BMW E34 M5 "keeping a legend alive"

Tastes change with time 
at the time I thought they looked the nuts and had they fit I would have left them on but I wouldn't fit them now 
as for the hight it never stayed like that (I'm not one for low cars for the sake of it ) it needs to work properly it probably isn't much lower if anything than the std car 


I forgot to mention in the last post how it handles with the new suspension 
well!
its hard to explain "it's almost go kart like"
for what is a big car you can throw it about like a mini
ive only used this as a road car and the ride quality is better than the std suspension but yet the grip is fantastic and most importantly it's neutral so you can predict what it's going to to next 

The next chapter: engine
So back in the day a group of us (family and friends) would do a Nurburgring trip once a year
A good social event and I'd take whatever car I had at the time

My brother suggested I should take the M5
That got me thinking
I was all up for taking it but it already had 170k on the clock and I was concerned it wouldn't make it
So I set about pricing up the parts needed to do an engine rebuild for peace of mind

You can read lots of horror stories about how expensive repair costs are but as it turns out the BMW parts prices aren't that bad
It's just the labour that's the killer and who can you trust with your car (I don't trust anyone with any of my cars)
So it was just the cost of parts
Now at the time I pulled the engine out and moved the car into storage to keep it out the way and safe
Then I got rid of my yard and things stopped the engine sat in the back of my transit for two years before I got a chance to get back on it
Hence to say I used a different car for the ring trip

Photos of the build































All parts used were genuine BMW
Parts replaced
Timing chain
All timing chain guides
Timing chain tensioner
Piston rings
Big end bearings and bolts
Main bearings and bolts head bolts
All gaskets and "o" rings
Valve stem seals
Clutch kit
Pretty much everything
I also balanced the Pistons and rods
For emissions they have an air pump that blows air into the exhaust to increase the O2 pre-cat
It only works on idle after start up and when you Rev it
The pump was noisey so I took the opinion to disconnect it
It feeds into the exhaust manifold via two pipe per port
So I done some porting on the exhaust side and removed the pipes and matched the manifold ports to the head

E28 M5 nice👍
When I bought this the E28 was next on my list and they were affordable back then 
i had a mad idea that I should own the set E28/E34/E39 M5 it looked doable "briefly" and then the E28 started going up quickly so it never happened and certainly won't nowadays ☹️

Such a beautiful engine. Admittedly I may be a little biased.

The M badge on the kidney makes my teeth itch though. No offence but it's a pimple on an otherwise perfect face.

So once the engine was done and ready to go back in I brought the car home from storage got it in the garage and set about putting the engine back in
Now it was at this point (when putting the back end on axle stands) I noticed the rear jacking points didn't look so good "a bit crusty"
So I removed the sill covers to have a closer look
This was when it all went tits up' a quick prod with a finger and I soon realised the metal was no more just the paint and rubber undercoat holding the rust together (I hate rust)

A quick lesson in how a sunroof works for anyone who doesn't know
They don't seal or stop water passing
They generally have a gutter system with either two or four drain pipes that allow the water to drain away without any getting in the car
These drain pipe usuallydrain into the sills and the sills themselves also have drain holes
Lesson over

Now on the E34 the drain holes in the sills are small but the way the sill covers fit means the holes are restricted by the covers
So when the water along with the dirt it carries fills the sill after time the holes block and the dirt builds up inside the sill
End result is a sill full of damp dirt and after 10 years or so it rusts from the inside out

From outside all you could see was a couple of rust bubbles on the dog leg but once you start poking around it just got worse








The damage was as follows
Outer sill
Iner sill
Dog leg
Iner wheel arch
Jacking point
And a small bit of floor where the cross member attaches to

As it happens BMW are really good for parts availability I ordered both iner sills from BMW
The problem was with the sill and dog leg
If you buy a sill new it finishes at the base of the dog leg and if you buy a 1/4 panel it finishes about 4" up the dog leg
So you can't get the two panels to meet at the most important area
As far as I was concerned the only way round this was to buy another car and cut out the whole area I needed and pick it apart by drilling out all the spot welds and then I could use them as my repair panels
Lucky I managed to find a very clean almost mint 535i with no MOT due to a self leaving suspension fault/leak
Took want I needed and sold the rest off










My garage is quite small so I can only do one side at a time then turn it round and do the other
So many hours later I had finished it
I made the drain holes a bit bigger and waxoil it to death so hopefully it will out last me

As I hand the spray gun in my hand I also done the stone chips on the bonnet






Prep




Looking closely I recon the bonnet has been painted a couple of times before probably due to stone chips as there is no signs of damage ideally it would have been better to have had the bonnet blasted back to metal first and then painted

Balance the throttle bodies

I also replaced the coil pack links (no reason other than I could)






And she was back on the road again
I'd probably owned it for 5 years by this point but with the engine/rust/and suspension done I was happy with the knowledge I wouldn't be spending any big money anytime soon

AMAZING work from body work to paint work....very inspiring!

JP

While it was on the road last time out I decided to fix the A/C ( it's never really worked well and I never re-gassed it after the engine re-build)
So new fan new condensor




This was more involved than I first gave it credit for
You can't get to the a/c rad from the front so you need to dissect it from the engine bay so while the intake was off
I thought I'd have a look at the starter motor (been noisey since I've owned it but I forgot about it when I had the engine out)
The problem was play in the drive gear


I'm pretty sure the M5 starter cross references with the M30 engine so I could have just bought a new one but where's the fun in that
One advantage of having a retired engineer as a dad is you can just ask him to make a new bush






Job done
At the same time I fitted a couple of lower front arms and replaced the poor quality EBay exhaust rubbers with genuine BMW ones








Even though I done all the work on the A/C I never actually got round to gassing it up
I think I only used the car twice that year

They only fitted them on the early models the 6 speed had bigger brakes so the 17" won't fit hence the 18" 
bmw later copied this disign and used them on the E38 and E39 but the E34 had a unique off set so while they look the same there not 
they also had more of a Matt finish compered to the later style parallels

(master mind on the E34 m5)😊