Thank you.
Last week I got tired of my rear driver's side door card rattling, so I decided to replace it. It was falling apart like all early door cards do, so it was definitely time.
While the door card was off, I re-sealed the vapor barrier to keep the moisture out for all the times it rains in Arizona (ha!).
As for the "new" black door card, it's a 95 door card from a junkyard car, which meant it needed some work before being ready to install. The first order of business was to glue on the top section which had fallen off:
With that done, I turned my attention to the back, where several of the clip mounting points had fallen off. A bit of hot glue did the trick.
The finishing touch was to transfer the early wood trim over (which I prefer to the later trim anyways) and to install these sweet foam pads from Angry Ass.
And here it is, all installed. It's not perfect, but it will do until I can find nicer door cards. Still makes the interior look a lot nicer in the meantime.
It's been getting warmer here in Phoenix, so I figured it was a good time to get my tint re-done before everybody else rushes to get it done in the summer. I went with 20% all around, as I've found that to be a nice compromise between being dark enough while still having reasonable nighttime visibility. Compared to the mess that was the old tint, my visibility has improved a ton. Prior to redoing the tint, everything looked blurry through the rear window... my tint guy had one hell of a time removing the cruddy old tint.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
This past Saturday, Kurtis, Dane, Brad, and I went on a drive with the local BMW club to Bagdad, AZ. It was a really good time, lovely weather and excellent driving roads. The 525i managed 21mpg in that trip, which is pretty solid considering I spent a good portion of the drive at 6k RPM for 5-10 mins at a time (when going up mountains).
While on the drive, Kurtis snapped these amazing rollers while hanging out the side of his E90 (while Brad drove). Truly a labor of love, and it shows in these pics. I'm very grateful to have friends that are good with photography, it makes my car look way better than it actually is, haha.
This one looks like a BMW ad from the early 90's... just lovely.
Here's one of my car and Dane's 535i. It's almost like seeing double
And here's me showing a newer BMW how it's done, with gratuitous lens flare (I love it).
The 525i rolled over 276k miles shortly after this drive, still doing great. I'm very pleased with it overall, I feel like it's getting to a place where I'm content with it.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Absolutely love it, it's awesome. I wish I could get wheels and ride height so perfect myself and just enjoy the drive.
For content: Bit confused though as it's a lower black/narrow grill car I'm suprised it's a wood door trim car, and that a certain wood trim can be an 'old' design. I thought the non wood is old and all wood ones were 'new design' and created equal?
Anyway, just asking for something to say rather than just 'like' and admire
Last edited by fo3; 02-25-2021 at 12:18 PM.
M-Pars and Bav Auto lowering springs are all that's needed to achieve this look, if you're trying to replicate it.
Wood trim was always an option on the early cars, so a lot of them just didn't have it. I've seen cars with an 89 build date that had wood trim optioned. The wood trim design changed in 93/94 to my knowledge, they went from a lighter colored wood with a horizontal grain to a darker wood with more of a burl. Personally I prefer the old style wood trim, it looks nicer to me.
You can see the difference between my front and rear door panels, since I originally forgot to swap the wood trim on the front door panel (I fixed that the other day).
New style:
Old style:
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
that roller!
Awesome pictures.
Thanks y'all! Kurtis really outdid himself on those pics, they've gotta be my favorite pics of any car I've owned.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Amazing photos, looks right out of a sales brochure from the 90's!
90,700 miles 1992 BMW 735iL Azure Blue Metallic with Silver Grey leather interior ‣My car ‣My YouTube channel
Love it!
Just needs projector headlights for safety Those photos turned out amazing.
Wow, good photography indeed. Slight chance my Touring and I will be rolling through your neck of the desert in some weeks.
Ouch.
You know how I'm always lamenting lack of local stuff and action? Well I had to make the sacrifice and join FB. Turns out heaps are being sold and junked all the time on aussie FB groups and ours have the euro set ups. There just wasn't any at junkyards, or our equivalent of CL etc.
E: but even if I could get them cheap, shipping from oz alone would be so high it still might end up cheaper overall getting them yourself from latvia, estonia or elsewhere in europe.
Last edited by fo3; 02-27-2021 at 08:46 AM.
damn that thing was madly neglected. Nice to see another E34 saved.
That's what I thought too, I love it!
Yeah, the current stock headlights suck and have a ton of moisture stuck inside of them due to being heavily cracked. Depo Euro smiley headlights are on the list of things to buy for sure, along with an HID retrofit so I can have proper headlights for once. I did a good HID retrofit on a customer's car, so that'll be nice to do on mine eventually.
Oooh, let me know if you plan on rolling through, I'd love to meet up.
Thanks! I see you're in Arizona too, nice. Where are you at? I'm in the Tempe area.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Man, I haven't posted anything here in a minute. The 525i has been pretty trouble-free, which is a good thing I suppose— it's at 278k miles now. Aside from that, the shop has been keeping me very busy... I put in a second lift and hired a full-time assistant to keep things moving along.
I did have a minor incident with a curb... those darn Bridgestones are dead silent even when losing grip so I've had the rear end step out a bit more than planned when messing around. No damage to the body, but one of the E31 lower control arms took quite the beating, lol.
Thankfully I had some extras at the shop so I popped in a new one and bent the subframe tabs back into shape. E34's are tanks.
While I had everything apart, I also installed camber plates that I had previously purchased from a Facebook group for very little money. I'm not 100% sure what brand these are, since there are no markings of any kind, but they look like the Ireland Engineering fixed camber plates so I'll assume that's what they are. I had to grind down the studs on my V2 shock mounts so they would be able to slip out of the mount after being punched out, and afterwards I found that I also needed to grind down the nuts so that the strut mount would rotate freely. It seems a little sketchy but there's plenty of thread engagement and ample Loctite to keep things together.
I forgot to take pictures of what they looked like installed, so here's a terrible picture from my driveway at night.
It's a little hard to tell from the pictures but there's a good bit more camber in the front now. The front fitment got a little worse too so I'll need to get some spacers and a stud kit soon.
The idea behind adding more camber was to reduce how much I roast the edges of my front tires when driving aggressively, plus it's supposed to help with taming understeer a bit since the tire should have more contact patch under hard cornering (in theory, at least).
I also got new rear tires— Yokohama Advan Apex V601 in 265/35/18 to compliment the V601's in the front. Feels nice to have matching tires all around, finally.
This past weekend I went to an autocross event with Dane, and I was very pleased with how my car performed. It handled very well and I put down some good times (good for my standards, I was still slow in the grand scheme of things). There was also an E90 335i there that was unsurprisingly in limp mode some of the time, lol.
I'm looking forward to taking my car to some HPDE events later this month and in the coming months, I could certainly use the practice.
Side note, the camber plates didn't really add much ride height in the front. If anything, they just reduced the rake a bit, which is good in my book.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
Good stuff, Danny! I think it's a sign our E34s are being good lately since there have not been as many updates, haha. Great to hear the shop is busy!
Besides the bad luck of the curb strike I'm glad you're enjoying it and being kept busy.
Yeah, they've been good to most of us. Dane's E34's haven't needed much either. Shop is stupidly busy... at the moment I've got an E39 M5 in for timing chain guide replacement (the U-guide grenaded at 180k), an E34 525i for a manual swap/suspension overhaul, an E38 740il in for chain guides, E34 540i/6 in for head work, E39 540i/6 for an engine replacement, 1987 L6 for hydroboost rebuild and suspension work, and my old red E39 540it for cooling system and timing work.
The curb strike was less bad luck and more so just me being stupid and doing clutch dumps at every U-turn, lol.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
One day you will go coilovers so you can get the greater-than-minus-3 camber our front tires crave. Orrrrr you use E32 lower geometry and push the bottom of the tire out haha, solves fitment problems while you're at it.
Coilovers are the plan eventually, but right now I'm investing all my money back into the shop so I don't have an extra $1k laying around for BC's. For now, this nearly free setup works fine. The Bilsteins were free from a customer that upgraded to coilovers, the Bav Auto lowering springs were free from a friend, and the camber plates were like $60, so the only real money spent was on new shock mounts.
1995 525i 5-speed - Thread
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