Picked up a nice 89 535i

[JGood]

I sold my 87 325is and picked up this 89 535iA from a good friend. It was a one owner car up til a few years ago, always garaged and never driven in snow. I'd even suggest that it was in mint condition. Then, the friend I bought it off of got hit in the drivers front fender. Barely any damage, but insurance cut a pretty big check for him to get it fixed, so he sold it to me for $1200 since he has about 10 cars too many.

145k miles, all original, new bushings and shocks all around. New plugs, cap, rotor, wires, etc... Drives like a brand new car. He's also including the m-tech side skirts, which I'll have painted along with the lower part of the front bumper. I may get some springs up front to bring in down and maybe some M-Parallels or Stye 5's. Other then that, It's going to stay stock to serve as a nice DD.

I have a lot of learning to do, I don't know much about e34's.

[StereoInstaller1]

Wow, nice find!

How long until this has a V8 too?

[JGood]

Wow, nice find!

How long until this has a V8 too?

LOL, not happening! I'd love a 540it/6, though.

This is just my cheap daily driver. Should be mostly trouble free, given the maintenance history.

[Danny]

What about the LOLVO?

[JGood]

What about the LOLVO?

Winter beater / car parts & mountain bike hauler. Kind of embarrassing picking up a chick in that thing... It's loud, makes crazy turbo sounds, is grey (I think) and just sucks to look at in general. Lol

[Danny]

It is indeed hard to get beezies to dance with in a lolvo.

[Jean]

Nice dude, interior is damn clean for an 89! Keep the m30b35 and add BOOST :) Good deal, and lucky that suspension / bushings are sorted out. These have WAY more than e30.

Any questions on these let me know, I am on my 2nd one and so far between the two I've taken then almost complete apart.

[JGood]

This is just my cheap daily driver. Should be mostly trouble free, given the maintenance history.

Famous last words bump. Don't read the following if you don't want to hear me bitch about my car.


This car has been such a PITA. The heater core took a shit immediately after buying it, which covered the drivers temp probe in coolant, causing my drivers side heat to not work. It's taken me about 2 months to diagnose and repair this. Also, the blower motor control unit took a shit. It's a fucking sword shape object that goes in the blower box, and measures the air speed, and adjusts the blower motor speed as necessary so that the precise airflow the engineers desired would be achieved. When it fails, you get no airflow. This cute little sword is a $600 part. Luckily I came across a rebuilt one for $140.

The front end shimmy on this thing is bad enough to make me question if a wheel and/or the entire front subframe is going to fall off. However, the entire front suspension is brand new. So where do I even start?

The instrument cluster is flaky, it sometimes turns off (well, everything but the speedo and tach). You have to hit the dash to turn it back on. I bought a replacement cluster, but there's 3 different non-interchangeable clusters for e34's, and of course I got the wrong one. So I bought another cluster, from the same year car this time, and put it in. Of course it was bad, almost nothing worked, this one was worse then the original.

So I go to pull the cluster back out. To do that, you have to remove the steering wheel, since mine is a non-tilt column. It's also an airbag wheel. There's two bolts that hold the airbag on, from the rear of the wheel. Very hard to get to. I managed to strip the threads on one of them, it's fully jammed, just spinning. Can't get the airbag off, which means I can't get the steering wheel off, which means I can't get the cluster out. The airbag is also lose on the stripped screw side (obviously) and rattles.

The cruise control also fucks up, I'll be driving along with the cruise set at 65, and it will spike the throttle and then leave off immediately, almost as if it's losing the VSS for a split second. Well, since the m30 actual has decent torque, this slams your head into the head rest and then forward again. It does this randomly. Sometimes once a day, sometimes once a minute.



This car was 100% mint, without a single electrical or mechanical flaw when I bought it. Within a month, it literally went to shit. Blah.

[Dj Buttchug]

dude I would look into replacing the ignition switch to fix those electrical bugs. A bad switch has been know to cause all sorts of whack issues cruise control being the #1

I feel your pain tho as my 525 is also a genuine piece of shit. It leaks oil, coolant and power steering fluid.

[Badwayz]

Famous last words bump. Don't read the following if you don't want to hear me bitch about my car.


This car has been such a PITA. ...... Also, the blower motor control unit took a shit. It's a fucking sword shape object that goes in the blower box, and measures the air speed, and adjusts the blower motor speed as necessary so that the precise airflow the engineers desired would be achieved. When it fails, you get no airflow. This cute little sword is a $600 part. Luckily I came across a rebuilt one for $140.

The front end shimmy on this thing is bad enough to make me question if a wheel and/or the entire front subframe is going to fall off. However, the entire front suspension is brand new. So where do I even start?

The instrument cluster is flaky, it sometimes turns off (well, everything but the speedo and tach). You have to hit the dash to turn it back on. I bought a replacement cluster, but there's 3 different non-interchangeable clusters for e34's, and of course I got the wrong one. So I bought another cluster, from the same year car this time, and put it in. Of course it was bad, almost nothing worked, this one was worse then the original.

.......

This car was 100% mint, without a single electrical or mechanical flaw when I bought it. Within a month, it literally went to shit. Blah.

Experienced all of these same things in my first month as well, plus I'm now diagnosing why my car wont start after recharging my dead battery. This car will now be a flip, rather than a new project.

[6670charger]

Sorry to hear. I had a few E34s in Europe. The 91 520i sedan I had was a really nice car, along with a 93 518i I had for a few months. No problems to speak of with either of them.

[Ryann]

Aside from front passenger seat twist (which I fixed) and minor front suspension maintenance my 240K mile '95 525i has been flawless in the two years I've owned it.

[JGood]

This is the worst car I've ever owned.

Replaced the heater box temp sensor... which required removing everything for the 9th time, down to the heater core. When I removed the cover, I saw that the plastic heater core pipe is dripping. Right in the middle of the pipe, it's a pinhole leak, somehow. I JUST replaced the heater core. So now I need to order the pipes and do the job again (for the 10th time). On top of that, I leave for work today thinking I finally have a 100% functioning HVAC system (minus a slight leak in the pipe), but no, I have no air coming from the floor vents. Twenty some degrees out, couldn't even feel my feet by the time I got to work. I'm furious. My HVAC system uses the electric slider for the floor vents, not the cable. So who knows what part of that system failed. At least I have properly controlled air coming out of the upper vents.

Honestly, this is by far the worst car I've ever owned. Even worse then my m62 X5 (and that thing was a disaster). Every electrical connector that I touch explodes into a million pieces. Which actually doesn't even matter because anything electrical in the car doesn't work to begin with. This is my first and last e34. Back to e30's I go...

[Gary Horneck]

Jeez, what a nightmare. Sorry dude

[e30bulldog]

you should buy a e39 540 like i did. extreme complication and m5 parts prices