Danny's White BMW (92 525i Thread)

[circuit.heart]

Y'all are nuts and we love you ever the more for it. You're going to give up on rubber thrust arm bushings sooner or later though. I would bet that modern tires and brakes can ruin a pair of post-2020 thrust arm bushings in one trackday.

[dannyzabolotny]

Y'all are nuts and we love you ever the more for it. You're going to give up on rubber thrust arm bushings sooner or later though. I would bet that modern tires and brakes can ruin a pair of post-2020 thrust arm bushings in one trackday.

Gotta save all the E34’s, haha. And I mean actually save them, not just procure them, wash them, and flip them for double the money…

Oh yeah, I’m sure this set of Meyle HD’s won’t last too long with track use, but I got new ones under warranty with fresh ball joints, so when the bushings go I’ll just press them out and replace them with Turner sphericals.

[justinca540i]

The more I see yours the more I want an E34 haha they just look so timeless a little more so than the E39 (M5/M sport looked good) but damn Alpine White E34s are so clean

[danespann]

Ugh...what have we come to! The OEM part installed in 1992 probably lasted triple that.

My OEM one from 1989 is still good at 272k.

[dannyzabolotny]

On Saturday, I went to a NASA track day, at Wild Horse East. It was cool to go to a local track, it's like 15-20 mins from my house. I breezed through tech and put my number on with masking tape (I should buy a reusable sticker or magnetic number).



While waiting for my HPDE2 session, I walked around and took pics of all the BMW's that were there:















Notice a common thread? It's all E36's and E46's, yawn. Zero originality, lol. Since neither Dane nor Cole wanted to come to this track day, I was the only old BMW there, at least until I spotted this E30.



Moving onto the actual track sessions: the first session went pretty solidly, and I was feeling pretty good. I had a good line going and passed a few people, fun! On the second session I got really sloppy and started coming into some turns way too hot, which ended up with me launching my car off the track a few times, oops. At the end of the second session I noticed that my car had a lovely shake from 45+, so I jacked it up with the factory jack to check underneath— which actually worked excellent, even with the car being lowered and on gravel. Kudos to the designers of the jack for making it actually usable; this is the third time I've used it.



A quick look underneath the car showed no obvious suspension issues, so I checked the wheels, and wouldn't ya know it, I bent all FOUR wheels. The fronts had slight (repairable) bends while the rears had awful bends and bends on the face. Crazy that I bent 4 17" wheels, but oh well. It's a learning experience, I suppose. To add insult to injury, Apex only does the 50% replacement guarantee on wheels purchased new from them or a dealer; I bought my wheels privately on Marketplace. I emailed Apex anyways, just to see if they could do something for me. Otherwise I'll have to fork out like $650 shipped for a new pair, plus whatever it costs to straighten the other two.

Aside from that, the car did great. It never overheated and the front Firehawks did their job admirably, though the rear tires are starting to be less grippy now that they've been heat cycled a bunch. I ended up drifting a lot of the turns, which was kinda fun but cost me time on each lap... plus drifting with an open diff sucks.

Not sure how these compare to other people, but in the second session I ran a best lap of 1:15.5, 1:15.2 in the third session, and 1:13.9 in the final session. Consistency and improvements overall, so I'll take it. Doing the last two sessions with extremely bent wheels wasn't fun, but I managed. The new big brakes did really well, with good heat management and pretty consistent feel. That being said, I think I roasted the Jurid pads, as my pedal feel and stopping power is significantly worse now. Might be time to get some more track friendly pads and bleed the fluid again.

Needless to say, I've got a few things to do before my next track day at Chuckwalla on the 19th. I should be able to advance to HPDE3 then, which would be neat.

[BleedsBlue]

...replace them with Turner sphericals.

Real talk from an impartial perspective (I mean, we sell them, but hey): why not Mooseheads for this application? The best part is that they're infinitely serviceable/rebuildable.

My OEM one from 1989 is still good at 272k.

SEE

A quick look underneath the car showed no obvious suspension issues, so I checked the wheels, and wouldn't ya know it, I bent all FOUR wheels. The fronts had slight (repairable) bends while the rears had awful bends and bends on the face. Crazy that I bent 4 17" wheels, but oh well. It's a learning experience, I suppose. To add insult to injury, Apex only does the 50% replacement guarantee on wheels purchased new from them or a dealer; I bought my wheels privately on Marketplace. I emailed Apex anyways, just to see if they could do something for me. Otherwise I'll have to fork out like $650 shipped for a new pair, plus whatever it costs to straighten the other two.

Holy cow - that was fast. On your offs, were you really off-roading (ie, bouncing up and down, etc)? Was the track re-entry brutal? Or are you more surprised they bent.

I suppose I only have one major off with my Apex wheels, but it was quick and I smacked a curb on the way back in - but thankfully no bends. Maybe my much softer suspension helped on that front. Good luck sorting the replacements - DM me on IG or something if you have trouble finding some, and I might consider sending you my pair of lightly used fronts. Promise, no bends

[dannyzabolotny]

Real talk from an impartial perspective (I mean, we sell them, but hey): why not Mooseheads for this application? The best part is that they're infinitely serviceable/rebuildable.

Holy cow - that was fast. On your offs, were you really off-roading (ie, bouncing up and down, etc)? Was the track re-entry brutal? Or are you more surprised they bent.

I suppose I only have one major off with my Apex wheels, but it was quick and I smacked a curb on the way back in - but thankfully no bends. Maybe my much softer suspension helped on that front. Good luck sorting the replacements - DM me on IG or something if you have trouble finding some, and I might consider sending you my pair of lightly used fronts. Promise, no bends

Re: the Mooseheads, I like the idea of the fully sealed Turner bearings, less work to maintain them. I drive a lot and I don't really clean my undercarriage a lot, and I've found that Mooseheads aren't quite as sealed up as the other options so they get pretty loaded up with dirt. That and on some of the cars I've installed them on, they've needed to be tightened multiple times in a fairly short span of time, even though they were preloaded correctly and whatnot. That was on one customer's 540i/6... but then again, they've been trouble-free on Cole's 540i/6 so who knows.

Yes, I off-roaded hard. I flew off the track doing like 70-80 because I was trying to no-lift through a turn and overcooked it, driving right over the curb and landing/bouncing in the dirt quite a bit while spinning. I had dirt in my teeth for the rest of the session, lol. The re-entry was okay, I found a smoother area and took it easy getting back on. I got in touch with the original purchaser of my wheels earlier today, and he said he would reach out to Apex, but if that falls through I'll definitely be hitting you up!

[dannyzabolotny]

The other day I noticed there was a strange scraping noise coming from underneath the car that came and went randomly, it started around the time I sent my car off the track. Onto the lift my car went, where I found that the forward exhaust hanger had come loose from the transmission and was touching the trans ever so slightly, transmitting noise and vibrations.



I just removed that hanger and the noises went away completely. Free fix, yay. Next up was figuring out the "brake lining" warning, which was pretty obvious when I pulled off the front wheels. The harness for the front pad sensor had come undone and was getting melted by the red-hot brake rotors at the track:



Thankfully the wires inside the sheathing hadn't melted, so it was just a matter of putting some electrical tape over the damaged areas and re-connecting the sensor to the harness. I also secured it with a zip tie so it wouldn't move again. Another easy fix, woohoo.

While moving the wheels around to check the wheel bearings, Dane and I noticed some vertical play, which we quickly figured out was due to a loose height adjustment collar on each coilover. With the coilovers measured (they didn't change height at all) and the adjustment collars cinched down tight, the play was eliminated.

So aside from the wheels being bent, the rest of the car came back from the track day relatively unscathed. Even the brakes started to feel better after I did some hard braking to re-bed them in.

[dannyzabolotny]

Pics from track day:









Nice and flat through all the turns, so I'm pretty happy with the overall suspension setup on this car. Tire wear seems to be nice and even too— the extra negative camber in the front really helps reduce understeer and also keeps me from chewing up the sidewalls on the outer part of the tire.

[circuit.heart]

Pics of tire tread or GTFO

[dannyzabolotny]

Pics of tire tread or GTFO

(note, that picture was taken before I aired my tires down a bit to use more of the tire)

[moroza]

I get a kick out of seeing yalls trio of Alpine E34. Something about cars in uniform... hot! If I ever find myself near AZ in my E34, we oughtta go for a convoy drive and photoshoot with three white sedans and a black wagon.

Your excitement and passion for this car is palpable - and inspiring!

This.

Not this. Either there's a jackstand not visible, or looks like someone hasn't experienced sudden failure of a hydraulic cylinder.

A well-sorted E34 is an excellent companion, no matter where life takes you

THIS x1000 and x17 years and counting (five E34 in that time, but the same front seats). Except in meaningful snow country.

Gotta save all the E34’s, haha. And I mean actually save them, not just procure them, wash them, and flip them for double the money…

Much respect and appreciation for saving/rescuing/promoting E34. Keep it up! But FFS, use jackstands. It'd be a rather twisted moment of sadism and irony on Fate's part for the community to lose someone doing such work to a lowest-bidder Chinese floor jack, which I bet has a tiny bit of E34 in its steel.

[dannyzabolotny]

I get a kick out of seeing yalls trio of Alpine E34. Something about cars in uniform... hot! If I ever find myself near AZ in my E34, we oughtta go for a convoy drive and photoshoot with three white sedans and a black wagon.

Much respect and appreciation for saving/rescuing/promoting E34. Keep it up! But FFS, use jackstands. It'd be a rather twisted moment of sadism and irony on Fate's part for the community to lose someone doing such work to a lowest-bidder Chinese floor jack, which I bet has a tiny bit of E34 in its steel.

To be fair, there were two jacks in that picture... what's the likelihood of both failing at the exact same time, anyways? But point taken, I should be a little more careful. Thankfully most of my work is done on one of the two lifts I have at the shop; I'm not a fan of laying on the floor anymore, I've done that for way too long.

And of course, I'll keep saving/fixing E34's for as long as I can. Dane and I just finished a pretty good E34 resurrection for a friend, you'll see about it here soon! And I just got a call the other day about getting another local E34 running, so that'll be fun to figure out.

If you ever come out to Arizona, hit me up! I love chatting with other E34 owners.

[dannyzabolotny]

Anyways, it's an impromptu new wheel day! I was getting really tired of driving on bent Apexes with the car shaking at almost every speed, so I test-fitted some wheels that came on an E34 that Dane bought recently, and to my surprise they fit over the E90 brakes!



The wheels are Azev Type B, period-correct accessory catalog wheels from 1992. They're 17x8.5 all around, decent spec. They're nowhere near as light as the Apexes but they'll be good street wheels so the Apexes can just be track-only wheels with the Yokohama A052's that I have. Still need to figure out which of those are repairable and which will need outright replacement, but I'll think about that later.

After test-fitting and confirming the fitment, I bought the wheels from Dane and went to my local tire shop to get my Firehawks transferred on. With most tires, a 255 width tire would probably be a bit much on an 8.5" wheel, but Firehawks are very rounded and run kinda small so it worked out perfectly! I only needed a 15mm spacer in the front and 5mm in the rear to have pretty darn good fitment.





These wheels are so funky, I still can't tell if I love them or hate them, and that seems to be how most people feel, haha. They're mostly known as being a VW wheel but these are 5x120 with a proper 72.56mm hub bore so these particular ones are definitely meant for a BMW. I don't think I've ever seen an E34 on these, so it definitely is a win in the unique column. They'll fit right in at Radwood Austin in February, which Kurtis, Dane, and I will be attending.

One other seemingly minor thing I did was removing aftermarket air intake for the stock airbox. There was so much dirt and junk inside the aftermarket intake that it was legitimately causing my engine to run crappy... my fault for not cleaning it, but it wasn't even on for that long so I didn't suspect it was an issue. No joke, my engine feels like it picked up a ton of power with the stock box, it revs way faster too. Dane likes to complain about my car being slow but even he noticed the difference.





Brian did always say the stock box was best, and I'm inclined to agree at this point, though the carbon one did sound kinda cool for a while.

[Desert E34]

I honestly love those wheels, they’re so unique and period correct. Shame the center caps won’t clear the studs, though. Hopefully the motor didn’t suck up any crap from the filthy intake.

[BleedsBlue]

I think those wheels can work, man - I just never dig the chrome (or maybe they're polished) look for the entire wheel (the rim/lip is ok). I'd say some plastidip would have you set!

I'll have to drop in on Radwood Austin, apparently. I don't plan to show a car this time but it should be fun and I bet it will be insanely busy.

And, there is a reason we plan to use the stock airbox in front of our incredibly complex carbon S38 intake plenum. In this case, it really is hard to beat the factory.

[dannyzabolotny]

I think those wheels can work, man - I just never dig the chrome (or maybe they're polished) look for the entire wheel (the rim/lip is ok). I'd say some plastidip would have you set!

I'll have to drop in on Radwood Austin, apparently. I don't plan to show a car this time but it should be fun and I bet it will be insanely busy.

And, there is a reason we plan to use the stock airbox in front of our incredibly complex carbon S38 intake plenum. In this case, it really is hard to beat the factory.

Yeah I'm usually not a chrome guy but for some reason it works on these wheels?

I already registered my car for Radwood Austin, I made the mistake of waiting too long for the San Mateo Radwood registration and ended up having to park my car in the general parking lot and not inside the show.

Yep, stock airbox is the way. I've still got tons of intake noises from my M50, even with the stock box.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh and Dane found me the one (1) center cap that came with the wheels, so I put it on to see how I felt.



It obviously needs a new BMW sticker, but I kinda dig it! If I could find three more I'd actually swap out the rear studs for shorter ones to make the center caps work.

More pics of the car on the new setup:

[dannyzabolotny]

Time for a little maintenance! I noticed the engine was running a little iffy under load sometimes, so I scrolled through this thread to see when I last did plugs, which turns out to be sometime in late October last year. Since then I've put on like 9k miles, so these copper boys were due for replacement, especially with how I drive.



As expected, the plugs looked kinda bad.





Looks like they got a little hot and also plenty of evidence of oil burning, typical. I also probably shouldn't be running track days on 87 octane gas, haha!

Compression on all 6 cylinders was extremely even, with less than 5 psi of difference between cylinders. Same results as last time, actually. I stuck a boroscope down the cylinders and the cylinder walls looked pretty nice and clean, with the pistons being pretty dirty— 307k miles and burning oil will do that, I suppose. The random cleaner spots were interesting though.





Moving on, I popped the front wheels off to roll the fenders and hammer down some edges that the tires kept grabbing (stance life? lol). With the wheels off, I noticed that some of the studs were a little loose, crazy. I was able to remove all of the studs with nothing more than a 3/8" ratchet, which Dane and I found to be mildly concerning. Time for some Motorsport Hardware studs, since I got those with the Apexes. I did the rears as well, and found the old studs to be pretty loose there too. I guess they were fine for one track day!





In other news, I dropped the Apexes off at a local wheel repair shop the other day, so we'll see if they can straighten any of them. They don't need to be perfect since they'll just be track wheels, I just need something to put the A052's on.

[Johal E32]

Did you apply any thread-locker on the old wheel studs?

[BleedsBlue]

You just made the case (as if it needed making) for treating stud conversions on these cars like a wear item, especially on track. Nice catch!

[Johal E32]

You just made the case (as if it needed making) for treating stud conversions on these cars like a wear item, especially on track. Nice catch!

Maybe the fine folks over at Angry Ass could develop a press-in wheel stud conversion as a solution?

Something like this? https://www.core4motorsports.com/pro...hub-conversion

[circuit.heart]

Did you apply any thread-locker on the old wheel studs?

This, Danny... studs aren't supposed to be torqued into the hub, only seated. When you torque the lug nuts down, that is all the stretch you want to put on the stud. Torquing the stud into the hub then applying lug nut torque is over-spec.

If you use threadlock to gently install the studs (most instructions are like 15-20ftlbs into the hub just to make sure it's seated) the threadlock should keep the studs from being visibly loose even if you gun off lug nuts.

[BleedsBlue]

Maybe the fine folks over at Angry Ass could develop a press-in wheel stud conversion as a solution?

Something like this? https://www.core4motorsports.com/pro...hub-conversion

Holy cow - are you spying on us, Jordan!?

We'll be testing an E34 with those exact units, on track, in the next few years. If there is a market, we would consider carrying them or developing our own (they are not rocket appliances by any means), but we (Greg) also questions some of their claims. We'd need to do our own testing to gauge the true benefit, basically.

We still fully stand behind our MSI thread-in stud conversions, with proper inspection and replacement (1 track season for rampant track-goers, probably no more than 2 years' interval for heavily daily-driven cars). And we are still running the thread-ins installed how Brian notated above (which matches MSI's own instructions) on our personal cars that see track time.

[dannyzabolotny]

Yes, I used Loctite Red on all of the studs when I first installed them, and I torqued them to 25 ft/lb. All of them came out quite easily and several were finger loose. Which is strange because every time I’ve installed wheels I’ve always used a torque wrench and every lug nut clicked just fine.

[dannyzabolotny]

Washed my car, cleaned my wheels, and washed the engine bay yesterday. Still cleans up real nice for 307k miles!











I also put Lamin-X on the headlights to keep them from cracking with all these track days and road trips I've got planned. Also just ordered some Moosehead sphericals (from the boys at Angry Ass) for the thrust arms so I can stop killing thrust arm bushings once and for all.

The Apex wheels will be making a comeback as well, since a local wheel shop was able to straighten all four of them... I'll put the Yokohama A052's on them and they'll be my dedicated track wheels from now on. The next track day is on the 19th at Chuckwalla, Cole will be bringing his supercharged 540i/6 as well.