how I replaced the siren as well as getting the wiring into the tunnel.


    If you lower the rear very much on a 92, there is a sensor that will trigger a bong and a suspension level warning when you carry a load of people or cargo, especially over bumps or whoops in the road.
    The same sensor is on m5s with sls, but different wire colors. Dmerheere gave me some info back in the day for m5s and I used to to write up how to get rid of it on tourings as well. it is on the DIY under my old name Attack Eagle if you ever need it.
    Last edited by Onizukachan; 06-21-2019 at 12:34 PM.
    If I were to give my Touring a first name, I'd probably name it "Alan".
    Mostly because I like puns.
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    I did some more work on the touring this past weekend, and I've been daily driving it for a few days now to work out some of the remaining quirks.

    First I started off by doing something I've almost never done before, which is buying a brand new battery. I usually either buy cars with decent batteries or I buy cheap used batteries, but I was feeling generous so I went to Walmart and plunked down $119 on a 5-year warranty battery. Strangely enough (not really) it seems to have fixed most of the car's electrical issues... go figure. No joke, it starts up faster than my more modern E39 540i/6, which is kinda funny considering the overall condition of this E34 and its history of neglect.

    I was a little sketched out driving the E34 initially since it had been months since I had driven it anywhere far, but I went ahead and did it anyways. And you know what? It drove pretty darn great. It remains woefully underpowered, but at least with the manual transmission I can wring it out and still have a little fun with it— this car is the very definition of "slow car fast." The new brakes took care of a lot of the sketchiness that the car had, where it would pull really hard to either side when braking hard. No more of that, and actually the alignment seems to have fixed itself with new brakes and new sway bar links, weird. The new seats are fantastic, I can't say enough good things about them— they make me want to drive this car cross-country.

    A few days prior, I had attempted recharging the AC with a cheap can from Autozone and I thought it didn't work very well, but after driving the car for a little while, the AC actually blows pretty cold, particularly on the highway. It's been hovering around the 100º mark here in Phoenix this past weekend and even without any tint I was reasonably comfortable. I'll probably get it recharged by a professional anyways just to make sure there's the right amount of refrigerant in the system, but that's nice to see for sure. I'm sure that installing a clutch fan would help with airflow too, especially around town where the AC doesn't blow quite as cold.

    With mostly functional AC and decent highway manners, I did the only logical thing that a 20-something year old person would do— I took it on a pretty aggressive shakedown (more of a torture test, really). There's this fantastic driving road in the eastern part of the Phoenix metro area, it's called Tortilla Flat. I've taken all of my other cars there, so it's a good road for me to measure a car's handling prowess. The E34 handled it reasonably well, with the weakest part being the old all-season tires with hilariously low levels of grip. That, plus a car with no stability control made for a few "oh sh*t" moments, but nothing too scary as the E34 is fairly balanced and easy to recover. I definitely noticed the relative lack of torque pulling out of turns, but once I learned to take everything in a lower gear and keep the RPMs up, things got a little more fun. All in all, it did very well for a $350 car running on ancient gas (last fillup was in October 2018). It's still a little rough cosmetically, but I've embraced that at this point.





    After putting 120+ miles on the car in a few hours, I drove it back to the shop where I gave it a much-deserved wash. I think this is the second time I've washed it in the year that I've owned it. Even after a fairly thorough wash it still needs another wash or three... it's just that dirty. Even though the car has no clear coat on a lot of its surfaces, I plan to clay bar it at some point just to get all the junk out of the remaining paint.



    My friend touched up all the black trims with Ammo Mud, which is not only a great tire shine but is also a fantastic general-purpose trim dressing. It really brought the door handles and lower body trims back to life, I was pretty impressed at how nicely the car cleans up with clean paint, clean glass, and dressed trims/tires.





    This car is a true survivor; it just shrugs off neglect and sun damage that has destroyed many newer cars like it's nothing. For example, the dashboard is still remarkably straight for a car that hasn't seen a garage or a window shade in years. The headliner is more intact than it is on both my 2000 540i/6 and 2003 Range Rover, and the A-pillars are still laser-straight with very intact fabric. The longer I own this E34, the more I appreciate the build quality of these cars. This one has to be one of the most neglected examples, and yet it still drives like an absolute champ, with a very quiet interior and virtually no creaks or rattles.

    Last night I fixed another annoyance, which was a non-working low beam headlight. I figured it was a bad bulb, and a $10 bulb later I have proper working headlights. Both the low-beams and the high-beams work perfectly, with the only non-functioning light being one of the foglights— I'll fix that in the near future.



    At this point I've driven the car for about 300 miles in two days, so I'd say it's pretty well-sorted mechanically. There aren't any check engine lights, I'm getting 20+ mpg even with driving at 80mph, and the exhaust smells normal (as opposed to the eye-watering pig-rich smell it had before I replaced the MAF, O2 sensor, and coolant temp sensor). Tomorrow I'll take it to emissions testing after work and hopefully it will pass.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    So the 525it got parked for a bit again, because it didn't pass emissions and I ran out of temporary paper tags to put on it to drive it legally. I'll probably need to buy some cats for it to replace the rattly original ones that are busted.

    On the bright side I finally got the title for it, after procrastinating for the better part of a year. I had kept waiting to pass emissions so I could title and register it at the same time, but with emissions still being a challenge, I figured it would be good to at least get a title for it, so that way I can at least legally prove that I own this vehicle if I get pulled over.

    This E34 has a very... interesting title story. A while back a tree fell on it (you can still see the large dent above the windshield on the driver's side from it) which totaled the car. A guy pushed most of the dent out with a hydraulic jack, put a new windshield in, and got it certified as rebuilt. Then the next owner was an unsavory fella that liked to do heroin and other illegal activities, and the car was soon abandoned, likely due to this owner's sudden imprisonment (supposedly he's still in prison). It was then bought from an impound/towing yard by a guy who snipped up the wiring harness, presumably to do an OBDII conversion and a turbo build, and then sold to his friend who didn't have the time nor mechanical abilities to put humpty dumpty back together again. That guy happened to be a mutual friend of mine, and he was desperately trying to get rid of the car because it was scheduled to be impounded at his apartment complex the following day. I paid a third party title office around $200 to handle the whole bonded title process, which was completely worth it in the sheer amount of paperwork that I didn't have to fill out myself.

    With the title in hand, I was able to get a 30-day temp tag printed out, which buys me some more time to figure out the emissions issue. Perfect timing too, since my E32 decided that it was a good time for its radiator to explode. Since the E32 is temporarily out of commission, the E34 got put back into daily duty, albeit with a different set of wheels (the E32 wheels). I'll probably swap the style 32's back onto the E34, I think it was a better look than this:



    I did two other things to make the E34 a little nicer to drive, the first being swapping the nicer driver's door panel on. Here's what it looked like before:



    And after:



    It's not perfect by any means, but a huge improvement, both cosmetically and functionally. I also fixed the non-working driver's mirror adjustment, which was simply unplugged by whoever had previously messed around inside the door.

    The other thing I did was transfer the Continental head unit over from the E32. Since I had a plug-and-play adapter harness, that took all of 5 minutes to do. All in all, a huge improvement in sound quality and it gives me Bluetooth in this old clunker, so that's nice for my commute.



    After driving the E34 for a few days I can say a few things about it compared to the E32: it's slower (duh, M50B25NV vs M60B40), feels way lighter (also duh), and having a manual makes the lack of speed matter a whole lot less. So I've been having a bit of fun with it, and saving some money on gas as well.



    It's easily the oldest car in my work parking lot, but to me that's more of a positive than a negative. So much more character than any modern car...
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  13. #88
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    Quote Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny View Post
    put humpty dumpty back together again.


    I once got a bonded title for a truck someone abandoned. It was a mild hassle and I had to pay ~$150 for the bond itself, but considering I got a running and perfectly legal Toyota out of it, totally worth my time. That was however in Montana, whose DMV seems to be run by anarchist libertarians (except when it comes to foreign imports; they must've brought in a Californian to run that department).

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    Quote Originally Posted by moroza View Post


    I once got a bonded title for a truck someone abandoned. It was a mild hassle and I had to pay ~$150 for the bond itself, but considering I got a running and perfectly legal Toyota out of it, totally worth my time. That was however in Montana, whose DMV seems to be run by anarchist libertarians (except when it comes to foreign imports; they must've brought in a Californian to run that department).
    Montana's kinda like the wild west as far as cars go, if it's got wheels you can make it happen there, haha

    Putting this car back together after the hackery of the previous idiots was certainly an interesting process. Lots of OBDII sensors that I had to replace with the proper OBDI sensors... needless to say, I had to make quite a few junkyard runs in the week I was assembling this car.

    All in all, I replaced: cam sensor, crank sensor, coolant temperature sensor, O2 sensor, spark plugs, vacuum lines, fuel lines, fuel filter, fuel pump, intake manifold gaskets, valve cover, and probably a few more things. Things that I had to source that were just straight up missing were: the fuel rail, fuel injectors, ignition coils, engine wiring harness, MAF, air filter box, intake boot, etc.

    The crazy part is how well this car runs with all of those junkyard parts... the only parts I bought new were the spark plugs, O2 sensor, fuel filter, fuel/vacuum lines, and gaskets.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    In what seems to be a common trend in this thread, my current main daily driver is being sold off so the E34 is back to daily duty. I do love that the E34 is so patient, it just sits and waits to be driven with very little complaints. Newer BMW's definitely do not handle sitting around in the sun quite as well as E34's, it seems.

    With the E32 going bye-bye, it was time for another round of work to the E34. First up was replacing the throttle pedal bushings, which were nonexistent and caused the pedal to flop around wildly (which made for some... interesting downshifts). That went pretty easily, I just slipped the new bushings onto the pedal shaft, popped them into place, secured the clips, done. The throttle pedal feels fantastic now, and is much more linear and predictable, especially during aggressive driving.

    I also did not want to be stuck without any tools ever again, so I scrounged together most of a tool set from junkyard cars and various E34 parts cars. Knowing I have some tools in the factory tool panel makes me very happy:



    After that, I drove the E34 everywhere and took pictures with all of my E34-owning friends— this first pic is with my friend's S50 + 5-speed swapped 92 525it, which has 339k miles (315k on the engine, too). It drives incredibly well and I'm happy to have helped him get it to a decent place. He just put some throwing stars on it, which I think look awesome on his wagon.



    Then the other day I hung out with one of my friends that recently picked up a 93 535i/5 for a stupidly good price due to some minor front-end damage.



    I should get all my local E34-owning friends together one day for a rad photoshoot, it's been cool to start putting together a nice little E34 community here in the Phoenix area— there's 6 of us now, some with multiple E34's.

    The other day I rolled over 215k miles. Crazy to think I've only put 3k miles on this car in the year I've owned it, but it did sit a lot. Those miles will start going up much quicker now that it's my full-time daily driver for the foreseeable future— I don't plan on buying a replacement car for this E34, as I plan to invest the E32 sale money into something more worthwhile.



    That same day I also took the 525it to a muffler shop and got a set of new Magnaflow catalytic converters welded in. The cost was pretty reasonable overall, and not only does the exhaust smell better, it also doesn't rattle anymore. Of course, the most important thing was passing emissions, which I did today. It's been a long journey to get this E34 to pass emissions in an honest manner, from getting the engine running correctly, to replacing the MAF/O2 sensor, to replacing the trashed original cats. I'm beyond excited to be able to register this car finally, as I've been running it without proper registration for the better part of a year.



    As for the next things I need to do:

    - Thermostat, since the current one keeps getting stuck open
    - Brake fluid flush/bleed + clutch bleed
    - Transmission fluid change
    - Oil change

    I'm planning on going to an autocross session this coming Saturday with two of my E34 buddies, so I'll want my E34 to be in tip-top shape to handle it.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  16. #91
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    Congrats on an honest emissions restoration.

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    I do love a good touring build thread, and yours, in particular, since our cars are sterling silber twins. They started in similar condition, too, and are at the same mileage. (215,500) Yours had a lot more of the parts already changed, but mine was at least running when I bought it. The VIN decoder I checked on yours said it came with an LSD already.

    I managed to get mine thru it's smog test, on Friday the 13th, no less. I threw the kitchen sink at mine first, plugs, fuel filter, seafoam, and, just to make sure, I bought and swapped in a non chipped DME. I was going to try it without the swap, but didn't feel like going back and getting tested a 3rd time had it failed. I now have a good, tested functional spare DME from a manual car. The car was much happier with the manual DME than it had been with the non chipped auto DME. I put the other one back in as soon as I got it home, though. A chip is something you should consider for your NV, it does liven it up quite a bit for very low cost ($40). The car feels much happier with it, everywhere thru the rev range. Kinda hairy installing it into the 402 DME though, there are lots of opportunities to break something in the process, and I didn't have a spare available had I bleeped mine up.

    Looking forward to seeing how yours turns out.

  18. #93
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    Quote Originally Posted by moroza View Post
    Congrats on an honest emissions restoration.
    Thanks! There are certainly ways to get around emissions, whether by registering in a non-emissions county with a phone address, or by getting historic plates + collector car insurance, but I drive too much for that and wanted to be as legitimate as possible, given that this is my only car.

    Quote Originally Posted by xcastaway View Post
    I do love a good touring build thread, and yours, in particular, since our cars are sterling silber twins. They started in similar condition, too, and are at the same mileage. (215,500) Yours had a lot more of the parts already changed, but mine was at least running when I bought it. The VIN decoder I checked on yours said it came with an LSD already.

    I managed to get mine thru it's smog test, on Friday the 13th, no less. I threw the kitchen sink at mine first, plugs, fuel filter, seafoam, and, just to make sure, I bought and swapped in a non chipped DME. I was going to try it without the swap, but didn't feel like going back and getting tested a 3rd time had it failed. I now have a good, tested functional spare DME from a manual car. The car was much happier with the manual DME than it had been with the non chipped auto DME. I put the other one back in as soon as I got it home, though. A chip is something you should consider for your NV, it does liven it up quite a bit for very low cost ($40). The car feels much happier with it, everywhere thru the rev range. Kinda hairy installing it into the 402 DME though, there are lots of opportunities to break something in the process, and I didn't have a spare available had I bleeped mine up.

    Looking forward to seeing how yours turns out.
    This touring did indeed come with an LSD from the factory, but that got thrown out whenever it was manual-swapped, because a 4.10 with a 5-speed is not a fun time. I think it has a 3.23 open diff in there right now, but I'll have to check underneath for the exact ratio. I would love to get an LSD at some point, and since this is a medium case that means they're somewhat reasonably priced when compared to the $1k large case LSD's.

    Where did you get your chip from? I'm certainly open to the idea of chipping the current NV DME, just to have a little more fun until I can put together an M50TUB30. The current DME is from an auto touring so it's probably not 100% correct for the manual transmission.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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    With emissions passed, I was finally able to register and plate this E34 touring, for the first time in the year that I've owned it. Believe it or not, the last time this car passed emissions was 2013, so it hasn't been legitimately registered in a long time. Good thing there are no back registration fees in Arizona!



    It just so happens that almost all of my current friends own E34's in some shape or form, which I'm certainly not complaining about.



    The other day I was at the junkyard with a friend, getting some miscellaneous trims and whatnot. Then we found a 1994 540i in sterling silver... I immediately started getting some dirty thoughts and all of a sudden we were wide grille swapping my E34 right in the parking lot of the junkyard.







    The old hood was chock full of bondo and was rattle canned, so it looked pretty awful. The wide grille hood isn't perfect, but aside from some dents the paint is decent. The hood swap needed to happen at the junkyard because I had no way to take a whole hood with me. I scrapped the old bondo-filled hood on the spot.

    After the hood swap was done, we finished the rest of the wide grille swap at the shop, along with fixing a bunch of broken stuff in the bumper.



    Here are the results:



    It's still pretty dirty from the junkyard, as I haven't gotten a chance to wash the car yet. But it already looks a thousand times better than the mismatched white nose panel that I had before. The wide grille just gives it so much presence and really freshens up this tired old touring. I also picked up a set of matching silver facelift mirrors, so I'll install those the next time I need to remove my door cards.

    That same night, we also installed a new radiator + expansion tank + coolant level sensor to replace the busted Chinese ones, a new thermostat, and an oil change with Mobil 1 15W50. Now the radiator is securely mounted with all the correct clips and rubber pieces, pretty stoked about that! I also tightened down a loose sway bar end link, which meant one less clunk in the front.

    The day after that, all three of us went down to Tucson to participate in an autocross event. I had a really good time getting to know the E34 at its limits and learning how to push those limits safely. Despite having crappy tires with no grip and some loose front-end suspension components, I improved my lap times by 6 seconds from the first run to the last run, and I wasn't the slowest at the event! Pretty good for a cheap beater wagon, I'd say— though at this point it's quickly becoming something nicer than a beater. I got some compliments on the touring too, as I was the only one silly enough to bring a wagon to an autocross event that's usually dominated by Miatas and BRZ's.



    The best part is that I gassed up on Sunday morning before the autocross event, drove from Phoenix to Tucson at 85mph, raced mostly at the rev limiter in 2nd gear, drove back to Phoenix, and still had over half a tank of gas left— pretty impressive for a car with no overdrive! In fact, I'm still driving on that same tank of gas today. I might miss the sound of the V8, but the fuel economy of the straight 6 is certainly nice.

    Next up for this touring is fixing the front end suspension. The thrust arms have Powerflex bushings which are in good shape, but the ball joints are completely shot, particularly on the passenger side. So I'll buy a set of thrust arms with no bushings installed and just swap the Powerflex bushings over. The steering linkage has a ton of play in its ball joints as well, so the center link + tie rods + idler arm will get replaced with brand new Lemforder parts. I'm also going to replace the dogbones in the rear, as they're fairly inexpensive to do and the current ones look perished.

    I also ordered a new set of tires for my new (used) wheels. If you know me well enough you already know what wheels they'll be, but if not, here's a hint: the tires I ordered were 245/40/18 front and 275/35/18 rear. Awww yeah.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  20. #95
    Join Date
    Sep 2012
    Location
    El Paso Del Norte, TX, US
    Posts
    438
    My Cars
    ‘15 F31d Msport
    Enjoying reading up on your adventures!
    If I were to give my Touring a first name, I'd probably name it "Alan".
    Mostly because I like puns.
    Mutual Admiration Society #5

  21. #96
    Join Date
    Aug 2019
    Location
    Seattle, WA
    Posts
    1,492
    My Cars
    '95 540/6, '01 750iL
    Thanks as usual for putting the time and effort into posting here. Always look forward to your posts. Great to see good content here and not just behind the faceblock wall.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  22. #97
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    Tempe, AZ
    Posts
    7,657
    My Cars
    1995 525i/5
    Quote Originally Posted by Onizukachan View Post
    Enjoying reading up on your adventures!
    Thanks! I'm glad I'm not just talking to an empty room, haha.

    Quote Originally Posted by a777fan View Post
    Thanks as usual for putting the time and effort into posting here. Always look forward to your posts. Great to see good content here and not just behind the faceblock wall.
    Of course! I love posting on Bimmerforums. Yeah, a lot of the day-to-day banter has switched over to the Facebook groups, but there's no way to do a build thread on a car there so I still come back to the forums for that.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  23. #98
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    Tempe, AZ
    Posts
    7,657
    My Cars
    1995 525i/5
    These days when I park the E34, I tend to back it into spots, because the front of it looks so good!



    With the sale of my E32, I finally had some money to buy the E34 some new shoes... first the tires showed up:



    The tires were so wide that I could not fit them 4 across, haha. I got them mounted onto a set of M-Pars that my friend sold me for a good price. The wheels are a little beat up and all of the paint has been stripped for a weird polished finish, but that's fine for now. I'll get them refinished later on once the rest of the car looks nicer.

    In my opinion it looks awesome, especially with the fat 245/40/18 front, 275/35/18 rear combo. Tires are Riken Raptors, which are supposedly classified as all-seasons, even though previously they were classed as summer tires. They were a bit over $400 shipped, which is a downright bargain for 18" tires in staggered sizes. The grip is really good so far, as is the ride quality. Road noise is minimal as well.







    Since the car is now registered and fully legal, I went and removed the muffler. For whatever reason mine was held on with clamps so it was very easy to remove. The exhaust note isn't the best thing in the world, but it's nice to hear something, plus it makes downshifting a heck of a lot more fun.



    I definitely want some coilovers, as the current lowering spring + shock setup isn't quite low enough, especially with the M-Pars. But that's not an urgent need, as the car rides quite nicely as it is.

    Last night I fixed another annoyance/safety issue that this car has had since I bought it, which were the thrust arms. While the bushings had been previously replaced with Powerflex poly bushings that were in good shape, the ball joints on the arms were completely destroyed. Both of them had no dust boots left, and the passenger side ball joint had a lot of play, like I could move it up and down by hand. That also made for some really sketchy clunking upon braking, turning in parking lots, and going into driveways.

    The replacement arms are Febi-Bilstein, which were fairly cheap at AutohausAZ. They were also the only arms I could find that didn't already come with bushings pressed in. I removed the old arms quickly, they didn't put up a fight at all. The poly bushings were transferred over to the new arms very easily as well, no pressing required. I cleaned and greased them so they'll be smooth and silent for a long time now. The best part about poly bushings is the ability to torque them without having the car at ride height— makes life a lot simpler for reassembly.





    With the new arms installed, a good 90% of the clunking is gone. The remaining bit of slop is from the steering linkage, which will be replaced in the coming weeks once I get all the parts together. I plan on doing it all: center link, tie rods, and idler arm. At that point the front suspension should feel like new.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  24. #99
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Location
    Berlin, Germany
    Posts
    1
    My Cars
    1991 735i, 2000 750i
    Hey Danny,
    Great job on your nice 525i touring.
    I‘ve recently bought a 92 535i and are working on it to be like it how it was when it came out of the factory in Dingolfing (the city near Munich where the 5-series is built).
    Also I love reading about the E34 enthusiasts in Phoenix, I lived there for more than 7 months back in 1997.
    Greetings from Germany,
    Matthias


    Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk

  25. #100
    Join Date
    Aug 2019
    Location
    Seattle, WA
    Posts
    1,492
    My Cars
    '95 540/6, '01 750iL
    M-pars, yaaaaaaas!


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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