e34 DD build, everyone's doing it...

[Jb325is]

I figured I would put this here since it's what is keeping me from making progress on my e30 temporarily. I've gotten to the point where my e30 is not DD friendly and I really needed another car. I always have had a thing for e34's and had a really nice one a few years back but I ended up breaking it apart and using the drivetrain in my e30.. I kinda regretted it and really wanted another one, so I had no choice when I found this '89 535i 5 speed on craigslist locally with a blown headgasket. It was cheap enough to allow me a little extra cash at it, nothing crazy as I am a self sufficient homeowner/college student but I suck at leaving things alone.

The owner was a typical non-enthusiast bmw owner and after telling me the body was near perfect I drive an hour to see this:




Other than that, the car was fairly clean all things considered and it was cirrus which is one of my favorite BMW colors so I ended up getting it for a decent price and taking it home.


The paint looks decent enough in that picture but I can assure you, it sucks and it was apparent right away that it was gonna need an all over re-spray. I wasn't really excited about this but I've worked with a body shop for years now, so while I've never actually done any paint and body, I kind of know the gist of it and I have some friends at work helping me out along the way.

Anyways, I got the car home and immediately got to work on the headgasket. Check out the steam clean on #6-




I tried to just slap a headgasket on it but the head was warped, so I had to pull the motor-


Luckily I had the spare motor from my old e34 just sitting in the garage, all it needed was some cleaning and it was ready to go in-






Cleaned the engine bay up too-




Took a couple weeks but finally got it buttoned up and running again-


On to the suspension...

[grippymonkey]

good job man! e34's are awesome

[Huff]

I like where this is going.. Looks GREAT man!!

[Jb325is]

I really had been wanting to make a set of coilovers. My last e34 had Nex on it and they were pure shit, my e30 has Ground Controls and they are expensive. I wanted something cheap that wasn't going to go through shocks at 5-10k mile increments but I wanted it to be really low if need be. After doing some reading I got this stuff from A-1 racing, they sell mostly dirt track/oval stuff but these sleeves/adjusters are made to fit over strut housings in the front and Bilsteins in the rear. I ended up paying ~$180 for this stuff-


The front sleeves were almost exactly the same diameter as e34 strut housings, so they were going to work perfectly. Unfortunately, I had a set of e28 housings laying around an decided to use them so I could start on the coilovers with the e34 still on the ground. Unbeknownst to me, e28 housings are .1" smaller in diameter than e34 housings so the sleeves didn't fit snug.


I ended up having some perch rings made with a step machined into them to center the sleeves on the housing. This would probably carry over to the e30 if you wanted to make your own coilovers for one, you'd have to make something to center these sleeves on the housings.

All welded up, thanks to Lorin (LJ851) and ready to go on the car-


My plan was initially to use Bilsteins all around with full length housings. I thought that I'd be able to use 6" ~500lb springs all around, weld the rings pretty far down and squeak by with just enough travel to ride as low as I wanted to. Unfortunately this didn't work out-

This is with 2.5" of travel. Not low enough and probably not enough travel-


And bottomed out perch to Bilstein gland nut-


That obviously wouldn't work. So I decided to go ahead and buy some short Corrado g60 Koni yellows. These are 4" shorter than factory stuff and would allow me to shorten the housings. I decided to take 2.5" out of the housings, if you look at the picture above I had a lot of room from welding the rings so far down before so I was able to not mess with the area where the perch was welded previously, take 2.5" out from the housings above the perch and just cut down the sleeves. Thanks to Steve @ Apexdesigns for the work on the housings! I got everything back together and it was a lot closer to what I was looking for (got some new wheels too)-


This worked out pretty well but I was still a little low on travel because of the height of the front upper perches that I had. I found some flat perches for sale locally and they worked perfectly, you can see the amount of travel it bought me comparing the two-


New perches and short housings, with 3" of travel still and some room on the adjusters (tires were hitting tops of inner fenders)-




15's btw^

So, suspension finished for now. On to cosmetics..

[grippymonkey]

tuckin 15's on an E34! nice stuf

[shEck3lls0]

Good lord. I absolutely love e34s. That suspension set-up will look fantastic once the wheels are set right. I wanna see this thing when it is finished.

[Jb325is]

The wheels were in great shape for the price, but I wasn't crazy about the blackness and they had some curb rash. I decided to try my hand at wheel repair, and they ended up coming out really good. This was the worst curbage after a lot of work-


And now with some color.. This was my first time spraying base/clear in a booth, and a wheel is a hell of a way to start. This was after the base, I was too tired and ready to leave work to take pictures of the final product in the booth, but they came out really nice for a first time job-


Cleared and on the car, yes I have center caps-


I also bought this, along with some skirts from a local member. It's brand new, never been painted-


And this is where I am today, got a replacement door for my nasty bondo'd POS. It is really straight but had a couple tiny spot of typical e34 lower door rust trying to start. Spent some time today breaking down the door, griding down and re-sealing the seam, the prepping it to be jammed out. Planning on spraying it tomorrow-


Next step is to start the bodywork. I am not an experienced body or paint guy by any means but I've been doing detail/paint correction with the body shop basically forever, so I feel like I'll be able to get it looking how I want to. I do have some professionals at work helping me out as needed though. I'm planning on taking my time and doing it right, especially since I'm on a budget and I'm buying some pretty good stuff to spray, so re-doing anything is going to hurt. So by all means, if any body/paint guys are out there and have any suggestions send them my way! I'll be using Spies hecker base and spies hecker 8035 hs clear, so as long as I don't fail horribly it should be super slick

[shEck3lls0]

That wheel fitment up front.... Just the greatest. I love the wheels and nice job on the repair and paint.

[838Kelli]

e34 are dope rides, great progress keep it coming

[Sputnik]

sexy car, keep up the good work!

[Jean]

Woot! Lots of guys on bfc swear by nex stuff, but I had my doubts lol...what problems did you have speficially I am curious.

Personally I am pretty set on just some bilstein sports + h&r sports or vogtlands...

[CHIF8008]

this is dope. seriously

[Jb325is]

Thanks!

As for the NEX coilovers, I had at least 2 blown shocks when I sold them, one front, one rear and the buyer said other front was leaking also (I sold them super cheap) and the rear bottom bushing on the shocks wore out and were making all kinds of noise. I also hate the design with the super wide front spring, really messes with wheel fitment

[Jean]

Nice dude, with a-1 racing stuff how is the choice of springs (rates/length) or did you use GC/ERS springs?

[Jb325is]

A-1 sells hypercoil I believe. I'm running GC/Eibach springs, 6" all around 525/440 rates