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An E34 M5 Lottery Ticket

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    An E34 M5 Lottery Ticket

    I don't think I've ever really posted much on R3V about my own cars, and know for sure that I've never made a thread following the progress of any of my cars. I figured since I was starting with a blank slate it may be best to keep track of all the little things I do with this car, as I seem to forget those little details as time goes on. Hopefully it'll be a little bit entertaining as well.

    So I'll start out with an intro to my interest in E34's. Most of my time has been spent with E30's, and I daily drive my 318is. I've been driving a decent bit around Metro Atlanta lately and will be driving a little bit more now with a new job. I got an idea to try out something a little bit bigger so I don't get crunched out on the free for all that is Metro Atlanta highways. I ended up buying a decently nice auto '95 525, did a bunch of maintenance work to it and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I soon decided that if I was going to put a bunch of work into an E34, I wanted it to be something more worthwhile. I was leaning towards a Touring, and I was casually on the lookout for an ideal donor.

    Before I found one though, I ended up with an opportunity to get into a reasonably priced E34 M5. As always, there's a catch. The car has been sitting for 10 years.

    My buddy Jonathan had been looking around for an E34 M5 and had been posting around in search of one. He ended up getting a message from a guy who had two M5's he was thinking about selling. One running Calypso car, and a non-running black car. He was interested in the Calypso car as he doesn't currently have the space and or time to be working on some haggard M5 so he asked if I was interested in the black car. I headed up to NC to check the cars out with him and this is what I found.

    I don't think I have the story 100% correct, but here it is as I understand it. The car was purchased from the original owner around 2006 or so. For some reason, the second owner had the head rebuilt around 2007, and the story that I got was that it never ran after the initial head rebuild, but receipts and records seem to indicate differently.

    Supposedly a new guy that was new to the shop did the rebuild, and once it was assembled and started it began pissing coolant into the cylinders. The story I was told then goes that the engine was torn all the way down and the block was sent out to be looked over. There are receipts for block pressure testing and a whole lot of new parts, including all of the bottom end bearings and new timing components. There are receipts for a bunch of head work as well. Supposedly the engine was then re-assembled once again, fired up, and proceeded to do the exact same thing.

    At this point, the owner had run out of patience and sometime in 2008 the shop replaced his car with an E39 M5 and the E34 has sat ever since. I purchased the car from somebody who bought the car from that shop in order to use it as a parts car, but only ended up taking the exhaust they needed and saved it as it's really too nice to part out. That's why I only have the second hand story as to what went down with the engine.

    The story that I got from the seller was that it seemed to have the wrong head gasket on it, as there was gasket visible when he looked down the cylinders with a boroscope. That seemed like too easy of a solution, and kind of hard to believe that a shop doing all of that work would have make such a vast oversight.

    Even though the engine problem really wasn't adding up, I decided that major component failure was unlikely and that it was more likely something smaller that was the cause, so I went ahead and bought the lottery ticket.

    Overall, the car is pretty decent. The paint is gone, but the body is pretty darn straight with very few signs of rust. We jacked the car up and I took a poke around the underside, and the rockers, floorpans, and door seams all seemed pretty solid. The major missing components are the M5 front bumper and the exhaust. The complete set of Throwing Stars was a nice plus though, and I just so happen to have a complete set of Turbines as well.


    IMG_3002 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

    The interior is in surprisingly good shape considering how long it's been sitting out in the sun, but the leather is definitely dry and the rear seats have split at the seam. The headliner actually isn't bad either. The car phone is a huge ++++++. (Might have even been the deciding factor )


    IMG_3003 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr


    IMG_3005 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr


    IMG_3004 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

    When I first looked inside the car I was a bit concerned about the missing cluster, but it just so happened to be in the trunk and the story behind it is kinda neat. The guy I purchased the car from asked the shop owner about the cluster and he remembered who he sold it to. The shop owner reached out to the guy and he just so happened to still have the cluster sitting on his shelf after 10 years. So luckily the car still has its original cluster!

    And here's the literal money shot! Another big thing (that shouldn't be big) is the missing spark plug wires. Those suckers retail for $500 from BMW. I suppose it won't hurt to be starting out with fresh wires though.


    IMG_3009 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

    So that's about it. We loaded her up and took her back home.


    IMG_3011 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

    I think I got most of the story right as far as I know it, but I've got a stack of receipts that show things a bit differently. I might talk about that a bit in the next post though.

    More to come soon!
    75' M42 Powered 2002
    AW 318is

    #2
    Nice! black on e34s is always such a win for me. What are the plans? I assume restoring it?

    1988 ~ Lacey ~ 325iS

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      #3
      my favorite m5 ever. Too bad its not a wagon, haha. This one looks to be in pretty good shape. Looking forward to more
      1984 Delphin 318i 2 door

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        #4
        I do love these cars. I owned a 91 M5 a few years back and at about the same time I did a lot of work with s38B36s. Given the questionable history of this car I hope you have deep pockets. These are very expensive engines. The fact the cluster is out and that he took the exhaust and maybe other things doesn't give me much confidence you wont hit other setbacks besides the engine.

        For your sake im hoping its just the head gasket but that doesn't seem likely. Crack in the head or block(cracks between valve seats not uncommon), warped head, cheap shop that reused head bolts or wrong torque.

        The Build:
        http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=191125

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          #5
          Looking forward to this!

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            #6
            interested in knowing the solution for the coolant geyser.
            if it's just the wrong gasket, you won the lottery

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              #7
              I always like reading these stories. I hope the end result is something fairly easy, not so costly and you get to enjoy driving that awesome engine.

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                #8
                Originally posted by vtechnik View Post
                Nice! black on e34s is always such a win for me. What are the plans? I assume restoring it?
                The hope for the time being is just to get it running and go from there. I don't plan a major resto, just a mechanically sorted driver that I can DD if so desired.

                Originally posted by ttrousdell View Post
                I do love these cars. I owned a 91 M5 a few years back and at about the same time I did a lot of work with s38B36s. Given the questionable history of this car I hope you have deep pockets. These are very expensive engines. The fact the cluster is out and that he took the exhaust and maybe other things doesn't give me much confidence you wont hit other setbacks besides the engine.

                For your sake im hoping its just the head gasket but that doesn't seem likely. Crack in the head or block(cracks between valve seats not uncommon), warped head, cheap shop that reused head bolts or wrong torque.
                Those issues are a bit isolated from the engine problems. The shop owner who did the work initially sold the cluster for some reason and may have sold/used the spark plug wires. The guy I bought the car from bought it in 2016 just to use the exhaust on his other car, but decided the car was too nice to part out.

                From all of the receipts I looked through a head of time, there were nothing to suggest that the big (rare, expensive, etc.) hardware such as the block and head were the root of the problem. The last time the engine had been rebuilt, the block and head had been pressure tested. There were also many new parts, such as all of the timing chain and guides, that were installed at the time that are either NLA or $$$ today, so that was a major plus.

                That being said, I had decided that if any of the big pieces are destined for scrap and no replacements could be easily found, that I'd either part the car or look into some engine swaps.

                Thanks for the encouragement everyone! I've made quite a bit of progress so everything here is catching up to now.

                I brought the car back to my parents house at the end of the weekend and had to wait until the next weekend to start digging into the car. The wait was killing me!

                So when I got back to my parents the next weekend, my buddy and I rolled it out of the trailer, pushed it in the shop (easier said than done with the super dry rotted tires) and got to work!

                IMG_3024 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                We got it set up on the lift and popped the hood off. Come to find out, E34 hoods are incredibly easy to get off and don't require readjustment when reinstalling which was a nice surprise.

                IMG_3025 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                Here's the missing exhaust and the underside. It's really not too shabby underneath, just a lot of roadgrime but fairly dry. Speaking of dry, all of the bushings have pretty much returned to earth and the ball joint boots have done the same, so a full front suspension refresh will definitely be on the list. Has anyone ever used E31 lower control arms before?

                IMG_3026 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                One surprise did pop up, and that was the lack of a power steering pump. After some research I wasn't all that concerned though. The car has already had SLS deleted and it seems that conversion to single vane M30 power steering pumps is quite common, so that's what I'm planning on doing.

                IMG_3027 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                Another nice little surprise. Just... Why???

                IMG_3028 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                My buddy and I continued to pick away at the car. I decided I wanted to pull the trans and then pull the engine from the top as I'd never pulled a drivetrain from an E34 before. We popped the plenum off in order to get a look around the bellhousing and pulled the radiator out in case the engine leaned forward.

                IMG_3035 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                No exhaust installed, so I pulled the driveshaft, disconnected the shifter and started loosening the bellhousing bolts. Bellhousing bolt access really wasn't all that bad. I suppose some E34s had rather large autos and V8's in them, so there was plenty of room in there with the S38 and its little transmission.

                The transmission popped off without too much fuss. When I put it down I noticed a few things. First, the transmission is DOT-R. Second, its actually a G260 and not the factory G280. I later found some more receipts from 2001 and 2002 that showed one of the previous owners actually purchased a replacement transmission from the dealer to the tune of $3200 or so. For some reason it seems that the G280 was commonly replaced by the G260. Not a big deal to me, I've seen quite a few G280's have issues so I have no problem giving the G260 a try.

                IMG_3038 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                IMG_3039 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                The clutch and pressure plate were new as I had expected after going through the receipts. Unfortunately, it's been 10 years since they were installed...

                IMG_3040 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                IMG_3042 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                Also, the tunnel sound deadening has hardened and started chipping away with no effort. It was definitely annoying to have chips continuously dropping down our shirts while pulling the transmission.

                IMG_3041 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                After getting the trans off, we kept picking away at the engine. We went fairly slowly as I've never been around S38's before, so I took plenty of pictures and organized the hardware as best I could. The S38 wiring harness is pretty annoying as it doesn't have a connector such as the C101 in E30's. I ended up taking off the harness the dumb way, rather than pulling the harness from the DME. It wouldn't have been so bad except for the fact that in order to pull the harness off the S38 itself, you have to pull the injector harness which was certainly the most annoying part.

                Either way, we were soon ready to start getting the hoist hooked up.

                IMG_3051 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                Soon the engine was on its way out. I have to say, pulling an engine, even one as long as the S38, from the top of the E34 is a pleasure compared to the contortions required to get 6 cylinders out of E30's.

                IMG_3057 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                Once out, we got it set up on it's temporary home on the engine stand in preparation to start tearing it down. It's quite a lot bigger than the little M42's and M20's I'm accustomed to.

                IMG_3061 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                I also decided to take a peak down the cylinders with a boroscope to see if I could find any clues before it started coming apart. I believe this was cylinder 3, and as you can see, something is a bit amiss...

                IMG_3066 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

                In the next installment, we'll get to the tear-down on this long beauty and see if we can get to the bottom of things!
                75' M42 Powered 2002
                AW 318is

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                  #9
                  Subscribed.
                  How to remove, install or convert to pop out windows
                  http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=297611


                  Could be better, could be worse.

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                    #10
                    I can't wait to see you figure this out. Sometime I would like to own a E34 M5 too, they just look so cool. Perfect Autobahn cruisers if you ask me :)
                    1990 325iX Touring - November 2018 R3V Car Of The Month

                    1980 Volkswagen Golf mk1 1.1
                    1974 BMW 2002 Touring

                    Instagram

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                      #11
                      There's a guy in Charlottesville, VA with a company called Moosehead Engineering. He is very knowledgeable on E28/E34 style suspension. The answer is Spherical Bushings! He does a mixture of his own fab and using E31 Lemfoerder arms too. It's a mixture of off the shelf stuff and his upgraded arms with sphericals.
                      Paynemw
                      1986 Toyota 4Runner SR5 - Sold!
                      the ebb and flow of 325is ownership - In RVA
                      1988 BMW 535is - RIP but my dream BMW

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                        #12
                        oh this is gonna be neat

                        1989 Coupe build thread: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=312012
                        IG: @mitchlikesbikes

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                          #13
                          sub'd

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                            #14
                            Very cool, love reading treads like this. Good luck
                            Instagram : makeitsnap

                            1985 e28 520i

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                              #15
                              Very cool! Sub’d
                              - Darrell

                              2001 BMW M5
                              1990 BMW 325is - Build Thread

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