When life gives you a gold car... (525i/5 thread)

[dannyzabolotny]

Anyways, to continue littering this thread with small updates on my car, here are some more small updates (we can't all afford grandiose engine swaps and fancy turbo kits).

First was that I found a piece of rear bumper trim to finally complete all of my trims. That was the last major eyesore on the car, so I'm glad it's fixed:



Next up was getting a new set of front tires to replace the cruddy old Acceleras— Firestone Firehawk Indy 500's in 235/40/18. The whole car just felt complete with Firehawks all around (rear wheels got Firehawks a few months ago). All the wheels were balanced to perfection and the car got an alignment so it drove like an absolute dream. I could actually take turns aggressively without the front wheels plowing through them, brilliant! Of course I had to test out the new setup so I went down to one of my favorite driving roads and confirmed that the car does indeed handle a lot better.



At some point I ordered the official BMW E34 windshield shade from Pelican Parts, and it did not disappoint. I've had this shade on a few of my other BMW's and it's definitely a worthy investment to keep the steering wheel from being scalding hot in the Arizona summers.



When I had done the shifter overhaul, I noted that the clutch slave cylinder was seeping fluid and appeared to be in terrible shape, so I ordered one. That was a good call, because one day the clutch started being really weird, like the bite point kept changing and occasionally it wouldn't fully engage or disengage, yikes!



When I took the old slave cylinder out, it was obvious that either the spring or the seal went bad (or both), because the rod wouldn't ever extend as far as on the new cylinder. I definitely dodged a bullet there, as that could have easily stranded me if I had ignored it.



Right around the same time, the HVAC blower motor called it quits. It had been rubbing intermittently for a few weeks but one day I made a sharp U-turn and it just toasted itself. Thankfully the fuse blew before it caught fire like it did in my friend's 525i (his car was fine, it just made some smoke). Luckily I had also ordered a new blower motor in the same batch as the slave cylinder, so ultimately I was only without a blower motor for less than a day. Everything came apart fairly easily, the majority of the time was spent on vacuuming out the various leaves and crap that had ended up in the cowl area over 25 years. When I took the old blower motor out, I noted that the cabin filter looked quite dirty (more on that later).





Another thing you can see in that picture is that the attachment point for the metal blower motor strap had broken clean off, so there wasn't a proper way to attach the new blower motor. My solution (not pictured) was to take a bunch of thick foam tape to the blower motor cover panel to press it into place. It took a bit of trial-and-error to determine how much foam tape was needed to press it properly, but I think I've got it pretty secure at this point.

The fan speed resistor (FSU) was replaced at the same time, since they're notorious for failing, especially with new blower motors.



As mentioned before, the cabin air filter looked quite dirty, so it was replaced as well. The filter that came out was from 2012, so while it wasn't the worst cabin filter I've seen, it was certainly overdue for replacement. I don't think I've ever bought an E34 with a fresh cabin filter, haha.



Putting the cowl area back together, I couldn't just put the faded old pieces back on, so I treated them with Mother's Back To Black to restore the finish. Each piece took about 10 coats, you can see the difference it made:



They weren't perfect afterwards, but they certainly looked pretty good when reinstalled in the car.



The wipers got a similar treatment:



All back together.



With the pressing mechanical concerns all sorted, I gave the car a good wash and got the M-Pars looking very clean. It's amazing how much better the car looks with clean wheels, even with the paint being bad.





And of course, what's the point of an E34 if you can't take it on a fun road trip? This past weekend, I did exactly that— drove it to Miami and Globe (old mining towns). The car performed admirably, with fantastic AC and a smooth ride. I also rolled over 223k miles, so that's pretty cool too.

[Sleepyhead97]

Great find, and I appreciate the work you put into the car. When my transmission goes in my E34, ill be doing a manual swap as well. Looks like you may need some paint soon, I am painting my car ATM and I have a thread on this forum. Its nothing showy, but I can attest it is a lot of work.

How long does the mothers "back to black" last? is it temporary or will it last a few years?

Your blower motor fix has me a bit worried . I would have used quick steel epoxy stick and a very large hose clamp. Put some epoxy on that plastic and set one end of the hose clamp into the epoxy, and (probably) have cut the screw end off and inserted it into the other part of that plastic with epoxy, then, place the blower, and strap the motor in by inserting the other strap end into the screw end.

[762Armo]

[QUOTE=dannyzabolotny;30465139]




It appears the front trans support is for I6 models only?
I don't have one on my M60, and can't find it in realoem based on my vin. Can anyone confirm?

Great progress on the car.

[danespann]

[QUOTE=762Armo;30479525]

It appears the front trans support is for I6 models only?
I don't have one on my M60, and can't find it in realoem based on my vin. Can anyone confirm?

Great progress on the car.

Only M50 cars have that support. My M30 cars don't have it either.

[dannyzabolotny]

At the insistence of Dane, here's an update to this thread, lol.

Rewinding back to earlier this month, Dane, myself, and another friend went on a nice 4 hour drive up north to a lake to celebrate a birthday. It was a lovely drive overall, with plenty of beautiful scenery and good times.







Normally I hate vertical photos, but this one seemed very fitting as it showed the scale of the trees around the car quite nicely. I have this picture as my phone wallpaper at the moment as well.



Of course Dane took my favorite picture of the day with his fancy camera:



On the way back, I spent a good amount of time redlining my engine, which worked fine until I was on the outskirts of Mesa and heard a loud CLUNK followed by the battery light. Having had this exact same thing happen in my silver 525it (on the same highway too!) I immediately knew that I had thrown a belt and likely a pulley, so I quickly turned the AC off, turned the heat to full blast, and got to a Lowe's parking lot off the highway. The engine didn't get hot so I was thankful for that.

One of my friends gave me a ride back to the shop so I could fetch some spare parts and tools, and I started working on the car in the Lowe's parking lot. This is something I'm very familiar with, haha.



This was the offending pulley:



The belt got pretty chewed up.



The pulley on the AC tensioner wasn't looking so hot either.



Given that this exact thing happened with my 525it, you'd think I would have addressed this preemptively, especially considering how much noise the bad pulleys were making prior to this happening. That being said, I got the car back on the road pretty quickly, so it was a minor inconvenience at best... or so I thought.

Once I got to the shop I smelled coolant and saw that the radiator had some damaged fins, likely from the belt/pulley flying apart. Mildly frustrating, but I was planning on overhauling the cooling system at some point anyways. I ordered $400 worth of parts to fix everything correctly and borrowed a friend's E28 535is for a few days until everything showed up.

In this picture: radiator, radiator hoses, thermostat, thermostat gasket, water pump, belts, pulleys, hydraulic tensioner update kit (my M50 still had the original spring tensioner), and new expansion tank cap.



All the old parts came off pretty painlessly, aside from the upper radiator hose which had a questionable amount of RTV...



The water pump pulley was also missing a chunk. Not sure if this happened from the belt explosion or just from old age; I see a lot of these falling apart on customer cars too. Thankfully I had a good condition pulley in my shop so that was an easy swap.





The car always ran slightly below middle on the temp gauge so I reasoned that it either had a faulty thermostat or no thermostat at all. Turns out it did have a thermostat, just a lower temperature one. I'm not really a believer in running lower coolant temperatures for no reason on an otherwise stock system, so I replaced it with a stock thermostat. That should give me better fuel efficiency in the long run.



No more coolant leaks and the belts/accessories are quiet, feels good to have that taken care of. Pretty much every M50 that I've seen needs this stuff done sooner or later.

The most recent thing I fixed was the blower motor moving around— my foam padding trick didn't really seem to hold the blower motor in place very well, especially in aggressive driving. Eventually it got to the point where the fan was screeching so much that I couldn't take it anymore, so I opened it back up and found that the fan had somehow gotten super out of place laterally, hence the awful noises. Dane came up with the brilliantly simple idea of making a hole in the spot where the blower motor strap would have mounted and running a zip tie through it and around the whole assembly. I used a soldering iron to a poke a hole in the plastic, since I couldn't fit a drill into the tight space I had to work with. This actually turned out really nice, and this solution seems to hold the blower motor about as securely as the factory strap.



I went on a quick test run to confirm, and I'm happy to say that after doing several skids around U-turns the fan has not moved at all. I'm happy that the blower motor saga seems to have finally come to an end, because I really did not like driving this car gently (which was the only way to keep the blower motor happy before). Now I can drive this car the way it was meant to be driven— with ample rev limiter, skids around every other turn, and daily burnouts.

[moroza]

6500RPM is no joke for old dry bearings. They're also dirt-cheap: about $15 a piece for Slovakian INA. It's a good idea to check all other pulleys WIT. Previously found radial play in both my waterpump and alternator. Replacement waterpump is waiting on a shelf. The alternator I rebuilt with new bearings.

[dannyzabolotny]

6500RPM is no joke for old dry bearings. They're also dirt-cheap: about $15 a piece for Slovakian INA. It's a good idea to check all other pulleys WIT. Previously found radial play in both my waterpump and alternator. Replacement waterpump is waiting on a shelf. The alternator I rebuilt with new bearings.

Yeah, I knew the bearings were bad from when I bought the car but I had other expenses that were seemingly more important at the time.

All the pulleys are new now, the tensioners are both new, and the water pump is new. Power steering pump was replaced with a lower mileage unit when I first bought the car, and it’s still quiet. The AC compressor is reasonably quiet as well.

The only accessory that makes any noise at this point is the alternator, I noticed that the bearings are starting to make some noise. How hard was it to rebuild your alternator? I’m weighing the pros and cons of rebuilding versus just buying a reman/new alternator.

Honestly, 6500rpm doesn’t even feel enough. I want to get a chip and go to 7000rpm— I know there’s not really any power there on a stock engine but I like the sound and I can stay in the power band better when driving aggressively (which is like 75% of the time).

[moroza]

Easy and straightforward, except for trouble pulling the drive bearing. Also, the only bearing information I could find (unlike older models, M50 alternators aren't broken down in BMW's parts catalog) was RockAuto, which was wrong. Discovering this only when my alternator was apart put me in a hurry and made me use the only bearings I could get on short notice, WBD brand, $19 for both from a local automotive electrical shop. According to my notes, my 1/94 alternator 12311744567 used commutator bearing 6203LHA (IIRC it had no brand or other markings) 17x40x12, and drive end bearing NSK B17-99DW8 52x17x17 (6304EHSR, Bosch 1120905012, BMW 12311747246).

[dannyzabolotny]

Update time! The car has overall been great, with fantastic AC during the crazy heat of the Arizona summer. Only complaint I really have is that I seem to be cooking the rear brakes... after a 20 minute round of hard driving the rear brakes are smoking, haha. That's not surprising though, considering that I'm running terrible parts store pads on questionable rotors. One of these days I'll swap on 540i brakes with nice rotors and pads.

A few days ago I noticed the AC wasn't blowing nearly as cold as it used to be, but it was fine when moving. I quickly diagnosed it as a faulty aux fan, as the fuses were all fine. I can't say I was too surprised about that, considering I've been ignoring the noisy fan for a while and had it jumped to run on high speed at all times due to a previously failed resistor.

Since most of the front clip has to come apart to properly replace the aux fan, I figured it was a good time to upgrade my beat-up old headlights to the shiny new Depos I bought a few months back.



This escalated quickly...



The wiring was all plug and play, which was lovely. All I needed were new H1 bulbs for the low beams and high beams, which I installed along with the headlights.



Whilst in the middle of this, I decided to clean the driver's side of the engine bay, which was quite filthy. I wish I had snapped a "before" picture, but I will say that you couldn't see the paint at all, it was all just grime. Surprisingly, it all cleaned up very quickly with just the pressure washer, no soap or scrubbing required.





I don't have the time to really do an in-depth engine bay detail, so it's nice to sneak it in wherever I can. Little by little, this engine bay is getting cleaner.

Anyways, here's what the front end looked like after it was all back together:





Having an intact turn signal on the passenger side is a welcome change, and it makes that corner look better, even with the awful dent. I still need to go and buy some amber turn signal bulbs to replace the clear ones, I'll do that tomorrow. Oh and the aux fan got replaced... no pics of that since it was quite straightforward. It works properly on both speeds now and it's quiet, awesome!

My initial impressions of the Depo smileys are pretty positive— the light cutoff is much sharper, and they seem to illuminate the road much better than my old headlights. And that's with super cheap H1 bulbs; I'm sure if I bought some nicer bulbs it would be even better. Time to take the car on a nighttime mountain run to test the new lights out!

[E34Driv3r]

Looks great.
It's so satisfying when you can get into all those little hard to reach areas huh.
I did the same recently and I used a long paint brush and some diesel to cut through the dirt and finished with just soapy water. It came up looking immaculate.

Headlights look great too, though I'm a big fan of amber indicators. Are the Depo lights comparable to OEM quality?

[dannyzabolotny]

Looks great.
It's so satisfying when you can get into all those little hard to reach areas huh.
I did the same recently and I used a long paint brush and some diesel to cut through the dirt and finished with just soapy water. It came up looking immaculate.

Headlights look great too, though I'm a big fan of amber indicators. Are the Depo lights comparable to OEM quality?

Oh yeah, it's super satisfying to clean stuff. If I didn't have to do customer work to make money I'd just take my car apart in the shop and just deep clean everything + reassemble everything with new hardware.

The Depo headlights themselves are great— they're easy to adjust, the lenses are glass, and the light output is pretty good even with cheap bulbs. We'll see how well they hold up compared to the originals which were all pitted and cracked after 25 years. I know the Depo turn signals are not as high quality as the factory ones, so those don't tend to last for as long. I'll throw some wax/sealant on them to try and prolong their life. They're cheap enough that if I get a year or two out of em I'll be happy.

[dannyzabolotny]

Over this past month the car's been a little needy, which was partially my fault and partially not. First, the fuel pump died on me, but I mistakenly thought it was my wiring that failed so I redid it and confidently drove my car on the hottest day of the year so far, where it died on me... in 116º heat, in a empty parking lot with my girlfriend. Needless to say, she was not pleased, but she was pretty understanding (that's how we've stayed together for 10+ years). Thankfully this E34 is nice and easy to push around, so I parked it, got an Uber home, and borrowed a Bosch pump from another car I had at the shop. The whole fiasco was kinda my fault because I used a $28 Quantum pump off Amazon, expecting it to last forever. I got a few thousand miles out of it and it didn't strand me too far from home so all in all, could be worse.

With the fuel pump fixed, I got a few days out of the car before it broke again, this time as I was pulling up to the shop one morning. I put my foot on the clutch pedal, and the clutch pedal went to the floor... hmmmm. The slave cylinder was new and I didn't see any obvious fluid leaks, so I assumed it was the master cylinder which was questionably old (more on that later). I ordered a new master cylinder, waited a few days for it to arrive, and then got to work— until I saw that all the clutch hard lines lines were rounded off by a previous mechanic. The line from the master cylinder to the slave cylinder wasn't even the right one, it was routed in a very silly manner. After doing some research and seeing what it would take to fabricate a new line with the correct fittings (which are surprisingly hard to find locally), I caved in and overnighted a new line through my local BMW dealership. It was something like $50 total, but it was the correct line and it showed up quickly.

Meanwhile my car sat like this in the shop during this time:



With the new line in hand, I cut the old line and got the master cylinder out. I also pulled out the slave cylinder to verify that it wasn't leaking, and confirmed that the rubber line was cracked and the hard line was also stripped, so those will have to be ordered in the near future.



Check out the production date on that master cylinder... 1988! I'm surprised this 32 year old master cylinder didn't blow sooner— I wonder if it's been rebuilt at some point.



Installing the master cylinder was a pain in the rear, because I had to thread in the line fitting with the master cylinder in place, so it was done a quarter-turn at a time with an 11mm open wrench that I had previously sawed in half to fit the tight space. After what seemed like forever, I had the whole system back together and bled it with my pressure bleeder. My clutch was back in action!

I was very happy to get the car back on the road, because driving my girlfriend's Hyundai is depressing and this E34 has some of the best AC I've ever experienced. In the days that followed, I had to sort out some remaining funkiness with the clutch return spring, which kept popping and creaking. The solution was to take the clutch return spring assembly apart, tighten up the jam nuts on it, clean it, and lubricate the pivot point where it pushes against the pedal box. Finally, my clutch felt 100% functional again. And now I'm an expert on the entire clutch system in this car, yay.

I will leave y'all with a shot of my car's front end with the new lights, I'm still loving the look!

[dannyzabolotny]

Car's been good for the past few weeks now, thankfully. It remains as hot as ever here in Phoenix so I'm thankful for the AC continuing to work exceptionally.

The engine sees rev limiter every day but doesn't seem to mind it. All the new cooling system components are doing great— I idled the car for well over an hour with the AC running whilst using it to power another E34's electronics at the shop, and the coolant temps didn't budge one bit.

Earlier tonight my friend Dane did a little photoshoot with his newly-acquired E36 318i/5, which has to be one of the nicest E36's I've seen lately. Our other friend brought his E30 318i so it was a photoshoot of the base models, pretty rad! The sunset in the background made for some cool pics.



And of course Dane got a few pictures of my gold heap:



Roof clear coat failing rapidly, lol.



One of these days I need to service the transmission fluid, it's definitely a bit low with how much the damn thing whines. And eventually I should do my black interior swap, but I keep being busy with customer work so I never get a chance to do it (good problem, I guess).

[Petrolheadpilot]

Love those base model 3s! I have a thing for factory hubcaps lol

[fo3]

Bring out the base!

Ohh, shame about the roof clear coat. Also yeah I can relate with experience on how easy these 1500kg cars are to push around, strangely easier than a similar weight gm/ford. That fact has provided some comfort to me in the past

[Streetpaid808]

I got a e34 I lost the key how I get a new one

[dannyzabolotny]

I haven't posted any updates here in a while, so I figured I'd give an update on where the car is at now. In short, it's a shell now.

It's not a decision I made lightly, but after the last round of things that broke, the thing that did it in for me was the door latch seizing up on the driver's door. I removed (destroyed) the door panel from inside the car, but I could not get the latch to release. I ended up having to cut the door open which was real ugly. Despite all that, I was going to fix it, and went as far as getting a matching-color Cashmere Beige door from a friend's parts car. After hanging the new door, I realized that the door handle was broken as well... stupid cheap metal. I don't remember why, but it was the final straw.

Every car that I own gets several chances, and this one got many chances, but it just kept on breaking and leaving me stranded, more than any other BMW I've owned in the past. It was so far from being a good car that I made the decision to part it out. In my defense, the car still had a bad interior, bad paint, lots of body damage, the steering column was loose, and I always had to start it by messing with the ignition switch because the ignition tumbler was broken.

I sold the M-Pars, seats, headlights, and a few other bits pretty quickly, which allowed me to get a reliable-if-boring E46 330ci to daily drive. Eventually, I found my next E34, which I currently have. With the replacement sorted, it was time for this E34 to end its life. It was unceremoniously pushed into the shop for its day of execution.





With the driveshaft and exhaust removed, the drivetrain was dropped out with the front subframe. It was very easy with the lift.



The engine and transmission now reside in a corner of my shop, waiting to be used in something else. The engine wiring harness stayed with the engine, which will be very handy for when I eventually do an S50 swap into my white 525i/5.



I also pulled the entire body harness from the engine bay, just to have all the connectors around for future projects. It was oddly satisfying to remove everything without cutting anything.



Front strut housings, axles, and diff:



Front subframe, driveshaft, transmission crossmember, shifter linkage:



With the engine removed, it was a great time to remove the blower motor I had previously installed, since it's still brand new.



Dane snapped a picture of me standing in the engine bay... it's an interesting perspective for sure.



The recently-vacated engine bay:



The completely stripped front clip:



Almost everything was removed from the rear, from the tail lights to the trunk carpets to the trunk lock actuator + latch.



Tomorrow I'll be removing the body trims, passenger front door, some more things from the interior, the manual pedalbox, and the clutch hydraulics. After that it'll be time to scrap this shell, ending its 25-year journey.

[Petrolheadpilot]

Ahh that’s a shame. But it makes sense really. I hate seeing these cars get parted out, but sometimes it’s just what has to be done. Sounds like a lot of the parts will live on!


1995 BMW 525i - Black/Parchment, M50/5 speed manual

2002 Volvo C70 Coupe
2017 Toyota Yaris IA

[NastyFuego]

Man I was hoping this one would make it. I love seeing kashmier beige e34s. Makes me feel good about mine.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dannyzabolotny]

I don't particularly enjoy parting cars out, but as far as E34's go, this one is fairly low in the hierarchy... it's a 95 525i value pack in tan over tan, originally auto. Plus with all the pre-existing body damage it just didn't make sense to keep fixing this car once I got a much nicer 525i with a straight body.

The good news is that the parts are all living on in other cars:

- The gauge cluster, some interior pieces, whole cooling system, whole belt drive system, taillights, GM, RM, and a bunch of other little bits went into my white 525i/5.

- The Depo smiley headlights and Dinan exhaust went to Dane's white 535i/5.

- The front bumper, back seats, door trims, and thrust arms went to Dane's Bronzit 535i/5.

- The exhaust mid-section and exhaust manifolds went to Kurtis' S50 525i/5.

- The Getrag 250, driveshaft, crossmember, and other associated bits will all go into a customer's 1995 525it pretty soon, right now it has a Getrag 260 in it that's secured with 4 bolts and a horribly bodged shift linkage, it's not a pretty sight. It'll be such a nice car with the proper manual transmission.

[moroza]

The expression on your face perfectly matches the tone of your obituary above.