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Thread: Danny's White BMW (92 525i Thread)

  1. #101
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    Oh wow, it's been a month since I updated this thread! I guess that's what happens when a car just... works. Currently this 525i is at 281k miles, still doing great.

    I finally got around to replacing the awful headlights with some nice Depo smileys. Not only did the light output kinda suck on the original non-projector headlights, the lenses were all cracked and allowed moisture to build up in the headlights every time it rained or I washed the car— 29 years and countless miles definitely took their toll on the headlights.







    With everything removed:



    The finished product. I know the clear corners aren't to everyone's taste, but I enjoy them and think they match up with the clear tails nicely. I was super careful to get everything lined up nicely on the nose panel since it was almost perfect before.



    After this upgrade, the light output has been improved quite a bit. Still need to mess with aiming the headlights a bit better but that's something I'll do one of these days.

    Several road trip adventures ensued in the weeks after— a day trip to Prescott with the lady, a fun cruise down to Roosevelt Lake, and most recently a trip to Payson with some off-roading.











    You can see the amber bulbs I put in the clear turn signals, I like the little hint of amber to make it feel more period correct.



    Earlier today I decided to tackle some remaining maintenance, namely the intake manifold. It was pretty gross under there so it was definitely due for a re-seal and some cleaning.

    At the beginning:



    During:



    I also replaced the spark plugs since they were a little dirty from all the blowby— I'm just going to stick to copper plugs from here on out and just replace them more frequently. I did the same thing with the oil earlier this month, switching to conventional 20W50 Supertech with the intent of changing it more often... the engine consumes too much oil to justify putting in anything nice.



    After:



    Here's the full list of stuff done in this round of work:

    - Intake manifold gaskets replaced
    - Intake manifold connector to the ICV replaced
    - ICV cleaned (looked to be a replacement unit from 1998)
    - 4-way coolant hose replaced (common failure point)
    - Throttle body coolant bypassed— removed the airbox thermostat which has been dangling around for months with no purpose and trimmed/looped the lines together.
    - Vacuum lines replaced
    - Spark plugs replaced
    - Throttle body gasket replaced
    - Throttle body replaced with a good used one— the old one was starting to feel difficult and inconsistent.

    My initial impressions are that it runs even better now, with a smoother idle. The throttle feel is better than it ever has been, it's very precise now with the properly adjusted new throttle cable.

    Aaaaand now I'm thinking of taking this car on a much longer road trip pretty soon. Sounds like it's time to order some new front tires... after 10k miles on the V601's they're getting to be quite bald. It's about what I expected from a performance tire, especially considering how hard I drove them.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  2. #102
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    Still haven't even driven mine since this thread started I do the same thing with my 320k km old engine, 20w50 oil and use the twin ground copper plugs checked and changed more regularly. Had to replace most vac lines, gaskets, throttle cable etc too.

  3. #103
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    Shortly after doing the intake manifold work, I passed emissions and was able to finally register the car after rolling around on expired tags for way longer than I care to admit. Somehow nobody bothered me about it, even when pulling me over for speeding tickets (yes, somehow I manage to get those with an M50NV, crazy).

    Originally I had planned to replace my very bald front tires before going on a trip to San Francisco, but as luck would have it, the Yokohamas that I like were backordered in my size. Not wanting to risk driving on some sketchy tires, Kurtis graciously lent me his 16" Racing Dynamics wheels to run for the trip. Spoiler: I actually really like them and kinda don't want to give them back, haha.





    Going from 18's, the ride on the 16's is crazy comfortable, even with my otherwise harsh Bilsteins. The really crazy thing is that with 225 width Achilles tires, I still have plenty of grip for twisty road driving. It's also super easy to correct even when I overcook it, so I've been appreciating this newfound liveliness.

    The other thing that needed to be done to make the E34 road trip ready was to swap out the awful old front seats which had hard torn leather, twist, and a whole lot of looseness. I bought a nice set of heated black comfort seats from Dane and swapped them in. Funny thing is, these are the seats that were in my gold car before I parted it out, then they went into Dane's Bronzit 535i, and now they're back in my car. To say the "new" seats were a game changer would be a huge understatement, it makes the car feels like a Rolls Royce and makes my interior 200% less shameful.







    At around 3am on a Saturday morning, I departed towards San Francisco with Dane and Kurtis. It was a fairly uneventful drive on the way up, and the E34 averaged 26mpg which is not bad for doing 85-90 most of the time. Somehow despite not sleeping at all the previous night, I powered through the entire 11 hour drive without any help... that's my inner Russian longhaul truck driver right there.

    In San Francisco, the three of us met up with the man, the legend, the wizard— Brian (aka circuit.heart). We ate food, hung out, and helped him with the wiring and oil cooler lines on the latest M52 build for his track car. It's always super rad to meet up with other E34 maniacs.



    The following day we did a bunch of driving around, starting with taking the obligatory tourist pic in front of the Golden Gate bridge.



    Then we went to Alice's Restaurant which has excellent food and some fantastic roads around it. The three of us took turns beating on the car until the brakes were practically on fire, such a blast. I love this car.



    On Monday we visited another BMW guru in the Bay Area and had a great time exchanging knowledge and stories. After that, it was time to head back home. This time I let Dane and Kurtis do all the driving while I relaxed and enjoyed being a passenger in my own car, haha. Traffic on the way back was awful between SF and LA on the I-5 (Memorial Day) but we made up time once we were past the LA area, easily cruising at triple digits.

    Overall, the car performed beautifully on this trip, and I love that I can trust it to do a 2000 mile drive with minimal prep. The other day I rolled over 284k miles— it's crazy how fast the miles are going up on this E34, not that I mind. Time for another oil change!
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  4. #104
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    Love the pics! I’m always jealous of those great California views.


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  5. #105
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    Don't let the views fool you. The local governments charges taxes just for the views.

  6. #106
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    Quote Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny View Post
    Then we went to Alice's Restaurant which has excellent food and some fantastic roads around it. The three of us took turns beating on the car until the brakes were practically on fire, such a blast. I love this car.

    Y'all are wild! Every time I do this on a road trip I lose a headgasket or a valve.

    Super enjoyed our hangout day, thank you again for helping me move that CNC router AND build racecars, and glad we could introduce you to real immigrant food

  7. #107
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    Quote Originally Posted by circuit.heart View Post
    Y'all are wild! Every time I do this on a road trip I lose a headgasket or a valve.

    Super enjoyed our hangout day, thank you again for helping me move that CNC router AND build racecars, and glad we could introduce you to real immigrant food
    I've always beat on my car on a road trip, I generally trust it to not explode.

    Meeting up with you and the others was a great time, looking forward to doing it again sometime soon
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  8. #108
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    Yesterday I had an open lift at the shop, so I seized the opportunity to get under my car and inspect it + change the oil. I'm running conventional now so 4200 miles is a decently long run, especially with all the hard driving this car gets. The oil that came out looked fine, so that's nice.

    On the way to SF I do remember hitting a very large chunk of metal on the road near LA, it scared the crap out of everybody in the car but there wasn't anything noticeably wrong afterwards so we just ignored it and pressed on. Now I see what it hit:



    Looks like the heat shield took the brunt of the damage, with only a slight dent on the actual exhaust pipe itself. Doesn't appear to be leaking either, so I'm just going to leave it alone. No other real damage though, so that's cool— E34's are tanks!

    I did notice that my diff looked a little wet, mostly from the rear cover plate. It only lasted 10k miles before leaking, what a shame. I guess I'll reseal it again when I get around to doing the clutch. In the meantime, I wanted to check the fluid level, so I made a tool for it by cutting apart a Duralast socket. For what it's worth, those are super well made because I had to cut the whole case apart and hit stuff with a hammer to get the 14mm allen bit out.





    Everything else looked to be in fairly good shape— all the control arms, ball joints, dogbones, and sway bar end links look to be in good shape. Subframe bushings still aren't great so that'll be something to do in the near future.

    On the way back from SF, we stopped at this one little town off the I-5 called Coalinga, and the roads near the rest area were some of the worst I've driven, just a vast expanse of unavoidable potholes with almost no actual road between them. It was at that point that both of my rear shock mounts decided to let go.

    I've gotten real good at removing E34 rear shocks, it took me no time at all to get them out.



    And here's the carnage— Lemforder rear shock mounts after 12,000 miles.

    Passenger side:





    Driver side:





    New Meyle HD mounts went in, so we'll see how long they last. I know the "proper" fix is to go with the Moosehead upgraded mounts, but I intend to get coilovers at some point in the future so the Meyle HD's will work for now.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  9. #109
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    Yikes. Thats a great ‘no confidence’ vote on the lemfs.

  10. #110
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    Quote Originally Posted by a777fan View Post
    Yikes. Thats a great ‘no confidence’ vote on the lemfs.
    Granted, I drive in a fairly abusive manner and had to deal with some pretty awful roads on my California drive, along with a few awful roads around where my shop is. If you live in a place with decent roads and don’t beat the crap out of your car they should last twice as long.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  11. #111
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    Awesome stuff. I can vouch that these cars are tanks. And that outside of pure track work, smaller diameter (and width!) tires are the sh!t. At this point in my life, I'm much more of a fan of spacers with narrow rubber to achieve similar stance, vs stuffing heavy and expensive wide stuff that changes the dynamics.

    Lemforder has kinda been trending downwards for awhile now, sad to say. You definitely have to pick and choose who you go with depending on the application. I opted for OEM RSMs recently and they were not much more expensive than the aftermarket alternative. Not that OEM parts are flawless, either...

    I'd definitely be matching you on mileage if I still had my B36 car! I'm jealous, keep it going!
    - Brent
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    Quote Originally Posted by danespann View Post
    Every E34 needs the same things in the end.

  12. #112
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    Lemförder quality is still good for their parts still made in Europe, which is a decreasing proportion every year. What I've seen of their Chinese products looked like bottom-barrel no-name junk, in addition to bigger-picture problems of mainland Chinese industry. OTOH, E34 RSM aren't the most durable to begin with.

  13. #113
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    Damn! A lot of solid work put into that. Nice work man!

  14. #114
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    Quote Originally Posted by M I C H A E L View Post
    Damn! A lot of solid work put into that. Nice work man!
    Thanks! Part of it is a labor of love, the other part of it is that this is still my only car, so I've gotta keep it reliable and stay on top of things before they become major problems.

    I passed 285k miles the other day, car is running/driving as good as always. After my trip to Radwood SF, I should be at like 287k or so... 300k this year might be doable!

    Last night, Kent, Dane, Kurtis, and I went to our favorite local road, the 88 (aka Tortilla Flat). Kurtis and Kent took Kent's Euro 535i/5, Dane was in an E39 540i/6, and I was in this E34 525i/5. The E39 did okay initially but those M62's sure do love to heat soak, so by the end of the run Dane was having a hard time keeping up with our E34's. That and the rear suspension on them is just not particularly suited to tight twisties, which is the same conclusion I reached after owning about a dozen E39's in the past. Kent's 535i/5 was all stock on some old 15" Michelins, so lots of body roll and a few pucker-worthy moments, particularly when Kurtis drove it. It was a wildly entertaining drive, one of the best I've done on this road recently. My 525i, despite being the least powerful car of the group and equipped with mediocre tires, kept up remarkably well, with the lowering springs, RD sway bars, camber plates, and LSD combining to make a very potent package.

    The other fun in running 16's is running the pressures kinda low (26psi) so that the sidewall becomes tread during hard driving. I snapped a pic of my tire after the drive, and you can see how much of the sidewall participated in tread-related activities. Kent's 15's had even more obvious signs of it.



    In other news, I've decided to wind down operations at my shop, with plans to close it in a month or two once my current work is done. A combination of financial issues and an unreasonable landlord has led me to this decision. While I'm not thrilled about the way it all went down, I am happy to move on to just working a job and not worrying about money for a while. I got a job as a technician at a BMW shop that's right down the road from me, and I still get to work on BMW's while getting paid consistently. I just installed Bilsteins + Ireland Engineering lowering springs and resealed the diff on a 1972 2002 last week, so that was cool. Soon I'll get to work on an E9 3.0csi, pretty stoked on that. As they say, when one door closes, another one opens.

    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  15. #115
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    Sad to see the shop go, but greener pastures await! Bring a Heritage sticker with ya on your drive up, we can both represent dead brands

  16. #116
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    ^Agreed - I hope the new gig will give you less stress and a happier life! Also I want some Heritage swag now
    - Brent
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    Quote Originally Posted by danespann View Post
    Every E34 needs the same things in the end.

  17. #117
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  18. #118
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    I've run my own business before so I know how hard it is to move on. Glad you could organize a new job so quick, that just makes it really easy to say goodbye to landlords and annoying customers.
    My white e34 needs some heritage rear 1/4 window stickers, just so I can tell aussies they're never going to find it haha.

  19. #119
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    Aren't we schedued for Danny's regular one year car toss up?
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  20. #120
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    Quote Originally Posted by justinca540i View Post
    Aren't we schedued for Danny's regular one year car toss up?
    Lol, pretty sure he's stuck with this one for now with how prices are on things.
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  21. #121
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    Quote Originally Posted by justinca540i View Post
    Aren't we schedued for Danny's regular one year car toss up?
    Nah, this one’s not going anywhere. I don’t really care to buy anything else and I don’t want to do everything all over again in terms of repairs/maintenance. This car drives good, has excellent AC, and has given me 22k trouble-free miles in the 10 months I’ve owned it.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  22. #122
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    Time for a formal update? The car is at 289k miles now, still doing pretty good overall

    Last month I drove to the Bay Area again for Radwood with Dane. We had our little Alpineweiss convoy going, it was fun. Kurtis was going to drive his car as well, but nearing the deadline to leave, we deemed his car to be a little too sketchy for comfort, so he tagged along and rode with us. (His car has since become fairly decent, go pester him to update his thread!)



    Brian's car was mostly sorted and drivable by this point, so he came out to Radwood as well. It was cool to see the racecar on the streets, the exhaust sounds pretty gnarly on it! Later that night, I set the Delrin trailing arm bushings on fire in it, but that's for Brian's build thread, lol.



    Radwood had a huge turnout; it was cool to be at a big car show again, I missed those a lot. Lots of different cars there, but as usual I went straight for the BMW's...



    Lots of E24's at this show, glad to see those are starting to get more attention.



    Manual-swapped E32 750il with a rad brown interior.





    My personal favorite BMW at Radwood was this survivor E12, it was kinda beat up but it made it to the show and was just an honest example of a cool old car. It's a shame the E12's don't get much love.



    After the show, Brian, Dane, Kurtis, and I went on some back roads for some good old fashioned hooning.



    Unfortunately all good things had to come to an end, so the next day we headed back to Phoenix. Aside from Dane's car having some hiccups with the AFM, it was a fairly uneventful drive back. I averaged 26mpg in the 525i, which is pretty solid considering I was doing 85-95 for most of the drive on slightly under-inflated tires... who needs a 6th gear anyways?

    Aside from that I've just been busy working at my job, fixing cool old BMW's as well as keeping the newer BMW-shaped trash on the road. Earlier today, I finally got some time to throw the 525i on the lift. After doing an oil change, I moved on to swapping the diff. The 3.23 LSD that I installed had a ton of miles on it from the previous owners so it started making some noise upon deceleration in gear, likely due to a worn pinion bearing. It likely needs a full rebuild at this point, so while I either look for a competent (but reasonably priced) diff builder or muster up the courage to rebuild it myself, I figured I'd swap in my old open 3.23. The replacement process was fairly straightforward, aside from the mild depression that installing an open diff causes.

    Before:



    Diff removed:



    After, with sad old diff installed:



    Everything else underneath the car seemed to be in good shape, so that was a pleasant surprise. As expected, the open 3.23 eliminated all the noises I was getting with the LSD, so I guess that's the one benefit of this tragic downgrade.

    Aside from rebuilding the LSD, the next things I'll have to address will be the cooked brakes and the aux fan, which has started being rather noisy.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  23. #123
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    Nice! Wish I could've made it to rad-wood. Could've added to the alpine Weiss drivers bmws. But glad to see the E34 is doing great, honestly nothing better then just adding the miles on great road trips or hard driving either just hooning or taking to the track/autox.

    Lemme know what you end up doing for brakes if you go with upgraded pads as mine absolutely cooked, could've cooked bacon on them after yesterdays track event. Kinda caught fire.

  24. #124
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    Quote Originally Posted by justinca540i View Post
    Nice! Wish I could've made it to rad-wood. Could've added to the alpine Weiss drivers bmws. But glad to see the E34 is doing great, honestly nothing better then just adding the miles on great road trips or hard driving either just hooning or taking to the track/autox.

    Lemme know what you end up doing for brakes if you go with upgraded pads as mine absolutely cooked, could've cooked bacon on them after yesterdays track event. Kinda caught fire.
    It's funny, you and a couple of other Bay Area locals didn't go to Radwood despite it being in your backyard, whereas my friends and I drove 11 hours each way for it.

    I have a brake solution for this car already— 540i brakes. The E34 540i brakes are a direct bolt-on option, requiring just calipers and brackets. There's no increase in rotor diameter, just much thicker rotors in the front for better cooling, along with vented rotors in the rear (as opposed to the unvented stock rear rotors on the 525i/535i). The increased cooling makes a pretty big difference in performance, and when combined with brand new brake lines, hardware, slide pins, and high-temp racing fluid, it'll be a big upgrade compared to the mediocre garbage that the car has now. The brakes are one of the few things on this car that I haven't touched yet, mostly because they always kinda worked and were quiet. Several abusive autocross days and mountain runs later, they're 100% cooked.

    Regarding the actual pads themselves, I just go with Jurid/Textar pads on ATE/Zimmerman rotors... they're super dusty but they're pretty quiet and bite well with good street manners. I don't track this car enough to bother with track-oriented pads... yet.

    Another popular E34 brake upgrade is the Angry Ass F30 brake conversion, which I've installed with great success on a few customer cars. The biggest caveat of that is that you're more or less stuck with 18" wheels, aside from a handful of 17" wheels that work (M-Systems). Given my newfound love of 16"/17" wheels, I don't see myself going this route any time soon.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  25. #125
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    On that note, I was in the Bay Area that weekend as well, but in Napa on the day-of for a bachelor party. Rough times, I know, but I would have liked to have dropped in.

    Well said on brakes, Danny. Thank you for the shout out! The venting/internal cooling fins make a huge difference and we'll be the first to admit that larger brakes are not for everyone. I'll estimate that well over half of the F30 Brembo takers are doing it for cosmetic reasons.

    We've expanded our offerings to support customers with brake fluid, stainless lines, and pad options (OEM rotors are still the best for these applications, available anywhere) and one can go far on fresh, track-proofed OEM components for sure.

    We're also excited to debut the small, affordable AP Racing 4 piston kits we are targeting at "small" wheel customers, likely this winter.
    - Brent
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    Quote Originally Posted by danespann View Post
    Every E34 needs the same things in the end.

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