Old BMW's FTW
Once again, I've found myself owning a 525i 5-speed, except this time it's a gold one!
As a bit of backstory, I've been working on my 530it (thread) for a little while now, along with working at my shop. I also try to help other enthusiasts out where I can, which is how I found myself in contact with an older fellow (to put it into perspective, this guy has been working on BMW's since the 2002 was new). He had a newer BMW daily driver and got stuck while working on it due to some health issues as well as it being quite a bit more intricate than what he was normally used to. With my help, we got his daily driver back up and running, and to show his gratitude for my work, he gave me a few parts from his vast parts collection, along with this 1995 525i/5 that had been sitting for a long time. I did all my work without expecting anything in return, so I was pleasantly surprised and very grateful.
As for the car itself, it's a 1995 525i/5, which originally started its life as a value pack 525i auto, with the vinyl seats, no wood trim, and no OBC. After several owners, it obtained leather seats (except for the driver's seat, which is still the original vinyl) and leather door panels in the front. The guy that I got the car from did the manual swap on it himself, so as it sits now it's closer to a normal spec 525i/5 than the value spec 525i it started as. The car is a super late car, with an 11/95 build. EWS has already been deleted, thankfully— that's the biggest annoyance with late cars in my opinion.
This is what the car looked like after it sat on the owner's property for a while:
It had been sitting for a few months after the steering lock malfunctioned and left the car with no steering. It still started up, but the steering wheel would not turn, no matter what. Thankfully I knew a little trick that I learned from junkyard cars, along with my experience losing keys to parts cars (oops). On most E34's and E39's, there's a little metal rectangle with some stampings on it right underneath the column that you can drill out. Once you drill it out, you can remove a spring with some pliers and voila, no more steering lock! You do lose the steering lock security feature, but I think the risk of a manual transmission 525i with bad paint being stolen are slim to none anyways.
With the steering freed up, I topped up the oil and drove the car back to the shop with a friend following behind me just in case. Thankfully the car made the short trip without any serious issues, other than a CEL for an O2 sensor, a brake pad sensor warning, and an ABS light. The front windows also weren't rolled up completely, due to a failed GM. Thankfully it barely rains in Arizona, so there wasn't much mold inside the car. The engine itself pulled pretty well, the transmission and clutch worked properly, and the only terrifying things were the dead thrust arm bushings which made the car shake violently with any braking above 30mph. All in all, not bad for a somewhat neglected car with 221k miles.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Old BMW's FTW
Earlier today, I started doing some work to make this car a reliable driver. I'm still not 100% sure what I want to do with it, but I'm thinking it'll be nice to have a spare car and/or as a shop loaner for whenever my friends' E34s are down for maintenance/repairs.
The first order of business was to track down the awful rattling noise from the engine. Given the age of the car and the awful condition of the belts, I figured it might have been coming from an accessory. My hypothesis was proven correct when I ran the engine without any of the belts installed— it ran perfectly quiet. Using a stethoscope, I tracked down the noise to the power steering pump, so I'll have to find a used pump in the near future. The water pump bearings are starting to make some noise as well, so I'll probably order a new water pump and thermostat in the near future to take care of that.
In the meantime, I replaced some of the really bad pulleys, along with the belts. Somehow I managed to find most of those laying around in the shop, so that was cool. The AC belt tensioner fell apart when I removed the belts, so I replaced that with a good used part.
Next up was removing the layers of sconge that had built up on the car after it had sat outside under a tree for the better part of a year. Out came the power washer and dish soap... normally I wouldn't go super intense on old paint, but this paint was in pretty poor condition so removing the embedded dirt was a higher priority than preservation. So many pine needles and so much dirt hiding in every crevice, crazy! After two good washes I feel like I got most of the dirt off:
Aside from some obvious dents on the passenger front fender and hood, the car itself is pretty straight. With some good condition bumper trims and a non-broken turn signal, it'll look a ton better.
While cleaning the car, I also cleaned the engine bay to try and make it less gross to work on.
The nice thing is that underneath all that dirt is a pretty nice, mostly original engine bay with all the little plastic trims and covers still in place. I wasn't particularly careful when power washing the engine bay, but it seems to have worked out alright because it ran fine afterwards.
With the car in a reasonable state of cleanliness, I bestowed it with shop stickers.
I've been having a ton of fun with this car, I forgot how much I missed having a straight 6. Next up will be to make the suspension less terrifying so I can really start driving this car hard.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Member
Awesome project! I always liked that gold on the E34s. More proof that they look good in any color!
1995 BMW 525i - Black/Parchment, M50/5 speed manual. Restoration project
2002 Volvo C70 Coupe
2017 Toyota Yaris IA
1989 BMW 535i - Cirrusblau/Natur, 5 speed manual. Stock and original!
2002 Volvo C70 Coupe
2023 Acura MDX A-Spec
Member
Good job rescuing it from it's fate which was probably the crusher or stripping done for parting out.
Turn up the base! (cold war motors joke). Has less missing bits that my 525i had when I got it, so it's a good start.
That's bronzit right? E: Oh, I read the label and it's beige metallic. Reminds me of my old 1989 EA ford falcon which had a similar colour called "champagne beige". I debated a long time about getting a 540i same colour that was local and cheap but I was put off by it's paint. By the time I came around to thinking it's OK it was sold
Good job anyway getting the steering sorted and I was suprised you don't have a 100 leaks on gaskets, rubber vac and fuel lines etc
Last edited by fo3; 03-18-2020 at 06:55 AM.
Old BMW's FTW
They do look good in just about any color, but I do particularly love the lighter colors like Alpine White, Kashmir Beige, and Glacier Blue. They're quintessentially 90's colors, but are subtle enough to fly under the radar.Originally Posted by Petrolheadpilot
See, if the car was in its original spec and had all the base vinyl seats and door panels then yeah I'd keep it that way, but since it's been 75% converted to the leather stuff, it only makes sense to complete the look. The base vinyl stuff is surprisingly hard to find, since only some late 95 cars got it.Good job rescuing it from it's fate which was probably the crusher or stripping done for parting out.
Turn up the base! (cold war motors joke). Has less missing bits that my 525i had when I got it, so it's a good start.
That's bronzit right? E: Oh, I read the label and it's beige metallic. Reminds me of my old 1989 EA ford falcon which had a similar colour called "champagne beige". I debated a long time about getting a 540i same colour that was local and cheap but I was put off by it's paint. By the time I came around to thinking it's OK it was sold
Good job anyway getting the steering sorted and I was suprised you don't have a 100 leaks on gaskets, rubber vac and fuel lines etc
I'm sure there's a ton of leaks hiding under the filth, and I'll have to tackle them at some point. All in due time though!
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Old BMW's FTW
Earlier today I was able to take a closer look underneath the car to determine what was causing the clunking and shaking upon braking. Turns out the thrust arms aren't all that bad, at least not enough to make the car shake violently when braking above 40mph. After that I turned my attention to the brakes, which were quite awful. The rotors had a huge lip on them and the pads were razor-thin, so that's probably where the shaking is coming from. I'll order those parts soon. The clunking appears to coming from the exhaust, which has several torn mounts and some weird jerry-rigged mount setup, that'll be an easy fix as well.
One thing I was able to fix was the CEL, which was indicating 1221 aka O2 sensor. I replaced the O2 sensor with a new one that I had laying around, and so far the CEL has not returned. The engine seems to run happier as well.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Member
BMW E34 NLA Rear - 65.jpg
Even old man Beige looks good on these cars. Keep at it!
MAGA TRUMP 2020
Beige all the things
I own mostly junk. Except the Porsche, that's kind of cool.
All the motorcycles are trash which you can read about at
http://oneguytwowheels.blogspot.com/
I'll update it eventually
Thansk
MORΩN ΛABIA
BMW CCA Member
Removing the spring on the steering lock still allows it to lock up, probably if you hit a bump just right (er, wrong). Strongly recommend pulling the tumbler and removing the lock pin/block altogether. I once had a steering wheel, whose lock I thought was disabled, lock up on me when I hit a pothole just so. Even at 15mph on a back street, that was terrifying. Ever since, I've positively disabled these things in every vehicle I own.
Old BMW's FTW
Haha well your car was what I thought about when getting this one. I like the color a lot more than I thought I would, it always looks clean and classy unlike my other black E34 which perpetually looks dirty.
90's beige is best beige
Hm, I'll have to look into that. The ignition key tumbler is fully removed, and most of the column is disassembled. Fun fact, I use a screwdriver to start the car because the ignition tumbler broke in it ages ago.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Old BMW's FTW
The other day, my friends and I practiced some social distancing with our E34's...
Definitely the ugliest side of this car:
With all the bars and restaurants pretty much closed down, we were able to get some great shots in the now-deserted Old Town Scottsdale area... normally it's jam-packed with people, especially on Saturday night when we were out there.
I love how every E34 in our lineup has my shop's sticker in the back window, really makes it feel like a community:
Tomorrow I'm planning to go to a junkyard to try and get some parts for this gold car. I gotta get some bumper trims, a power steering pump, and a few other little bits.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Member
You got a chuckle out of me.
Looks like some suspension work in your future too
Last edited by fo3; 03-23-2020 at 07:41 AM.
Old BMW's FTW
Oh yeah, the car definitely needs some suspension work in the near future. All the control arms and tie rods seem okay, but it definitely needs shock mounts, dogbones, and sway bar end links all around. I'll probably put in some new shocks all around as well, since the rears are of an indeterminate age and the fronts are junkyard Bilsteins— who knows how old they actually are. At the moment it doesn't ride particularly well, even with 15" wheels. Probably some lowering springs at the same time, to make the ride height a little more palatable to the eye.
--------
Earlier tonight, I addressed one of the major annoyances I've had with this car, which is the power steering pump. It's been making awful noises ever since I got this car, and it made the steering wheel shake at idle. I thought I was going to have to source a used one from online or from the local junkyard, until I remembered that I had a good pump laying around from the days when I had the silver 525it. It's always great to find parts that you bought ages ago, almost feels like getting it for free!
Immediately after removing the old pump, I found the source of the awful noise. One of the bolts behind the pulley had backed out and was scraping against the pulley. There were a lot of metal shavings from the bolt grinding away at the pulley, and the pulley had a noticeable amount of metal missing from it, meaning it's been doing this for quite some time.
Aside from some leakage in the power steering system, the rest of the engine looks relatively clean... not bad for 221k miles!
After installing the new pump I filled it with some ATF that I had laying around from a previous job, effectively making this a zero-dollar repair, sweet! I bled the system and topped it off, and now the engine idles quietly. No screeching noises, and no more shaking. Job well done!
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Member
I know it was free but I love this car dude hope u keep it
Old BMW's FTW
Oh I definitely will keep this one. I couldn't sell something that was given to me in good faith, that just wouldn't sit right with me.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Old BMW's FTW
So today while I was in a drive-through to get lunch, my throttle pedal decided to stop working. The pedal went right to the floor, no connection at all. I was with a friend (who also owns an E34) so I played it cool and just clutched out slowly in first gear to get the car moving enough to make my way out of the drive-through without having to push the car— manual transmission for the win! I quickly discovered that the throttle cable had come out of the pedal, presumably due to the bushing disintegrating completely. My temporary fix was borrowing a clip from one of the glovebox straps to secure the throttle cable in place... I'll have to take a picture of that tomorrow. That fix ended up working just fine, hooray for MacGyvering things.
Later in the evening I decided to tackle replacing the driver's seat. I hate the vinyl seats, they get extremely sticky in warm weather and mine was super twisted so it was terribly uncomfortable. I have a whole black interior ready to swap into this car, but I figured I'd put the seat in first just to make my day to day driving more comfortable until the big swap.
Before:
While I had the seat out, I gave the carpet a quick vacuuming to get all the crud from under the seat. I didn't go too crazy since the carpets will be replaced when I do the interior swap in the near future.
After, with the new seat:
The new seat is super comfortable, is 100% functional, and has zero seat twist. I totally scored with getting these seats, it was like $60 for the pair. An added bonus is that I got heated seats, which this car didn't originally have. Win-win!
Speaking of the interior swap, I scored the final piece for the swap earlier today— a very nice non-airbag black upper dashboard. Here's how it looked when I first found it in the dusty junkyard:
Most would overlook it due to how filthy it was, but I saw how straight it was underneath the dirt.
All in all, it took less than an hour to pull the upper dash along with all the bits that it needs to work properly, like the speaker grilles, vents, glovebox, kick panel, etc. What's lovely is that the dashboard actually fit pretty nicely in the trunk of the car:
Once I got back to the shop, I gave the dashboard a quick cleaning, since it was super gross.
It actually cleaned up super well, and is in perfect condition, especially for being from an Arizona junkyard where most of the dashboards are warped and cracked. As for the rest of the interior, I grabbed that from a 1995 530i a month ago, so I've got some fairly nice late door panels and all the other little trims for a complete interior swap. I'm pretty stoked to do the swap as soon as I've got a free weekend, I think the black interior will really pop with a gold exterior car.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Member
I'm jealous of how good that dashboard is. From a junkyard and that good? Even mine has a crack around the storage shelf, sun discolouration of the vinyl making it brownish in places and a warped centre vent - and it's been garaged most of it's life.
Member
Great save on the granny gold E34. Years ago when I was daily driving our brillantrot '94 525i there was a super sweet very low mileage 540 over in San Luis Obispo in the (gasp) gold. I just couldn't pull the trigger on it and have regretted it. Love your work on this car and salute the save. Very well done!
Old BMW's FTW
I know, I was shocked when I found it. My hopes were not high, as it came from a late 89 build 525i, and it had been sitting the junkyard with the windows down for a while before I got to it. I usually have pretty crappy luck with junkyards, so maybe this was just the universe finally giving me something good.
I'll be honest, I never really paid much attention to E34's in this gold color before but it's really grown on me with this car. It doesn't show dirt easily and it flies under the radar pretty well, as opposed to all the red cars I've owned in the past.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Old BMW's FTW
Not too many updates regarding the car lately, other than me switching out the style 5's for some style 37's, aka M-Pars. A lot of E34 guys have a love-it-or-hate-it relationship with these wheels, especially in the E34 Facebook group, but I happen to love them. It feels like *my* car now that it has M-Pars, and that's all that matters.
I definitely need to do something about that awful dent on the passenger side fender, it's such an eyesore. The ride height needs to come down a bit as well, but that will happen in due time.
What I've been working on for a little while has been expanding my shop space. For those who don't know, I have a shop called Heritage Motorworks (as if the stickers on my car aren't obnoxious enough). The shop space is around 1200 sq ft, but it came with this weird second floor storage loft and a back storage room that took up a lot of that space. Initially it wasn't a problem, but as I started taking on more big projects, I started running into issues with only having one bay. That led to the beginning of the plan that came into fruition this past weekend, where my friends and I knocked down that second floor and back room. It was quite the massive undertaking and removing all the debris took a long time, but I think it was worth the effort.
Here's how the space looked with the second floor loft and back storage room.
And here's how it looked after knocking all that stuff down. It ain't pretty, but look at all that extra space!
With all the debris cleared out, I was super happy with the results— I couldn't help but fall in love with the shop all over again, it feels so good to make something your own. Not sure if any of my friends read this thread, but I just want to extend a huge thanks to them, because it would not be possible without everyone's hard work!
I wasted no time, diving right into some projects that had been on the backburner for a little bit. Timing chain guides on a 2001 540i and power steering lines + driveshaft work + transmission service on a 1995 530i. If I could just work on E34's and E39's forever, I'd be happy.
The best part about this new layout is that I now have a place for big projects that don't necessarily require a lift, like timing chain guides (I do a lot of those!). This frees up the lift for quick jobs and things that actually require it.
Going back to this gold car, the next job will be replacing the rear strut mounts, as they are completely shot and making a ton of noise, even on smooth roads. After that will be figuring out why the aux fan isn't working, since I need the AC to work properly as we start heading into the warmer (hot) months here in Arizona.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Member
Love to read about this unplanned gold project. Keep the pics coming.
Old BMW's FTW
This past weekend I did a whole bunch of work to the car... it started out innocently enough, with taking care of a few odds and ends.
First up was installing a battery hold down that I grabbed from a junkyard car recently. The battery hardly moves anyways, but track safety inspectors like to see the battery secured, and since I plan to take this car to the track as soon as this pandemic passes, I figured it was worth doing.
After that, I replaced the dogbones. The old ones were terrible and I had new ones laying around at the shop, so free repair there. Same goes for the exhaust hangers, I found some at the shop.
It was at this point that the project went off the rails... I was initially planning to just replace the rear strut mounts since they were making noise, and then I realized I had a decent set of Bilsteins laying around at the shop, along with some old Bav Auto lowering springs. The gears started turning in my head, and before I knew it, the suspension was completely apart.
The "new" Bilsteins + Bav Auto springs on the lift, old original stuff on the right.
With the struts out, I saw that the thrust arm bushings were starting to fail, so those got swapped out for some arms with poly bushings in them. Again, these were free since they had been discarded from a customer car (that customer upgraded to Moosehead bearings). Installing used parts might not be glamorous or make for pretty pictures, but it sure is cheap!
With the struts installed, I figured it was a good time to take care of the brakes, since they were extremely low on pad life and shook violently upon braking. The rear rotors were okay so I reused them, while the front rotors were utter junk so I raided my scrap pile for replacement rotors. I found a set from my friend's 525i when he upgraded to 540i brakes, and had them turned at my friend's shop. They were still within spec so I don't feel bad for reusing them, since it was free. Cheap Autozone pads (all I could get on a weekend) rounded out the budget brake overhaul.
While the car was still on the lift, I figured I'd use the power bleeder to try and flush some of the nasty old fluid out. It was a very dark green for some reason, gross.
Here are the results of all the work:
The Bav Auto springs are fairly soft and lower the car a good amount, so no complaints with those. The shocks are typical Bilstein, where they're great on a smooth road and punishing on rougher roads. I'd never buy Bilsteins with my own money, but since I had them laying around, they were better than the garbage that was on the car. Thrust arms feel fine, if not a little harsher due to the poly— I'm not sure what kind of poly bushings were used, since they're filthy and old. The brake feel is mediocre but the stopping power is decent, they don't seem to make any noise, and the car doesn't have any more violent shakes upon braking (or ever, really). The exhaust doesn't rattle anymore, and the rear end feels pretty planted with the new dogbones. All in all, for a total of $60 (the costs of pads front and back), I really can't complain.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Old BMW's FTW
Another project that got completed recently was redoing the whole center stack. I hated how it was before, with a misaligned frame, non-working OBC (due to this being a value pack car), ancient Sony head unit with no aux-in, and inoperative backlighting on everything. Much like with the suspension, one thing led to another, and that's how I ended up here:
I did that about a week ago, so I had to drive around with no radio and HVAC controls that flopped around. Fun times.
The first order of business was getting the OBC working. I swapped in a known good unit from a parts car and that made no difference, so I pulled out the multimeter and started troubleshooting. I used the guide on the E34 website (https://www.bmwe34.net/E34main/Upgrade/OBC.htm) to figure things out. My car was a value pack car so it wasn't getting power to pin 17, so I tapped into the wire going to pin 9 and verified that I was getting 12v at pin 17. With that done, the OBC fired right up, success! I quickly swapped out the bulbs in the OBC for new ones and then moved onto the next nightmare, which was the radio wiring mess.
Presumably the ancient Sony head unit didn't use a standard harness, so the previous owner made a weird custom harness by snipping a bunch of wires from the factory connector and running them into a separate harness. I wanted a clean solution so I put all the wires back into the stock harness, using these lovely heat shrink + solder connectors:
Thankfully it all worked, because I hate wiring and I would have hated to have to redo any of that work. With the stock connector restored, I used a standard adapter harness that I grabbed from my other car and got my JVC head unit working. It was very satisfying to have all of the backlighting working on everything as well, it really helps with the cabin ambiance at night.
Naturally, all the screw holes in the dashboard and center console were stripped out from the interior being tampered with so many times, so I had to get a little creative with my fasteners to secure everything properly. All of this will get replaced with good condition factory stuff once I do the black interior swap, but it was nice to have everything lining up nicely, at least for now.
With the interior all back together, I went on a little cruise on the deserted highways. The interior stays super quiet, even at 80+ mph, and the stock sound system sounds pretty decent.
I'm happy with where the car is at this point, it's really come a long way in the few weeks that I've owned it.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Member
Looks good on the mpars and new springs, even with the fender dent!
MORΩN ΛABIA
BMW CCA Member
So that's what that trapezoidal bracket I found in my parts bin is for! I thought all E34 used an L-shaped bracket that went all the way around the battery, which I can't use on mine (H7, I think).
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