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Thread: Danny's 92 525i Thread - Some Assembly Required

  1. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny View Post
    Thanks! I'll probably go with some Magnaflow universal cats, I can get them welded in at a local exhaust shop for like $200 - $300. Arizona emissions aren't that strict and they don't care if you have aftermarket cats, just as long as the car hits the right values on the sniffer dyno test.
    I'd caution against this, the last time I tried Magnaflow cats it felt like they clogged within a few weeks, super weird.

  2. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by circuit.heart View Post
    I'd caution against this, the last time I tried Magnaflow cats it felt like they clogged within a few weeks, super weird.
    Eh they've been fine for me. Maybe you got some weird Cali-certified ones? Here in AZ there's no visual inspections and they don't care what cats you have, as long as it passes the sniffer test. My white car had some Magnaflows on it and I put 45k hard miles on them, with tons of oil burning, and they were still halfway decent after all that.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  3. #28
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    More stuff, yeeee.

    The clutch pedal still felt crappy, so it was time to replace the clutch master cylinder. I've done this job so many times that it's minimally miserable at this point.

    You can see the fluid residue and torn boot on the clutch master cylinder here.



    New hotness vs old garbage. I also replaced the fluid supply hose because the old one was in awful shape.



    While I was in there, I also replaced the clutch switch and brake light switch, since the old clutch switch was broken and I was getting the occasional "brake light circuit" warning. To finish it off, I also installed new throttle pedal bushings. I say "installed" because there were absolutely no bushings left, it was the throttle pedal assembly just banging around loosely.



    New throttle cable along with swapping in a nicer throttle body to improve the garbage throttle pedal feel.





    With all of that done, the throttle finally felt decent and the clutch pedal felt 100% correct. All it took was replacing literally everything, go figure!

    To celebrate, I installed a nicer factory steering wheel that I found upstairs in the shop. No idea whose car it was from, but it's reasonably nice with no tears so I'm not complaining.

    You can see how nasty and beat up the old steering wheel was, and also no airbag so it looked very janky.



    Much better! I also took the opportunity to pull the cluster and replaced some burnt-out bulbs for nice, even backlighting.



    At some point Dane convinced me to wash the 10 years of dirt off the car. The paint still sucks and doesn't match in some places, but it's an improvement, I suppose.









    The most recent thing I did was install some fog deletes and a plate delete filler that Dane sold me. I also found a semi-broken tow hook cover at the shop and made it work with some zip tie magic. Now the front is 100% complete, so while the car looks like garbage, it looks like proper garbage.



    At this point I've out about 1000 miles on the car, and it's come a real long way from when I bought it a month ago. I'm planning a full suspension refresh soon (coilovers are ordered), and I've got a nice set of wheels + tires in the works to get this thing sitting nicely.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  4. #29
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    someone's been busy on the weekend :P
    nice work dude. hope the clutch and pedals feel like new!

  5. #30
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    Is it still "some assembly required" when you're basically rebuilding the whole automobile?

  6. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny View Post
    All it took was replacing literally everything, go figure!
    LOL

    Another nice save, my good chap. This is coming along very nicely.
    - Brent
    www.angry-ass.com

    Quote Originally Posted by danespann View Post
    Every E34 needs the same things in the end.

  7. #32
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    While I wait on the last of my suspension bits to ship, I've been keeping myself busy. First was installing a new eBay shift boot with a used ZHP knob (thanks Dane), which really dresses up the interior.



    At some point last week, I heard from my friend Leo (Leonator134) that he had obtained a 95 540i parts car. I figured I could grab some nicer black interior bits for my car and for a friend, so a deal was made and I had to suddenly make sure that my E34 would make the 900-mile trip properly. On Friday, I set out to address three major concerns: heating, stereo, and tires.

    First was getting the heat to work— while the heater core wasn't overly leaky, the heater valve was stuck open so I had previously bypassed it and removed it from the car. Thankfully there's a heater valve rebuild kit on eBay, so I rebuilt the valve.





    With the valve installed, I got good heat, but then the heat wouldn't turn off, so after some troubleshooting I deduced that the HVAC control module was faulty and sending bad signals to the heater valve. Swapping that out, the HVAC system worked correctly.

    Next up was getting the stereo working. This problem had two main components: 1) the missing amp in the trunk and 2) the complete lack of head unit. For the amp, I reached out to a friend of mine that had an old 91 535i in his yard... it had mostly been stripped of parts over the years, but the amp was still there, score!



    With the amp situated, I looked at the stereo-shaped hole in the center stack and found a wiring adapter tucked in there, score! I then remembered that I had a JVC head unit brand new in box in my shop office (I bought it for the white E34 but didn't like the red backlighting so I didn't use it). Wiring up the adapter to work with the new head unit, I plugged everything in... and somehow everything worked??? I was not expecting that, I'll be honest. Yes, the rear speakers were a little blown and crackled, but every other speaker worked correctly so I felt pretty lucky.



    The last problem was how awful the tires on the style 8's were... they were 10+ years old and cracked/separating really badly, I didn't trust them at all. Fortunately, Dane had a set of style 9's laying around with good tires, so we swapped those on and the car was ready to go.

    On Sunday morning, Dane and I headed out, driving about as fast as we dared to on the 291k-mile original suspension (it gets real sketchy you hit a bump at 90mph). The car took it like a champ, returning a pleasant 26mpg in the process.

    Somewhere in the northeastern part of AZ, we stopped at this abandoned old Taco Bell/rest area, pretty neat.





    After about 7.5 hours on the road, we arrived at Leo's place on the outskirts of Santa Fe, and the prize awaited:



    I got my tools out and quickly extracted the front seats, door panels, fuel filler door, 540i brake calipers + brackets, mirrors, trunk carpet, and some bumper trims. Who needs a work truck when you've got an E34?







    With everything loaded up, the three of us headed to a local tavern for a good meal. After that, we hit the road, heading back to AZ. We really got to test out the heat, as the temps went from the mid 60's in the daytime to 31ºF at night. We made it back close to 3am, not too bad. The car didn't skip a beat at all, good car.

    Of course I started installing some of the goodies the next day, like the fuel pump cover:



    And then the trunk carpet, which means the trunk is now 100% complete. I don't know why, but I'm pretty stoked on that.



    The rear bumper now has all of its trims, which makes the car look significantly less like a hooptie.



    I need to glue the door panels up a bit before I install them, as well as replacing both of the driver's side window regulators and the passenger rear window regulator clips. It'll be wild having an E34 with all 4 working windows, I don't recall ever having that.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  8. #33
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    It could be my own total lack of progress and deferment of even simple jobs, but I feel like you're moving dang fast on this one. It's motivating to watch!

    The trunk is complete...save for that cargo net! Shameless plug as I've been looking for an OEM cargo net for 90 years with no luck.
    - Brent
    www.angry-ass.com

    Quote Originally Posted by danespann View Post
    Every E34 needs the same things in the end.

  9. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by BleedsBlue View Post
    It could be my own total lack of progress and deferment of even simple jobs, but I feel like you're moving dang fast on this one. It's motivating to watch!

    The trunk is complete...save for that cargo net! Shameless plug as I've been looking for an OEM cargo net for 90 years with no luck.
    Progress happens quickly when things are quite broken and when it’s your only car, haha.

    The next big thing will be suspension… here’s my current parts list:

    - Godspeed Monomaxx coilovers
    - Gangl roll center correction pucks (30mm)
    - Center link + tie rods (TRW was having a clearance sale on Rock Auto so it was dirt cheap)
    - Corteco idler arm bushing
    - Delphi thrust arms with no bushings
    - Mooseheads, whenever they ship from Angry Ass
    - Mevotech Supreme E31 lower control arms
    - Mevotech Supreme dogbones
    - Meyle HD sway bar end links + sway bar bushings

    I’m trying some different brands this time around, since a lot of the traditionally “good” brands like Lemforder have gone downhill in quality. We’ll see how it all works out, suspension stuff is easy to replace later on.

    I may also buy stuff to redo the brakes while I have everything apart… I have 540i calipers and brackets from that parts car so I would just need to buy some good pads (thinking about Stoptech Sports), rotors, brake lines, etc.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  10. #35
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    It feels like it's been forever since my last update, but it's been less than 3 weeks... a lot of work has happened, so let's go in chronological order:

    First up was the long-overdue suspension overhaul. Having just done the trip to Santa Fe and back with the BMW equivalent of the famous Jeep death wobble, I wasted no time in redoing the whole suspension.

    Looks like an E34 suspension exploded all over the floor:



    Oh did I mention that I had a major road trip planned like a day after this? I don't know why I keep doing this to myself.



    All of the old garbage. There was not a single usable piece in this whole pile... every ball joint was shot, the steering link was shot, the idler bushing was shot, all four shocks were completely blown, the thrust arm bushings were nonexistent, sway bar links were falling apart, etc. Truly a trashed 293k-mile suspension.



    With all the junk removed, it was time to start assembling the new bits. Earlier that day I got the Godspeed Monomaxx coilovers welded up by my local guy (GSK Fab, guy does amazing work). I did spray paint the welded area with a durable chassis paint— it almost feels like a shame to cover up the lovely welds, but I'd love for these to not rust. I had these welded to some random housings that I had laying around my shop, which totally didn't cause problems later (foreshadowing).



    Then it was time to press in the new Corteco idler bushing into the original idler arm.



    I forgot to take a pic of me pressing Mooseheads into new arms, but just imagine the above picture with a bigger arm and a bigger bushing going on.

    All the new parts prepped and ready to install:



    Everything went together in a predictable, anti-climactic way. It's almost like I've done this before, a dozen times, haha. I set the coilovers top hats to max camber, which ended up being around -1.8º, good enough for now.



    A forum member graciously sold me a set of the Gangl bump steer plates, which were out of stock at the time (AKG didn't have any of their plates in stock either). I have to say, the Gangl plates are sooooo much nicer to install than the AKG plates. Zero, and I mean zero filing was needed to make them fit. Everything fit beautifully and I was able to start all of the bolts by hand, now that's a good product! 10/10 on this one. It's also 30mm versus the 25mm of the AKG, so that's a neat bonus.



    All assembled with the wheel bearing:



    With a 20mm spacer, a 16" style 9 cleared adequately.



    Moving onto the rear, the coilover install was extremely straightforward, with nothing to really note. The old dogbones were extremely trashed, as visible in this comparison shot:



    The last bit was installing a rear sway bar. For reasons unknown to me, there was no rear sway bar on the car when I bought it, just some broken brackets and end links. Thankfully sway bar brackets are still readily in stock, so I grabbed a sway bar from upstairs and we were in business.



    The next morning, I got the car aligned and it was finally time to take some pics of the new ride height.





    Of course I wasn't done, so I moved on to gluing the new-to-me door panels back together. E6000 + clamps proved to be a winning combo.



    For the first time in ages, the car had decent rear door panels! These helped a ton with road noise too.



    The fuel door hinge showed up at some point too, so the fuel door was mounted, finally completing the car's exterior.



    The last thing I did was washing the car, because it was pretty dirty.





    I also figured out that the hood had been repainted in single-stage black, so after a bit of polishing it actually came back quite nicely.

    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  11. #36
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    After getting the car aligned and the interior back together, I set out for Salt Lake City, UT to go see a show with my girlfriend.

    To give you an idea on how tight the timeline was, I started the suspension refresh at like 1pm on a Wednesday, and started driving to Salt Lake City at 7pm on Thursday. Late Thursday night we stopped in Big Water, UT for the night. It was like 26ºF and the car's heat did a fantastic job keeping us warm during the drive.

    The next morning, I started the car up, waited for the 20W50 to turn from lard into oil, and continued the journey.

    Kanab, UT:



    Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, UT:



    And finally, in downtown Salt Lake City:





    On Saturday morning, I met up with a fellow E34 enthusiast, Mo, and we all had breakfast together. Good times, I love meeting fellow geeks.



    Later that morning, we headed back to Phoenix, this time doing the entire 11-hour drive in one stint. Having previously driven 16 hours through the dredges of Texas, this was relatively easy in comparison, with lots of pleasant views throughout.



    Shout-out to my Escort radar detector for saving me from excessive speed enforcement (aka profiteering off travelers). The amount of speed traps was just silly.





    The E34 drove flawlessly, keeping us warm, playing music, doing 85mph, and averaging a solid 27-28mpg throughout the trip. The new suspension performed flawlessly, with the new coilovers settling in nicely. We also got lucky in that we didn't encounter any ice or snow on the road itself, despite the temperatures hovering between 22º - 38ºF in Utah.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  12. #37
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    As well as the E34 did in its trip to Salt Lake City and back, it was not entirely without consequences. While driving down the rather bumpy roads of southern Utah, I noticed a thumping from the back of the car. When I got back home, I did some poking around and found that the back glass had started to come unglued on one side... just like the blue car. I always have such strange issues with my E34's, lol.

    The next day, my glass guy came by and we pulled the back glass out, finding that the adhesive had completely failed. It wasn't stuck to the glass at all, and I was able to peel the entire strip of adhesive off the body of the car in one piece with minimal effort. I guess sitting in the desert for 10+ years will do that.



    With everything cleaned and primed, the back glass was installed with some fancy new adhesive and fresh trim clips. The trick to E34 windshields and back windows is to install the new clips and trim onto the glass, and then install the glass into the car.



    While the rear of the interior was apart for the glass re-install, I vacuumed everything and swapped out the rear deck speakers, since the old ones were hilariously blown. A new thing I learned is that the rear deck speakers are the exact same as the kick panel speakers in the front... good thing I have lots of those.



    The last thing I did in the interior was cutting + splicing in a new section of door seal to fix the hilariously shrunken rear door seals. One side needed like 4 inches of trim spliced in, that's how shrunk it was.

    With the back window fiasco out of the way, I moved onto fixing a new problem that had surfaced after doing the suspension install— the ABS light had come on. I didn't have time to fix it before the Salt Lake City road trip, and thankfully I never encountered any situations where I would need the ABS. After some head-scratching and talking to Dane, we figured out that the strut housings I had welded the coilovers to were actually early housings, meaning they were meant for a wheel bearing/hub assembly with a large ABS pickup ring. I ordered a set of early-style Centric hubs on Rock Auto, and once they showed up, the difference was pretty apparent:



    Looking at the car, you can see how this makes a difference. Here's one side with the late-style hub assembly, and you can see how far the ABS sensor is from the pickup ring:



    Compare that to this, after I replaced the hub with the correct early-style hub.



    This fixed my ABS issues completely, and there don't seem to be any other ill effects from running early housings on a later car, so long as the hub-to-sensor clearance is correct. Perks of a stone-age ABS system, I suppose.

    While I had the car up on the lift to fix the ABS issue, I also took the opportunity to replace all 6 of the soft brake lines, which were cracked and quite original.





    Bleeding the brakes, the fluid started looking better real fast with the new lines. Round 1:



    Round 2:



    I stopped there because I'll end up bleeding the system again in the near future when I install the 540i brakes.

    Given the temporary nature of this 525i brake setup, I threw in some used pads to replace the hilariously worn rear pads.

    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  13. #38
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    And now that brings us to the latest road trip— LA for Radwood SoCal. After the last two road trips, driving to LA was an absolute breeze.

    Who needs overdrive?!



    Radwood SoCal was great, lots of cool 80's and 90's stuff there. Quite a few E34's, E28's, E23's, E30's, etc. Lots of air-cooled 911's and 944's too. Me, Kent, Gordon, and a dude with a white M5 got a nice little lineup of E34's going:



    Brian was there with his S52 E34 as well, but he was in the Royalty section because he thinks he's better than us (and can afford a $100 entry ticket, apparently). His car made the drive to LA and back pretty much flawlessly, which makes me feel good since I helped him install the cylinder head on it recently.

    Immediately after Radwood, Dane, Kent, and I drove to Palmdale, CA to grab some cheap BBS RX's that Dane had found for me on FB Marketplace. Somehow they were still available after being listed for months. They're a little rough but for how little I paid, I really can't complain about some real BBS wheels in 17x8 ET10. I'm thinking to make them my track wheels, hehe.

    With the BBS RX's secured, we headed down to where Brian was staying and picked up a set of five 17" style 5's from him, with brand new Continental DWS06 tires on them, score! Those will be my new daily wheels so I can give Dane his style 9's back... finally.

    Wheel haul at Kent's house:



    It's black E34 season here:



    The next day, the three of us hit up some good driving roads, going to Glendora Mountain Road:



    As well as San Gabriel Canyon Road:



    Admittedly, I'm a little out of practice, having not run too many canyons since totaling the white car, but I still had a ton of fun and my E34 performed well. The only thing that went wrong with it was something in the evap/fuel vapor purge system, which caused gas to bubble up and spew out of the gas cap halfway through the driving. I'll have to mess with that at some point.

    Having had our fun in LA, it was time to go home with all the goodies, which made for a thoroughly packed car.





    And with that, we're now caught up to where the car is today. Whew. More to come, I'm sure.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  14. #39
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    Danny, your project car turned out beautifully, black on black combination is timeless and the best!

    I love the way these cars are designed, solid durable and straight forward, minimal electronics, naturally aspirated, port injection, non vanos, no computer module resetting needed. The blown harness fuse was the only tricky troubleshooting that came up. I think the exterior polished up really nice. Another one saved, it was sad to see the donor car at the yard, as it seem in pretty good shape, but you can’t save them all 🤣😂.

    Nice job, can not wait for more updates!
    Last edited by E34 Lives; 11-22-2022 at 02:03 PM.

  15. #40
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    Nice dude, the stance is perfect. Great job on these updates as well, we love to see 'em!
    - Brent
    www.angry-ass.com

    Quote Originally Posted by danespann View Post
    Every E34 needs the same things in the end.

  16. #41
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    Quote Originally Posted by dannyzabolotny View Post
    Brian was there with his S52 E34 as well, but he was in the Royalty section because he thinks he's better than us (and can afford a $100 entry ticket, apparently). His car made the drive to LA and back pretty much flawlessly, which makes me feel good since I helped him install the cylinder head on it recently.
    I mean...

    Really wish I could have driven more with you guys, those Enkeis would have been egged for sure and then I get to replace yet more wheel bearings. Azusa is SUCH a nice road, now that it connects to ACH again we have the full SoCal Nurburgring experience.

  17. #42
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    Chapter long updates that i liiiive for!

    Again, not a huge stance guy here, but I really like that drop. It looks great!

    Question: have you ever managed to get those window trim clips in WITHOUT removing the window first? I’m in that position at the rear of my car currently. Removed the trim to clean, and just about every clip is now a goner.

  18. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by E34 Lives View Post
    Danny, your project car turned out beautifully, black on black combination is timeless and the best!

    I love the way these cars are designed, solid durable and straight forward, minimal electronics, naturally aspirated, port injection, non vanos, no computer module resetting needed. The blown harness fuse was the only tricky troubleshooting that came up. I think the exterior polished up really nice. Another one saved, it was sad to see the donor car at the yard, as it seem in pretty good shape, but you can’t save them all.

    Nice job, can not wait for more updates!
    Thank you! I'm not normally a black on black car guy, but I don't hate this one, haha. The paint's still pretty shot on the passenger side, but the car looks acceptable at this point, more than good enough for a 30 year old car.

    The car 540i/5 being parted out had some rust and a ton of hail damage, as well as 300k miles, so it wasn't the nicest car despite how it looked in pics.

    Quote Originally Posted by BleedsBlue View Post
    Nice dude, the stance is perfect. Great job on these updates as well, we love to see 'em!
    Thanks! Typing these up is certainly a labor of love, and it can be tricky to find time to sit down and put it all together.

    Quote Originally Posted by circuit.heart View Post
    I mean...

    Really wish I could have driven more with you guys, those Enkeis would have been egged for sure and then I get to replace yet more wheel bearings. Azusa is SUCH a nice road, now that it connects to ACH again we have the full SoCal Nurburgring experience.
    Oh it was a blast, but at the same time if you were there I'm sure we would have driven way more aggressively, for better or worse. I still remember the dumb stuff Dane and I did while chasing you around the hills near San Jose a while back.

    Quote Originally Posted by a777fan View Post
    Chapter long updates that i liiiive for!

    Again, not a huge stance guy here, but I really like that drop. It looks great!

    Question: have you ever managed to get those window trim clips in WITHOUT removing the window first? I’m in that position at the rear of my car currently. Removed the trim to clean, and just about every clip is now a goner.
    Due to how tightly the clips grab onto the window and the way they sit in the adhesive, it's damn near impossible to replace them with everything in place. If you don't want to deal with pulling the glass to replace the clips, you could use a bit of that window adhesive on the trim to stick it to the clip remnants.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  19. #44
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    Love seeing the progress man, great build!

    Greg

  20. #45
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    Having fixed a ton of irritating stuff, I rewarded the car with some normal maintenance at 318k miles (on the engine). Oil change, spark plugs, and a trans fluid change.



    The plugs looked like crap, which is to be expected considering I last did them when this engine was in the white car, at 307k miles. So they had 11k miles and 2 track days, generally running 87/86 octane aka whatever's cheapest.

    Nothing remarkable as far as oil goes, just a routine oil change with Castrol GTX 20W50. No sense running anything fancier when the engine burns a quart every 1000 miles or so. I replaced the oil cap since the old one's gasket wasn't holding up anymore... still need to wash the engine bay.



    As for trans fluid, I was previously running Redline D4 but I switched it out for Redline MT90 which is more of a gear oil. I figure it'll help with the warmer temperatures and track abuse, as this transmission is getting a little tired at the age and mileage it's at (318k miles, just like the engine). So far it feels good, so I'll report back on how it does with sustained aggressive driving.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  21. #46
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    The other day I did some work to make the interior slightly nicer, aka installing the lower dash piece on the driver's side.



    I also replaced the broken headlight switch with one that looks nicer *and* lights up at night.



    If y'all know me and my cars, you'd know that I love clear turn signal taillights, and this car is no different. My friend Ryan traded me these nice Depos in exchange for some work on his car.



    In addition to looking great, these new taillights fixed my brake light warning, caused by the passenger side taillight having a broken housing causing one of the brake light bulb sockets to not stay in. Look, an error-free dash for the first time in my ownership!



    Earlier today, Dane and I tackled fixing my busted sunroof. It barely tilted up before and didn't slide back at all, getting jammed when I tried. This caused the cables to skip and get out of sync, so I started having a ton of wind noise on the highway, super irritating!

    Since the sunroof didn't slide back at all, we had to resort to some... unorthodox methods to remove the sunroof panel. It wasn't pretty, but we got everything apart.



    I vacuumed out all the loose debris and dirt from the sunroof, along with blowing out the front sunroof drains. Then, using parts we picked up from a local E34 parts car, we reassembled the whole assembly (cables, carriage, rear deflector). It's actually a pretty simple system once you take a minute to learn how it all works.



    Reinstalling the sunroof panel, we aligned it to the car, sync'd the motor to open/close correctly, installed the sunroof headliner, and we were left with a sunroof that worked perfectly. It tilts up quickly, slides forward/back completely, and one-touch works as intended. I'm not really a big sunroof user (I would've rather had a slicktop) but at least this one closes properly now.



    Testing it on the highway, it's nice and quiet from the sunroof, even going into triple-digit speeds. Excellent!

    The one remaining thing that needed to be fixed was a rattle coming from the sunroof motor area, which we figured out to be some loose cables + the motor rubbing against stuff. Some foam + zip ties + shims fixed that nicely.



    Never a dull moment with this car, haha.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  22. #47
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Location
    MA
    Posts
    6,285
    My Cars
    ///M5
    Nice progress Danny. Car’s coming together nicely.

    Thanks for coming out my way a few weeks ago. Was great to see you again and great to meet Dane.




    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Current
    2005 E55 AMG
    1998 Silverado K1500
    1964 Impala
    ​1964 Chevelle 496ci


    Past

    2000 Avus M5
    1988 Suburban K1500
    1987 Suburban K2500
    2007 Suburban
    1999 K2500 Suburban
    2000 MGM
    1999 K2500 Suburban
    2001 Stratus 740i Msport
    1990 750iL
    1995 540i/6
    1996 MGM

  23. #48
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Los Gatos, CA
    Posts
    2,795
    My Cars
    05 330i
    Nice to see you back in another E34 project.
    One of these days your thread will be convincing enough, if it wasn't for damn covid pricing.
    05 330i Alpine White
    Past:
    02 330i Titanium Silver
    R56 MCS
    00 540i6

  24. #49
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    Tempe, AZ
    Posts
    7,658
    My Cars
    1995 525i/5
    Quote Originally Posted by Leonator134 View Post
    Nice progress Danny. Car’s coming together nicely.

    Thanks for coming out my way a few weeks ago. Was great to see you again and great to meet Dane.
    Good to see you again too! The parts have all been put to good use as well, those seats finally went into my friend's 540i last week. Cycle of life and whatnot!

    That green chile burger at The Mineshaft was so freakin' good, I still remember it.

    Quote Originally Posted by justinca540i View Post
    Nice to see you back in another E34 project.
    One of these days your thread will be convincing enough, if it wasn't for damn covid pricing.
    Prices are starting to come down to reality a bit more nowadays, which is nice. Good deals are still out there if the car needs some work (aka every E34 I've owned).
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  25. #50
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    Tempe, AZ
    Posts
    7,658
    My Cars
    1995 525i/5
    Finally installed the style 5's that I got from Brian. Had to roll/beat the fenders a bit to avoid excessive rubbing, as the 245/45/17 tires are slightly too large for this car. The Conti DWS06's are comfortable and quiet though, I'll give them that.





    The center caps needed a little work, mostly in the emblems. Thankfully SSF had a bunch of the 70mm Genuine BMW stickers in stock, so I got the center caps looking real nice in no time at all.





    Much better. It goes from looking like a clapped E36 to a proper gentleman's E34 with the center caps.



    Earlier today, Dane and I did our semi-regular ritual of ignoring work/responsibilities to run South Mountain in the morning when it's free of tourists and normies doing 15mph. It was a good run, though I definitely noticed I need a smaller steering wheel that's spaced closer to me, I ended up sitting in a real awkward position.





    In the interest of full transparency, here is the ugly side of my car:



    Dane grabbed this pic of me standing around, waiting for a decent gap to open up for a fast downhill run.



    Next up is installing wheel studs, a replacement gauge cluster, and beating/rolling the fenders/quarters some more.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

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