E28 M5

That looks lovely and will now become one of my few bookmarked BMWs!

Great looking car, looks like it's been looked after.

Please say your going to change those god awful bumpers for Euro spec one?

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. tristanh - The E39 is an M5. Always wanted one and buying it earlier this year almost tanked the deal for this car. I hadn't heard from the seller all winter so I went ahead and got the E39 and then maybe a week later he called and asked if I was ready to make a deal. Of course, right after I had blown the cash I was saving for the E28! 

I absolutely want to convert to Euro bumpers but to do it right there's some metal work to do on the rear end, otherwise you're left with a couple of visible holes below the rear bumper. I've got a set that needs some work that should be good place holders until a mint set comes along and I'm ready to attach the euro tail panel. Plenty to do before I get to that though.

Looks like the fuel system is going to be the first major project. I suspected that things in the tank might be ugly judging by the fuzz on the inside of the gas cap. I'd never seen anything like it, but I've also never had a car that sat for over a decade with ethanol gasoline in the tank. After draining the tank and taking a quick look with a cheapo endoscope my fears were confirmed. The tank is fairly rusty with a layer of slimy crud at the bottom, so now it's got to come out.

A few years ago a standard E24 / E28 tank was around $300. Now it's over $700 even with a wholesale discount, so I decided to clean up a spare I kept from a car I scrapped years ago and take it to get boiled out by a local radiator shop. I'll send the injectors out to get cleaned and replace all of the soft fuel lines. Not sure what to do with the hard lines. They are available from BMW and aren't very expensive but I'm thinking that they might clean up well enough just by running some solvent through them. Both pumps are frozen, probably just from sitting with fuel in them. They might come back to life but in the event that they don't I may convert from the twin pump setup to a more modern single submerged pump.

On the upside everything under the carpet looks excellent. The battery box doesn't have a speck of rust on it and the (presumably) original spare and clamp and cover are all looking good.





Everything up top came apart easily enough despite being pretty crusty.



I wasn't thrilled to see this but I was also not shocked. I suppose this is why you store a car with a full tank and fuel stabilizer.



It doesn't look all that bad here but with the scope inside the tank I saw many terrible things.



The spare tank from a late 635CSi. It was probably clean enough to get by with just a thorough rinse but I'll feel better having it boiled out properly.

There you go...

bookmarked

Stunning as usual
Really looking forward to following this thread

That's a lovely old BMW to own and bring back to rude health - very jealous.
Your plating shop does really nice work. Quick question on the Pierburg valve thingy that's been done, I noticed it has electrical connections,so wouldn't the acid pickle and plating mess that part up ?

Big update!

First, after a bit more deliberation I removed the engine and gearbox. Part of me was still considering leaving it alone, or at least doing the timing chain guides with the engine in situ, but the only way to really do it right was to take it all down. The leaks from the rear main seal and the transmission output seal were worse than I had originally thought, maybe as a result of sitting for so long, or maybe my drivetrain was assembled on a Friday afternoon.







Pretty gross. Definitely best to pull it all out, clean it, re-seal it. Do it right.

Drivetrain extracted:



A strange artifact on the topside of the exhaust. I suppose Steven Dreifuss decided to autograph my car, whoever he may be.



Dirty, but the documentation I have supports the mileage shown on the odometer. Lots of cleaning to do, especially under the brake booster area. Seems like all of the E24s and E28s I've had are always filthy in this area... Not sure yet what the solution might be.







Before I removed the transmission, clutch and flywheel to get the engine ready to onto the stand, the front crank nut needed to be broken loose. In the past when I have had access to air tools it's been easy to zip it off with a 1/2 impact, but sadly my compressor is gone so I had to do it manually. This nut is torqued to around 320lb/ft on the M30 and S38 engines, and after being in place for so long they are usually not very willing to come loose. In this case I had to use a ratchet strap around the legs o the engine hoist to pull the engine down, wedge the crank holder tool between the floor and the leg of the hoist, and then put some tension on the boom to load the whole assembly and keep the engine from twisting. I bent my 1/2 breaker bar on my first attempt at breaking the nut loose. The 1" bar did the trick after hitting the nut with a torch for a bit longer.



Time to remove the gearbox and see the severity of the rear main seal leak. The clutch pressure plate was very oily, as was the inside of the bellhousing. Won't be reusing these pieces anyhow.







There was a very thick coating of grease on the front of the head and timing cover. I would later discover that the cam box wasn't sealed very well to the head and was likely the main source for this leak, and this is what prompted me to remove it for a re-seal. More on that later.





A very special package arrived. I couldn't help myself... they had to be test fit. Waited six months for these and they did not disappoint.





Exciting! Stepped Supersprint headers and matching exhaust system. I decided to clean up the block and give it a fresh coat of black since it was looking kind of shabby. At this point I figured since it's a low mileage engine I'd just go ahead as planned with the timing chain guide job and the new task of re-sealing the cam box. But as I got deeper into it I started thinking that it would be a shame to be this far into it and not send the head out for a rebuild. One expert I talked to said these engines seem to need valve guides at around 100k miles and that was about all the convincing I needed to do it. Realizing later that it needs guides or seals and then having to pull the head with the engine in the car sounded awful.























With the head on its way to the experts for their stage 1 performance rebuild I turned my attention to the front suspension and engine bay. Bilstein Sports have gotten hard to find for these cars but Alpina offers their FE-1 kit which includes custom valved Bilsteins with matching lowering springs, so I ordered the kit. I stripped and painted the strut tubes, subframe, dust shields and a few other parts with the same epoxy and 2k satin black I used on the fuel tank.









I also cleaned up all of the aluminum heat shields and the cast aluminum parts from the engine. I nearly sent all of this to be vapor blasted but since I'm not repainting the engine or the rest of the car I was worried about giving the engine an over-restored look.



New upper and lower Lemforder control arms came in and I finally got to use these spherical upper arm bearings I bought years ago. They are rebuildable and are not supposed to be too harsh. We'll see how they work out.



Lots and lots of scrubbing later and the wheel wells look pretty respectable so it was time to bolt some pieces together. Every piece of hardware is new grade 10.9 with locking nuts and either loctite or anti-seize where necessary. The engine bay needs a little more work but it's cleaning up pretty well.











Not sure if the inventor of this balljoint separator intended for it to be used this way, but it happens to be a great way to pull the tie rod ends into their taper and keep them from spinning while the nuts are tightened!



New hub bearing assemblies and E32 V8 / V12 front brakes. Zimmerman rotors, ATE hoses, Jurid pads. Rears will be vented brakes from an E34 540i / M5 done with the same components.







The next jobs will be the rear suspension and brakes (SLS delete), reinstalling the fuel tank and soon, hopefully, putting the rebuilt head back on the block and putting the engine back together.

Thanks Ray, I'm happy with how it's going. Euro bumpers will definitely happen.

I just realized I hadn't mentioned why the change from the standard 4 piston brakes to the big single piston calipers up front. The 4 piston units will be refurbished and maybe refitted at some point, but having driven E24s and E28s with almost every OEM brake upgrade package, my favorite remains the E32 fronts with E34 vented rears. It's the perfect combination of feel, performance and cost. I do intend to keep the original brakes in case there's ever a desire to put them back on or sell the car.

This is the last set I did. Zinc plated bodies and hardware, black oxide finish on the (incredibly unique) 9mm bolts.



Yesterday the head came back from the rebuilder. They did their "stage 1 performance" service and it looks excellent. I've got new OEM bolts and head gasket plus the rest of the timing components mentioned earlier, so this engine is officially ready to go back together now.







Since I'll have to set the valve lash regardless I'm considering using the cams from my 3.6 liter engine. They are supposed to be good for a bit more power without hurting mid-range. More updates soon as I get this engine back together.