just another 525iT

[cmybimmer]

Nice! Very Clean and simple.

What size are the fikse's? They look great, but I feel one more inch in diameter would be perfect.

Other than that, it's where I want my wagon to be. Modded, yet subtle.

[s14brent]

Nice! Very Clean and simple.

What size are the fikse's? They look great, but I feel one more inch in diameter would be perfect.

Other than that, it's where I want my wagon to be. Modded, yet subtle.

Thanks man, i wanted to keep it subtle. I do agree 18's do look better, but fiske fm5's in 18's go for more than I'd like to pay for wheels on my daily. The gas mileage has been better with the 17's also (vs the mpars), and surprisingly these 17's clear my m5 brakes. The wheels are 17x8.5+12 square, and I am running spacers on top of that. The car definitely looks better in pictures, the paint is faded in a couple spots, but i really do like this.

[cmybimmer]

Yeah I liked the ride comfort when I had the Style 19's on my wagon, but it made my car sit way too low and my bumper was taking a massive beating on the slightest of grade changes, and I started scraping on small speed bumps. Reminded me of my e36 days loll. Had to put my 19" wheels back on.

Did you place your rear diffuser on?

[s14brent]

lol, yeah i had these on my e36 m3 also! so sad story about the rear diffuser, i had it in my storage (on a rack) waiting until i got my exhaust done....day comes that i'm getting my exhaust, i find the diffuser cracked in half.....probably from the las vegas winter/summer change unfortunately. but i brought it with me to mock up the exhaust, just need to buy a replacement eventually.

[s14brent]

Sometime last year I replaced the passenger front window regulator, and the driver side took a dump about 2 weeks ago. This one was way worse than broken plastic tabs.




To add some more bad news, I had some bad luck this past weekend. hit a construction area with uneven metal plates and blew out two tires and in the process destroyed two fiske fm5's....super upset about it. Also ripped off the bumper bracket on one side of my front M5 bumper. Hopefully I can file a claim with the city and get reimbursed a little.

I wanted to keep these wheels for the e30 (after i got wider flares) and eventually go back to 18s on the wagon, but I guess I procrastinated too long. Anyways....i picked up some e60 style 124's (18x8+20 18x9+32) with some nexen tires (245/40 & 265/35) w/decent tread from a local e30 buddy. These actually look waaayy decent. running 18mm spacers in the rear and 20mm up front. The spacers also convert the hub from 74.1mm to 72.56, but they still fit in the wheel wells (just barely). Hopefully I will have a picture with the ride height and front end back on to update here in the next 24hrs.



I will update this once I get the ride height all dialed in - in day light. After I took this picture I raised up the car (so it has about 1" wheel gap up front and 1.75" in the rear) I decided to plastic epoxy the bumper mounting bracket back on. I'm just letting it set/cure over night. I really don't think the state is going to cover this or will try to fight it I'm sure. I found the website and you can't even file a claim online anymore. You have to go to the office downtown. My insurance is a $500 deductible that I don't necessarily want to pay for either, so I'm hoping to file with the city and hope for the best.

[BimmrMeUpSnotty]

That blows! Hate to see that man.

[s14brent]

That blows! Hate to see that man.

It could have been worse I guess, nobody got hurt so that's most important here I suppose. I got it buttoned up this afternoon. the plasti-bond seems to have worked. It's kind of boogered on, and unfortunately the only color they had was like SAND? so i didnt take any photos of the mess LOL.



I wanted to raise the front up a bit since the wheel gap is uneven between front and rear, but just by going off the sideskirts i'm going to leave it the way it is now. I think it looks great for a quick fix. I might take it out for an alignment soon.

[jp5Touring]

Seriously nice effort, love all that you've done on the Touring.

[s14brent]

Seriously nice effort, love all that you've done on the Touring.

Thanks man. Wish it was in overall better shape, but slowly...

--------------
so fuel pump went out on me. I replaced the fuel pump relay first thinking it was that, the location is pretty stupid (behind the glove box) but turns out the e39 fuel pump is just so quiet compared to the walboro in my e30 LOL. I got some china lifetime warranty pump from o'reilly's because I needed something immediately, not proud, but lifetime isn't so bad.



while I had the back seats out, I decided I should put in the rear seats I pulled over a year ago from a local part-out. I believe these were dyed, but he did a pretty good job, but the plastic trim near the seat belts need a refresher. Also the headrests aren't in great shape, but ultimately I think they're better than the grey ones I had in there prior.



Same thing goes with the front seats. (not the best, but good enough for now). Wish I had time to swap the carpet, but I have work in a few hours. Did as best I could in the given time to vacuum inside and clean the carpet up.



and finally



The headrests are electronic, not sure what combination of seats these are, but they look like 7 series headrests if i'm not mistaken. either way I think it looks wayy better for now. Hopefully nothing else needs to be replaced on this thing for a while. I'm still deciding when I'll have time to do rear subframe bushings on this thing. I haven't had much time to or the spare funds to really dump into this as home improvements seem to be endless.

[s14brent]

so..i'm wondering what would cause the serpentine belt to snap when it was replaced when I did the swap. I did the idler pulley, tensioner pulley, and conti-tech brand belts, and on my way to SEMA last week, this happened.



got it home and could barely steer it into the garage. Found these tangled around the PS pump pulley.



after getting the car up on jackstands I noticed the super bent PS pulley and luckily it was just the bracket which happens to be the same part # as e36's with m52b28's.




Both idler and tensioner pulleys had a good 1.5-2mm of horizontal play so I next day aired new belts and skf pulleys from pelican parts since it's closest to me. I also swapped out my battery since it was under warranty and the voltage was low.

Parts came in and everything runs fine again. just super confused to why this happened in the first place. all the bolts i pulled off were tight, i'm just glad the clutch fan and radiator didn't get destroyed by the belts when it all happened.

[s14brent]

I sold this car back in december 2020 to a friend of mine and replaced it with a 21' tacoma TRD OR/6MT. I didn't realize I changed my image hosting since then and none of the photos work here anymore. Long story short, I have the opportunity to buy the touring back for cheap so I might be poking around the forums again. I think I'll be just garaging it for a bit while I decide what to do with it as I still have my e30 that I use specifically for grassroots drift events. I think he was working on the full black interior swap, looks like it has oem nav now, and I think he swapped on stock header(s) and full oe exhaust (not pictured). There are a few things that need to be addressed like a leaky valve cover, and I guess the AC kinda took a crap. BUT I kind of want to prep this for our local auto-x just for a season and see how it goes before dumping a bunch of money into it. There's also the thought that I could always just keep this around for a backup chassis in case someone wants to cash me out on the e30 one day, who knows! I guess I'll keep you guys' posted, but here are some pics my buddy sent over in its current state.

[dragracer440wed]

Hi s14brent, back when you did the engine swap to M54B30 did you have to reflash the DME? I have a 03 525iT and have access to a 03 530i as an engine donor.

Thank You
Ezra

[s14brent]

Hi s14brent, back when you did the engine swap to M54B30 did you have to reflash the DME? I have a 03 525iT and have access to a 03 530i as an engine donor.

Thank You
Ezra

I had the m54b30 dme reflashed. I tried to have the b25 dme tuned locally but it was just issue after issue. so I actually had someone on here code the b30 dme for me. no issues since but our smog here isn't as strict as commiefornia - i guess if you direct swap, do the cats and secondary air pump/evap stuff/airbox (keep it as stock looking as possible!)