The Orient Express aka Danny's 540i6 Thread

[justinca540i]

Safe travels!

I am also in East Bay area, so perhaps we will run into each other at a BMW event

[dannyzabolotny]

Safe travels!

I am also in East Bay area, so perhaps we will run into each other at a BMW event

Oh I'll be in the Bay Area plenty, I know a ton of BMW people there so our paths will cross sooner or later.

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This past weekend an old high school friend of mine was in town and I figured we'd take a quick little trip up to Prescott, AZ since he had never been there and I wanted to visit it one last time before I move. The 540i did a perfectly fine job of getting us there and back, passed 296k miles.

[BleedsBlue]

I'm not getting tired of that color on those wheels

[dannyzabolotny]

I've secured a place to live in Sacramento, so now the preparation for the next phase of the move beings. Car parts are much easier to transport when they're installed on a car, so I took a moment to do the rear pads + rotors + sensor, since I had the parts laying around for a while now.



The old rotors had a big lip and were super grooved, and the pads were pretty much smoked as well. Only reason I didn't have a pad wear warning was because somebody had previously twisted the wires together on the old sensor instead of replacing it. Good thing I had a new pad wear sensor in stock in my home collection.



I went with Zimmermann coated rotors and Stoptech Sport pads, I've run that setup before and I find it to be a decent combo. I'll do the same on the front once those need replacing.



With the brakes done, I went to a crappy little car show with Dane, since the big weekly car show here seems to have called it quits for the summer... lame.



After that, we went to our favorite local road (Tortilla Flat) and had some fun. Dane's 535i has very sticky 200tw tires and I've got brand new Conti DWS06+ tires, so neither of us were really anywhere near close to our cars' limits on this run. Was a great time either way, nice to run this road one more time before I move away. Dane took some long exposure pics at the end of the road with his good camera so maybe I'll throw these in whenever he sends me them. In the meantime, here's a pic of our cars at the nearby gas station afterwards:



Earlier today, I prepped for moving by installing a Curt trailer hitch on the 540i. It's actually the same hitch Kurtis used on his 535i/5 (Bronzit Bomber v2) when he moved from Dallas to Philly (Dane bought it during the partout of that car), so it's certainly seen some use. I don't need to transport my entire house with this, just some preliminary stuff with a U-Haul 4x8/5x8 until we do the big U-Haul truck move in the middle of the month.

I started by removing the bumper cover from the crash bar, what's surprising is that all of the trims came off perfectly and not a single clip broke anywhere. PNW cars are the best, I still stand by that. With the metal crash bar exposed, I was able to take some very precise measurements (aka squinting and eyeballing) to get the hitch mounted.



After drilling some holes in the bumper cover, I reassembled everything, and it all went back together very nicely.







All I have to do now is get a U-Haul wiring harness to make things work electrically. I'll probably raise the rear a good bit to compensate for the extra weight and perhaps I'll run some slightly smaller spacers so there's no risk of any tire rubbing under load.

[Mama Tried]

Congrats on the move! Hope to see you at an event.
Rob

[circuit.heart]

Good luck with the move! See ya soon.

[dannyzabolotny]

On Friday I picked up the 5x8 trailer from U-Haul. Hooked it up, plugged it into the U-Haul wiring harness I had wired in the day prior, and we were ready to go. Driving the trailer back home, I noticed it was rather bouncy in the back and that the tires were still rubbing, so I removed the 20mm rear spacers and put on 5mm ones. Looks stupid but zero rubbing, yay. Also cranked the rear coilover damping up a good bit to make for less bouncing in the rear.

On Saturday, I picked up some new clutch fan blades and reinstalled the clutch fan for the first time since October. I figured I would need all the cooling I could get when towing a trailer for 900 miles.



With that done, we were ready to go, so Sunday morning we packed our final belongings into the trailer, put our cats in their carriers, and set our sights on Sacramento. The first two hours or so were pretty straightforward, aside from the cats meowing loudly the entire time (they hate being in a car).

At the first fuel stop in Quartzsite, I calculated the fuel economy to be 15mpg, yikes. Granted, I was doing 75-80 the whole time with a very un-aerodynamic trailer, so I dunno what I was expecting. The car seemed to not mind otherwise, and after the 3 hour mark, the cats finally mellowed out to where I could enjoy the drive.

Of course, it couldn't be that easy...

While passing through the windmill area of the I-10 (known as the San Gorgonio Pass) I noticed the car was shaking a good bit, and while I initially attributed it to poor road quality and/or the strong winds, I noticed I was having trouble maintaining 65 up the hills. Downshifting to 5th and then to 4th, I was able to maintain speed, but I was hearing popping sounds, indicating a misfire. Not knowing if this was due to fuel starvation or something else, I pulled off at the next exit and evaluated.

What I noticed was that the engine was running rather poorly, on about 6-7 cylinders at most, shaking the car quite a bit, but it wasn't dying and I could still rev it out, so that eliminated fueling as the culprit. Being an OBDI car, the CEL was not on and even if it was, it wouldn't tell me anything useful. I didn't have any spare parts on me either, so I couldn't really do much diag on the side of the road. It was at this point that I had to make the call on what to do next, and since I had some very unhappy cats in the back seat, I needed to get this drive done ASAP, so I made the decision to press on.

I figured the closer I got to my destination, the cheaper a tow would be if the engine blew up. It's just an M60, those aren't expensive or difficult to find, so whatever. I changed my driving strategy a little, relying more on 4th and 5th gears when going up hills, as I noticed the engine would start bogging and shaking real bad if it got below 2500rpm. Of course there was somehow a ton of traffic on the I-10 and 210 going through LA, as if I wasn't already somewhat stressed. At least the car wasn't overheating (yet... foreshadowing here).

Going up the Tejon Pass on the I-5 was tricky, thanks to a combination of reduced horsepower, higher altitude, and hauling a trailer. I was going pretty hard in 3rd gear at one point in the right lane while getting passed by trucks, that was a whole basket of fun. Making it past that, the going got a little easier on the flatter grounds of the Central Valley. Gassing up again in Bakersfield, I noted the fuel economy was 14mpg, which wasn't the end of the world considering how piss-poor the engine was running.



Soldiering on, everything was going fine and at about 1.5 hours left I was starting to feel like I was in the home stretch, having already covered around 10 hours of driving. Figuring I needed to gas up once more before reaching Sacramento, I stopped around Lathrop and was met with a "check coolant level" message upon turning the engine off. Uh oh.

Opening the hood, I saw some steam around the heater valve but I didn't see a ton of coolant leaking out. I figured I was close enough to my destination that I would just send it. So we got going again, with the AC off, driving gently, but the coolant temps start creeping up a bit until they got to around 3/4. Hearing hissing sounds and seeing steam from under the hood, I got off at the next exit and as soon as I stopped the car it was just a total smokeshow from under the hood. At this point, I could see the leak was coming from the heater valve, specifically the auxiliary water pump. Not having any parts with me, I bought some cheap pre-mixed coolant from the gas station, dumped in almost 2 gallons of it, and hit the road again, figuring I could maybe limp it along with the occasional top-up.

This was rather short-lived, as the engine was no longer interested in containing coolant for any amount of time, and I was off the highway again at the next exit after a lovely "coolant temp" warning. By this point, I had made it to downtown Stockton, and I was welcomed by a very friendly array of unhoused locals. Thankfully I had enough dollar bills to keep them off my back, and they generally left me alone after that.

We were a little over an hour away from our destination and it was around 10pm at this point so every parts store was solidly closed; I was about to give up and call AAA to pick up my car & trailer and send my girlfriend + the cats off to Sacramento in an Uber. But then I had a genius idea to bypass the heater valve entirely... using a 15mm deep socket. I've done bypasses like this before but with slightly nicer barbed fittings from a hardware store.

Grabbing my tools from the trunk and double-layering my nitrile gloves to minimize how much I burned my hands on the scalding-hot... everything, I got to work. Once I started taking things apart I realized that the leak was caused by the auxiliary water pump hose flange completely crumbling apart— what an absolutely crummy time for it to do that, jeez.

Jamming the 15mm socket into the end of the coolant hose going from the back of the coolant manifold, I cranked the hose clamp down tight, and then finished the loop by grabbing the hose end that goes into the heater core from the 3-way hose that goes to the expansion tank. I also remembered to grab some crappy pictures for posterity.





Was it kinda ghetto? Absolutely. But it held and didn't leak at all, so after dumping in some more generic gas station coolant (I really need to do a flush after this) I was back on the road. After momentarily going into the red again, the cooling system finally burped some air and the temps stabilized to perfectly in the middle. I was extremely relieved, as was my girlfriend. Shout-out to my cats for generally being chill about this, they were very well-behaved during this whole little crisis which made it just that much easier to deal with things.

At this point I was happy to finish the trip with *only* a bad misfire. I felt like a much lamer version of a WWII B-17 bomber pilot, trying to make it home with a tattered plane after battle. Finally, we reached our new (rental) house in Sacramento, ending what had now become a 14-hour journey. The best part was that after all of this, I still had to completely unload the trailer because my bed and mattress were packed deep in there. Needless to say, I was excited to go to sleep.

Earlier this morning I noticed the entire back and driver's side of the car were covered in coolant residue, haha.



All in all, the 540i did make it to its destination, and I'm thankful for that. It was probably not the wisest choice to tow a trailer 900 miles in a car with 300k miles, but sometimes you just gotta go for it.

I still have to figure out what's causing the misfire, but that's a problem for another day, once I get the rest of my tools and parts up here next weekend. For now, the 540i is tucked away in the garage, which is the first time I can say that in my ownership of it (I haven't had a personal garage since like 2017).

[R Shaffner]

Wow. What an ordeal. Glad it's behind you.

About my car I've often said, "Sometimes I take care it of it, and other times it takes care of me." Like how people use to treat a loved and reliable workhorse.

[clarkitect]

A trip to remember! Best of luck in the new digs!

[BleedsBlue]

That was a good save. It's not the first (or even the 3rd time) I've heard of an aux water pump bypass saving an E34 on a roadtrip!

[circuit.heart]

I'm gonna keep a 15mm in my car from now on. My aux pump looks healthy but as you found out, it's all a gamble at 30 years old.

[Michael97528i]

My original AUX pump went last year at around 168K miles on my '95 530. Fortunately caught it when it was just starting to leak while doing other work on the car. Probably a good item to inspect regularly at this age.

[dannyzabolotny]

Wow. What an ordeal. Glad it's behind you.

About my car I've often said, "Sometimes I take care it of it, and other times it takes care of me." Like how people use to treat a loved and reliable workhorse.

Yep, at the end of the day the car made it to the destination, even with the engine running poorly. That's the beauty of these old OBDI cars... even when something is seriously wrong, they just keep chugging along.

A trip to remember! Best of luck in the new digs!

Thanks!

That was a good save. It's not the first (or even the 3rd time) I've heard of an aux water pump bypass saving an E34 on a roadtrip!

I'm used to bypassing the heater valve when they start sticking and causing AC to not work properly (the most common issue in hot climates). This is actually the first time I've had to bypass it due to a leak.

I'm gonna keep a 15mm in my car from now on. My aux pump looks healthy but as you found out, it's all a gamble at 30 years old.

I might just start keeping a barbed fitting in the trunk tool kit, in addition to the fuel pump that I usually keep in the spare tire well.

My original AUX pump went last year at around 168K miles on my '95 530. Fortunately caught it when it was just starting to leak while doing other work on the car. Probably a good item to inspect regularly at this age.

The strange thing is that this aux water pump didn't leak or show any signs of failure prior to catastrophically failing. 30 year old plastic will do that, I suppose.

[dannyzabolotny]

It's been a few weeks since I parked the 540i— the E46 has been doing all the heavy lifting and daily driving in the meantime.

I've gotten mostly settled in at home, and I've found a good shop to work at (Lubo's Bavarian). I feel right at home here:





Funnily enough, the first job I did at this shop was a water pump on an E32 740il with 265k miles. Piece of cake.



So far I've worked on an E32, E46, E30, and an F10, plenty of fun old stuff between the modern stuff.



Anyways, going back to the 540i, I finally got the garage at home to a decent place, with good lighting and enough room to work.



Backed the 540i in, since there's more room to work that way and it's nice to be near the door for some fresh air (it actually cools down nicely at night here in Sacramento).



The first order of business was checking compression, since it didn't seem like a spark/fueling issue. The plugs all looked okay:



Moving onto compression testing the engine, cylinders 1-3 were all solid, at 150+ psi each. However, once I got to cylinder 4, I immediately found the problem:



Yep, 0 psi on that cylinder, with a very smooth, resistance-free cranking sound. I remember hearing a ticking noise around the exhaust in conjunction with the misfire, so I suspect there's a burnt or damaged exhaust valve. I'll see if I can borrow a proper boroscope from work tomorrow to confirm my suspicions.

It's not the worst outcome I suppose, the bank 1 cylinder head is relatively easy to pull since the steering lines/steering box/oil filter housing aren't in the way. And since the head gasket hasn't been compromised by overheating, I should be able to just clean up the head, throw some new valves in it, and install it with a new head gasket.

[Jcbe34]

That sucks- have you decided to keep this thing? I swear I saw it for sale somewhere recently, no?

Either way, new garage looks good and the shop you're working at looks like it'll be a great fit. Hopefully Sacramento supports the E34 weekend adventure lifestyle like AZ did

[dannyzabolotny]

That sucks- have you decided to keep this thing? I swear I saw it for sale somewhere recently, no?

Either way, new garage looks good and the shop you're working at looks like it'll be a great fit. Hopefully Sacramento supports the E34 weekend adventure lifestyle like AZ did

Seems like it's sticking around for the time being. I posted it up back when I was living in Phoenix because I figured it would be nice to have the money for moving + not have to drive an extra vehicle to Sacramento, but I actually did not get a single serious inquiry, crazy. I mostly had people telling me I was insane for asking real money for it because somehow the mileage makes it worthless.

There's plenty of places nearby to drive to, I went up to a lake like an hour from my house last weekend, it was nice. Lake Tahoe is like 2 hours away, the Bay Area is like 1.5-2 hours away, Sonoma and Thunderhill are relatively close by, so there's a lot of new places for me to explore here.

I looked at the cylinders today with a boroscope and while I didn't get a clear answer, I did see a whole lot of carbon buildup on the valves along with some pitting. I'll probably just go ahead and pull the cylinder head on Friday and see what route I need to take.

[BleedsBlue]

I love the realization that non-AZ cities are not hot 24/7

Awesome you already found a source of income, too!

[dannyzabolotny]

The weather was pretty nice this morning so I started the process for pulling the head, and I guess it went so smoothly that I got the hood off in about 3 hours of work, with just hand tools. All that M6x experience from my shop is really paying off, haha.

As I suspected, I burned an exhaust valve on cylinder 4. If I had to guess why, I would attribute it to towing a trailer up hills while in 6th gear instead of downshifting, so it put a lot of load on the engine at low RPM and probably generated a lot of heat inside the cylinder. Oh well, live and learn!





On a positive note, the cylinder walls look fantastic for having almost 300k miles on the original Nikasil block. No scoring and the factory crosshatching is still clearly visible. That's good to see, it means the engine is worth fixing.





On Monday I'll contact some local machine shops for an estimate and will most likely just end up replacing the two exhaust valves on cylinder 4 myself. And then I'll clean and lap all the other valves, throw new valve stem seals on em, and put everything back together with a new head gasket. Easy enough.

[m60power]

Excellent work! Glad you're going to fix the motor back to health. Nikasil is remarkable (assuming it survived the high sulfur fuels of the 90s), and it is objectively a much higher performance and more durable cylinder wall surface for aluminum blocks compared to Alusil, or steel or iron sleeves.

Did you find the piece of metal that fractured from that exhaust valve?

[dannyzabolotny]

Excellent work! Glad you're going to fix the motor back to health. Nikasil is remarkable (assuming it survived the high sulfur fuels of the 90s), and it is objectively a much higher performance and more durable cylinder wall surface for aluminum blocks compared to Alusil, or steel or iron sleeves.

Did you find the piece of metal that fractured from that exhaust valve?

I didn't find any pieces of metal so I'm assuming it just went out the exhaust. I did hear some popping noises in the exhaust when this first happened. I don't see any impact marks or evidence of getting into the cylinder so I'm not going to worry too much about it.