Stoney's E34 535i

[Stoney]

Well, finally today i took some photos of the old girl, so i thought she was worthy of a topic now that most of it's completed and on the road registered

Ok, the story

It all started when i was scouring ebay for a cheap car to use until i had the funds to upgrade to something better, as i had just returned from Europe travelling for a while, i stumbled upon a 1990 E34 535i, and the owner was unsure of why it didn't run, all he knew was that the engine has started to be dismantled - inlet and exhaust removed, etc he had just picked it up cheap to fix, but kdidn't know the first thing about cars

Thats where i step in, i picked it up for a prety good price - sight unseen though and got it car carried back to my home town from Sydney to Bellingen

Here are the photos of it from ebay

[Stoney]

Ok, next stage is where the fun begins, first thing i did was diagnose the fault with the engine, and that it had a headgasket leak, me being a qualfifed mechanic for 5 years helped in this department

I stripped what else was required to take the head off - which was basically head bolts and timing chain, the rest was undone and i was a bit worried that i was missing half of it, and i wouldn't know until i refitted all the parts that were in the boot - luckily enough, the only things missing were a few nuts and washers

once the head was removed I discovered that the headgasket between the coolant gallery to cylinder 6 has corroded and that was the issue

So i could have just replaced the headgasket and been done with it, but figured with what i have here being such a nice example, i may aswell rebuild the head completely for future reference and peace of mind, so i got it crack and pressure tested, then a complete rebuild on the head including reseating the valves etc

Bought the required parts i needed off "Marcinek" on here for a cheaper price than anywhere else i looked, those parts being
-VRS kit
-exhaust manifold nuts
-thermostat and o-ring
-oil filters

the rest of the parts like fuel and vacuumhoses, oil, fuel filter, hose clamps, i got off my mate who works at repco (its handy knowing people in the right places)

I figured i may as well replace all the hose clamps - as half of them failed when i was doing them up, and also all the fuel line and vacuum line i could get to as they were getting old and hard, it is nearly a 20 year old vehicle

So i started putting it all together again, and had a few minor hurdles along the way, mainly being to try and fit the head and inlet whilst still having the exhaust manifolds attached the the exhaust system - not possible to do with three people, if the steering box wasn't in the way or my mates had more endurance in their arms to hold the head still, it might have been possible

anyway, i then proceeded to remove the exhaust manifolds, low and behold, i snap an exhaust stud in the manifold from the down pipe connection, so that then required me to extract the broken stud, which led me to just drilling it out and retapping it for an M10 exhaust stud to replace the long spring setup M8 studs

once that was sorted, i fitted the manifolds to the head and put it all in as one - nice and heavy

somewhere along the way i had downloaded the bentley E34 manual, i had a basic read of that, but the whole process reminded me of a faclon headgasket replacement, and seeing as i've dont countless amounts of them, this was all straight forward

I had the rocker cover and inlet acid bathed to remove the cosmoline, and decided the paint the rocker cover

[Stoney]

Now that the engine was reassembled, with all new fuel/vacuum lines, clamps, oil and filters

It was time to start it

Jumper pack on the flat battery and voila, started first go!

Let it get hot and then followed the procedure to retorque the head once it was warm

Now that it was running, i turned my attention elsehwere to see what else was required to get it registered and pass a blueslip

all lights worked - i have since adjusted the headlights and fitted some slightly whiter/bluer bulbs, no longer yellow

the tyres were what worried me, whilst the all had enough tread on them to pass a blueslip, the problem was they were all mismatched

the rear tyres were 195/65R15's, whilst the fronts were 205/65R15 and a 225/60R15, all on the standard BBS rim, and just to top it off, the spare was a flat 195/65 too, so i decided i needed 4 new tyres for the rims, was very close to purchasing a set for around $500 delivered for some good khumos, when EBAY came to the rescue!!

Firstly a couple pictures of the finished engine bay

[Ade]

That rocker cover has come up nicely ~ the highlighted details on the black base really look good.

[Stoney]

Anyway, EBAY find number 2!

Another E34 535i was being offered, and it came with 17" style 48 rims and near new tyres, however it had a front end crash, which made it basically undrivable - fine with me, as it ewas going to be a parts car

So i bought it and got it delivered, and it was in much better condition that i had anticipated, the bonus thing, was although in the photos of it on ebay i knew it had side and rear skirts, it came with the front as well

So in my possesion is a complete genuine M-tech 'aero' bodykit - which is a kit that slips onto the standard bumpers

I'm tossing up whether to fit the kit eventually or sell it

Anyway, as i'm swapping the wheels over, i notice the rear shocks on my 'to be' registered car are yellow, closer inspection reveals i have KONI yellow shocks at all four corners, matched with what i'm still trying to find out, but what i think is KONI springs too!!! BONUS!!

I wiped these down with a wet rag, and they came up like new, no stubborn road grime, scratches etc on them, which along with what appears to be new strut tops, gives me the feeling that they aren't very old

So i also swapped over a few other suspension parts, like rear dogbones, LHF control arm, as the bush in mine was shagged, whilst the bush/arm on the wrecked car was good, pity the D/S one was bent

im after a set if anyone has some, condition is not important, they are to just go onto the parts car so both wheels are straight again, as the drivers side wheel currently rubs the rear of the inner guard it's pushed that far back, so i will chain pull straight the front end and throw in a set of used arms, just so i can roll it around easily,

I also destroyed the P/S/F ball joint thread trying to get it out of my road car, no amount of anything would remove it from the hub, in the end i removed the whole hub and control arm from the car to get at it, as pullers, even a cheap ball joint seperator wouldn't do the job, trusty hammer and bench vice got it - wasted an hour of my time

So now the suspension is sorted on the road car for now

[Stoney]

Now that she ran nicely - after i replaced the siezed ICV with a better condition one from the parts car, had a good stance to it with the 17"s, matched tyres, no worn suspension components

the next thing to tackle was why the temp guage sat at just over 1/2, i had only been idling it for short periods at a time, so it had water in it, till i flushed that out properly

the radiator had a cracked plastic outlet pipe on it, whilst i could still do up a hose clamp over it, it was dodgy, so out with that radiator and in with the parts car one, another BONUS! the radiaotr has a sticker on it thats not even 2 years old, looks to have been flushed and cleaned up, as its painted black, so i put that in the car, along with an uncracked fan blade and coolant

now the temp sits at just under 1/2 and never variates from there

My car also came without a headunit, it still had fron speakers, so i decided to see what they were, BONUS! Nakamichi components

So next thing to do was to swap over the Pioneer headunit from the parts car, and wait for it, BONUS! the front compononets from that car to the rear of my car too, so now my E34 had a pretty decent headunit (pity about the colour) and component speakers at all for corners, that was all done the night before my blue slip inspection

Future plans for the stereo include - now that i have had it playing for a month- fixing the small rattles in or around the RHR speaker, working out why the DSF speaker isn't as loud as the others, and then wiring in a sub and amp to better tune the components for quality midrange and high end.

So, the morning comes for the blueslip, i take it there, drop it off, and impatiently wait around all day at work, until i go pick it up that arvo, with a pass!!

Oh yeah!! look out people, i'm on the road!

[Stoney]

So now that she was on the road, and all the main issues were sorted out, i didn't worry too much about anything else for now

i just drove it, and drove it, and drove it, in the first 3 weeks of having it rego'd (god damn that costs so much these days) i had travelled over 1,000kms, i have sionce done 1,500kms with no dramas at all, and i plan on doing another oil change in the next week or two

anyway, a spirited run up dorrigo mountains with some mates in a WRX, Cefiro and a Silvia, really suprised me and them at how well my car performed, sadly being an auto, it didn't have the punch out of the corners that i would have liked, and that is where they pulled away from me, but under brakes and corner speed, i had them, the WRX was the only one to pull away, downhill was a different story, the WRX and me, left the other two behind when it came to corners and braking, even then the WRX was stuggling to have any faster corner speed, that little drive showed me that i do need to fine tune the KONI's and the dampening is either too soft for the springs, or vice versa, yet to play with the adjustment on them

So fast forward to today, and i just finished polishing the old girl for the first time, and let me tell you, while the paint is stunning for a 20 year old car, it needs a really good cut, there is still many imperfections on the paint, a few scratches here and there, and i reckon a day with the paintless dent removal guy wouldn't hurt either, nearly every panel, has some minor minor dent on it, nothing you notice until you are on your knees centimetres away from the panel polishing it

So without further adue, cue the drumroll x-x-x-x-x-x

Here is how she sits as of today!

[Ade]

Nice going, Stoney! It looks as if you had a real run of luck with this one. It's working out very nicely indeed. Good work!

[Stoney]

future plans include fitting the body kit from the other car, but not the boot spoiler

swapping interiors over, they are the same, but the hoodlining in mine is drooping, and in the parts car, it has had the hoodlining and pillars all retrimmed recently

and also the door trims in the parts car are in better condition, as on mine, all the vinyl is starting to shrink and lift at the edges

I also swapped over the rear number plate garnish from the parts car onto mine

I will also fit the BMW tips from the other car onto my exhaust at some stage

I also want to go a little lower in the suspension height, it does handle very nicely now, and is purely a visual choice, but there is no rush

Th great thing about the parts car, was that anything that was shitty on mine, is in excellent condition on the parts car, so i haven't really had to buy anything yet

The only purchases so far other than mentioned in the first post
-a new RHF bumper protection insert, as the old one was cracked and rough, i sanded and painted the other side, and it looks good enough to pass all visual inspections
-4 H1 globes, to replace the stock ones, with a more whiter light, updates the look of the car at night
-i bought some hubcentric spigot rings as i assumed the rims needed them due to a vibration i was having, and because they should hvae being later model style wheels - turns out these rims dont need them, so they must be replicas designed for the E34, so now i have a set of spigot rings for sale, PM me

here is the parts car, and the body kit it has, also a close up of the headunit and wheels too

[Stoney]

and now for mods to the car

I just purchased an EBAY chip designed for the 535i from the US, so once that arrives, i will go to my friends workshop where they have a Mainline AWD dyno, and i will perform a before and after run to see if there is any differences, and also to check AFR's and what not at the same time

On a side note - if there is enough generated interest, we could have a dyno day there and a meet up, it's at Coffs Harbour, so sort of midway between brisbane and sydney, i will start a new topic regarding that

I considered at first removing the resonators, but all internet searching revealed was that it didn't give it a louder sound, just made it raspier, then i contemplated changing the rear muffler for something a third of it's weight and straight through - which is stil an option, but i'm in no rush to throw away another $300 or so, after fitting it, and the only gain will be a deeper note, it still is auto, so i dont want anything loud

I did last weekend play around with the inlet a little, nothing ground breaking or really worthwhile, but the standard inlet pipe to the airbox is around 60mm, whilst the hole into the aiorbox is around 85mm, so i removed the stock pipe, and modded a piece of PVC tubing to fit with a flared bell end on it, and then partitioned off that area from the rest of the engine bay - i plan on remaking the shielding with aluminium or perspex at a later date, this was just a mock up test

I plan on at some stage, studying up on how the KONI's work, and which way is which when it comes to adjusting them, and also how to on the rear ones, and play around with the settings

as for the photo, its not permanent and already removed, its just a template if i decide to make up a partition, theres no reason why the stock airbox cant be selaed off to just the cold air, also the new inlet isn't present in that photo

[Bing Bong]

I think it needs the Mtec, but otherwise it looks sweet. I would quite like one as a daily for myself but maybe a less sporty one! Want to handle those pot holes like a cloud!

[Stoney]

This is very tame around town, and until you throw it into a corner you wouldn't realise that it has some firm suspension underneath it

maybe thats because i was accustomed to my old daily S13 Silvia that had some rock hard, super low suspension

after looking at these photos of mine i took today, i really think it needs to be just a little lower, like another 30-40mm in the rear and another 15-20mm in the front, that way it will make the side skirts level to the ground, and lower all round

I'm happy with the wheels, but if someone was interested in a swap for something more aggressive, i'd consider it, wider and less offset for me!!

[Nutza]

Stoney, the more you study the stock airbox design (and the exhaust) the more you will see that this is one place the engineers had their day. That airbox has a massive filter and is probably one of the most efficient designs I've ever seen. It would have been better on the LHS of the bay, but that was a matter that depended on placement of other parts such as brake master cyl, ABS and steering hardware (on every M30 engined car since they were first made). It probably makes little difference but the input venturi you removed could do something like restrict the intake of particles without reducing flow (it depends on the turbulence created behind the grille/lights) but those engineers think about all this. The rear muffler is just what an exhaust engineer would do to give power (just look at what they did to cram it in there- that was certainly a team on a mission working) and no matter what we do to an e34 exhaust very little will improve it. Few know, but they change the e34 exhausts on all e34s- engine, year- it all means small (and some big) differences in the exhaust hardware. I reckon about all one can do is put on a 750 muffler (which weighs more) but looks nice. You'll only get power out of it by increasing fuel though, and I mean cams or FI, not throttle body, injectors, engine management. The M30 e34 was pretty polished, about the only thing they could have done better is optimised the steering and brake systems for RHD models and used Stainless exhausts (from the cat back) which was simply not feasible at the time. Instead every one was the best they could do in galvalnised metal. This was the period that all cars were moving to ULP and exhaust manufacturers were greeting requests for SS hardware with polite WTF responses...

If anyone doesn't believe me about the exhaust, take a look at an M5 (it is almost the same as an M30B35 car), where they were getting more power pre cc than just about any engine on the planet. Is there any way they would have accepted short cuts in the exhaust design when they changed practically everything else?)

I have a loud SS exhaust on an M30, anyone that wants it can have it if the swap me a good resonator so I then put my old one back on

Well done with your efforts so far, the nicest thing about these cars is what isn't immediately apparent. Enjoy the ride, and be sure to take care good care of the auto and the cooling system... (you want to conduct several oil changes and run Castrol Transmax Z synthetic instead of Dexron II). It is far better fluid and is approved by ZF for the 4HP22EH. The right synthetic in the diff is a good idea too- and check that your brake fluid is Super Dot 4, most ppl use Dot 4 and that is not so good for these systems). After that, a decent start is a Megasquirt ECU which allows you to add whatever you want on the fuelling side of things and always be able to tune for maximum efficiency and horsepower and sniff out things that are not quite up to scratch in the engine.

[Stoney]

Thanks for the input

I'm well aware that unfortunately these dont give results with any form of basic mods, so all i am doing is just playing around, and so far anything i have done is easily reversible back to standard, hence why i am hesitant in even considering changing the exhaust

I figure though that shileding the inlet from the engine bay hot air, and increasiong the diameter of the airbox feed with a larger similar design to standard wont cause any reverse side effects, but as said, i can change it to stock easily

Interesting that you mention the auto, diff and brakes, which are the only three things i haven't touched yet

The diff oil looks pretty new, i found this out when my speedo stopped working one morning, so i scoured the net for issues that cause this, and figured the diff speed sensor is the likely culprit, so one saturday i jacked the rear end up and proceeded to remove the sensor, which entailed lowering the whole diff assembly, all up it took less than an hour to complete, the magnetic part of the sensor was covered in metal paste, which once cleaned and refitted, worked fine, i then figured i may as well clean all the ABS sensors too, which all had a bit of metal filings on them but not very bad, when i had the sensor out though i did notice that the oil was very clean and full

But next time im at my mates workshop i will check the fluid level and type

As for the brake fluid, so far other than checking it's colour and level in the master cylinder i haven't done much about it, but on my spirited run up and down the mountains, not once did i have brake fade, mates in their silvia and cefiro started getting fade, when i stopped at the bottom of the hill, my front rotors had a faint glow about them, yet still worked admirably

The issue with my Auto is the fact that it's a sealed unit, and the tube where the dipstick should be has a breather unit there instead, where as my 12/1989 model has a dipstick there, ideally i would love to just swap the dipstick over and do a complete flush and fit an external oil cooler, and there is a tiny oil leak out of the selector rod seal, on a plus note though, the oil leaking from the trans is very red and clean!

So future maintenance things i want to do include
-auto service and flush, with a possible inclusion of an external cooler
-brake fluid flush
-wheel balance
-wheel alignment - does anyone have recommended specs?

More repairs i want to do/swap from other car
-swap hoodlining and pillar trims over
-swap door trims over
-fix stereo
-get it properly polished and detailed, the paint really needs a decent cut
-fix A/C, currently low on gas, also check out and reset all blend door motors, as there is an issue with that side of things (long story)
-fix rare intermittent sqeaking noise from the springs/shocks

Visual things and mods i want to do include
-fit clear front indicators i have just ordered
-properly smoke the front lights, two reasons to do this, one is the hgih beams have a white residue on the inside of the glass, and two, the front end would look better smoked rather than clear on the dark colour of my car
-spray the tailight amber parts in the nightshade taillight tint, to remove the last of the amber on the car
-finish stereo off with a sub and amp (maybe two amps, one for the component speakers
-lower the car a little more
-fix and fit bodykit
-fit ECU chip and check changes on the dyno
-remake airbox cold air partition in perspex
-possibly fit a twin inlet/outlet straight through rear muffler to increase the sound a little (purely after a slight sound increase, power is not an issue)

Just a few things to do if i really got stuck into it, that could all be done in a week, but that involves effort

[Stoney]

It probably makes little difference but the input venturi you removed could do something like restrict the intake of particles without reducing flow (it depends on the turbulence created behind the grille/lights) but those engineers think about all this.

I have a loud SS exhaust on an M30, anyone that wants it can have it if the swap me a good resonator so I then put my old one back on

As for the input venturi setup, i figured if i replicate this in a larger diameter with the flared end, i cant hurt, but it is the Vane AFM that is the biggest restriction in the inlet

As for the exhaust you have, i'd be tempted to swap for a stock system if you want, PM me some pics and details if you are serious