The Bronzit Bomber: Rough 535i/5 Build Thread

[danespann]

This car popped up on my local offerup, so I had to go take a look. Supposedly it hadn't even been started in at least a year and the last time it was driven, it was in an accident that resulted in the engine and transmission mounts tearing. This meant that the car had a broken clutch fan, broken vacuum lines, and the shifter carrier wasn't attached to the chassis.




The car absolutely wouldn't accept a jump start when we looked at it, so I went home with the idea of the car turning over in my head:
"Sure the interior is trashed, but 535i/5's don't come up cheap anymore".

The next morning, I sent the seller an offer and he accepted, offering to deliver the vehicle to my friend's shop while I was at work since it did not run and he needed the car gone.



I arrived at my friend Danny's shop where I'd had the car delivered. I threw in a new(wrong size) battery, and the car fired right up. Lights work, alternator charging, radio works.





Things that are broken:
-Engine Mounts
-Trans Mounts
-Brake Booster Check Valve
-Fan Blades
-All 4 window regulators
-Entire Sunroof assembly missing(yes missing)
-Seats destroyed(see sunroof comment)
-Guibo
-Center Support
-Shifter
-Heater Core Bypassed
-Blower Motor Dead
-Trunk Latch Broken
-Probably more

I have lots of parts laying around and a few parts cars at my disposal, so this car should come back to life over the next couple months and it will be documented here. It's never going to be perfect, but that's fine.

[fo3]

Got to catch all the bronzits hey? Is that other one in the 2nd last photo one of yours or is that dannyz?

I know what you mean when you say they are getting rarer, in WA there's none for sale but 3 or more wanted ads. It would be nice to have a parts stockpile but people are starting to hold on to them down here now. Three years ago they were getting junked or sold real cheap but the party is over, so good job saving it from the scrapper.

Plenty on the aussie east coast but yeah, covid, so no travel allowed to the Victorian supply. Hard to get a e34 locally now, especially manuals as when new down here the 525 was $85k, 535 $100k and a 540 $120k so they were strictly for doctors and dentists out here in western australia and most 535s were auto 4 spds. Also when the zf 5spd auto came out with the m50 in 1990 bmw australia stopped importing many manuals. The 530 and 540 were all autos. m50 525 were all autos, only a few of the 1991 535 manuals were sold - but otherwise manuals died of down here with the ending of the m20 in the 1989 5 series e34.

[BleedsBlue]

Mr 535! Love the M30 focus, Dane, and looking forward to seeing what you do with this. Bronzit can really look sharp.

[danespann]

Got to catch all the bronzits hey? Is that other one in the 2nd last photo one of yours or is that dannyz?

. Also when the zf 5spd auto came out with the m50 in 1990 bmw australia stopped importing many manuals. The 530 and 540 were all autos. m50 525 were all autos, only a few of the 1991 535 manuals were sold - but otherwise manuals died of down here with the ending of the m20 in the 1989 5 series e34.

The other gold car is Danny's. He has a thread on the car but it's on hold for now. That one is cashmere beige. That sucks that you're mostly limited to auto cars over there. Never knew that.

- - - Updated - - -

Mr 535! Love the M30 focus, Dane, and looking forward to seeing what you do with this. Bronzit can really look sharp.

I do love my m30's. Most m50 e34s with this level of neglect would have low compression. Plus it allows me to rob parts from opposing cars which is nice.

[danespann]

Danny nagging to update this... While waiting on more parts, some more progress was made.

-Removed a large black trash bag full of trash and pine needles from the car and gave it a quick vacuum. (Thanks to Brad for the help on this one)


-Removed the nasty destroyed seats and threw them in the nearby dumpster. (car no longer smells bad)


-Placed the "sunroof delete" panel found in the trunk back in so at least it's protected from animals and leaves getting inside for now (doesn't rain much in AZ)


-Found some H&R springs in the trunk.


Fixed the driver's window. This was difficult because we could not get the glass to go up properly.
Initially thought we had a bent track but turns out the glass was down so long it warped, so it had more of a bend than it was supposed to. First time i've seen this happen.
Danny had a spare window laying at the shop and now the window goes up fine.

[moroza]

Those seats... I don't even...

My impression of the window regulators is that they're fairly robust - of five E34 over 15 years, I've had one fail. For all four to be dead, I'd look pretty hard for a systematic problem (GM?).

Glass was warped? What I've read has claimed its ability to do this is a myth... got a photo?

For the motor and trans mounts to tear from the bump that caused that little ding on the hood, they had to've been on their last breath.

[dannyzabolotny]

Those seats... I don't even...

My impression of the window regulators is that they're fairly robust - of five E34 over 15 years, I've had one fail. For all four to be dead, I'd look pretty hard for a systematic problem (GM?).

Glass was warped? What I've read has claimed its ability to do this is a myth... got a photo?

For the motor and trans mounts to tear from the bump that caused that little ding on the hood, they had to've been on their last breath.

You must have owned some nice E34's... this E34 is pretty indicative of most of the cheap E34's in Arizona. It's very normal for the seats to look like that.

And all of us have had dead window regulators, some with all four dead. The motors die in them from the heat— we averaged 110º+ for like 50 days straight this summer. In this car's case, it's not a GM issue because the driver's window regulator goes up and down and all of the other window regulators make clicking noises when you press the button, so the motors are getting power and are just seized up.

Every single E34 that all of us have purchased in the last year or so has had completely destroyed motor mounts and transmission mounts; again, that's normal here.

[danespann]

My impression of the window regulators is that they're fairly robust - of five E34 over 15 years, I've had one fail. For all four to be dead, I'd look pretty hard for a systematic problem (GM?).

Glass was warped? What I've read has claimed its ability to do this is a myth... got a photo?

For the motor and trans mounts to tear from the bump that caused that little ding on the hood, they had to've been on their last breath.

Regulators themselves are in fact quite robust, but the motors seize up and that's the case with 3 of my 4 on this car.

I, too was impressed by the glass warping. I didn't think it was possible but Danny convinced me to swap the glass. Couldn't get a photo that showed the difference but the new glass fits.

Motor and trans mounts... Yeah they were probably bad already, like everything else in this car. This is the 2nd 535i I've purchased that had the drivetrain detach from a front end accident.

[a777fan]

If you are getting the ‘click click’ from the window motor, you can fix it:

https://youtu.be/XGmMmUPjtsQ

I had success on mine by popping off the motor cap as shown in the video, and driving in some 3/8 inch (number 8 i think?) long screws at locations around the plate. Experimentation showed that any longer of a screw would poke through the other side of the motor case, and fully lock it up. Any shorter didn’t provide enough ‘oomph’ to keep the metal plate and the plastic gear together. I had to do some hackery on the cap before re-expoxing it back on to ensure the screw heads wouldn’t scrape on the cover. If you got screws with a low enough profile on the head you might not need to do this.

[danespann]

Myself and Danny are both pretty busy lately, but made some progress on the bronzit car. Made a trade deal with Danny so now the car has 16” AC Schnitzer reps.



Gave it a wash and the paint is actually nicer than expected (peeling but not beat up where it does have paint). Also hammered the hood back into shape so it closes now.



The main thing, though, is that we went and pulled the entire sunroof cassette from a gold parts car to replace the one that had been kicked out and broken on this car. For now, the sunroof panel is just sitting there, but a detailed post will come of the process for cleaning drains and swapping the cassette. Also means I can start swapping the interior now that the car is closed up.



Video of 535i with exhaust chopped off:

https://youtu.be/i23-tblXfUQ

[danespann]

After some more sitting around, this pile finally received a couple hours of attention…

Cooling system.

This thing is known to have sat for the last year or so and had terrible maintenance (aka none) from the previous owner. I figured it would have rusty water in the cooling system and that was accurate.





It had a radiator from an auto car with junkyard markings:



Connector for aux fan not present:



China thermostat and water pump:



Car received a used Nissens radiator I had laying around along with new thermostat and water pump.

Cleaned out the cooling system with a pressure washer for 30-40 minutes and cleaned all the mating surfaces with a razor blade and scotch-brite pad. Then, threw the new Graf water pump and wahler thermostat in. No sites ever list the thermostat gasket for these cars, but I always grab the pn11531250357 listed for a 1983 733i and it works nice to create a good seal, even on corroded cars like this one with a thin layer of clear rtv on both sides.



Threw a new blue coolant temp sensor in as I had stolen it from this car to get another friend’s 535 back on the road a couple weeks ago.



That about wraps it up as this car is beginning to get the attention it needs.

[6erWEBB]

I love gold bmws and project cars that have been abandoned so this is very relevant to my interests.

[justinca540i]

+1 for gold BMW love, reminds me of my old E39

[danespann]

Okay, this is the big update for this car. Myself and Danny (Heritage Motorworks) both had thanksgiving eve free, so we started on this car at 9pm. The car has not been drivable due to lack of any motor or trans mounts and a bad csb. Up it went on the lift.

As much of a pile that this car is, it somehow has the belly pan intact.



Transmission mounts? Nope.





Shifter? Not connected.



Had a nice pile of parts ready to go in. CSB, Engine Mounts, Trans mounts, shift boot, all the shift bushings, oil change stuff, etc.

Dropped exhaust and driveshaft first and did the CSB. It had probably been thumping for a while when this car was parked:





Pulled the crossmember and trans mounts. Nothing lined up well as the engine was about an inch forward of where it should be so we jacked the engine up and removed the blown engine mounts. Then, I lifted the transmission and we just shoved everything back until the mounts lined up.





Found that the rubber inside the shifter handle was shrunk and had play, which is definitely a new one for me. Dug through some boxes upstairs and found what we think is an e39 540i stock shifter. Makes a nice moderate short throw shifter when used in 535i it seems. I find my e60 545i shifter in my other car a little too short but this e39 shifter is a good happy medium. Plus, the bushing inside isn’t bad.



Rear carrier was destroyed, but there was a good condition one laying around from someone who upgraded to the Turner carrier, so I threw that in. New washers and things on the selector rod and everything clipped back in. I lost the front knuckle bushing that connects to the trans, so we left that alone.





Threw driveshaft in and exhaust on at around 2am. Then cursed for a while putting a seat in the car, only to find there was a quarter sitting on the carpet keeping the hook from catching on the inside. Didn’t bother putting a real exhaust on the car because we were tired. So, it’s still a chopped muffler delete:



Car looks great though:





Celebrated with a couple of nice open diff burnouts on 2-year-old gas.



Here’s a video of burnout:

https://youtu.be/_hPK-RAbnDE

[dannyzabolotny]

What's really surprising is how well the car drives, now that the shifter and mounts have been sorted. We both took turns beating on the car a bit last night and it was a load of fun. Next up will be installing a new sunroof cassette, thrust arms, brakes, and putting the interior back together in some fashion.

[bmdubya1198]

Nice! The car looks like it's coming together nicely. Certainly looks like a basket case, but worth saving for sure!

[danespann]

More updates.

Threw Forgelines with decent (and importantly balanced) tires on.

Car made its drive home from Danny’s shop (around 35 miles). All the suspension is actually somehow in fine shape including thrust arms, but it shakes a bit under braking with violently bad front brake rotors. (This will be addressed with some braking upgrades in a future update)
Overall, this thing drives way better than it looks.







The next morning, it was cleaning time. 2 shop-vacs, lots of carpet and interior cleaner, and a carpet shampoo machine were at my disposal and this thing needed them all.



I think those are cigarette burns in the console tray?? I threw the shift boot and leather e-brake covers out.







I wish I took before photos, but it was very awful.

Lots of stains are left on the carpet, but most will be hidden under the seats. This is about as good it’s going to get without swapping carpet. The car smells fine now that all this has been done. It had a very desert/woods smell before. I’d say a few pounds of dirt came out of the interior through a few rounds of shampooing.

Did all my weekend errands in the car, starting with driving across town to pick up Sunday lunch:



Went to the junkyard and picked up 2 plate deletes:



Not a bad driveway view and 2-car-solution:

[bmdubya1198]

Probably cigarette burns... yuck. Otherwise, the interior doesn't look too bad! A little bit of scrubbing with some Folex should clean up individual stains that are in sight. That stuff is like magic... and usually I can never find anything that works well for cleaning upholstery.

[moroza]

Those are the most ruined trans mounts I've ever seen. Good job on the car, keep it up!

[bmdubya1198]

And I thought the ones on my E39 were bad. Those were WAY worse!

[dannyzabolotny]

Not only were the engine and trans mounts completely separate, the whole engine and trans were not in the right place... everything was about an inch too far forward, so the clutch fan was almost touching the radiator (the old radiator had signs of the fan scraping it). With a transmission jack and some pry bars we got the powertrain to sit properly. Funnily enough, this isn't Dane's first cheap 535i/5 with a misplaced powertrain...

[bmdubya1198]

I guess people don't bother replacing their mounts when they get worn out, and the powertrain walks a little bit. Or there was an accident... that's what broke a whole engine mount bracket on my E39. I still have to replace the other one on that car, but that'll be done during the manual swap. The E34's mounts are in surprisingly good shape still!

[dannyzabolotny]

I guess people don't bother replacing their mounts when they get worn out, and the powertrain walks a little bit. Or there was an accident... that's what broke a whole engine mount bracket on my E39. I still have to replace the other one on that car, but that'll be done during the manual swap. The E34's mounts are in surprisingly good shape still!

The mounts were already kinda shot and then the car was in a very light front-end accident— that's how the powertrain moved around. Pretty easy fix, thankfully, and there wasn't much collateral damage. That's a big part of why the car was so darn cheap.

[danespann]

Probably cigarette burns... yuck. Otherwise, the interior doesn't look too bad! A little bit of scrubbing with some Folex should clean up individual stains that are in sight. That stuff is like magic... and usually I can never find anything that works well for cleaning upholstery.

Good tip! I'll have to pick some up as the shampoo-machine alone isn't cutting it. There's a couple holes in the carpet, so I'm also tempted to just swap it...

- - - Updated - - -

Those are the most ruined trans mounts I've ever seen. Good job on the car, keep it up!

You know, the last lightly crashed 535 I bought had worse ones somehow plus the trans mount ears were broken off the trans. So I'd consider this one lucky.

[danespann]

The mounts were already kinda shot and then the car was in a very light front-end accident— that's how the powertrain moved around. Pretty easy fix, thankfully, and there wasn't much collateral damage. That's a big part of why the car was so darn cheap.

Thanks for keeping up with my threads better than I do myself.